Switches · the western districts, Berlin
I said yes to everything for a year and it hollowed me out
Pinned as yes_to_everything
- Wants
- one thing, done properly, and nothing else at all
- Rope so far
- Nine years, and one year of doing far too much of it.
- Around
- the western districts, Berlin
After my last relationship ended I said yes to everything for about a year. Every invitation, every introduction, every arrangement anybody proposed. On paper it was the most active year I have had. By the following spring I could not remember most of it and I had become a person who was pleasant to everybody and close to nobody.
Thirty five, out west, nine years in. I am not going to be dramatic about it. Nothing bad happened and nobody treated me badly. It was simply an enormous amount of activity in place of one thing that mattered, and I recognised the pattern eventually because I have done the same with work.
What I want now is one partnership and nothing else. I have stopped going to most things. I am not looking to meet people generally and I am not available for anything that would spread me out again.
I switch, and in the last year of all that I noticed I had drifted to one side purely because it was what people asked for, which is its own small lesson.
Not looking for anybody who wants to be one of several. Not looking for a wide social introduction. And not looking to explain the above at length on a first evening, since it is more or less all here.