#27 | weekend
Summarizing the weekend in some dry/bland words because I just want to write and don't know what else to write about.
Friday
Went to the office. My employer previously required everyone be at the office three days a week, but recently increased that to four. Everyone is complaining, including me, but I admit that the change has come at a beneficial moment. Going in has helped me routinely leave the house and make plans to see friends. Otherwise I would be dissociating completely at home.
Only a few other people in my area of the floor were around. I got lunch with one of them. We don't know each other very well. She recognized me at the office last summer because we had spoken on a video call years ago for her to ask me career questions. We were supposed to hang out a couple months ago, but my life crumbled into pieces, so it took me a while to get back to her. We seem to have similar interests but very different personalities. I feel bad, but I don't feel very compelled to see her very often. It's nothing against her at all. She was nice, but I feel like she spent a lot of our time talking about her career and recent engagement and I just couldn't relate. My job is not my passion, and my ex and I never wanted to get legally married. I felt myself disconnecting a little bit.
Marriage is weird. In my last relationship, I occasionally thought it would be nice to elope at some point and have a ceremony to trade vows, just the two of us. I often felt like in a lto of ways we were already married. Nobody understood us as much as we understood each other, and she's still the most important connection in my life, which is really scary but true, though it doesn't matter right now.
Semi-relatedly, there is a friend at my office that I've become closer with over time. I feel like she's generally been much more actively caring and emotionally engaging with me about my life which I appreciate a lot, and she opens up with me as much as I do with her. She told me that she actually got divorced six years ago. I guess that's why I feel like we're able to have such open and thorough discussion on romance. Sometimes it seems like this breakup is a divorce.
I'm grateful to have her as a presence at work. I chatted with her and another floormate at the office and we concluded that coming in on a Friday is way better than Monday, because walking out of the office on a Friday comes with a much greater surge of satisfaction than closing your laptop on your couch at home. The weekend feels more real that way.
Saturday
Gave a tour of my apartment to a couple who seemed kind but not that interested. Got lunch with a friend at a Taiwanese restaurant and then worked from a cafe with her for the afternoon. I finished reading Attached by Amir Levine, which is an outdated but seminal book on attachment styles. I found it somewhat helpful but at times difficult. I wish I had read the book earlier in my life, and I kept thinking that perhaps I could have saved the relationship if I'd known the key takeaways (for example, that bringing up a concern in a relationship is never a bad thing, that it will always reveal something you needed to know; that effective communication is a teachable skill). But perhaps I also wouldn't have been able to open my mind up to the contents of the book until my relationship endded. But I just wish I had told her earlier how badly I needed her to start opening up to and confiding in me more. I pushed my needs away didn't understand that my desires were actually hers too, and she could still try to fulfill them, even if she was struggling.
My friend and I wrapped up with perfect timing: she got her digital art project working, and I finished the book. Then we parted ways.
I got home and tried to start packing, but I found notes that my ex and I had exchanged in late February/early March. She wrote me for my birthday that although the past year had been difficult for us with family troubles and all, we endured and were continuing to thrive; that she could tell I was becoming a confident and admirable person; that I was the best partner she could have ever imagined; that the future used to be daunting, but together it was exciting; that I was the light of her life. I wrote her back and said that her words touched me so deeply because for they told me what I'd been aspiring to for so long—to be a partner that made her feel supported and secure. She had always been such a supportive force in my life and I felt like I was able to do the same for her.
Anyway, I read that and cried. It's been a couple weeks since I cried like that. It made me realize that if anything, our relationship earlier this year was at its peak. We had endured and only become stronger together. It reminded me of what had been lost to the death of her dad. Grief is a black hole.
FaceTimed my old friend, but they didn't pick up. Texted my guy friends. One of them called and came over. We discussed my feelings and then went out for dinner. We were seated at the same table and in the same configuration I had sat with my ex the last time I went to that restaurant, which is something that seems to happen everywhere I go. I told him I had been feeling lonely lately, that I had friends, but the friends I could go to for absolutely anything at any moment of the day was quite small. I told him he was one of them, but she was still my closest friend by a cavernous margin, and I hated the idea that she might not trust me anymore or want me in her life. He said that we are still planning to meet up in a month so it's not good to think so negatively until I know more. He then said she and I both have high standards for close friendship, so the fact that we both felt so strongly about each other's company says a lot about how not-suddenly-yet-still-suddenly things ended. After dinner, we sat on my couch and watched YouTube. I dozed off next to the cats, but briefly woke up to say that it was nice to have him just sitting around. So he kept me company, practicing violin and calling our friends on the phone. Eventually he went home and I thanked him immensely.
Sunday
Went on a run. It's been about 10 days since I last ran, so I was grateful to continue the habit. Only ran for 20-25 minutes, but followed it up with some lunges. Thought about how much I loved the park near my current apartment and will be sad to live farther from it. Bought some sushi on the way home but got the meat ick halfway through. Forced myself to finish. Had to spit out the last piece.
Watched a movie I had wanted to see for a while. The friend I was supposed to go with flaked. It's ok, it happens. The movie was really really good.
Went to a friend's apartment where she was having a mini art exhibition. She was sourcing feedback on her art for her portfolio, so that she could apply to MFA programs. One of her projects was for us to draw a map or diagram of our secrets. It was very healing. I drew doodles of all the secrets and shames I had had throughout my life: how long it took my mom to potty train me, my sexual assault, what I truly wanted from my ex. All sorts of things. I like the idea of maps as personal narratives.
I washed my bedsheets today. I'm so fucking glad. I continue to live.