Is it better to have loved than not at all?

I love you.

I wish you knew how much I loved spending every waking moment we've had over the last two months. Cuddling on the couch, having dinner, just spending time with each other has made me feel something that I haven't felt in a very long time. You infuriate me, you annoy me, but I keep coming back because I want to spend time with you. I fucking love having you in my arms, being able to have you fall asleep in my lap, hear you go into your little soliloquies about military history, ships, and weaponry.

I know what we have would probably never work out in the long-term. You live half a country away, our personalities could probably not be any more different, and you say you don't want to jeopardize the friendship we have by taking things too far, but maybe that's why I want you so bad. I know we only have a few days left before you have to leave and it pains me thinking about how I won't see you again probably for almost another year.

Our 12 year+ long friendship has always been something I treasured. It's always been something that I never fully understood how it came to be, but I was so glad it did. We have shared more intimate moments than either of us want to admit or talk about, and I feel like there is something you want to say but won't. Maybe it's because we're both afraid to talk about it or maybe I'm just delusional thinking what we have is more than it really is.

I wish I had the courage to ask you do you feel the same way? Do you think about me before you go to bed? Do you wonder if you could spend every night together like we do when you come over for dinner and we watch a movie and you're curled up in my arms and I give you soft kisses on the back of your neck? Do you want to hold hands while ice skating again? Do you want to keep teasing me over my little obsessions? Do you like it when I joking call you Rozanov and you call me Hollander? Will you miss me in the same way that I will miss you when you leave?

Whatever we are and wherever we land, I hope you know that I love you. I will always cherish whatever we have with each other. Maybe one day our relationship will grow into something more, but I know right now, we will live in this beautiful, painful limbo where our actions may speak louder than our words

I didn’t want to get into this as deep as I did, but I can’t deny what I’m feeling now.

I know we probably won't be anything more than friends. I should appreciate what we have, the beauty of what we share, and move forward and look back fondly on what we have done and what is to come.

But I love you. Do you love me too?

We flew too close to the sun

Heartbreak is something I have rarely experienced before.

To be honest, I had never gotten so emotionally invested with someone and had to break up with them, or have them break up with me until this past week. And to think, we weren't event together. Or at least, sort of.

I've been seeing this guy, let's call him Mike, for over the last year. It started as a friendship - or friends with benefits situationship to be perfectly clear. It was fun, it was lustful, it was something new and exciting.

We would hang out, grab dinner, and have some fun but we kept our feelings out of it mostly, at least until the last few months. Little did either of us know that what was for nearly a year a physical friendship slowly turned into an emotional one.

What embarassingly started as a text where I misread this guy asking me to be his boyfriend, turned out to be an admission that we both had started developing feelings for each other, and what would our future possibly look like. We had an honest conversation which turned into an emotional roller coaster of a week, and is a ride which I still feel like I may be on.

After three days of back and forth, it happened.

He asked for a break. He was becoming too emotionally invested, and through my own secrecy and discomfort of revealing too much about myself, I lost his trust and hurt him. I did not do this on purpose of course - I am a private person and I know, at least for now, I can't pursue a serious relationship with him. But in the process of talking through this with him, he felt like I was holding back too much, and for him to open up and pursue something more serious with me or even keep what we had before, he could not separate his feelings for me knowing that I had been holding back what he felt like was too much.

I feel like shit. I'm sad because, more than anything, I did not want to lose a friend. Yes I started developing feelings for him - he's a kind, beautiful, and smart man. We have amazing chemistry and he makes me smile, but most of all, he is a great person, and those are rare in this world. 

It may sound selfish, but when I meet someone who I genuinely believe to be a good person, I want to keep them in my life. And when he told me he needs to step away from what we have and not see each other for a few months, I felt like a punch in the gut. 

I respect his decision and of course will make sure to respect what he wants, but it doesn't make what happened hurt any less. It's the first time I feel like I've felt true heartbreak.

My first heartbreak at 32. Damn.

I just hope that we can and do find our way back into in each other's lives. 

-JP

Thanksgiving and Therapy

Well I'm back - again deep in my emotions and looking to let things out in one of my corners of the internet.

