Last week I went to the smoke club and sat next to two gentlemen, one was a boisterous American of fifty-something, the other a quiet Chinese guy of forty-something. The mismatch in energy was palpable, with the American guy drilling the Chinese one with endless questions “Oh you study medicine in London! How is that you got started studying medicine later in life?”, reply “what did you do before?”—“I was in the army”. “What division, what did you do”—“basic level comms”. The story of the Chinese guy was indeed unique, but if I had to suspect any one of espionage it would have been the American guy, the exchange looked more like an interrogation than a conversation.

As I was leaving, the conversation changed about Madrid. The American guy said that Madrid seemed like a friendly city, the Chinese guy said not so much. I interceded with a simple remark “Madrid is friendly, but you need to know the etiquette and keep things superficial, at least for the first couple of interactions”. Then the American guy started interrogating me “Oh really, we’re are you from, how long have you lived here?”.

I said “sorry I was just leaving, but before leaving I wanted to ask the gentleman over here a question, if you don’t mind”, I said turning to the Chinese guy. “I overheard you study medicine, and I’m curious, what is your personal take on the health effects of weed”, he chuckled. “Well, besides your lungs it will definitely fuck up your memory, I notice it very quickly if I smoke too often”.

And then we went into a conversation on “how to have a healthy relationship with weed. The American guy was adamant that it was good for you and the benefits outweighed the cons, the Chinese guy said it was a good relaxant in moderate quantities, perhaps once every two weeks, and I said I noticed excess stress if I abstained, and poor memory and a general fuck it all attitude if I did it too much. I could tell the Chinese guy was glad I had interceded so I could handle the conversation with the boisterous American guy, his attitude towards me was warm and he was courteous but you could tell he didn’t want to converse with the American guy. I felt the same towards him and towards the American guy.

The Chinese guy excused himself and said he was leaving, I took the chance to make my exit too. And outside the club I told him I hoped to catch up with him some other day. He said he was just a couple of days in Madrid and we said some warm words to each other “it was nice to meet you, you seem to be an interesting person, enjoy your stay”.

The point the Chinese med student made about memory rumbled for a couple of days, and what I had said to counter the American’s statement that grass was inherently healthy “I get so many insights when I’m high”—“yeah but what’s the point of getting insights if you forget them or they don’t make sense the next day?” and we all laughed at the truth in this.

Yesterday V. invited me over for lunch. She wanted to have a conversation with me. I deliberately held off smoking because I knew the conversation would be important. During lunch she said the pregnancy has made her much more emotional, that she cried a lot a certain day, that she was unsure if her crying was worth the magnitude of the issue. She asked if I cry, very rarely I responded. The last time we met I think you wanted to cry, but you abstained. “What do you mean” I asked, and she said, at a certain moment your eyes were red and filled with tears. “I don’t recall wanting to cry, perhaps I yawned?”, “no, it wasn’t that” she said. Ah, I was high dammit, but I didn’t say this.

I can’t capture the conversation, only the gist of it, and it went like this: you stood me up, I was disappointed and I cut you off emotionally. I needed your help on the day of the embryo transfer but I didn’t tell you because I was mad. I deal with this type of problems by cutting off people, but I’ve talked about it with my therapist and she recommended that we talk it over.

Behind the tough words I sensed fear of the unknown. She has very few good friends in Madrid, and one she senses she can’t rely on me. She knows she can do it on her own but it will be very tough, just as it’s very tough asking for help. Even tougher is asking for help and not getting it. She said she was finding difficulty in this eternal tension between unconditional acceptance and expressing her needs, not knowing if she should just accept I’m unreliable or if she should ask me to do better.

I said her path of growth was asking for help, and my path of growth is becoming more reliable, and that the duality between accepting and asking must be transcended: you can accept and ask too. We said goodbye in good terms, these are commitments I had already made and the conversation was easy for me to digest as I had already done it upfront.

After lunch I head to retiro to practice handstands. I recalled the times I’ve let her down, and inevitably my addiction is in between. If all my leisure hours are dedicated to that, what time will I have for my friends? At the same time recognize that quitting won’t magically make me become a more reliable person, but it will make me care about becoming a more reliable person.

The last few weeks I’ve taken it exceedingly easy on myself regarding smoking, and my mood and performance has been much better. Beating yourself down will do just that.

I just realized: accepting ourselves and asking more from ourselves are not mutually exclusive. The fractal of our social relationships also manifests within our inner relationships. Be more kind to yourself, and expect good from yourself. As within, without.

Everything will fall into place, in time.