It's always something...
Sixteen years. Five of friendship and damn nearly eleven building a relationship. Then a family and a house and a shared identity. All to pot now, I suppose. Somewhere along the line, we cracked. She knew I was insecure from a childhood of rampant critiques and screaming rage fits about how I wasn’t worth spit, then a torrid teenagerhood in the closet with my best friend, where she went off and got boyfriends, and I...well, I wasn’t good enough for any of the boys either. I had ups and downs thanks to an overactive brain and an emotional repertoire that rivals the number of different songs ever appearing on the Billboard 100 list, in all of history. I knew she was a control freak with a temper. I knew she was a flirt.
I knew we didn’t have a great start. We were young, and gay, in a small town where anything less than traditional was frowned upon. Stealing kisses here and there as we could, sleeping over at one another’s house for days - even weeks - at a time. Coded notes written sloppily so that no one would know the sender. It started as a battle, and with as different as we were - and still are - I don’t know how she would believe it would be anything but a battle to continue it.
But that’s what happened. I was in it, I still am in it, and adamantly disagree with what she, naturally, ordered into place: a referendum on our relationship. Because she can’t handle my being worried that she - as logic dictates since it’s happened before - would get caught up in the eye of some good looking douche-nozzle with half of the personality she deserves, but makes up for it with manipulative, bullshit words. And who knows, maybe I was right to be worried. All of this transpired as said man was breaking up with his own girlfriend. She said she was done because of it, because I cannot trust that he won’t get her so wound tight that she won’t have the conscious ability to say no. It’s not, not in the very least, and it took me years to figure this out, that I don’t trust her. It’s because I know her so well to know how fuzzy her brain can get, because I’ve gotten her there before, and I know what guys like this one are capable of and what kind of fucking prize it would be to snatch a girl’s girlfriend of all things, prove once and for all that a good dick is all that any gay woman could need.
And because of the stress of a (recently quit) job, and feeling like I was completely out of touch with our family and friends because of that stress and that workload, I felt low and she tried but I was too late. She’d apparently quit, and there was no changing her mind. “There isn’t anything left to give. I don’t have it in me to pull you out of it again. I can’t.” She told me far too many times for my liking tonight. I had no idea that she was affected so thoroughly. Like I said, I’d always been insecure, I’ve had my low points where I just need to absolutely bawl my eyes out, and it usually happens along with my PMS. Great, right? I digress, however. I bawl, I’m better, we move on, but apparently it wasn’t like that at all. She never told me any of this. Ever. Not until she blew up tonight and threw it all into my face.
So I’m following the rules, sleeping on the couch because that’s what she wants. I’m supposed to step up and stay up and stand up and all of these barely disguised metaphors for being happy and sociable whenever my heart feels like it’s cracking, and what a crack. It wasn’t shocking, not like whenever we hit a boredom patch of monotony and she hit on our roommate and I caught her, and we eventually “took a break”. No. But it’s fed off of that one, this new crack, deeper and longer and it hurts for every year I put into this relationship. For all of the eight years our daughter has been alive (nine if you count pregnancy).
And we have to tell her what’s going on. And I don’t know if everything will be okay again, which is what she’s going to want to know, and that digs at me more, a new little vein on the crack. All I can do, like her, is hope. I have to work on me, for me. And for the sake of our little girl, of course. But some of it is for her, I cannot lie. She told me to fix me for me and it sounds like a cop out. I can’t give up and I know that I can’t live like this. She asks me to go back to being her best friend, the happy girl (who wasn’t ever really happy, I just hid it well with a big smile and loud mouth, plus a blog. The blog helped a lot), because that’s who she fell in love with, but can’t take it if I fall again?
I wanted to actually, actively work on us. She needs to get her back, apparently. Excuse any tone from that past sentence, as I don’t mean it to be quite as acerbic as how it looks in print. I’ve never known a true “me”. Not ever. I know I’m gifted at writing, have a decent voice, and enjoy a lot of things. But I have never had a “me” that was definable. That’s the only little bit of rudeness in there. It’s why I think it’s so laughable for her to ask for the me she fell in love with, because that girl was more flash-emotive than I am now. Maybe that’s what she wants. I mean, obviously doing a handful of mystery pills or cutting can’t be included, but I had also tried to bring that one up to her. That I let it out more often instead of holding it in.
It’s confusing, and downright worthy of being screamed at. That’s life for me right now though. So if anyone’s still out there, I could really use a friend while I go through this, just someone to tell me I can do it, someone to give me advice on...any of this crazy bullshit, to let me know if there’s any hope. If not, I just...I don’t even know. I know that I have to be here for my kiddo. There’s no choice there. I just don’t know how long I could do it and fake being happy if I have to interact with her and her mom every day. Every day, just constantly being reminded that this was what most of my life had been, and because I’m a fuckup with emotional issues, it’s upside down now and I don’t have much to hold on to anymore. God forbid she ever reads this and decides it’s crossing a line...or worse, if someone else takes her away from me before I have the chance to sweep her off of her feet or make her heart skip beats or flutter or whatever it is that she wants from me.
