I have a bad habit of revisiting things. I can't just let it in the past, I have to go back to it, read it again, try to understand it. And there's a reason for that: it's like a football coach watching past games to learn from them. On the heat of the moment, things are said and things need to be said, so sometimes we lose sight of some stuff in order to focus on others. When I come back to it afterwards, my mind is cleared and I don't have the urgency of the conversation to distract me, so I can see the whole picture. It's a bad habit, but not one I regret having.
The bad side is to see things that could have been left unseen, things that could have been ignored. The whole picture has all sides: the good and the not so. I learned a lot from the whole picture of our chat over the weekend. As someone who likes to make lists, it's only fair for me to list them:
- You don't want me to get out of your life. You value our friendship and the place I have in your life.
- I should be glad that you get to talk to me as much as you do. Not only it is not common for you to have video chats with your friends, you don't chat with them that often. So I don't have any right to complain.
- The issues he has about us are a reflection of his own failure: in 4+ years together he wasn't able to reach you like a random stranger from Instagram did. Despite all the time you were together, you were closer to someone online than you were to him, living under your roof and sleeping in your bed. That's his fault, but as it's well established, he needs to have someone else to blame for it.
- I don't have and will probably never have the same place in your life as your other friends, but that's not something new to me. The distance and the time we know each other are a huge part of this.
- The new bit is that you already think that you give me so much, and you do, but you don't realise (or didn't in the chat) is that I am more interested in quality than quantity. And I don't mean that what you offer me is low quality in favour of high quantity, but I would be willing to give up some of the quantity for a different type of quality - for example, I would be OK with talking to you less, if that would mean that I can talk to you whenever I want, and not have to schedule our chats around his life. But again, I should be thankful for anything I can get.
- You are not willing to make him uncomfortable, which I understand, but that also means sometimes making me uncomfortable instead. As I'm nice and understanding, you prefer to throw it to my side.
- As long as you two are together, my place in your life will not change. This, as we are right now, is as good as it gets. At the moment that is something we can handle, but moving forward I will want more. As I told you, I don't invest in a friendship unless it is a real life friendship. Ours is mainly virtual, and that main theme will probably never change because of our life set up - distance, time zones, my job... But I won't be willing to waste the few real opportunities to leave the virtual into the real one because someone does not like me. This is not a decision for now, but one that will have to be made at some point, if you two remain together.
- Equally, I have to rethink the place you have in my life. Right now you are probably the closest person to me after the Husbear, and I would jump almost any hoops to give you priority. It is clear that this is not the case with you, and without going into right or wrong, good or bad, it is not healthy if our friendship is not well balanced. If we don't find the balance, the whole thing will crack and fall to the ground. As I realised that the change won't come from you, I will be the one who does it.
I believe I already started to change the way I behave towards you and our friendship. It is a slow process, but it is in motion. It is inevitable. Newton already knew that many centuries ago: every action has a reaction. It is called exact science for a reason: there is not room to wiggle. I tried, and I had to learn this the hard way.
No comments:
Post a Comment