Exchange town weirdness

Back in my ex-exchange town for a week and a half – to dance and to meet friends. Scouring out some library books for my thesis as well, probably.

While the strongest feelings of wtf/fuck I hate this place/but I kinda like this place/aaagghh! have passed [e.g. I don't start crying uncontrollably when I talk about my exhance year or this place or my ex] there still a certain amount of weirdness in the air. I made it to dance practice last night which – surprise surprise – offered some mixed feelings. Dancing was fun: the easy dances that we were doing were ok, but the harder ones were AWESOME! Dancing! \o/ It was nice to meet some mates, but it’s not like I actually had any conversations with them, but mainly the “good to see you! How are you?” type of stuff. This is understandable as there are so many people there that I know (i.e. not much time to spend chatting with individual people) and there’s so much DANCING. Understandable but a bit underwhelming.

Another thing was some of the stuff they said that made me feel like an outsider (which I am, of course, but don’t rub it in my face, ok?). I hadn’t advertised my coming to town much [the main reason for this is that the first time I returned to town after moving out I was all telling people on facebook that hey I'm coming to toooown wuhuuu only to feel that not so many people cared], if at all, so almost everyone present was surprised to see me. I like a bit of a surprise but hearing the “what are you doing here?” bit a couple of times too many started to get a bit annoying as it made me feel like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Go away, you don’t belong here! This was most obvious when this one girl [a girl I don't know much at all but who I, as well as several other people, consider to be quite annoying and actively rude to people --> ignore her] uttered the mentioned question in her not-so-polite-nor-happy tone (there was no good to see you here) so it sounded kinda negative. Compare this to this one guy (who is nice and who I snogged the last time I was here) who said “Wow! What are you doing here?” in a surprised and happy tone: suuuuch a big difference. Funnily enough the girl happened to be closeby when the guy greeted me, and she had the nerve to comment on the situation (something about herself having said the same thing to me but that I didn’t like it). Le Sigh. There I was trying to explain to her how differently the guy said it. Did I already mention the ‘wow’ bit?

Another thing was when a friend asked me what I had been doing back home, to which I responded that I’m slowly studying and such. To which he said “you’re always studying”. I was a bit baffled as 1) I wasn’t quite sure what he meant – his English is ok, but not very nuanced 2) gee, thanks, mate.
What I mean with the first point is that he could have meant that I’m always studying – like don’t study too hard, enjoy life a bit more and hey, how come you started that new degree thing in another university [which wasn't mentioned in this chat, but he could have picked it up on FB]. Or he could have meant that I should graduate already. I choose to respond to the interpretation nr. 1 and said that like I said, I’m slowly studying, so not aways. But really in my head I took in the interpretation nr. 2 and felt like I had been accused. It gets kinda annoying after a while (since 2010…) to explain how the system is a bit different and more flexible, and that most people in Finland stay at the university longer than in Britain [I'm not commenting on whether that's good or not but that it just has some consequences] and that the Master’s Thesis phase often is a bit stretched due to work etc. And oh, there this thing I have called depression and it’s kinda slowing me down. Not to mention that the university the thesis instructor nr. 1 (i.e. the useless guy!) kinda ruined it for me which set me back quite a lot. Oh, and then there’s the new degree I started at the university of technology FOR GOOD REASONS. It’s kinda slowing me down a bit, but it’s useful so don’t give me your shit or your ideas about how things should be – you only know your own system, and damn it, don’t imagine it’s the only system that exists!

Then there was my ex. Haven’t seen him or talked to him since last March. And when he arrived at dancing he was, of course, just hanging out with his girlfriend (they are not a couple, they’re a singular item) in a corner so I didn’t really want to go up to him and say hi. They also danced with one another all the time which I thought was odd: earlier on they mostly danced with one another but they did also dance with other people. Now it appeared that the girl was more comfortable with the dance gang than before (she was talking to a couple of people on her own, while a year ago she didn’t really talk to anyone but him) but they had become more exclusive when dancing. Weird. Anyhow, I was just dancing, and trying my best not to look in their direction… which I managed quite well. But finally, he came to talk to one of his friends to the other side of the hall close to where I was. I figured this is the point I could go and say hi to him – although that was still a bit tricky as I didn’t want to interrupt their convo, but they weren’t very actively talking. “Oh, now they’re not talking, I can go to them. No wait, now she just said something and they’re talking again”. Blah. But I went up to him, said hi (well, I didn’t really say hi, but commented on the beard-thing he had grown), and what he said was “are you okay?”. This confused me a bit: does he mean to say “how are you doing” in general (oh, I’m fine/okat”) or is this a reference to my depression [which I mentioned to him last March - after I had actively not talked to him for 2 weeks]. Is he asking me if I’m still on head medication or such like? So I said “Define okay” – a phrase which didn’t really work in this situation as he probably interpreted as “not doing that great”. Which was correct in a sense, but that wasn’t quite what I was meaning to say – it kinda slipped, as define x is something I say often-ish. He didn’t really say much anything to that, and then that friend of his interrupted and that situation passed.  So that was it with him. Due to past experience, I don’t find it that smart to ask him to hang out with meif it’s just the two of us – because we won’t have that much to talk about and it’ll be awkward – but it would/could be nice to hang out with him in a bigger group. But as he and his girlfriend didn’t come to the pub after dancing (which it seems they don’t really do, while he did almost always come pubbing before they were together), and it appears that they not coming to this dance weekend next week (I spied on the list of attendees because I wanted to know in advance) so this may be tricky. But I probably could text him and say this out loud. Hey, it would nice to hang out with you in a smaller/bigger group, do you have any ideas on how to make it happen? That doesn’t sound like too difficult/weird a thing to ask.