College or some'm

I'm in college.

In fact, my first semester of first year is already over. Next week my exams start. (Yes, it all makes sense now why I'm back blogging again - procrastination!)

This semester has gone by so quickly and I don't feel as though I've done enough. I don't think I've socialised enough, studied enough, got involved enough, tried enough, talked enough, eaten enough, learned enough thought enough. There hasn't been the time for it all.

I've dreamed of going away to college all my life. As a child it was the only thing I wanted, my greatest aspiration - it epitomised growth, confidence and knowledge. As I got older I was terrified of the idea. I was certain I was going to fail. Fail at being an adult, at making new friends, at my course - everything! I still wanted it but now I was harrowed by doubt and anxiety.

And today here I am. How was my first semester? Quick. Frightening. Exciting. Freeing.
I'm trying to hang on to that last word. Freeing. I have more freedom than I have ever known these days and with that, responsibility. It's difficult coming to terms with it all in such a short time.

I don't know I've spoken about the three step rule to liking things before on this blog, chances are yes. Anyway the way it plays out,normally with people but apparently also with things, is that first I love-them-with-all-the-intensity-of a-thousand-suns, then I become dillilusioned once I realise they aren't perfect and then finally I accept and love them for who/what they are. Without exception this has happened to me with every close friend I've had. Now it's happening with college.

When I arrived here I was terrified but soon my fears were put to rest because everyone was in the same boat and everyone was kind and helpful and friendly. I began to get comfortable, I made excessive (for me) efforts to talk and connect with people. I joined societies and committees and everything was going well.
Then I started to encounter the not so fun sides. The fuckboys, the two-faced gossipers, I realised I still hadn't made any genuine friends despite having plenty of people who I talk to on a regular basis. It's study week and I'm still procratinating as ever. We don't seem to leaning anything in suffiecient detail, everything is just brief and vague.
So University isn't perfect. When I'm alone I'm worried I spend too much time by myself and when I'm socialising I'm worried I'm not spending enough time by myself. Life is tricky and complicated and I don't really know what I want out of it. But this is college. This is what I've spent years waiting for. At the very least, I'm glad to have moved away from home.

Friday

I'm sitting in the dark of my room listening to the rain fall against the skylight like continuous fingers pattering against the glass. It's 9:49 on a Friday night. I feel listless and anxious and cold. I came home from school today and watched Stuck In Love and without meaning to got caught up how problematic a film it is. Then to cheer myself up I watched 27 Dresses which happens to be a terrible movie but the message I got from it was a lot nicer than 'SIL'.

Summer is coming soon. That's a double edged sword. On the one hand I can't wait for school to end. On the other hand it means exams that dictate the rest of my life, and the beginning of the end of my future. If anyone has any suggestions for what I should do with my life please comment below.

I'm tired. Tired of a lot of things. I'm tired of not knowing myself and not knowing what I need. I'm tired of being so impatient that I give up on anything that doesn't produce immediate results. I'm just so tired.

I won't blog again for several weeks, maybe months. You didn't need me to say that, you already knew.

Hashtag Boyfriend

I wrote this last Sunday night and forgot to publish it. As per usual.

Boyfriend came to my house for the first time today. Which meant the first official meeting with my parents – obviously discounting the time he drunkenly asked my dad for his permission to go on a date with me. That’s a story for another time.

I was very nervous for this to happen. Largely because I feel like I've sort of forced him into it even though force is too strong a word. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea. I've been to his house and briefly met his parents so it not exactly out of place for me to expect him to also come to mine. We had arranged it at a previous date but then we had a sort of argument and he fell sick so couldn't make it.

Last week I brought it up again and he was very against the idea because he’s nervous and a little awkward and also I probably make my parents out to sound like psychopaths. I guess I pushed it a little, as in I didn’t simply accept that this wasn’t going to happen. Because it kind of has to at some point anyway? I by no means demanded it however. Anyway he wasn’t convinced. The following day I brought it up in conversation again. It was a very smooth, very casual entrance and by no means pushy at all.  He mentioned that his record player was fixed and so I could play the record he got me for Christmas at his house some time. I half-jokingly said you should come to my house first. To which he never replied. And the following day he never replied. So two days later he sends me a random text about the reasons for Hagrid getting expelled from Hogwarts. Boys, am I right?

