I need a manifesto. Or possibly an icon from the comic 'I feel sick' by Jhonen Vasquez
I don't like me, so I'm not a brilliant judge of how good a person I am - in the sort of general socio-scope of things. (I want to be good but sometimes I'm a bitch, I try to understand but sometimes I sneer, I wish to encourage but sometimes I'm too miserable to be able to fake the smile.) What I mean is, my crimes aren't in the statutes.
I'm just too tired, too self absorbed, too sad to always offer the help and encouragement to everyone I should. I kinda hope that's the same for most of humanity - that we always try but occasionally fail. That seems supremely human to me. We're not perfect or omnipotent. The trying is a very important aspect of that - as is the failure - because failure teaches us things that success cannot and never will. But it doesn't stop me from feeling sick when I know I ought to have done better or been better, but missed the chance - chickened out or just didn't bother. I really loathe that aspect of myself. (Yep, thanks, well aware, loathing doesn't fix it.)
Some of my good points are that I don't tend to shout or call names even under pressure. I try to adhere to polite and reasonable argument and when I know I can't I often try to bow out because I know it won't reach a conclusion for either side, it will just get nasty and I'm not in to that sort of debate. I like whimsy. I like satire. I like clever reposts. Calling me 'a fucking idiot' or even worse variations really isn't in the ballpark of 'smart comeback'.
Funny, isn't it, how those closest to us can treat us so roughly, putting forth acts and words we would never put up with from anyone else.
No one has ever called me the names you have nor derided my intellect nor dismissed my thoughts so casually, brutally and often as you have. 'Entitled dumb fucking bitch'? Tell me how you really see me why don't you. (No, please, I would far rather a rational conversation that an evplosion at 2am.) No one in my life has spoken to me like that prior to you. Because no one else sees me that way.
I don't know how you see me - honestly at this point I'm afraind to ask. No, never mind, I know entirely how you see me. Did you ask why there was a hidden half bottle of spirits there? No. Did you ask how I'd got it? No. How long it had sat there? No. Did you ask what the hell I meant to do with it? No. Instead you gave me the softest gentelest intervention speach ever. Which was sweet. If misplaced. And ironic.
I have a half bottle filled with all the whiskey and vodka you didn't drink because you went to bed. I didn't want to drink it at the time and didn't want to let it go to waste either. We're not rich enough to waste spirits. So I bottled it - saved it for a rainy day. I didn't drink it, just collected it. And yes, there it sits. And I add to it everytime you pass out with a full glass that would go to waste. You're right I have an alcohol problem. It's a fucking terrible hording alcodol problem. The drinking? Less so. One shot a night and I'd be good. The thing is I'd like just one shot a night as a constant. But constant isn't a thing here unless I cheat.
Or to put it another way, I'm a witch who doesn't have much agency and is making the best of what she has. This includes hording off-casts through the fallaow times. (That's overly dramatic language. All I mean is I can't live on $2 mac-cheeses one week and $20 steak the next. I would rather an actual balanced life?)
I love you but please wash Lady BlueJay's influence out of your mouth. You, who is by your admission so brilliant at arguing. You're not. You're a bully. It's not passion. It's being an arse. When I have to accept everything you say on no evidence... When you demand actual physical evidence of anything I bring up... When my plea of 'can we talk about this in the morning when we are sober with at least one brain cell between us?' is treated as me trying to weasel out? Sterling.
You don't treat any form of discussion as a debate - you treat it as a poker game where you can out bid your opponents and bully them from the table whether you have the cards or not. (You got super pissy with me when I said slaves didn't build the pyramids and there weren't many Hebrew slaves in Egypt at all at that point in history. You shouted me down until I just went to bed - utterly sick of the whole thing. A day or so later you sort of apologised by saying "I looked it up, apparently there were these artisans in special villages, but there was also the labour/tax system...." like it was news to me and I hadn't tried to tell you about it the other evening.
Kal, I'm sorry to tell you but you are the worst adult I have ever had to have a mildly confrontational discussion with. (You are a wonderful adult and indeed Keecher in almost every otrher way.) Generally because you don't want a debate/discussion/argument/whatever. You just want to tell me I'm stupid and wrong. Which is what you do. Over and over. Which is a funny sort of stance for someone who used to say it was so lovely I was both English and smart. (Apparently since living in the US I've forfeited both statuses.)
I don't really care which opinion comes up trumps - I just wish you'd be consistent. If I'm smart, don't call me 'such a fucking idiot' all the time. If I'm dumb, go debate with someone clever and leave me the fuck out of it. I'm good with either.
I am done being endlessly belittled and trash-talked. I already think I'm shit - I don't need you to tell me too. I wouldn't mind if it's constructive? But it never is. No boyfriend has ever thrown my things out, told me to get out, told me he's done with me only to take me back the next day with a mumble of 'I was drunk, what do you expect?' No one in my life has ever been as verbally corrosive towards me as you have. Ever. No one has said even one of the highly shitty things you have repeatedly said to me. And you're my husband.
And yet you want a child.
And despite the utter fucking terror of it all, I'm up for that.
But you can't keep your calm or patience with me, the cats, or indeed the laptop, how on earth are you going to cope with a crying baby that might not shut up for hours? You can't shout or swear at it or threaten it with a spray bottle. You can't tell it it's a dumb cunt and needs to leave.
I know this is lockdown (the very mild tropical version, let's be honest) but you have become more swear-y, more insomniac, more hyper sexualised and more aggravated with everything as the months have gone by. I know not having work is stressful. I know you want to see your friends. I know I want less sex than you do and that's not fair on a cosmic level - not fair to me either - it's not fair all round really.
I would give anything to be able to Skype my parents, even if I couldn't see them. Also at least one grandparent and a grandaunt. But I can't. Because they're dead and gone and not even necromancy at this point will bring them back.
Your friends aren't around on island, true, but you can Skype them. You can also real-time say hi to both your parents, your grandparents, and any sibling you want and they will be in an approximate timezone.
Meanwhile my life is packed far away in boxes, as it has been for a decade. I've forgotten most of the things I ever had. I fear when I finally open up all the boxes it will be as if they belong to a stranger. CDs I don't listen to. Books I don't wish to read. Clothes that don't fit. Furnishings and furniture I finally have a space for but no longer want or know what to do with. Notebooks and sketchbooks once belonging to a version of me who is long gone and I don't know whether to make a shrine to her or burn the books and try to be done.
Can I resurrect the joy from the boxes of my old life? Or will it have rotted away, killed before its time and I get to excavate it?
I don't want to make my position sound more dramatic than it is. I've lived apart. I've lived without heating and electricity. I've lived in seclusion. I've lived on vodka, self hate and toast crumbs. My status in one country or another has at times been so tenuous I wished I could get an explosive anime nosebleed from the stress.
I should have a pithy point to tie together this collection of paragraphs. If I have anything, it's just this: I want to be in a pleasing space where I can unpack my boxes at last where there are chittens and a keecher whom I love and whom loves me. I want to be inspired to make art. I want occasional times and spaces that are my own. I don't want to be shouted at or told I'm so sooo stupid. (Yes, even though just thinking of ringing up bank customer services makes me cry from bastard anxiety - fun times. Perhaps more accurately rather than 'stupid' you should say 'pathetic'.)
Most of all I don't want my partner to pity me for hiding his excess alcohol against the inevitable drought so I can drink half a shot when I'm doing necromancy and need to give offerings to a ghost.