Blueberry Italian Soda
I lived with my friend Whitney for years. She’s a Scorpio. She’s where I came up with my theory that Scorpios have a way of making people do things and trying to convince them it was their own idea. She always calls me a Blueberry Italian Soda.
The story goes…
We went out to a cafe once and it was during a period of time when I was into trying different flavors of italian sodas. One day, I ordered a blueberry, and was confounded. I swore it tasted like carbonated milk. Whitney tried it and she didn’t get it. She said that there are some things in life that should be one thing, but just aren’t.
Whitney always swears I’m a Gemini who’s really a Scorpio. That’s why I’m a Blueberry Italian Soda.
And I have to say those Scorpio times (November), are my most creative.
This is a story in the Scorpio theme of restraint.
A couple of years ago, I had a good friend. I cared about him and felt a strong connection with him, but it was platonic. When I found out he was engaged, I didn’t think of him as anything but that. He knew I cared about him and was protective of him (the way I am of my brother), and he had really ambivalent feelings about getting married, so he would drop a lot of hints about being tortured, and resigned to this decision. I had been in a similar situation where a married lesbian friend did that, and soon was trying to use me to leave her wife even though she knew I wasn’t gay. That had been a very demoralizing experience. But I’d recovered and I sure as hell wasn’t getting involved in anything like that again. So I would try to be supportive, and his discussions would get deeper and more desperate. When he found out I’d quit my job and was going to visit Germany, he invited me out to lunch. We had lunch and it was civil, like two friends talking, but he calls me later to tell me he hasn’t gone out with a female friend by himself since he started dating his fiancee, and there’s just something about me. I’m getting that big red flag feeling, so I’m beefing up my boundaries saying that we really connect on a mental level. that’s the only level we should be connecting on, but it’s such a deep, rich level that I think it’s a great addition to our lives.
He hangs up and the next time I talk to him, he tells me he told his fiancee about me and how he’s really “intrigued” by me.
Great, I think. Now she wants to kick my ass.
I knew he’d thrown me under a bus. It was a childish action–he wanted me to be under his control, a tool for his escape if he couldn’t go through with getting married. He was also torturing his fiancee by throwing his ambivalence in her face. Neither is a respectful place to put someone, and it’s not nice.
So I always maintained my boundaries, but I had a soft spot, so I always listened, always tried to give him positive advice but without giving an opinion. He even called me the day before his wedding, telling me that he was convinced that we knew each other in a past life. I told him I agreed, and that we had it in us to be friends for a long time. I wished him luck and congratulated him. I really hoped to see him take responsibility of his own life and sort it out.
And so he went through with the wedding. And by then, I was living in Amsterdam with a ghost who was doing a dog and pony show to convince me that he was my life partner.
To be honest, did I think he was making a mistake? Yes. But only because of the way he was acting. But I am the last person who was going to tell him, and it was pretty unfair of him to try to goad me into a position. But I was still kind to him and positive, down to that last phone call. I did truly care about him. But I wasn’t going to get involved with his life outside of respectful friendship. It wouldn’t have done anyone any good.
And then our final conversation. He’d told me he really needed to talk to me, so I met him on Skype. He said he couldn’t sleep and weird things were happening, and launched into this strange metaphorical conversation that lost me a little. Then he started accusing me.
“People just want to know that you care about them, Julia.”
I was offended. He knew full well I cared about him.
The conversation got stranger.
“You like to fuck people. Your such a dude ;-).
Leave your seed and find the next bitch to fuck.”
?
To be honest, I laughed when I read this. It was so absurd, yet that’s how he sees me.
“You love being that tall dark handsome man that someone falls in love with and disappears forever…”
?
This is the first time I’ve ever been compared to a tall, dark handsome man.
The rest of the conversation, I tried to understand him, I tried to discuss, tried to defend myself against his analysis of me that just didn’t sound like me. He got really aggressive. And then i heard a line in my head from one of my favorite songs…
You can’t talk to a psycho like a normal human being…
I realized, there was no reason for me to even be wasting my energy in this conversation. It wasn’t going anywhere. He was leading it in circles. He had already shown me how he sees me, and even worse, how he was trying to get me to see myself. He was a little boy throwing a tantrum by breaking his toys, even though he was an adult who made his own decisions. If he doesn’t like where his life is, he should have a long, serious talk with management.
That realization was instant relief. I graciously and politely excused myself from the conversation, and all of a sudden he was nice again. I told him I’d talk to him later, even though I knew, closing the window, this would be the last time. This guy wasn’t my friend if he could feel he had the right to try to hurt me just because he was angry I didn’t “save” him from his own life. He was blaming me for his inability to stand up and be his own man.
And I don’t have time to waste on little bitches.