tiistai 7. tammikuuta 2014

Day 376: Reflecting upon living with another


07012014

I misread "loneliest", lol - http://dallion.com/comics/


My partner left today to travel for a few weeks. He has been living here in my apartment for about 3 weeks and he will return for another few weeks before he returns to his home country. Because I have lived alone for the past 4-5 years having someone live with me has been a very interesting challenge, and now that he is gone and I am alone again I am starting to notice some peculiar things.

At first once he had left I started noticing these little things I had learned to do under his influence while he was here, which is when I just felt immense gratitude, even though they were relatively small practical changes. Second, I tried to glorify solitude by thinking of how cool it will be to have some “me-time” and whatnot, without success however, which left me sort of empty and unenergized.

Third, towards the end of the day, I started paying attention to something we had on some level already discussed with my partner. Because we have both been very solitary in our living, we had both noticed that living with another person does change the way one positions oneself to the “empty moments”: the pauses in activity when one simply wonders about what to do next, how one is feeling, etc. I have noticed that when he has been living here I am more inclined to spend those “empty moments” being social, by sharing my thoughts and experiences, by suggesting shared activities or by reflecting out loud upon what I was doing. Having another person present was like constantly looking into a mirror, as everything I did was reflected on him and off him in various ways.

So when I was just now doing some house work on my own, I noticed that in comparison to how these every-day activities were with another, I appeared lifeless, joyless, motionless – like a walking carcass, a shell of a living being. I am not entirely sure whether this is just my inability to enjoy my own company (or an expectation of entertainment?) - even though I am not feeling emotionally down, just empty – or if my state of being compares like this because life is actually best enjoyed when shared. What if I don't want to live alone anymore? What if I'm just DONE cherishing personal space? Whatcha say about that, Miss Seclusion?!

Due to practical reasons I might have to live alone for some time yet, so I do need to find some way of coping with it, even though the downsides are becoming more and more accentuated as years go by. Arranging shared living, then again, is at its core a practical task, and if I do decide that it would best support my living to share housing with others, all I've got left is to act upon that decision.

Self-forgiveness next; we'll see if something else relating to this pops up by tomorrow.

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