Friday, Apr. 14, 2023 - 8:57 pm.
March seemed to be a never-ending month whereas April is rushing through. My god, it's going so fast.
I will stop for a second here, though, and say that today's Nephew #2's birthday, hooray!
Helen's flight should be landing in Santiago any time soon. Then she'll take a domestic flight tomorrow morning and Andrew and I will pick her up at the airport at 9 am.
How do I feel about this, you say? Thank you for asking!
I have so many mixed feelings that overall I'm a bit numb. I'm excited that she's coming to visit, of course! I guess I'm just wary of her expectations, but that's on me for not verbalizing sooner that I've dropped the "with benefits" from our friendship. She's a cool person, she'll say she brings no expectations and "we" will figure out stuff as "we" go along, and she'll probably mean it.
But see... This week she signed me up to attend an online talk of a bi author I enthusiastically follow. But I saw the email confirming my ticket and I freaked out because I didn't remember signing up for that. Then I saw her message saying she'd done it for me, and I lost it.
The answer she expected, and possibly the decent one, was that I'd be grateful to her for thinking of me. I may have overreacted but to this day (it happened mid-week) I stand by my reaction. I didn't appreciate that she assumed my schedule and inserted a commitment in it without my knowledge or consent, providing my email in the process (I already have an account on the platform where she signed me up, but *I* provided it). It turns out I'm sensitive to people doing that. I didn't know I was because people does not do that to me.
I know she meant well. I know that if I'd done the same for her, say, signing her up to attend a Serena Williams talk, she would have been thrilled. It's a nice thing to do for someone, isn't it, getting them a ticket to a show you know they will enjoy. I think I was just pissed because I felt she presumed a right over me that -to me- she doesn't have anymore.
And then came the whole explaining to her why I reacted the way I reacted (minus the last sentence above). I hated sounding ungrateful but I had to tell her I didn't like that. So I explained in detail why. Cue all those exhausting times when we were in a relationship and I had to give her "context" for everything. Nothing that she asked for was unreasonable, but it was so damn exhausting nevertheless. I don't miss being in a relationship with her.
Still, she's a dear friend to me. She's caring, supportive, an amazing company for a smart chat, a laugh and tea (not the drink, the gossip), and all she does for me comes from her most genuine desire for me to be happy. The bigger her gesture and the more it pisses me off, the more genuine it is.
All these complications in my head aside, it'll be great to have her visiting. My first visitor from home since we moved back here from the UK (in 2019!). I'm afraid I won't hang out much with her during weekdays due to work, but I did warn her when she booked her flights last year that I had no idea how my schedule would be like by the time she arrived. She said it was fine.
So anyway, I'll be busier than usual for the next two weeks until she leaves on the 30th. Andrew's being a delightful host already and got her fine chocolates and a bunch of stuff for the apartment where she'll stay (including a covd testing kit, just in case). We'll go out, we'll party indoors, we'll have nice meals, we'll do some serious sightseeing... It's gonna be cool.
Other stuff going on: I'm loving my sign language course, and all's well at work. It gets queerer and queerer everyday, god bless. My family's doing well, though I wish I could see them soon.