Naseem's...noises...are more defined, overly done and overly pitched, though I never mind it because in my eyes that woman can do no wrong, I adore her. But with Akira, I truly thought he was considering what I was saying...instead of trying to avoid disagreeing with me, LOL. For a long time, I thought we were clones, because he hardly ever disagreed with me. It wasn't until I started reading blogs and started paying attention to my Japanese friends. I started to notice that they all avoided disagreeing with me by these noises. And it's amazing because here I was, close friends with Naseem and a few other girls, and I never ever noticed that they were being polite. I actually to this day feel gulity about it because I never took the time to pay attention to their culture. I actually considered Naseem to be Persian, I never really saw her as Japanese because...well...she didn't look Japanese. And see, even saying something like that is awful.
But when I started dating Akira, so many things he did would remind me of Naseem. In fact, being around him would make me miss her because I was use to seeing her daily, and now I was seeing Akira daily. Then when we would all hang out together, I finally saw it. They tip toed around me...in fact Naseem got extremely nervous around me and kept eyeing me. I felt bad, but I was actually jealous. It was the first time I ever had that kind of experince, and it was because I was around a culture I completely didn't understand but my other half did. It was un-nerving...to the point that I never brought Naseem around Akira again.
I guess because I loved them both so much...I didn't want to be left out...but I know they would never do that to me, but it felt like it. And it was again, the first time I realized I wasn't one of them. So that experince has made me extremely nervous about meeting the family in Japan. I didn't know a thing about the Japanese other then hear-say. So I started reading books, I started trying to learn Japanese, and I've started reading blogs...and now I'm blogging...I guess to record my progress on it all.
I do have to say...in most cases...the avoiding conflict ordeal is very useful. Akira and I a few weeks ago had a terrible fight, to where I didn't sleep or eat for three days and I was basically a nervous wreak. He left his work and actually came to mine with a gift once he realized what kind of shape I was in...we recently lost our child, I wasn't that far along...a few weeks, and he was away on business and has been almost every week and comes home during the weekends, but it's been very hard to deal with it all alone because no one knows. So when he was flirting with a few girls on facebook...well...I unleashed hell on him. I know he was doing it to seem funny, the only issue was that one girl was middle eastern, and the other American, and I know they saw it as a socially ackward moment, and I know the middle eastern girl thought it meant Akira had no respect for me. We middle easterners don't flirt to joke around. Hell...we're told not to smile to the opposite sex, much less joke. So I was a mess. I was embarrassed, I was depressed, and I was angry at being alone and ignored.
Anyhow, we went away for the weekend, and we made a pack...that this part of our relationship, we would avoid conflict. Once again, adding another egg shell to tip toe around. I'm not sure if it's healthy, but I have to be honest...the no fighting thing...it's helping me recover. Here we're trained to talk about things over and over, but sometimes that's like picking a scab and in the end all it does is leave a scar. What we are doing is kind of like, putting a bandaid on it. Out of sight until it's healed and we can remove it. It's not being avoided...it's being left for time to heal it.
In that aspect...I think Akira being Japanese is a good thing, because I don't know what I would have done had this happened with someone else. His little quorks...turned out to be little ways to make our life happier.
There are things he does that annoy the shit out of me...he'll avoid too many things, or he'll pretend he didn't hear me or he'll be over dramatic before he tells me he did something I won't like...he'll bury his head in a pillow or something...sometimes I get mad, but usually I just wait it out, and play with his hair until he feels secure enough to tell me. And these things, while they annoy me because it takes up time to get to the point, in the end...everything usually turns out okay.
I'm not saying I want to be Japanese, I actually have no desire for that, or to look Japanese or any of that, I'm pretty happy being Persian...but there are so many things that they do that I resist at first, I guess by default...but in the end...it turns out for the better. The result is the same...but how they react to the result is different. It makes me think of a bumper sticker I saw when I was 21, Life is 1% of what happens to you and 99% of how you react to it.
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