Today, my Advent Calendar’s task for me was to identify somewhere where I have needed to speak up for myself, and then to be brave and to speak up for what I need in that area.
I didn’t know this until tonight, because I forgot to look at the calendar page until tonight.
And yet, somehow, it seems some part of me knew that this was today’s task.
Why do I say that?
Because that is exactly what I did today.
I’ve been wanting to go watch someone play soccer for quite some time now.
Supposedly – and I believe it – he is an amazing soccer player.
Since he is so good, I cannot imagine he would play on a team with players who aren’t also at least quite good players.
Therefore, I can only see one of his soccer games as being a very high and beautiful level of play – the exact kind of play worth watching, worth admiring, even.
When I initially asked if I could see him play sometime, he agreed easily, and he seemed unconcerned.
Yet, every time I would send him a message, asking about when his upcoming games are, there would be radio silence… he would reply to whatever I sent after that message about the games, but never to the message about the games.
After this most recent occurrence of said behavior – this past weekend – I felt myself at a limit.
Either he didn’t want me to come or not – whatever the case, I needed to be done with the wondering about whether he was avoiding my coming to a game.
I wanted first to give up altogether, say nothing, and do what I could to forget about it and to write it – and thereby him – off forever.
But then I noticed how uneasy I was with that plan, how degraded I felt, like I wasn’t good enough in his eyes for some reason, and then that my avoiding getting clarification was a personal admittance that I didn’t believe myself good enough.
Even if he somehow thought I was trying to go to a game because I wanted to date him, I was good enough – I am good enough – to date him.
(And, let’s be real here: He is quite possibly the most gorgeous man I have ever seen in real life… and that’s saying something.)
However, upon consideration, I am clear that I do not want to date him – I hardly know him.
I would need to get to know him a lot better before I could genuinely consider if I were genuinely interested in dating him.
And – super big star here – it hardly matters, anyway, since he’s already in a relationship.
And I am not interested in playing any kind of role beyond friend or acquaintance in that sort of situation.
But that’s a bit beside the point: the point was that I needed to stand up for myself and find out from him why he keeps avoiding answering my requests for soccer game details.
I prepared myself mentally last night, and went through what all I might need to say when I saw him today.
I set myself a reminder for just before I was likely to be seeing him, with my general comments, with what I wanted to say – I didn’t want to forget, and then have to live with that for the next month while I’m gone.
And I put the reminder in French, just in case it popped up on my phone when someone was around to see it.
There were two parts to the message, but I found that I only needed to use the one part, the part of simply asking why he always ignored the messages.
I had to work myself up to it, but I did it, and I walked right up to him, and I asked him.
And it was loud, so I actually had to repeat myself, which only encouraged me more, somehow.
And I stood my ground on my point that he always leaves me with no response; just a “read” message.
And he said that he sees it, gets distracted, forgets to go back and reply, eventually sees the next message, whatever it is, and responds immediately and directly to that (suggesting that he doesn’t notice what was just above it in the conversation).
And he said that he likely has a game tomorrow night.
And that he will let me know which of the two times it ends up being.
And he told me approximately where it will be.
I don’t know if I will be at a soccer game tomorrow night or not, but I accept this as 1) progress on the soccer-game-watching front, and as 2) a beautiful win for standing up for myself, and on multiple levels.
Also, it is a total bonus that it just so happened to be my Advent Calendar task for the day.
I guess, when we are doing our best and being our best selves, we tend to be in sync woh the world around us, and things like that are more and more likely to happen.
For that, and for my strength today, I am grateful. 🙂
Peace
Hannah
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 