"This is not my beautiful home. This is not my beautiful wife."

[zeroenthusiasm]

Our trip was over. We had been on the road for 107 days. Tara's health was continuing to fluctuate in troubling ways. She seemed to be getting gradually sicker with each day, incapable of digesting or absorbing food of any kind and rapidly losing weight. We had no choice. It didn't help that her mother was demanding she come back every day. While riding bikes in a park in New Orleans a few days earlier, she had received a call from her stepfather, who she'd find out had no idea where she was. He didn't even know that she had left town, let alone been living in a car and traveling the country for over three months. It was very confusing, but further proved my suspicions that her mother was a little off, and a compulsive, manipulative liar. Of course, I had promised her to never speak ill of her mother ever again, so I just stayed quiet as she expressed her feelings about it and attempted to make excuses for her mother. From that day, Tara's attitude seemed to shift, her patience became shorter, and her tolerance for the harsh conditions of that part of the south shrunk to zero. I assumed it was just because she was feeling so sick. Truthfully, I was feeling pretty exhausted from the trip and living in a car, too, so I didn't hold it against her. We were suddenly arguing a lot, though, including a particularly stupid fight that she escalated into one of the worst conflicts of our entire relationship. Traveling without money was possible and fun and exciting, but it was also a struggle. I was devastated to be returning to Schenectady, and really worried about Tara, but also grateful to have been able to go on adventures every single day with the person I loved for a quarter of a year and to have made so many new friends along the way. If all went well, we figured, we would be able to resume travel in a few months, using the couple thousand dollars raised by the GoFundMe we'd set up.

We left at noon on the 28th. I drove until Birmingham, where we ate dinner at a Mellow Mushroom, and then started driving again. We entered a blindingly heavy rain somewhere in Tennessee. We got a hotel for the night. I'd driven 630 miles in ten hours. We weren't even halfway home yet. As I tried to figure out the way into the hotel's lot, Tara started screaming misleading directions at me, telling me to turn left while backing up. She sounded so annoyed with and mad at me and I couldn't understand why. It hurt so much to have her talk down to me, and so loudly. I felt like she hated me and was actively trying to push me away.

The next day, I drove from 11 until 5. We got dinner at the first Denny's we found and then I resumed driving from 6 until 9:30, by which we were only three or so hours away from home. It was so gross around us; so wet and cold and dark in a way that only the northeast could get. I was so upset that we were heading back home, even though I was very seriously concerned about Tara's health. I made sure to emphasize to her that her health would always be top priority. She still kept expressing feelings of guilt for dragging us back home. I couldn't drive anymore, so I asked if she could. She hadn't driven at all the entire trip, so I figured it would be fair to ask. We got home around 1 in the morning. Amanda was still awake to welcome us. It was of course frigid, covered in snow, and gross there. A box was waiting for me. It was a Christmas gift from Tara she had ordered weeks earlier. It was this adorable pigeon mug I had spotted while at a shop in Savannah. She said she'd never seen me respond to a material item the way I did that day, so she got it for me. It was such a sweet gesture. I celebrated by preparing some hot chocolate and tiny marshmallows to fill it to the brim with.



December 30th
The next day, our life there just picked right back up where it left like we'd never even traveled. She was at doctor appointments all day. I did some grocery shopping at Walmart. Hannaford didn't have anything Boca or Daiya, so I had to go all the way to Whole Foods. I made two wrong turns leaving there and almost got crushed between two cars because of some reckless asshole who dangerously cut me off.

Back at the house, I'd mentioned being miserable and Tara responded with an exasperated, "And it begins!"
She told me I complained too much and brought up being sick. I couldn't tell if she were implying that my misery made her illness worse, or if my problems weren't as serious or important because I was physically healthy--either were possible, as both were common attitudes by that point. It made me feel really bad for being sad, and like I wasn't allowed to express how our life, which we shared together, was affecting me.

December 31st
I woke up to her telling me she was leaving to get blood work done. For some reason, the hospital rejected her, so she had to go out of her way to another one in Saratoga. While she was out doing that, I wasn't really sure what to do with myself, so I went out to buy some chips and fill up the gas tank. It was New Years Eve, so I made a nice queso dip so we could dip chips as the last hours of the years passed. She had gotten so much worse just in the first 48 hours of being back in that house, and I couldn't help but think that it was the house itself that was doing it to her. Whether it were due to black mold, the ghosts and evil spirits she believed haunted it, a psychological effect of her returning to a traumatic space, or her mother poisoning her, I did not know, but it couldn't have been coincidence. We stayed in bed and watched a buncha Derren Brown shows on the laptop. She'd have to spend a half hour in the bathroom every time she consumed food. I was so scared she was going to waste away completely.

