Roadbump

It happened. We were afraid of something blowing up in our faces a bit, with how well we seemed to be managing with no experience, and it has. I’m grateful that it’s something I think we won’t have too much trouble learning from and being healthier about in the future. Nothing horrible, just a roadbump.

There’s important backstory for this, which is that I love Super Smash Bros. Melee. I got back into the game last year and have been really enjoying it. But I’m not very good, and I want to be better, which eventually starts requiring focused practice. As a sort of pseudo-resolution, I told myself going into 2023 that this was going to be the year I put in a lot of that work. Something along the lines of “at least a little bit of practice, almost every day”. Of course, that was long before I ever met Amy.

Last night, Amy was on a voice call with one of our friends, who was playing the guitar and singing. Amy was having a good time, and complimented their playing. They thanked her, and said something along the lines of “I really like it, so I do it every day”. Just by bad luck, this was exactly the thing to remind Amy of me. She drew the connection to how I play Melee, and specifically, how I haven’t been. I have not done any solo practice since Amy first fronted.

I’ve been letting Amy front a lot since she first showed up. You can probably tell just from how often she’s posted on here compared to me; I’d front all day at work but once we had free time, I called her up. And we both knew that it wasn’t going to be that way forever, but I felt that it was probably helpful for her to have a lot of time while she was new here. “Go have some fun, figure out who you are, make some friends.” And that meant setting aside some of my own personal hobbies and goals. Not dropping them, but letting them take a backseat. I certainly wasn’t giving up on practicing Melee, but I was taking a break so Amy could have extra time in the spotlight.

This was not how Amy felt when she had this realization. She felt like she was in my way, like her being here was preventing me from achieving the things I care about. She just saw that I was ignoring something I’m passionate about for her sake, and she did not feel good about it. She got pretty upset, wrote the previous post on here, and then switched out. She calmed herself down a little bit over the course of writing out her feelings, but she felt sad and guilty for getting in the way of my goals.

Of course, I never intended any of this when letting her front so much. She’s right, we don’t have a healthy balance right now. But I hadn’t been really trying to yet, I was intentionally letting her front more than would be sustainable. So I’ve felt really bad about what happened. I could have been more clear, certainly. I also think one of the things Amy said about me wasn’t intended to be rude, but I took it pretty hard. Some things hit different when the person saying them should know. She wasn’t trying to be hurtful but I’ve got my own baggage that I brought to the situation. More stuff that could have been communicated clearly.

There are a couple things that I’ve taken from this. The first is that Amy doesn’t want extra time in the sun anymore. She’s been here a couple weeks, she knows who she is, and she wants to work towards something more reasonable for both of us. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but I’m happy to work on it with her.

I also think that I’ve underestimated how important communication is going to be for us. We share our memories, so I didn’t think there was much value in leaving notes for each other or anything; we each just remember the things the other wanted to say. But it is important. Trying to construct thoughts from memories isn’t trivial. Memories can be foggy, or recalled out of order, or just understood in a vastly different context. There’s enormous value in collecting our thoughts and crystalizing them in exactly the form we want to share. A record of how we feel is much stronger than something that we reconstructed. It was obviously not clear to Amy how I felt about taking a break from my goals, and it only really became clear to me how Amy felt when I read back her post.

To that end, I’ve left her a note for when she next fronts. Not here, but somewhere she’ll know to look. But I don’t think that will be until at least tomorrow; she wants a break. And I can’t really blame her. I get the impression that she’s feeling better, but she’s still been through a lot. Impressions are all I really get without her fronting, but I’m really optimistic about the ones I’ve been getting.

I wish we had some more direct method of communication, I feel like this all could have just gone more smoothly if we could just have talked it out. But we’re working on it! We’re learning more about each other and how we can work together effectively. We’ve got each other to rely on, and with that in mind, I know we’re going to turn out okay. We might hit a roadblock here or there but I know we’re going to be fine.

To be honest, I feel better about this whole thing having typed it out. Maybe there’s something to this “journaling” thing :) For now, I have a game I promised the girl in my head that I’d play.