Posts Tagged ‘friends’
Secret Single Behaviour
Between work and study I seem to have made very little time for hanging out with my friends. I was so thankful last week when we finally were together to celebrate that our friend Ash had come to visit all the way from Melbourne. When we were in highschool there was nothing better than having a sleepover complete with mountains of food, bad movies, sleeping in the same room telling stories and trying on each others clothes (it makes sense when you are a girl). So what better way to celebrate us being together than by replicating the days of the past, plus a few drinks in the mix now that we are adults.
Part of me enjoyed the evening a little too much and wished for the days back in highschool where our biggest concern seemed to be what we were going to wear to so-and-so’s birthday party or whether or not it was a good idea to dye our hair blonde…again. I wanted that freedom, but then I remembered all the other things that come with that, things like having no money, working for your entire Saturday only to come home and find you have made $50 that entire day, not being able to drive and still sharing a room with your sister. Maybe it was better the way it is now.
Then I started looking around at what my friends had that I didn’t. They are for the most part single and living on their own so there is a kind of freedom in that too. Like being able to put things wherever you like, having make-up and perfume bottles on a dressing table, bright pictures on the walls and cushions on the couch. Ben is a minimalist so our house is a strange clash of his minimalism, which is currently winning out, over my desire to make everything bright and girly. Sometimes I miss my old house where I lived on my own because everything was the way I wanted it to be.
Then I remember why I live the way I do. I live that way because I want to live with Ben and I want to share my life with him. I’m not pretending that is all I need, there will still be times I will have to fight the urge to paint the lounge room hot pink, but remembering that it is about compromise not about giving up, is its own freedom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Image: Aftermath of the sleepover (taken by me)
I have a friend who is going through some tough times at the moment and, during the course of some email tennis, there are a few paragraphs that I think bare repeating.
Would you change him, so that you could keep him? If you were to forgive what seems unforgivable (and believe me, it is forgivable, but maybe not just yet) and continue from roughly where you left off, what would you have to change, in your deeply held beliefs about relationships, so that you could REALLY be back in the relationship?
A lot huh?
About the same amount of things you’ll have to change to have your next serious relationship with whomever comes along.
Coupled with…
Know that when you are in a relationship, you choose to be in it and there will always be unexpected stuff coming at you. It is the nature of a relationship between two (or more) people that things will not go “as planned” and so, as you get more experienced with being in relationships, you stop making plans and stick to a generally agreed upon “basic outline” that can be reviewed at any time all members are together.
It has taken me, personally, ~15 years to figure this out and, while I think I’ve got it mostly worked out, I know that I could also have it completely wrong. While I am not exactly “fine” with that, I am okay with the idea that it doesn’t matter so much, as long as I am willing to throw out my old ideas and learn something new when the situation requires it.
I don’t really have much to add, outside of the context of the situation, other than: Relationships are curious things, the more I have the more I realise how much more there is to learn about them.
Ben took me to visit an old friend of his. He had been trying to get us to meet for some time due in part to the fact that I had now married him and that this friend had not met me, and because I and this friend had the shared interest of performing. I think on some level he was hoping for us to hit it off and start organising concerts together, that isn’t off the table yet but I still need time to get a little more confident before I launch into that sort of thing. I will admit now that I was a little intimidated by her immense talent for playing the piano. I can barely stomp out a rendition of happy birthday while she could play you every classical piece of music ever written by memory.
I am really glad I met her. Not only because of the potential for us to perform at some time in the future, but also because of what I learnt from watching her interact with her family and from some of the things she said.
Firstly she has two small children, remarkable children in fact but that is going to be the topic of my next post when I get around to writing it. I think I can safely say that she has sacrificed a lot for the sake of these kids, things like being able to go to Europe and perform or casually throw everything in to see how far she could get as a performer, but then I don’t think she would have it any other way. She really loves her kids and has managed to work her performing around them.
Having children is hard. We had only come over to visit for afternoon tea but we were soon invited to stay for dinner. It was around 6pm when we were asked if we wanted to stay so we accepted. Then things got interesting. Firstly the kids had to be washed, then fed, then read bedtime stories, then taken to the toilet, then put to bed, then taken to the toilet again…I think you get the idea. It was three hours before us adults could sit down and eat. How did she find time to organise anything with that sort of schedule just for bedtime?
I still really want kids but I don’t want to give up everything for the sake of them. Ben and I have still decided to wait at least until I finish this course this year. I don’t want to use my kids as a reason for not doing what I want to do. I am the kind of person who will tie myself to one place, if Ben would let me, and forget about all the ideas and dreams I had. I would talk myself out of things and I would use kids as an excuse. For that reason I am not ready yet to have the children I still really want.
It was an interesting evening where I got to see how one family was dealing with the little things life throws at them. I think I learnt a lot, and the rest I am still figuring out.
Image by Irina
Ben and I decided back when we were seven weeks pregnant that we wanted to tell close friends and family the good news. The announcement was met with a lot of happiness and on the whole people were happy with the announcement. There were those though that thought it was a bad idea for us to be telling people so soon and their main argument for this was “So much can go wrong in the first twelve weeks. What happens if you lose the baby?” At the time we both thought we were unstoppable, that those sorts of things happened to other people not to us, but it did happen to us.
I’m glad we told everyone because it meant we got to share our joy, however short-lived, with the important people in our lives. We got to talk freely about the pregnancy and baby allowing ourselves to feel some joy and not be ashamed of the circumstances. It was an incredibly joyful time and I think not only brought Ben and I together but also brought our families a little closer together. I know that I definitely feel a lot closer to Ben’s family since the announcement.
Announcing the pregnancy before the week twelve safety zone had passed also meant that we had a lot of support when things did go wrong. My friends understood why I didn’t want to go to Perth Cup with them on New Year’s Day. They understood that it was hard for a few days there to not do anything but watch DVD’s in the dark confines of the house. It also allowed them to help me through this situation because they understood what was going on, nothing was kept in the dark so there was no guessing.
All in all I think we did the right thing in announcing the pregnancy when we did and next time I intend to do the same thing.
Image by Joyseph (Flickr)
I just got back from spending time with Ben’s family. It was the first time we had seen them since Christmas and the first time since we had lost the baby. It was hard and I don’t entirely know why.
There were times when I felt like I had let them down, like somehow everything was my fault. I felt like I had built their hopes up only to destroy them a few weeks later. It was a pressure I didn’t think I would feel and I wasn’t expecting it so I was somewhat unprepared. A few times during the night I had to excuse myself for fear of crying in front of them, but when I actually stopped to think about why I was crying I realised it was silly. I hadn’t let anyone down.
I guess it was a lot more difficult than I was expecting. I’m going to have to just approach these moments as they come. During the last week I have had to face friends and family with hesitation on both sides. I think though the best thing to do right now is to spend time with people who love me because they are the ones who are going to be there for us now and in the future.
Things are slowly getting easier and the tears are furthur apart. We will get through this. I will get through this.
