Sympathetic.

One of the problems with caffeine is that my brain thinks too much. There is too much going on and I can’t slow it down long enough to make sense of the work that I am doing.

I was having a conversation with my boyfriend yesterday, and it turns out that I am not very sympathetic. Well, that is what he says. I didn’t understand that, because I felt like I was very sympathetic. I wanted to be mad and offended for him saying that, because why wouldn’t I be defensive about something I have spent my entire life doing? Just being me, with no regard to who or what I affect. I have been learning to try to think about the things I am communicating, because well – that’s part of what school is about. Communication. The art of speaking.

So my boyfriend said that I was not very sympathetic because when he tells me something, I hear it but then I start talking about something else. See, that’s not me being unsympathetic. That’s my brain working on overdrive. I have so much stuff in it, that at any given point, I am either not in the mood to talk – or I just can’t stop.

Sometimes I just don’t have the words to be able to express my sympathy, or even that I am acknowledging what I am hearing. Because I am still learning.

So I am not mad at him for saying that. I need to turn this around. I need to open that door and change the way he views me. Because if my own boyfriend thinks that I don’t show sympathy very well, then what are my future clients going to think? I can’t just open the door to my life to show them that I actually do understand what some of them are going through. I have to maintain my boundaries about who I am. The dialogue will not be about me anymore. It will be about someone else.

I need to show that I understand. That I am sympathetic. Because I actually am.

I am still learning.