The result was anyway that he brought up later in the conversation the possibility of visiting my house this weekend. Which thoroughly took me by surprise. But Sunday arrived and so did The Boyf. I was nervous because I thought my parents would barrage him with a flock of questions. He was nervous for similar reasons, I don’t doubt. My parents introduced themselves, my dad shook his hand (ugh) and then they left. Like actually left the house. They had some ‘errands’ to ‘attend to’ in ‘town’. Who knows what that was about and I surely don’t care. I was just glad they were leaving.

My brother also left not long after to go training (he’s an athlete lol what a weirdo) and my sister doesn’t leave the room when there are strangers about. So we spent the afternoon/evening in the sitting room watching Gone Girl and later The Royal Tenenbaums. When my family returned some hours later and it was time to eat I became increasingly anxious. I’ll try and explain. To a certain extent I felt responsible and slightly guilty for the fact that he was at my house at all. I know that’s not being fair on myself but it’s how I feel. Anything that happened would be as a result of my asking him to come. I really didn’t want to scare him off. I didn’t want my parents to make him uncomfortable or assault him with unnecessary conversation. I didn’t want his first experience of my family to be a bad one.

(It’s striking my just now how little I care about what my parents and siblings think of him. Honestly, that was never something that I even thought about except briefly. I feel like I should perhaps be worried that I care so little for their opinion.)

Anyway due to my not wanting to scare him away I tried to rush through the meal as quickly as possible. No easy task when my mother decides to cook for a rugby team. Two massive bowls full of chips and chicken goujons, a pizza, cupcakes, and some kind of cake covered in marzipan and chocolate. Jesus mother, how many boyfriends were you expecting?

Conversation was alright for the most part. Unfortunately my mother decided the best way to fill any kind of silence was with questions like “How’s school? Are you working hard this year? What do you want to do in college? What do you want to do after college?” Not even kidding, those were the exact questions she put to him. I finished up and we quickly migrated back to the sitting room where we continued watching The Royal Tenenbaums.

My other brother who is a teacher was in Dublin all weekend. I don’t even think he was aware of the fact that I have a boyfriend which makes the following story so much worse. We heard the car pull up outside and him enter through the front door as we hastily moved so that there was an inch of space between us on the couch. A moment later he opened the sitting room door and stood in the entrance for a moment before wavering backwards slightly, out of what I can only assume was shock. He stood there for a full two seconds before stuttering, “Oh…is…um…anyone around…or…” To which I directed him to the kitchen where my family had been forced to spend the evening. I can’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking. He comes home after being gone for a mere two days and his sister on a couch with a strange boy who he had no notion even existed. All he wanted was to return after a long journey to relax on the couch in front of the fire and suddenly it has been invaded by some random guy getting cosy with his sister. No wonder he nearly fell over with shock.

At around 8:15 pm my boyfriend’s dad arrived and they left together. That was it. He was gone and nobody had died. It almost seemed anticlimactic but in the best kind of way. I texted him later to make sure he didn’t die from a delayed shock reaction and he said it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected and he actually had fun. He even said he’d come again. Yeah. We came from not talking to me for nearly two days because I mentioned it, to willingly agreeing to do it again. Amazing.

Later while ironing my shirt for school the following morning my dad tried to talk to me. He does that every now and again and it’s rarely comfortable for either of us. I’m almost proud of him though. He genuinely seems to be really trying to be fine with this. He said Boyfriend was “A nice quiet little chap” which I suppose is a good thing. He comes up with the weirdest compliments, my dad does.

The whole event went much better than either of us had dared hope. It's a relief that it's over all the same. I'm definitely not going to be pushing for it to happen again.

