Celery | intensity | baby

For the sake of love, n, the first part of this entry is dedicated to Celery.
Oh… how lovely celery is.
I love celery.
You can eat celery with light Philly, which is nice.
Some people eat it with peanut-butter.
…
I’m allergic to peanuts.
Celery should come with a warning – ‘May contain traces of nuts’.
…
Like some other things whichshallremainunmentioned.

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I don’t write long entries very often so do me a favour and read this one – it’ll only take you a couple of minutes.

Intensity, yes.
I had a wonderful several hours-long conversation with my sister-in-law on the weekend about several subjects, but one that touched a little on the way we each relate to people, the various kinds of relationships that develop, and our own behaviours in social interactions. One of the things I spoke about was my tendency to be quite closed to most people in a casual context. I get along well with everyone at work, however they don’t know much about me and that’s precisely how I keep things. Just because we work together doesn’t mean we need to know all about each-other… unlike many of the people I’ve worked with professionally over the years. However, once I become friends with someone, I tend to become incredibly curious about them, and I very much appreciate the same in like kind. Of my few best friends, I met Jack at the last place I worked (he too has since moved on and works elsewhere), but as soon as we became friends, we conducted our friendship strictly outside of the building, and hardly spoke at work unless it was on business matters. Of-course we had the occasional chuckle or shallow conversation about useless topics of the day as one does, but no more than what we would with anyone else. This is just my way.

If you’ve made it through that paragraph unscathed, congratulations. You are now part of the 2% of users on Open Diary who have an attention-span longer than 3 seconds/five lines of text.

Enter the discussion with my sister-in-law about the various signifficant others I’ve had in my life. If you don’t know by now that I’m a conversationalist, you really haven’t been paying attention to my diary(ies), or just haven’t been reading for long enough. When I enter a relationship with someone, part of how I love, feel affection for and engage in intimacy, is to be extremely curious about the other person. It’s part of how I love – I want to know all about them, about every thought, idea, passion, fear – everything. Of-course not all at once, and of-course I enjoy being playful, lying still together or watching a movie or something where we don’t talk, it’s not like we have to be monologuing all of the time… but it has to happen at least some of the time.
Enter the ego.
The natural thing for me to expect on the other end of that is for my lover to be as curious about me. Not to the same extent, but at least with some measure of enthusiasm. For those who know of the principal, it’s part of my love-language. For me, to love someone more and more means among other things, to know them more and more. We learn and discover things about one-another in many ways, verbal communication is only one among many, but it is one of the most powerful forms of communication we have – cue another plug for increasing reading, writing, vocabulary and language use skills. Lover’s communication isn’t just about sharing our passions, but also about resolving conflicts and overcoming differences. One of the most important things it’s for is apologising properly – emphasis on properly becuase begrudgingly muttering ‘I’m sorry’ really doesn’t cut it. One of the things I said to Zoe (my sister-in-law) on the weekend was that with one of my partners, I really learnt about humility and the importance of apologising properly. It isn’t just about trying to lay down a blanket apology that hopefully sort-of fixes things, it’s about really trying to understand how you came to do something so wrong or harmful, and really talking about it, learning about it so that not only do we try and prevent it happening again, we once-again learn more about one-another.

The point – right, you’ll be needing that about now, before I get carried away. I can see myself getting carried away. Can you see me getting carried away? I’m glad.

The point is – it’s really intense. This whole talking thing, this whole fully engaging in exploratory conversation, for many it seems to be quite confrontational. I understand that it takes a great deal of vulnerability to be willing to do something like this, but for me it’s so important. One-night stands/flings aside, as the normal rules of engagement (*snicker*) don’t apply, I find it amazing that people place ultimate importance on sex or shallow ‘compatability’ issues when they can hardly communicate. Sex especially takes an enormous amount of vulnerability, especially with the body no less, yet people will dive headlong into it in search of physcial comfort without any, for lack of a better term, spiritual comfort in like kind. Yes, sex is important, so too compatability on some level, but like a broken record, communication is one of the most paramount things in life, and not only in our relationships with our lovers, in our interactions with anyone!

Getting carried away again…

The point is… are you afraid of it? This myth that women want talk and men don’t… I don’t want to offend my lovely female cohort here on OD, but in my life I’ve only found the opposite. My friends, my immediate family, all of the males crave intimacy, while the females struggle to express their feelings. So often I’ve felt like the nagging housewife begging her cold husband to spend some quality time with her, to talk to her and open up his feelings… except I’m the male in this equation. Do you think I’m too confrontational? Too intense too early? I mean for me, it’s a huge part of even falling in love with someone or taking an infatuation with them, to have that curiosity about them, to crave being engaged by them and likewise engaging them. If people don’t want or are afraid of this kind of intimacy… then what on earth do you do with a relationship? Eat chips and watch the friday-night movie? Isn’t it part of feeling loved, that someone wants to know you so much, and then is exposed to all of your faults and fears and insecurities and still loves you?

Hmmm, the answer to all of this may well lie in the fact that I’m probably really toey right now. Maybe it is all about sex afterall – seems to cancel the necesity for intimacy in everyone else…

Also worth taking note of – this is something of what it sounds like when I bitch.

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Sunday was Father’s day, and we had a big family picnic at a lovely park out near my sister’s place. Baby Olivia has grown stacks since I saw her last almost three weeks ago, and is spending more time with her eyes open. She’s a groovy little rocker with great facial expressions and big, curious eyes. She’s also at the stage where she sleeps for short periods and then wants to eat, and isn’t sleeping so much at night. But mum and dad are coping well, and for the most part Olivia is too. It’s amazing to watch her sleeping as she makes noises and moves as she dreams.
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I just can’t wait until she’s up and walking and talking, then when she goes to school and her entire life to come.