I knew we didn’t have a great start. We were young, and gay, in a small town where anything less than traditional was frowned upon. Stealing kisses here and there as we could, sleeping over at one another’s house for days - even weeks - at a time. Coded notes written sloppily so that no one would know the sender. It started as a battle, and with as different as we were - and still are - I don’t know how she would believe it would be anything but a battle to continue it.
But that’s what happened. I was in it, I still am in it, and adamantly disagree with what she, naturally, ordered into place: a referendum on our relationship. Because she can’t handle my being worried that she - as logic dictates since it’s happened before - would get caught up in the eye of some good looking douche-nozzle with half of the personality she deserves, but makes up for it with manipulative, bullshit words. And who knows, maybe I was right to be worried. All of this transpired as said man was breaking up with his own girlfriend. She said she was done because of it, because I cannot trust that he won’t get her so wound tight that she won’t have the conscious ability to say no. It’s not, not in the very least, and it took me years to figure this out, that I don’t trust her. It’s because I know her so well to know how fuzzy her brain can get, because I’ve gotten her there before, and I know what guys like this one are capable of and what kind of fucking prize it would be to snatch a girl’s girlfriend of all things, prove once and for all that a good dick is all that any gay woman could need.
And because of the stress of a (recently quit) job, and feeling like I was completely out of touch with our family and friends because of that stress and that workload, I felt low and she tried but I was too late. She’d apparently quit, and there was no changing her mind. “There isn’t anything left to give. I don’t have it in me to pull you out of it again. I can’t.” She told me far too many times for my liking tonight. I had no idea that she was affected so thoroughly. Like I said, I’d always been insecure, I’ve had my low points where I just need to absolutely bawl my eyes out, and it usually happens along with my PMS. Great, right? I digress, however. I bawl, I’m better, we move on, but apparently it wasn’t like that at all. She never told me any of this. Ever. Not until she blew up tonight and threw it all into my face.
So I’m following the rules, sleeping on the couch because that’s what she wants. I’m supposed to step up and stay up and stand up and all of these barely disguised metaphors for being happy and sociable whenever my heart feels like it’s cracking, and what a crack. It wasn’t shocking, not like whenever we hit a boredom patch of monotony and she hit on our roommate and I caught her, and we eventually “took a break”. No. But it’s fed off of that one, this new crack, deeper and longer and it hurts for every year I put into this relationship. For all of the eight years our daughter has been alive (nine if you count pregnancy).
And we have to tell her what’s going on. And I don’t know if everything will be okay again, which is what she’s going to want to know, and that digs at me more, a new little vein on the crack. All I can do, like her, is hope. I have to work on me, for me. And for the sake of our little girl, of course. But some of it is for her, I cannot lie. She told me to fix me for me and it sounds like a cop out. I can’t give up and I know that I can’t live like this. She asks me to go back to being her best friend, the happy girl (who wasn’t ever really happy, I just hid it well with a big smile and loud mouth, plus a blog. The blog helped a lot), because that’s who she fell in love with, but can’t take it if I fall again?
I wanted to actually, actively work on us. She needs to get her back, apparently. Excuse any tone from that past sentence, as I don’t mean it to be quite as acerbic as how it looks in print. I’ve never known a true “me”. Not ever. I know I’m gifted at writing, have a decent voice, and enjoy a lot of things. But I have never had a “me” that was definable. That’s the only little bit of rudeness in there. It’s why I think it’s so laughable for her to ask for the me she fell in love with, because that girl was more flash-emotive than I am now. Maybe that’s what she wants. I mean, obviously doing a handful of mystery pills or cutting can’t be included, but I had also tried to bring that one up to her. That I let it out more often instead of holding it in.
It’s confusing, and downright worthy of being screamed at. That’s life for me right now though. So if anyone’s still out there, I could really use a friend while I go through this, just someone to tell me I can do it, someone to give me advice on...any of this crazy bullshit, to let me know if there’s any hope. If not, I just...I don’t even know. I know that I have to be here for my kiddo. There’s no choice there. I just don’t know how long I could do it and fake being happy if I have to interact with her and her mom every day. Every day, just constantly being reminded that this was what most of my life had been, and because I’m a fuckup with emotional issues, it’s upside down now and I don’t have much to hold on to anymore. God forbid she ever reads this and decides it’s crossing a line...or worse, if someone else takes her away from me before I have the chance to sweep her off of her feet or make her heart skip beats or flutter or whatever it is that she wants from me.