Posts tagged with "relationships"

Shirley's Trust

Shirley is a fun­ny woman. Really. Someone had recent­ly not­ed that she uses the phrase, “Well this is it!”, a lot. It’s usu­al­ly for sit­u­a­tions of agree­able­ness, and spo­ken with iambic dime­tre, empha­sized on every oth­er syl­la­ble.

Shirley’s in denial about the whole mat­ter.

There are always news reports and sto­ries of mass mur­der­ers, pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths whom no one ever sus­pects. In my head I always think that it does­n’t mat­ter how some­one may be per­ceived on the out­side, that any­one could be the next noto­ri­ous psy­chopath. Shirley, how­ev­er, is one of the few peo­ple I would have a very dif­fi­cult time believ­ing as being able to hurt any­one. Some may think that it’s sad to be so cyn­i­cal, so untrust­ing of almost any­one, but that’s just the way my world­view has devel­oped.

Put sim­ply, she’s an inno­cent per­son. Not inno­cent in the igno­rant sense, which is some­thing that I had only recent­ly begun to dis­tin­guish, but inno­cent in the good, whole­some, true, hon­ourable sense. I real­ize that this makes me trust her about as much as I trust my oth­er friends. I hon­est­ly feel like I can divulge almost any­thing to her with­out wor­ry­ing about being judged or mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

Yet there are things that I don’t let her know, because I firm­ly believe that our work­ing rela­tion­ship isn’t worth the risk, if there just hap­pened to be some­thing she found out that she could­n’t deal with.

So does­n’t this mean that I don’t tru­ly trust her?

Autumn Argument

Thumbnail: Autumn pathway

Quite a few weeks ago, on anoth­er Sunday, I woke up with Loo sleep­ing next to me. I could nev­er sleep past sev­en because of my work hours, and Loo rarely gets to bed before 11 the night before. Our sched­ules were, and still are, almost an eight hour shift away from each oth­er. This does­n’t put us in the great­est of moods, and makes us say things that we don’t mean (on my end, at least, I can’t speak for her).

Like on that Sunday, after wak­ing up and sit­ting in the IKEA PELLO for an hour lis­ten­ing to my music, I was grumpy to say the least. I was­n’t tired enough to sleep, but I was­n’t rest­ed enough to do any­thing.

I decid­ed to just get out and walk, not sus­pect­ing how beau­ti­ful the autumn day was. Everything I loved most about the fall was in that morn­ing; the light chill in the air, the lay­ers of colours, the man­i­fest atmos­phere. The walk was brief, just along the canal and back, but it was a shiv­er of the sens­es that only comes out a few days of the year.

When I returned, I still was­n’t in the best of sorts. My frus­tra­tion about our mis­matched sched­ules was start­ing to come through. Loo got up and we argued, try­ing to fig­ure out who was to blame. In the end, I real­ized that it was­n’t either of our faults, but we were both pay­ing for it.

Even though we argued, we end­ed up resolv­ing things, a lit­tle wis­er, and still just as tired. Another hur­dle jumped, anoth­er obsta­cle that won’t get in our way again. I like to think that only good came out of that morn­ing, and that if it did­n’t hap­pen, I would­n’t have expe­ri­enced what I was meant to.

Like watch­ing jog­gers kick up the autumn leaves strewn across the pave­ment.

Accepting The Help Of Others

It’s funny…I always think of the stereo­typ­i­cal, recent­ly divorced hus­band, and think to myself “I’ll nev­er end up like that”. I’ll nev­er “go back” to liv­ing on canned food, messy rooms, or gen­er­al unkempt­ness if I ever split up with a long-term girl­friend or wife. So I try to live my life the same if I’m in a rela­tion­ship or not, and not depend on some­one else to do things for me, by being healthy and clean when I’m not going out with some­one.

Then I real­ize that there are already things that Loo does for me that I would­n’t do myself. I don’t have the patience to make my bed, but she can’t stand to sleep in wrin­kled sheets, so she makes the bed every day. She buys fresh veg­eta­bles, because I always pur­chase the easy-to-cook frozen ones. Can I go back to liv­ing with­out lit­tle sweet pep­pers packed with my lunch, or with­out some­one to brush the cat hair from my clothes as I get dressed for work? How much of our­selves do we know­ing­ly or will­ing­ly give away, when we accept the help of oth­ers?

Appreciating Both Sides

The days can go on with reg­u­lar­i­ty over and over, one day indis­tin­guish­able from the next.

—Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

Every day I think that I’ll catch up on sleep at night, but I nev­er seem to get the chance. I have time here and there to write, but things don’t come out prop­er­ly when I’m tired. Even on the week­ends, when I expect to be able to sleep in, I’m always off some­where, doing some­thing. It’s such a change from how I was liv­ing last year; no school, no job, no girl­friend, with all my friends still attend­ing uni­ver­si­ty. I lost all sense of time.

I’m busier than ever at work, and it’s a great feel­ing to know that I’m respon­si­ble for so much…for meet­ing dead­lines, for com­plet­ing projects, for com­ing up with solu­tions to peo­ples’ prob­lems. It’s a lot of stress, but it’s a great chal­lenge. Being forced to work with a lack of sleep has made me more accus­tomed to think­ing while fatigued, some­thing that I nev­er thought was pos­si­ble. I used to need a prop­er eight hours a day to think, oth­er­wise I could only oper­ate at a basic lev­el. Only one day in the last month have I felt rest­ed. The fact that I’m still going and get­ting things done is a big deal to me. And now it feels like I’m final­ly work­ing towards some­thing, in my rela­tion­ships, in my career, even in my equi­ty and assets.

I remem­ber Pat telling me to enjoy my unem­ploy­ment, and I did exact­ly that. I appre­ci­at­ed every minute of it, and now I appre­ci­ate every moment that I have some­thing to do. I appre­ci­at­ed the free­dom of being sin­gle, and now I appre­ci­ate the com­fort of being with some­one.

Church And State

I want­ed to thank you for chang­ing my life.

Then I real­ized that you did­n’t do any­thing. You were com­plete­ly self­ish, com­plete­ly incon­sid­er­ate. I picked myself up and made the best of what you left me as. Loving you was the impor­tant part, not any­thing that you had ever done.

I real­ized that it was­n’t you who changed my life. It was the expe­ri­ence. It was the con­scious effort to turn my life around.

It was me.