Being open and honest about my feelings, my emotions, and what makes my happy, sad, angry, or my heart ache has never been something I'm good at. I'm not sure if it's to do with growing up in an Asian household where expressing emotion, especially among men, was rarely done. Heck, there were only a handful of times where I know I truly have let out all my emotions I was feeling at a time - including when I first came out to my mom, but since then, I still keep things bottled up. I had a therapist for a while and she encouraged me to find ways to express myself, to stop bottling things up, and this blog had and continues to be one of those outlets.

God that was a long intro. But I wanted to come back and say - I hope everyone is doing well. If you celebrate American Thanksgiving - I hope you were able to have some time with your parents and enjoyed some well deserved time off. I know Thanksgiving can be a tough time of year for many, and this year especially as it feels things are more divisive than ever. We had a small Thanksgiving this year with my family - just 5 as many were traveling. But nevertheless, it was a cozy evening - full of good food, lazy afternoons, and peace.

But what is a good blog post without me spilling some of my emotions for you to read? 

I'm looking for a new therapist - or I should say, my partner and I are looking for a couples therapist to help us reconcile and understand where we are in our relationship. We've been together now for over 11 years - its been great, but it's also been the only true long, long term relationship I've been in. We've grown together, bought a house, and are living our best lives together, but also, we both know things have cooled over the last few years. We still obviously deeply care for one another, we value each other above all, and he makes me happy, but also we both know something needs to change if we want to stay with each other for the long term.

I know there is no such thing as a perfect relationship - my own, my parents, my family, and my friends all have multiple examples, but taking the step to see what we can do to help us nurture our relationship is important. As someone who struggles with being open and emotional, this is something I am nervous and hesitant about, but I know it's needed. 

Wish me luck.

JP

When is someone in too deep?

 

I wish I had someone I could just fully confide in with no judgement. 

Someone I had no history with. Someone who I could tell my deep dark secrets to. 

Someone I could just just tell all the things in my life which have weighed on me, the feelings I'm experiencing - the guilt and the joy, the thrill and the anger. 

I've had a therapist before, and even then I never felt like I could fully open up. It always felt to clinical. I want a friend without the history - just someone who will listen, provide feedback, and give me a hug.

On the surface everything about my life looks perfect - I have a stable job, I have a nice house, I'm surrounding myself with friends who I love and adore, but underneath it all is a storm.

I'm starting to question so many things. My career, my relationships, and where and what I want my life to be.

I love my boyfriend, but between my post at the end of last year when I reconnected with a long time friend and some new friendships over the last year that have developed into more - physically and emotionally, I'm starting to realize I'm developing feelings for others. Is it just lust? Is it just wanting what you can't have? Is it just my old habits of caring for others too much when I know the should just be friends?

I don't know.

I'm a bad person. I should be honest and end things before they get too serious. But attention and lust is a drug. It makes me energetic. It makes be eager and excited in ways I haven't felt in years. It's the thrill of the chase. It's the thrill of the new, the novel, the exciting. It feels like young love. It feels like missed opportunities. 

It's intoxicating and I crave it.

I don't want to end my relationship, but would that be the right, ethical thing to do? Am I in too deep now?

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate - this year has been a truly special and unique time. I've heard some people say that the year flew by, some say it it dragged on; for me, I think it was the former. 

I give credit to a lot of changes in my life in the last year and a half which have been thrilling, but also brought me anxiety, nostalgia, joy, and also more questions than I have the capacity to answer anytime soon. I started a new job a little over a year ago, bought a new home, reconnected with old friends for the first time in almost 8 years, and am trying to understand what I am truly looking for my life - in love, in my career, and what I "should" be doing now that I have crested 30.

I'm hoping to return to this platform to share this journey with you, much like I did over a decade ago when I first started writing this blog as a 17 year old in high school figuring out his life, friendships, college, his sexuality, and what it meant to be in the world. The questions, the topics, the things that are on my mind obviously have changed, but I'm still the same boy, arguably now a man, who is typing behind a computer screen sharing his thoughts into a little corner of the internet.

So (re)join me, won't you?

-JP