Important: The names I use aren’t the real ones, because I’m telling my story and not theirs. If you know, you know.
In the last post I told you about my time at Dormibella. Later on in these posts I will probably mention other people and situations from my time spent at Dormibella. For now I’m going to talk some more about Arja.
It was January 23rd 2009 and I went to an Enter Shikari concert with Kenny and Lars. Yes, Kenny and Lars, haha. During the support act I received an SMS from Arja. He was going to a concert of Late of the Pier at the same venue. He saw the poster of the Enter Shikari concert and remembered I like them. He asked if I was there too and if we could maybe meet up after the concert. Well DUH of course…we HAVE to meet up. Hello butterflies! Of course I very much liked the Enter Shikari concert, but oh my god did I want it to be over, so I could see Arja. Arja’s concert finished half an hour after mine. Kenny, Lars and I were at a bar when I received an SMS from Arja that he was done and we could meet up. I left Kenny and Lars for a little bit and went back to the venue to see Arja. He was with a friend I had seen before, nicknamed ‘Red one’. His real name was Robert. I liked Robert. He was nice and decent and very innocent, haha. I didn’t see Arja for a long time that night. We just hugged and kissed and then Arja and Robert went home. I went back to Kenny and Lars, but didn’t tell them who I just met up with. They didn’t need to know.
I definitely wanted to have more time with Arja as soon as possible and apparently he wanted to see me too. February 10th 2009 he messaged me to ask me if I could come over that weekend. I’m sure he wasn’t aware, but that would have been valentinesday. I was so stoked! He wanted to spend valentinesday….with ME!? Unfortunately I already promised my best friend that I would have valentines dinner with her at the restaurant I worked at. So I went to Arja a weekend later.
That weekend I was so nervous and insecure, it made me feel sick. I had this feeling that this weekend was gonna be the weekend that everything would turn into shit. Arja was now living in lodgings. He picked me up from the train again and we cycled to his place. Arja gave me a little tour around the house and then took me to his room. We immediately started kissing.
At the time I definitely wasn’t in the best time of my life. I felt extremely insecure and was afraid Arja just wanted me for sex and not for me. When he moved his hand up my dress, I pushed it away. This repeated itself three or four times and then Arja gave up. I could see he didn’t understand what was happening, I was always very much into this. And I still was, I longed for intimacy with Arja. But it just didn’t feel right. I guess it put Arja in a mood…or he was already in one, but he didn’t seem very happy with my presence. Arja put on some music. It was a band I didn’t know yet, but my god did I love this music. It fit the situation so well. The low baritone voice of the singer just pierced my heart and I broke. I suddenly felt so emotional and it felt like this was going to be our last meeting ever. The band we were listening to was ‘The National’ and the song in particular that broke me, was ‘Fake Empire’. We listened to it some more before we headed out to do some grocery shopping.
Grocery shopping felt extremely awkward. Every time Arja said something, I really struggled to respond. Everything was just very ‘off’ and I didn’t know how to deal with it.
We had pizza for dinner. Arja burnt one of the two pizza’s and that really didn’t help the situation. Prior to this day I asked Arja on MSN if he maybe wanted to invite Robert to spend time with us. Just watch tv or whatever. Robert was invited, but it definitely didn’t feel like he was very welcome. Arja kinda distanced himself from us. We watched a tv show and Robert and I were sitting on a couch. Arja was sitting in his chair, commenting on the tv show we were watching and not paying any attention to Robert or me. Seriously Arja, if you didn’t want it, you could have just said that. Yeez. At some point Robert decided to go home. Arja walked him to the door and they had a little chat, before Arja came back upstairs.
I don’t know what happened, but it was like the whole vibe just suddenly changed. Arja was very sweet and gentle. He gave me a very nice and caring hug and then asked if he could undress me. He pulled my zipper down and slowly lowered my dress. He kissed my neck and asked if I wanted to go to bed. I missed this. This felt good. Why weren’t you like this the rest of the day? Were you sorry? We had sex. It was so nice, but Arja came very fast and was embarrassed about that. I seriously didn’t see it as a problem. I kinda saw it as a compliment.. I was so overwhelmed with emotions I just HAD to ask: What was this? What were we? The answer didn’t come as a surprise, but it sucked nonetheless. Arja was cold and said: ‘We just have a sexual relationship’. He gave me a kiss, turned around and went to sleep. What an ass! I didn’t want this. Aah this sucked! I obviously wanted more. But to Arja I was just a random girl willing to have sex with him. I couldn’t believe I was in this situation. Give me a break.
I decided to try to get some sleep. After being awake for hours, reliving this moment over and over again, I finally fell asleep. In the morning Arja woke me up by caressing me. He wanted to have sex again and I just went along with it. It was different and it didn’t feel right. It felt like we were done and all my hope was gone. Arja was getting ready for the rest of the week. He was gonna celebrate ‘Carnaval’ and asked me when I was going home. What a weekend. Exactly when Arja decided to be the biggest dick ever, I realised I never felt this way about anyone before. It really broke my heart and I cried on my way back home.
We didn’t talk for a while. When we did talk again I couldn’t deal with the situation we were in and I just word vomited all my frustrations onto Arja. I told him I didn’t want to be with others anymore and Arja responded that he thought that was weird and unhealthy. We weren’t in a relationship, so we could obviously sleep around, according to him. Fuck, I really didn’t see it this way. We got into a heated discussion and I got so upset that I ended the conversation. It felt like I was losing Arja and I couldn’t cope with that. I cried for days.
A few months later Arja started talking to me again. He apologised for his behaviour and explained what was going on in his life. He had doubts about his study and had a lot of other stuff on his mind. We had a little chat and at some point Arja asked me if we could meet up again. I was so happy he still wanted this and I really wanted it too. But I was still very hurt and I couldn’t let it go. I decided to not do it. I had to stop our contact for a while and so we didn’t speak for about a year.
