So much has happened the past couple of weeks. I turned 24 three days ago! I moved into a studio which is completely my own and it’s amazing. I had my last day at the clothing store I work at (they decided not to prolong my contract, the assholes). I had that talk about that one night with that friend and it was good to finally get it off my chest. He was empathetic and even a bit shocked about how I had experienced it and how he had not noticed that. But all is well between us now.
One day before I moved out of the student home I was living in, one of my roommates told me he was in love with me. He is the most darling boy I’ve ever met, but that’s precisely it: he’s a boy. He’s barely 18, sweet and innocent. He believes everyone on this earth ultimately has good intentions. He’s never had sex. He calls his parents mommy and daddy. And it hurt me so much that it had to be me who had to break his heart. It felt so unfair that the universe would send me such a pure angel who would no doubt treat me better than anyone I’ve ever dated, but then put us so far apart in life we can’t do this. I’ve thought about it for a week, but I came to the conclusion that I wanted it to work much more than that I actually felt attracted to him. So in the heaviest phone conversation of my life I told him that I didn’t feel the same way and it was possibly one of the hardest things I ever had to do.
But that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about. I’ve been having dreams. Most of them had something to do with my ex texting/calling/writing me about wanting me back, and I always wake up so disappointed, especially because lately I’ve been half lucid in these dreams and became reluctant to believe what was happening was not a dream. Then when I finally did accept it was real, I woke up, feeling miserable. Last night for example, I dreamt he texted me apologising for not wishing me a happy birthday (because he didn’t in real life), and of course when I woke up my phone was blank. I’m trying to not feel too affected by it, but I am. I’d hoped it would have been a chance to speak to him, as we’ve not spoken to each other for almost two full months. I was just curious about how I would feel, how much progress I would have made. After all, that’s difficult to say when you don’t see or hear someone. But I guess I’ll have to accept this is another step in us becoming strangers to each other again, no matter how much it hurts.
This one dream stood out to me though, and I’m reminding myself of it from time to time. In it, I was talking with him about our relationship and we came to some really interesting conclusions. He explained that for most of his life, he had felt pressured by his parents, school and society to know or find out what he wanted in life. And he never really did. He said he now thought he used relationships to escape those pressures and live in some kind of fantasy with someone where everything is fun and games. That made so much sense to me because he always said that when he and his ex got into a fight, they’d just leave and see each other again after a few days, without talking about what happened. It now seemed so much more logical that if you don’t want to feel any negatives or responsibilities in a relationship you exhibit that kind of behaviour. And then I started talking, about our relationship feeling like a continuous holiday. When we were together, I felt like I could do nothing, guilt-free. That could be nice and relaxing and it definitely taught me how to sometimes make time for myself to do absolutely nothing. However, it also meant that we weren’t a team that could take on real life challenges. We were very bad at being a couple in the real world. That was exhibited by how many times we got into a fight as soon as we stepped outside. He didn’t really feel at home with my friends, I did a bit more with his but it was still difficult. He never really wanted to go anywhere and refused to get himself a bike at the station of my city, even though I lived very far from any public transport stop, which brought on some complications and discussions. I was bad at doing my own thing when he was around, even though he had made clear multiple times he liked being in the same room while both doing something on our own. We had completely different approaches to almost anything in life. It’s kind of hard to try to force that to work. So in the dream, we looked at each other and concluded: “Some mismatch, huh?” And then I woke up, feeling strangely satisfied. Admittedly, soon I felt the urge to share this revelation with him and to verify if what my brain had conjured up was true for him as well. But I was strong and haven’t contacted him. It was interesting enough to have such a psychoanalytic dream and to know my brain is ‘cleaning house’, as a friend called it.
I’ve made some small steps, like deleting him from Facebook, burning some polaroids, throwing away some stuff of him I had kept. I think moving houses is also going to help me a lot. I won’t be working at the station anymore, which will lower my anxiety of seeing him walk by. The potential for letting go is there, now I just need to invite it in.
“The door is open.” – The Walking Dead (S6E4)
Tea Time With Amber 