Him

« Entre deux amants, il y en a toujours l’un qui baise, et l’autre qui tend la joue »
That’s a French proverb. Or at least, in English it’s attributed as a French proverb. It could also be a quotation from Balzac or Montserrat. But in any case, it means between two lovers, there is always one who kisses, and one who turns their cheek. It’s probably my favourite French phrase ever, because it perfectly embodies a philosophy that I’ve always believed in – in any relationship, there is always one who loves the other one more.

This, I know, is me. And it has never bothered me. It’s just a fact of life, that I love him more than he loves me. Many times it’s been the other way around, but this time I’m the one who’s more invested. It’s not a bad thing – someone has to do it, otherwise you don’t have a relationship, and it’s not exactly something I have difficulty coming to terms with.

But because I’m the one who loves him more, I’m also the one who’s had far more trouble with being away from him in the last nine months. For six months he was in Limerick, on industrial work placement, and I was stuck in Leixlip, unable to go anywhere because of firstly my college course and secondly my job.
Then immediately following his return from Limerick (by a margin of a day) I moved to France. And this is where it really began to hit me just how reliant I am on him.

The main reason I don’t like France is because he’s not here. I would be happy in France, I could get along quite fine without my family, or my friends, but because he’s not here, I don’t like it here. I can’t stand being away from him and not talking to him.

And it’s not like he’s any good at long distance. He never calls and we only very rarely skype and I get an e-mail of about three lines every two to three days. Darren reckoned today that the chats he has with his significant other are better in a long-distance relationship because they mean more. But trying to get him to tell me about his day, his week, his college life, his family, anything, over the last nine months, has been like getting blood out of a stone. I talked to him today for the first time in a week and he just had nothing to say. In person, his reticence is less troubling, because it’s easier to prod responses out of him, but on the phone and especially via e-mail, it’s just not possible to sustain a conversation.

And it drives me up the wall. It wrecks my head that I can’t talk to him about anything because he’s just not capable of doing it. The times we do get to talk are either punctuated by a skype call which cuts off abruptly or a phone call which cuts off when one of us runs out of credit, which happens every time.

And the worst thing? That is the sole reason I hate France. I can deal with the hipsters, I can deal with being on my own (eventually), I can deal with the language barriers, with the fact that I don’t like the college as much as I like Maynooth, that I haven’t managed to make the calibre of friends here that I made at home. None of that really bothers me, I can cope with all of it. But I cannot cope without him. I’m not happy here, JUST because he’s not here.

And that worries me. We haven’t been together long enough for him to mean that much to me. I’m too young for him to be that important to me. It’s FAR too one-sided for him to mean that much to me.
The third one, I know to be true, because he had no such problems when he was in Limerick as I’m having here. And that, in and of itself bothers me. It’s not the inequality in our respective dedication, it’s that I care so much more than he does.

The corollary, then, of how much I miss him while I’m here is that when I get home, I will want to see him all the time. For the first time in three months we’ll be living in the same country, the same province for the first time in nine months and the same county for the first time ever. And because the last few months have been so hard, I’m afraid I’ll smother him when I get back.

I don’t want to strangle the life out of my relationship, but I don’t want to have to restrain myself for fear of scaring him off either. I just don’t know how to deal with feelings this strong.

They’re too strong – they’re too committed and they’re too loving and they’re too developed for me. They’re too much for me and they’re too much for him – neither of us is ready for any sort of commitment, so caring this much is really not the ideal situation. It would be so much easier if I could step back and see that while I care about him, he’s not so important to me that not being with him changes my entire experience. I don’t want to look back on my three months in Lyon and say I could have made so much more of it if I hadn’t been mooning over some guy who’s going to end up breaking my heart, but the truth is, I can’t control how I feel about him. These stupid feeling developed of their own accord and they are bewilderingly strong and they’ve fixed him as a central part of my life. And I’m really worried that they’re gonna end up destroying what I’ve had to work so hard for the last nine months to keep going.

It’s just head wrecking to think that after struggling for nine months with not seeing him enough, what might actually kill us is seeing each other too much.

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