PSA

My friend Laura and I used to promise each other of the fact that one day, we would laugh about all of the hard/crazy/frustrating/electricity-less moments we had in France. The first few months there were trying to say the least. I cried a lot. I stopped eating the first week I was there. I constantly asked myself why the fuck I would make the drastic choice of leaving everyone and everything I knew and loved for French-language snobbery and bullshit. And that was before I started work.

Thankfully, Laura and I kept our promise. We laugh about the insults, the tears, the characters, the hard times. I think of our batshit crazy landlady with a sort of nostalgic fondness now - rather than the contempt and spite I once held for her. That time that two of my kids got in a fist fight in the middle of my class? Comic genius. That dumb coworker I fell for, hook line and sinker (like a fool)? Merely a cautionary tale to be told, now.

So I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to say the same of my last few months in Istanbul. Rather than remember how I spent every day wishing I were about to wake up from a deeply unpleasant and detailed dream, I hope I can smile about the delicious food, the kindhearted students, the feminist boat cruise down the Bosphorus. That time I accidentally bought an entire kilo of DIABETIC baklava for my level 1 students. (Okay, that was pretty funny even then.) Or being asked out by a 45 year old museum docent in Cappadocia. I'm not there yet, though. Nowhere near.

I knew before I even booked my ticket home that the move would be difficult and shitty and completely unsatisfying. Everyone here (and there) has asked how the adjustment is going, and I have to shrug my shoulders in ambivalence. When I was still in Turkey, bawling my eyes out every day, I wasn't really fully there. And now that I'm in California, I'm not really fully here either, even if my eyes are considerably dryer. I didn't want to leave Istanbul, but I couldn't stay. Maybe that internal push and pull prepared me for the culture shock of returning to a quieter, more organized place. Or maybe I'm just an emotional zombie.

Perhaps one day I'll relate the little trip to Cappadocia I took between finishing work and coming home, but today I want to deliver a little Public Service Announcement. From me to you. Take this pearl of wisdom. Use it. Live it.

Ready?
Good.

I know we all grew up watching movies that ended well. Where problems were solved and wrongs were righted and everything worked out. Think of all those great Brat Pack films that featured some major grand gesture that solved everything. "Say Anything" is a brilliant example. John Cusack shows up with a boombox and hey presto! He gets the girl.

Here's a secret: that shit doesn't work. Life isn't a romantic comedy.
How do I know that? Well, I did you all a solid and tested it out for myself.

Before you shake you head and tell me no guy is "worth it" (especially the ones I like,) let me stop you right there and tell you that a) I know, and b) he was. When you love someone - even if you were raised a feminist and you're "more intelligent than that" - you do stupid shit for them.

I decided that I couldn't really leave the country without at least trying to see Aydın. Aside from wanting to "get him back," I also wanted to at least say goodbye on my own terms. I wanted closure. And, if I'm being honest, I wanted him to feel deeply uncomfortable for a few minutes. I wanted him to know that when I said he was worth a fight, I meant it. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to slap him. I wanted him to see that I really was leaving the country. (And again, if I'm honest, I wanted him to give me a reason not to.) I wanted a lot of things. So I took my roommates' long expired advice, and on my last evening in Istanbul, I hopped on the metrobus (disgusting) and grimaced through the sweaty thirty minute ride to my old job. Where I knew Aydın was supposed to show up for class.

Yes. That is stalking.

I was nervous even thinking about the plan, let alone going through with it. What those fantastic 80s films don't show is what happens right before the magic moment. Do you plan what you're going to say to the person receiving the gesture? How do you decide where precisely to stand? What if they walk a different way? Or, what if they don't walk a different way but refuse to talk to you all the same? I don't know about you, but I hadn't thought about those things. Until of course I was presented with them.

I found a seat outside a cafe and ordered a glass of tea in the humid 90F heat so I could have a little stake-out. Sunglasses were a must, of course, though they didn't do much good, and everyone walking by took a moment to stare. I'm still not sure whether that was because I wasn't smoking, or because I was a western-looking girl in a sea of headscarves. Either way, it rattled my nerves. To distract myself, I tried to write down what I'd say in the event of me catching Aydın on his way to the English class I used to teach. And I waited.

I don't know if I've lived a more agonizing hour. Trying not to stare at every dude in a suit. Trying to figure out whether that street would be the one he'd walk down. Our mutual friend showed up and I told her what I was doing. She looked at me with a combination of pity and... pity. The minutes crawled by. At 7.05, having seen no one who even looked like him, I accepted that he'd either snuck by me or gone a different way. My last night in Istanbul - and my grand gesture was tanking. So I did the next logical thing, and I texted Aydın. Never mind the fact that he hadn't answered a text from me in months, and I knew tonight would be no different. What else could I do?

Considering all the things I'd written down to say to him, my message was pretty simple. "Hi. Are you in Șirinevler?" (The neighborhood where his class is.)
I went inside the cafe to pay my bill and avoid eye contact with my friend. As I was walking back out, my phone vibrated. A message. "No I'm in Beylikduzu." That long word you can't pronounce is a suburb of Istanbul way the hell out there - at least 45 mins by car. His sister lives there. I'd come all that way for nothing. It doesn't really matter whether he was being honest. My gesture, and my happy ending with it, collapsed right then and there. It was by sheer will alone that I didn't lose my shit in front of my friend. I can't describe how shitty it felt. (Actually I can - it felt like losing him all over again. It felt like the universe was kicking me while I was down. It felt like emptiness.)

An hour later, I was back on the metrobus heading home. And for the first time, I got to be the creepy person unnecessarily wearing sunglasses indoors at dusk. I sobbed the whole way home. And then I sobbed some more.

Moral of the story: Sometimes the universe does not provide. Sometimes, even if you're good and try to do the right thing, you do not get what you want. Hard work fails. Sacrifice of dignity? That fails, too. With or without boomboxes.

So take my advice, which is manifold.
Skip the gesture. The grand one, in any case.
And if you can't skip it, then make sure you're prepared for it to fail.
And if you can't do that either, then make sure you do it with all of your heart. Because you won't forgive yourself if you don't.