reports of my physical and mental breakdown have been greatly underexaggerated

[amand_r]

I don't think it's news to anyone that I'm an up and down person. I have mood swings, and until recently I have always gone with the flow. Back in February the anger end of those issues started to hinder relationships, so I tried to locate causes and tracking on a calendar, and lo and behold they were cyclical, like another cycle I have, go fig

Comments

[noveldevice]

Yeah, I was both amused and impressed by that. I was ampressed. Or immused. Something.

I understand, believe me. The yeariversary of Ranj's death is later this month, and I feel...many things...about it. Most of them to do with the idea, whether it's right or not, that he is only dead because I moved to Canada to get a PhD. And I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time to meet someone and not be alone forever and become a pet-hoarder who is eventually eaten by her fifty cats and small yappy dogs when she keels over in her pee-soaked house full of carefully saved magazine articles about cuckoo clocks.

I know, intellectually, that that's absurd, but I actually feel rather panicked about it.

And I'm 34 and, ten years after deciding that I did after all want to have a kid or two, I have no kids, because my partner who is now dead never thought it was the right time to try, and I am slowly coming to understand that for him, fatherhood was a beautiful dream that he was content to take out and polish occasionally without ever having the courage to even try to make it happen, but he wasn't honest with me about it, which is all that I asked. And then, see above re feeling like I basically killed him. Sigh.

I know it doesn't get easier, but it seems very unfair that it apparently just gets harder.

I myself tend to apply Ben and Jerry's.

YOU WOULD BE A GREAT CORPOREAL FRIEND. I LIKE SPICY FISH.

[amand_r]

I SHALL BE 34 THIS YEAR.

I have no urge to ever have a partner ever again, but IN TEN YEARS IF WE DO NOT HAVE SOMEONE WE SHOULD TOTES BECOME HETERO LIFE PARTNERS AND MOVE IN TOGETHER SO THAT WE CAN EAT ICE CREAM AND FISH AND SCOFF AT MEN AND CHANGE THE LITTER BOXES.

I wish I could say that it gets better, because I think everyone is different. I think it's best to say that it mutates. Yeah, your focus mutates.

[noveldevice]

Hahah I like this plan. We should totes do it. And if I ask one of my gay dude friends to knock me up, you can help me change diapers.

I'd just like it if I felt less like a horrible murderer all the time. That would be nice.

[amand_r]

Yeah, today the therapist goes, "well geez, maybe you'd feel less guilty if they'd locked you away for murder for a while and you could serve some time!"

And in my heart of hearts I was like, "well, maaaaaybe."

[noveldevice]

*snrk* I think sometimes people don't understand. YES I NEED TO BE PUNISHED. NO IT WON'T ACTUALLY MAKE ME FEEL BETTER BUT I WANT IT ANYWAY.

I can't tell if I need a therapist or a dominatrix, honestly.

[amand_r]

HAAHAHAHA well, it's like, intellectually, I know it's not my fault, but emotionally or somewhere in my skull that isn't clear. Maybe if there was punitive damages I'd feel...I dunno.

I wouldn't survive in jail! I can't be anyone's prag!

[noveldevice]

At least I'd have plenty of time to read. So there's that. No, I know that there was nothing I could have done, and it was nothing I did. And if I'd been there, I would have just found him which, well, probably would have just made it worse and all that. But...I keep going through trying to figure out what I did that made it happen, and how I could have done it differently, whatever it was. :(

[amand_r]

Yeah, in the end, I guess there comes a point where you just have to stop that. Like, I think to myself that if I had been there I might have stopped him, but the fact is that I wasn't, and even then, it might have happened some other time, and we can't go through life thinking that the last time we see someone might be the LAST time we see them, you know? It's be like living at Red airport security level all the time. We're not wired for that anyway.

[noveldevice]

And I did actually, because of my sort of semi-horrible relationship history, spend the first eight or so years after his stroke like that. I let a lot of stuff slide because I didn't want my last words to him to be "GODDAMMIT WHY WON'T YOU EVER PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF, YOU SLOB" or whatever. And then? We had a fight and he died.

Oh, what a sense of humour the universe has.

And yeah, the toll it took on me to live like that? Pretty bad. But it took years for me to come to the end of myself and be like, fuck it, I deserve better than this.

[amand_r]

Yeah. I R SRS DR, NOVEL. I PRESCRIBE TIME.

For serious. And maybe talking to someone. That was what I needed, because DAYUM, I HAVE THINGS TO SAY.