the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Today’s prompt from Onsite is: “How can you begin to foster more intimacy in your relationships? With whom would you choose to do so?”

I think an obvious question to this is time, as well as genuine curiosity about one another. I have quite a handful of long-distance friends, and maybe this is just a trend among millennials, but they are all people with whom I would want to foster more intimacy with. At this point, it looks like meeting in person only every once in a while, or talking on the phone and texting just a little bit more frequently. But it would be nice to meet in person or talk in the phone more often. There’s one friend with whom we exchange voice messages with, and while it’s not the same as talking over the phone, it’s the best we try to do with regards to staying in contact with one another.

Not to be replacing these friends either, but something else I could do is also try my best to be finding people closer by to establish and invest friendships in – it just feels a bit more difficult at this point in my life. My communities outside of work include a fellowship group (that has actually yet to start in a couple of days), a start-up church that does not have regular small group meetings yet, and now a French meetup group that gathers once a month (that I’m still fairly new at). I find it’s difficult to deeply connect with others in class, as I’m usually tired after work and will only try to connect superficially. I think this schedule of working full time and having classes part time is making it difficult for me to have energy to want to establish intimacy with others in general.

Anyways, thanks for reading ! I got to ramble a bit more than I was expecting.