Will we stay the same?
Do you know what love is?
Do you know what love is…know what love is like?
There’s something about growing older that we retreat into ourselves. And with the pandemic, we run to the comfort that we already have and isolate ourselves in it.
I did it. I ran into Chris. And I felt comfort. I felt safe. Knowing that he is safe, especially after being hit by a car. Knowing that he’s, for whatever reason, immune to disease. (Or at the time, he kept thinking: but what if covid proves that it was just a fluke all this time.)
And so maybe with aging and our social network upended by people moving elsewhere or just getting busy with their lives, our friends just became less. I used to have a large network of friends who I would speak with throughout the day, but particularly in the evening when I would chat with them. Maybe life shifted a bit? Because with the movement toward mobile phones, we didn’t do that. We just started using social media more and that’s where I would connect with people. But for me, before I knew it, I didn’t have people that I would run and talk about my daily life. Maybe it would come out in spurts. But it was so much less. Why was that? I don’t know. I trusted people less with my everyday things over time and so I kept it inside.
Even though I could say that there’s a lot of people around me. People I could trust. But I didn’t know if I could trust with my life. Or that I couldn’t trust that they would want to hear it. And likewise, maybe I didn’t want to hear about theirs. We weren’t “close” yet.
So there was something uncomfortable when Chris got to know Jliu. It wasn’t obvious at first. I guess like a child, I encouraged him to meet people. To allow himself to open up. To seek friendship.
When we both younger, I would have many guy friends. Just naturally. Because I wanted to be free of all the judgement. He would have many female friends. But over time, maybe because I wanted to crave the intimacy of female friends, I went in that direction. All my guy friends were just too obnoxious, too unfeeling, too mean. While Chris just overall had less friends or just always circling around the shame of not doing well enough.
So yeah, it was fine that he found solace with her. But then there were moments that it got annoying. He had never been planner and preferred spontaneous hanging out. So I would expect to spend the evening with him—not that I would explicitly say it, but it was expected because that’s how it would be. But suddenly, he’s out watching a movie, watching tee vee. Wait a minute, how did that happen?
Then it progressed to other things, which was fine. Because she didn’t seem to have a 9-5 weekday schedule and he didn’t have either. So there was reading. So there was this and that. But he would skirt around who it was. Then it was playing tennis, camping…and skiing.
There was the moment that she came over to have turkey…the one that was left out overnight. And I didn’t want to eat it. It was awkward. Like she was pretending that I wasn’t there. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Messed up!
I guess that I was annoyed by it all, but most of all last Monday, when sure he went to play tennis, but suddenly it was a hike and I was explicitly not invited. I was working on writing retreat applications, but felt out of sorts so I couldn’t focus as I was angry about it.
Because I felt abandoned. i didn’t want to be left behind. And also I learned later too that I was not invited because she thought that I was negative. Not okay!
Still feeling the thing. Even though we talked about it. All communication I hope.