What Lisa told me was a strange truth to deal with. Did I really have a problem with empathy? The more I thought about it, the easier it was to admit. And it was apparent in my concerns over Jisoo and the death of her Grandma. My brain was more occupied with thoughts of what I was going to do about a potentially confounding and awkward situation than it was with feelings for my friend’s sorrow. What a bummer.

I think that, over my short life, it’s been easiest for me to suppress my feelings in favor of logical thought. Logical thought is hard to argue against, whereas feelings just seem to get in the way, they’re all mushy and nebulous, and they leave you open to getting hurt. It was succumbing to my feelings that caused me to admit being uncertain about my uality to Kai, in a perfect world, he wouldn’t have been the first one I told. I hardly know the guy. Why did I tell him? Why was my guard let down in that moment? I wasn’t clear on it yet.

But I trusted him, in a weird way, to pretend like the conversation never happened. To give me space to figure this all out for myself. I guess that’s why I told him. Some sort of strange internal intuition of his character that allowed me to give it all a trial run. My thoughts are always so scattered, it’s hard to pin down why I’m thinking about any given thing in any given moment and how it relates to everything else. And I think that way of thought ends up dulling my ability to empathize and probably gives me a bit of  a cold demeanor on the outside.

All of this drew me closer to Lisa. The fact that she could see these things about me that I had difficulty seeing was immensely alluring. She could even completely brush off my honesty about her comedy routine like I wasn’t an offensively cold jerk to the girl who, I can admit to you, I was certainly developing some feelings for — even though, of course, my feelings always seemed hard to completely define. I knew there was something about Lisa that clicked with me, something about her that I truly needed. Like she could show me parts of myself that I was unfamiliar with.

Jisoo had gone back home for her Grandma’s funeral and to help take care of what her Grandma left behind and although I enjoyed the quietude of an empty dorm room, I definitely missed her bright face popping through the door at varying times of day. Before I came to college, I was scared out of my mind about sharing a room with a stranger. But Jisoo had made me instantly feel comfortable, her natur