unbearable, trent alexander-arnold

⁸night problems

september, nineteenth.

EARLY IN THE MORNING OR LATE AT NIGHT, tosca was finishing an assignment she had to hand in on wednesday. she tried to be as silent as possible so as not to wake up trent who slept by her side peacefully. her head into her computer, she was trying to find a way to finish the work she had to do in vain. the subject was too hard and she couldn't do it, the five poor lines she had typed were hard to see. to try to put her ideas back in place, she got up slowly and went to have a glass of water in the kitchen. when she returned, and while she thought she was discreet, trent was awake and looked at her with his eyes wrinkled.

"sorry, i didn't mean to wake you up."

"it's ok," he muttered, "what are you doing?"

"an assignment on 'can love and hate work together in a relationship?'"

"looks pretty boring."

"nah just too high intellectually for you."

he only rolled his eyes before he leaned closer to her to have a glimpse of what she was writing on her computer, "you're getting on?"

"don't act as if you care," she shrugged.

"you're right, hope you fail," and he folded back the blanket over his body.

"hope you get injured tomorrow, asshole," she talked back.

trent didn't respond and went back to bed, tosca, and went back to her problem. hands clasped in front of her face, she reread what she had already written:

"love and hate are not parallels, but very closely related emotions, with the more intense the more consuming and significant they feel. love felt too strongly can be as dangerous as hate, even more, when they are both coexisting in a relationship."

after drinking and ventilating a little, she felt the inspiration coming back little by little and started typing again on her keyboard, only, a few minutes later, trent woke up again growling.

"can you stop with the "click-click" on the keyboard? it's annoying."

"well, i can't do otherwise so deal with it."

he sighed before resolving to watch her work. she was now on her momentum and could not stop, determined to finish this work in less than an hour.

"these relationships most often start when people are young. they idealise the concept of love and relationships that are full of feelings and must be intense. when you feel too strongly, feelings can quickly become confusing, especially when you are influenced heavily by these emotions and you lack introspection of them. all you know is what you feel, so you try to share it as you can, but most of the time, you don't know how, so you're doing it wrong.

the crazy thing is that the more you don't mesh with this other person, the more you clash, and the more intense and confusing the feelings can become. you can fight and break up, but the significance you project onto the other person keeps you seeking validation from them. amping up feelings and going back and forth through anger and attraction can be confusing, and confusion can amp up your emotional state as well. so you have all sorts of intense feelings when you deal with this one person and now you associate this person as being a person you have intense feelings for, and thus they feel like someone who has great significance to you

but sometimes, two people think they hate each other but are in fact in denial of their feelings. as we said earlier, love and hate are closely related emotions and can be confused. for some people, loving someone else is too hard and they can't afford it because it requires too much attention or devotion and they are not ready for it, so pretending to hate them make them think that, maybe one day, they will finally really do so. it is always easier to hate someone rather than love someone, and it's sometimes easier to tell people that rather than the truth."

the major problem she encountered as she was writing was that she felt like she described her relationship with trent. it was disturbing, really disturbing but she had to finish it anyway, so she continued, still under the gaze of the footballer.

"to get out of a relationship like that, there are only a few ways out: one, the hate turns to more and more severe and the loving phases decrease or lose power to the point the other person no longer appears as an attractive option. two, a third party enters into the picture, whether a person or just an idea/possibility, that appears more attractive, to one person in the couple, than the attraction in the current relationship. three, and last, you mature and start understanding yourself, your feelings, your motivations, and your needs, giving you the ability to identify and break apart your feelings correctly.

in conclusion, i think that it is easy enough to see how love and hate can coexist in a relationship, and this is one of the things that is paradoxical about love and love relationships — whether romantic or not. so yes, it can work, but only for a limited time. there will be one day where you will need to think and decide about if what you have with this person makes you more good than bad and if it's really worth it."

she finished writing her last paragraph before adding an endpoint, relieved to have finally finished. being by her side, he could finally go to sleep too, but before that, he wanted to ask her one last thing, "can i read it?"

"uh sure," she handed him the laptop, quite unsure of the fact that she had let him read it.

during his reading, he sometimes frowned his eyebrows or bit his lips as he seemed confused, making tosca even more nervous. he finally raised his head to hers when he was done without saying anything for a few seconds, "are you talking about us?" he ended up asking her.

she remained speechless after his words, was it that obvious? her answer took time to come, she hesitated between telling him the truth or the contrary, lying to him. in both cases, it was an embarrassing situation. "maybe a little."

"but, in which part?"

"not your business," she spat to try to get away with this conversation.

"you're literally talking about me, of course, it's up to me."

"i'm not only talking about you, it's a generality," she took the computer back in her hands before putting it on the floor.

"is it about the denial thing and shit?"

she didn't respond, and the footballer took her silence for a yes as he remained puzzled for a few moments.

"good night," she ended up turning by whispering these last words to him, indicating that the discussion was over.

that night, trent didn't sleep very well and continued to turn around in bed, thinking of the young woman's words and what she had written, totally lost.