On things turning out better than expected

It's almost midnight now, and I'm camped out on my couch listening to the sounds of T sleeping deeply in my room. It feels kinda surreal. A year and a half of existing through a screen, and suddenly he's here in the flesh, and it's not even awkward. I'm the queen of awkward otherwise. It's kinda my thing. Yet here we are, chattering away in Japanese in front of totally clueless roommates, and I'm really happy he came. The slight apprehension I had going on about this week to come is draining away, which feels good, all in all. Any week of work is enough to feel magical, I guess, but having a friend over and realizing that you're just as good friends off the internet as you are on it makes it feel even better.

Up until now, I've been really nervous about what it would be like with T here. I haven't been getting nearly enough sleep, and my emotional state has been kinda up and down. While the Margaret Cho gig was awesome, I was feeling pretty down just generally, so I decided to ditch going home and instead headed over to my friend the Philosopher's apartment, where we first had some tea and played cards, but then eventually headed into Talking Territory.

I hate Talking Territory. When I get into Talking Territory, my heart races. There's like a 300% acceleration as soon as I start thinking about things I need to say. Obviously this is pretty noticeable, and I don't know if it's because he has a degree in philosophy and is used to talking about abstract concepts and thoughts, or if it's because his mother's a shrink, but I've generally had an easy time talking to him about stuff. That being said, while we were talking, he stated that while he likes me and likes hanging out with me, he doesn't trust me completely, partly because of my crippling inability to talk about feelings. I understand where he's coming from, and I think his point is pretty valid, but it was still a bit of a blow to hear it out in the open like that. Then again, I think that's one of the reasons I trust him so implicitly - he's not blind to my character flaws, and while they're things he doesn't like, they don't seem to impact his view of me enough to dislike me as a person. He accepts me as someone flawed. Things could absolutely be worse.

Getting me to talk about my feelings is kinda like pulling teeth. The way I see it, these things are lodged deep in me on strings with barbs on them. When people pull these strings, the information either gets stuck inside me and can't come out, or it hurts. The more carelessly people pull on the strings, the worse it is. The thing about people like Pony is that they know this and are thus very careful when pulling. The Philosopher's careful too - but he doesn't let me off the hook. When he asks me what emotion I'm feeling and I don't want to respond, he'll keep asking until I do (or asking me to guess when I say I don't know), which could possibly be a good thing as it forces me to address these things with words. I think I'm being more direct than I'm used to - he asks me to stop being so vague. I'm guessing it's a process, especially part of the process of me taking more emotional responsibility for myself, but it doesn't make it less complicated. At the end of our talk I was completely emotionally drained, yet glad to have it over with. Honestly I don't know if this conversation will make me want to talk with him more or distance myself. It's a strange kind of scenario.

When I mentioned that I have a hard time trusting people, he asked me about therapy. "Some people you can learn to trust. Some people you can pay to learn to trust." When I later cracked a joke about it (saying he was one to talk about me needing therapy when he was talking to his Christmas tree like it was a small child), he backtracked, saying "Well, it's not like I said you needed therapy like that...", but the distinction is pretty lost on me. I don't know if I think it's really his place to be saying stuff like that, friend or not. I appreciate the sentiment though. It's nice that someone wants me to live my life without feeling anxious or fearful. I just wish it was less horrible to talk about it.

Yesterday kinda compensated in terms of nice things happening. Work wasn't very busy, and after I headed out for a few beers with a new person of interest, who apart from being adorable, talented, smart and having a good sense of humour told me in passing while discussing Korean music that he used to be friends with G-Dragon, like it's no big thing. I nearly peed my pants and had to really try to control my fangirling ways ("Funny. Wait... wait,  you're not joking? Seriously?! Oh my god, holy fuck! You know G-Dragon?!"). Looking back, I'm thinking maybe it was the K-pop gods who were rewarding me for good behaviour for trying to better understand my emotional states. Yay for such amazing rewards is all I have to say.