My university crush

How are you, Andy? Miss you.

Today I met with an university friend for dinner. He’s actually not just a friend, but my first ever “crush”, not sure if you remember who but I’m sure I shared about it before. We remained friends after that period of time when I had a really hard crush on him during my first few years in uni. The last time I met him was 2 years ago before I went to the UK for my study. I think he asked me once if I wanted to catch up last year when he wished me happy birthday, but I avoided his message because I still didn’t feel mentally ready to reconnect with people or the world during that time.

This time, it actually happened because I wished him happy birthday last month and he asked me again if I wanted to meet up. I feel bad to avoid him again and there’s also a side of me who is encouraging myself to try and reconnect with more people, so I decided to go.

I actually felt very nervous about it when I left home this evening. Mainly because I know I will get stressed and uncomfortable if people start asking me questions like how’s life been for you, especially if it comes from a friend who doesn’t know any of my stories. I am still finding the middle ground between being genuine and not over triggering myself when I have to open up and talk about myself.

Turns out, he was quite talkative tonight and shared a lot about his life casually. But towards the end, he started sharing some relationship troubles that he’s having with his girlfriend. He feels like they should be moving to the next stage of their relationship (getting married etc), but turns out the girl hasn’t really thought much about these things. So I turned on my “listener” mode and just tried my best to create a safe space for him to share what’s on his mind.

It’s a very strange feeling that I have as I listened to him. I feel like the me now have even better ability to empathise with people than before because of all the emotions I have gone through, but at the same time it also feels like I don’t have enough mental capacity to do so. I don’t know if that’s why I felt like crying so much on my way home. I feel like shutting off myself from the world after meeting him, and the only thing I want to do when I got home is to write all these things down here. 

I guess reconnecting with people does still drain my mental energy quite a lot more than it does to most introverts. But maybe all I need is just some introspective recharge.

Miss you, Andy. I want a warm hug tonight.