As bad as things seemed, I still tried to remain hopeful for the future. I wrote this Facebook post:

The last couple of years have been really hard on me, so I didn't expect much from 2016. At a time when I had fully given up on happiness, comfort, and love, it turned out to be the best year I've had in a long time. I traveled the country for almost 50% of this year, finally saw Hawaii (and for free thanks to the kindness of others), and lived in a car seeing all of the eastern part of the US for over a hundred days; I weighed less than I have in over two years; I proved to myself I could be okay while always alone; I made so many new friends all over the country; I watched my closest friends excel in their personal and professional lives (Matt and Tia, I'm so proud of you guys); I finished a new zine and tabled at a few zine fests; I got so much better at cooking; I reconnected with a long lost love after almost eight years single and alone and am now in the greatest, healthiest, most fulfilling relationship of my entire life (I love you, Tara); I learned how to drive and got my license; I started playing piano/keyboard again and will be working on music with Tara a lot in the coming year; I started learning American Sign Language; I delivered Chinese food and sold stuff and saved up thousands of dollars for future European travels; I dumpster dove so much stuff, even made some money off of it, and spent a few months helping the local Food Not Bombs, even at a time helping it become 100% vegan; I participated in very successful, media-covered protests against horse racing with Horseracing Wrongs; I helped so many people go and stay vegan; I finally got to see one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, Owen, after several years of repeatedly missing or getting screwed out of seeing him; I saw so many good movies; I started a YouTube channel with Tara (@everything is aweful); I spent Christmas in New Orleans in a swanky hotel; I got to see and meet so many animals I'd previously never seen in real life; I lived in the most stable and comfortable home I ever have; and I/we all got to see the continued collapse of animal enterprise and capitalism as we spiral closer and closer to the end of civilization. I'm optimistic about life for the first time in maybe a decade. I am still determined to "never grow up" and to do whatever it takes to do whatever the fuck I want without contributing to the evil and destruction that curses this planet. And I finally have someone to hold my hand and experience this life with. In 2017, I hope to see more travel, I hope to write and record songs, I hope to keep making videos, I hope to write a lot in my blog and for new zines (as soon as I find a new means of making copies for free), I hope to keep meeting new people, I hope to go to the gym again, I hope to expand my vandalism of the country with my cute pigeon character, I hope to ride my bike a lot, I hope to find new loopholes and vulnerabilities in this system to exploit, I hope to partake in more animal rights activism, I hope to get into screen printing and button-making, I hope I can continue to fend off the demons that will forever plague my brain due to mental illness, and I hope how shittier America gets every year will eventually get the people angry enough to finally engage in violent insurrection and forced revolution. I hope everyone's doing okay and that none of you will drink and drive tonight.

I superstitiously hesitated to post something so positive, but decided to fully believe that everything was going to be okay. It'd be mere coincidence, but the universe would laugh right in my face in the coming month.



The first day of 2017, I woke up at 2 in the afternoon and had nothing to do. I drove Tara to Saratoga so she could drop some samples off. On the drive, I asked her what she wanted to do about the whole issue of me living in the house. She didn't tell me right away at the time, but when her mother started calling a lot more, and suspiciously right after she was caught in a huge lie, she suddenly brought up me living there.
"Does dave live in the house?" she asked one day, as if she didn't know.
Instead of offering an explanation as to why she had been lying to both her and her stepfather, she changed the subject and decided to focus on no longer wanting me in "her" house. She owned it, and paid all the bills to keep it up and running for Tara to live in, so she was well within her rights, but it was still needlessly mean, and scary for me since I had nowhere else to go. I'd offered to pay rent or do anything else her mother might want me to, but Tara just kept telling me she would handle it. She absolutely did not want me and her mother to talk it out together.

Anyway, when I brought it up, Tara just said that she didn't know what she wanted to do about it, that she'd never even thought about it, but also that she, "had concerns." She began telling me she liked her "alone time", which was news to me. When I brought up that she was the one who wanted me around all the time at the beginning, she shrugged it off as just a symptom of the honeymoon phase. She told me all of her past partners always had a problem with it, but she was at least allowed to live with most of them, including the last two boyfriends who lived in the same house I was potentially being evicted from. It was all really catching me off-guard.

While Tara was out, I locked myself out of the house. I had no idea what to do. All of the windows were protected by metal chicken wire, tightly nailed into the frame, so I couldn't even break in. We were left with no other choice but to call her mother and have her let me in. When she showed up, she had a visible scowl on her face. She was such an intimidating, scary woman. I tried to be friendly, of course, meeting her with a smile and a light tone, saying, "I'm so sorry, this is all my fault."
She jerked the key from me and huffed, "I'm taking this. If there's only one key, it should be in her possession, not yours!"
In that moment, I abandoned all hope of ever talking to the woman.

