learning

Three Five One

I spoke to O today about the way that I’ve been feeling, explaining how birthdays and celebrations are important to me, as are words of affirmation, and also asked him to let me in more, and to open up more about his thoughts and feelings. He took it all really well. At first, he was a little teary eyed – I think he may have thought I was going to break up with him, which was a sweet response and I made sure to tell him before I left that I wasn’t mad at him, and that I really care about him. He apologised for not making an effort with my birthday, and said he would try more with the words and also opening up. I’m really glad I talked to him. I know that he never means anything by the things he does or doesn’t do, that it’s just a learning thing because I am his longest relationship.

I think it was a good conversation, I felt heard and my feelings acknowledged. I hope I communicated in a way that made space for dialogue too. The way he responded says that he’s committed to making this work, and I love him all the more for that.

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Two Eight Four

Nice wee confidence boost getting an A back on an essay from a class which I’m being examined on tomorrow. I still am not entirely convinced that I know anything, maybe I just write in a way that makes it sound like I do. I’m going to really miss doing this paper. It’s been incredibly enlightening and relevant and thought provoking. This is why I went back to university, to learn stuff like this that makes me want to learn more stuff and feel like I’m engaging with the world around me. That feeling of being connected to your environment, of being shaken awake by ideas, that is the good shit. I want my life to always have this good shit in it.

Two Four Two

At lunch with O today, I asked him – do you still like me? He nodded and reached across the table to hold my hands. I told him that recently it felt like he didn’t want to spend that much time with me. He told me that he’d just been feeling really tired. I said I could understand that, and that’s where the conversation ended.

I know that this conversation doesn’t sound like much but I do believe him, and maybe that willingness to trust will come back as gullibility and bite me one day, but what can you do really? I think in relationships you have to trust that the other person is being honest with you.

What I’m learning is that he is an introvert and that because of this, he operates vastly different to me. I am an extrovert, I really like spending time with people and I make room in my life for this. With O, I think he enjoys his own time and the limited energy he has is usually taken over by his flatmates because they’re always there, in his space.

To be honest, we are each other’s longest relationships and neither of us really know what we’re doing. I want him to be more communicative but the reality is that he’s still learning the ropes of what it means to be in a meaningful relationship too, so there’s gotta be grace for that, just as there needs to be grace for things that I do which I’m still learning.

At the moment, I know that he still likes me, that he still wants to spend time with me, and that’s enough for now.