Day 371: Removing the Boulder

Today was another instance in which I wrote in my private journal rather than Road to Ramen because it involves the girl I’ve been seeing, and while talking about things that only affect me (e.g. my routines, my philosophy, my work) feels fine to share publicly, it’s a different story if I share details that involve someone else.

So, I’ll write this post in a fairly generic way that focuses on my personal experience.

The important lesson I re-learned today: Always communicate directly and openly.

There were some things in our dynamic that felt confusing, and I had come up with hypotheses for what was happening between us. As convincing as these explanations sounded in my head, they turned out to be completely off-the-mark. Talking directly with her resolved many things and reminded me of the importance of recognizing that the stories I come up are only that — stories.

Some of the difficulty in our communication was that things were being relayed inaccurately through outside parties. I had talked to a mutual friend about some of the things I had been thinking about, and it turned out that he had told them to the girl I’d been seeing in a way that excluded a lot of context and misrepresented what I had said. Although I hadn’t explicitly asked him to keep our conversation between us, I was disappointed to find out that he had shared things without talking to me about it and done it in a way that had led to misunderstanding. Hopefully he meant well and was just trying to help, but it ended up making things more complicated. Talking directly with her about things cleared up a bunch of things, and I realized that I should’ve done that in the first place.

I loved how open our communication felt once we started talking, and it was like we had removed a boulder that had been blocking a stream. With that out of the way, the cracked, dry earth actually has a chance to become fertile soil and make it possible for something to take root.