A Challenging Ignorance

I never quite understood the mechanics of a romantic relationship. Why was it so different to a friendship? Why was it so difficult to have a clean breakup? Why, even with a clean breakup, is it difficult for the people involved to completely move on?

I put these unanswered questions, and more, down to my own ignorance and lack of experience. I have always feigned empathy in situations that required it because I had literally know comprehension of the complex affairs of the heart.

For the past two months, or there abouts, I have had a boyfriend. He's strange. Our relationship is strange. Sometimes I'm not even sure it's exactly healthy but I think everyone has moments like that. Provided the good vastly out weighs the bad, you're probably fine. The thing with us is that I'm never quite sure where I stand. That's a strong statement to make but please don't be alarmed. Here me out.

He's a seventeen year old boy and I'm a seventeen year old girl. I like to think I'm quite mature for my age and my mother likes to back me up on that, though I can never tell if it's just empty flattery on her behalf. In anyone's opinion I think he would be considered immature. That's not meant as an insult, just a fact. And though this is my personal blog I don't feel comfortable going into details about him here, for his own privacy.

I'm not the kind of person who has dreamed about falling in love or even having my first kiss or sex for the first time. Of course I went through a phase where I thought the one thing that would prove my worth would be to secure a boyfriend. After all, what girl has not been taught that the ultimate goal for her is to make a man want her? But excessive reading and becoming aware of feminism has long ago helped me come to the realisation that I don't need anyone else to tell me I'm important. I will only ever be as important as I believe I am.

I suppose you could say I've had a fairly negative opinion of relationships for several years now. When I say negative - that's really far too strong a word to use. What I mean is that I saw dating as something other people did, something I might/probably would want to do at some point in the future but right there and then, I did not. I didn't desire a boyfriend or a girlfriend or any kind of romantic or sexual partner (save for those occasional moments of loneliness or, let's face it, just pure lust).

I also had this impression that being in an exclusive relationship somehow meant missing out on the finer parts of life. What these 'finer parts' were I have no idea however I'm pretty sure I've been missing out on them long before I had a boyfriend.
Then of course comes my general aversion to monogamy. I'm learning however that polygamy and/or an open relationship and the likes, involves more than simply deciding "I'm cool with seeing other people while my boyfriend sees other people." I'd like to think I'm capable of trusting someone and feeling comfortable enough with myself to be in that kind of relationship but I can also acknowledge that it's not for everybody. Emotions and self-esteem get in the way. Things can get messy very quickly if everyone involved doesn't know exactly where they stand.

So back to my current relationship. I'm of the belief that for a relationship to work consistent communication is required between all partners. It's difficult to make someone talk when they don't want to. It's also difficult to uphold a relationship when your partner gets defensive any time you try to have a real conversation with them. I'm not completely guiltless, I'm well aware of that too. But when someone is so sensitive and insecure it becomes challenging to say anything without fear of offending him - well that's not a great situation. I know, I'm making it sound pretty bad. Sometimes it is quite bad. But is it bad that I don't actually care?

In the past couple of weeks our communication has reduced even more due to my own lack of motivation. I don't see why I should constantly have to be the one forcing him to open up. So I've stopped trying. I no longer care. I'm not sure if I don't care about the relationship or about him or simply about his lack of forwardness. This confusion has led me to consider whether it would simply be better to finish it now. If he doesn't seem to care enough to talk and neither do I, then what are we even doing?

On the other hand however, I think this is possibly the most low-maintenance relationship I'll ever be in. I always said I'd love a relationship where we didn't feel the need to talk every day. One that wasn't so intense that I distracted me from my other life goals. Now that I'm in a relationship that is almost exactly that, I'm just not sure I like it. At the same time, I'm not ready to give up on it yet. This was my idea of the perfect relationship. Maybe it's not quite how I expected it but I need to at least give it a chance. Relationships are weird. I've always known that. Now I've finally realised that I was in fact, not so ignorant after all.