When Tara got back home, I tried to tell her about it and added that I really didn't like the way her mother spoke to me. I'd always been nothing but respectful towards her mother, and was also one of the best things to happen to her chronically ill daughter. Tara wrote it off as her mother just being "cranky" and said she was entitled to being upset because her and I had, "screwed up." It was like her mother had possessed her like a ventriloquist dummy sometimes, the way she'd just start contradicting herself and saying things I knew only her mother thought and felt. I had to tread lightly, though, because Tara absolutely refused to have an honest conversation about the way her mother treated her. According to her, this was all our fault, because I'd moved in without either of us getting permission from her mom first. I tried to remind her that she was a grown woman, and that if her mother was going to give her a house that she should trust her with it like a grown woman, but her mother had really instilled a ton of guilt in her by then, and she felt eternally indebted to her. I personally felt the only person I owed anything was Tara, so it was enough for me that she let me move in. We both knew at the time that it was way too soon for me to be living with her, but the circumstances just slowly wound up that way. She never wanted me to leave, so I didn't, and with time I had brought more and more of my stuff over. Neither of us could have prepared ourselves for the day my brother texted me saying, "Get your shit out of my house," and rendered me literally homeless again. As we talked about it more, the blame shifted more and more toward me exclusively, and that hurt my feelings the most. It was beginning to feel like Tara really resented me for moving in, or was at least a conduit through which her mother could express her own resentment.

I was getting pretty upset and frustrated, so I told her I needed to leave and get some air.
"Can we have a normal day, ever?! Everything is the end of the world with you!" she barked.
I felt like my feelings were being belittled. I told her I deserved respect from her mother, which pissed her off. She disagreed vehemently, on the grounds that I had occasionally spoken badly about her behind her back and had, "ignored her wishes," when I moved in without express permission from her. Maybe I didn't respect her mother, but I always showed her respect. Most importantly, I treated her daughter well and took care of her when she needed it. I knew she disliked me for being poor and living an unconventional lifestyle, but I was a good man, and quite literally the only partner her daughter had ever been with who didn't abuse her. She started a bath and began trying to avoid me as I continued to ask her if she felt I didn't deserve her mother's respect. I could only assume she didn't with each time she ignored the question.
She began defending her mom, saying, "She did one thing, and had done more good for me!"
She was referring to a really fucked-up incident that took place earlier in the year that I tried to never let her forget. Of course, it wasn't the only shitty, abusive thing her mother had ever done to her, but I knew better than to get too in-depth about it all.
"If people only heard the bad things you've said and done to me, they'd tell me to break up with you!"
I had no idea what she could have been referring to, but it struck one of my biggest fears, which was her silently growing to resent me and then surprising me one day with a slew of accusations and grievances the way Kara had done.

I repeated that I wanted to leave and spend a few hours apart, since there was no way for us to do it inside the house together. She immediately started asking about her car, confusedly adding that she, "wasn't playing these games." Who the fuck was I talking to?
"If I'm not here when you get back, the door will be unlocked for you," she told me, as if she didn't care where I was going.
I mentioned wanting to go to Philadelphia or something and she calmly responded, "Aw, man, I wanna go to Philly," like nothing had happened.
I started packing. I was so stressed and scared about where I'd go and the future of our relationship. I asked her again if she wanted me to live with her or not, but she just couldn't seem to give me a straight answer. In time, she told me she did, but I no longer felt confident that I could trust it.
"I mean, I don't want you to leave," she added.
It was beginning to sound like she didn't want me to go, but didn't want me to live there anymore, either. It seemed obvious to me that what she actually wanted was conflicting with what her mother wanted, and she didn't know how to reconcile the two. She brought up that I had nowhere to go and that I was unwilling to try and find my own place. She said we'd been arguing more since the big fight we had down south. It left me feeling like she was already beginning to look at our relationship through a negatively distorted lens, just like Kara ended up doing. The reality was that all of our arguing since then had been about this, all due to her mother causing a rift. I didn't leave, and instead made us grilled cheese. She was beginning to look really disoriented and sick, so I dropped the subject for the night.



Found a huge box of vegan Eggo-like waffles at Whole Foods for super cheap!



Buffalo Beyond chicken mac and cheese!



One night, we did leave the house, to see one of our favorite comedians, Mike Birbiglia. The show was great, and it felt good to be able to sit and laugh with Tara for the first time in what felt like weeks. It was strange to find out that night that there was apparently a comedy club in the mall.



Racked a pair of steel toe boots for the winter. I haven't worn boots in my adult life, but winter in Schenectady had broken me. These were 100% vegan, of course. It was incredibly easy to find heavy-duty footwear not made of someone's skin.



Sesame sweet and sour Gardein pork with mixed peppers, water chestnuts, and broccoli, over a bed of dumpstered white rice! Looked ugly, but was fucking awesome.



Being back in Schenectady meant having little to no reason to leave the house, so playing word games inside, instead. This one was pretty cool.



Tara wasn't doing all that well, so I made her favorite dinner/my least favorite dinner: classic spaghetti and meatballs with Newman's sockarooni sauce and nooch sprinkled on top. Don't get me wrong--I love me some spaghetti and meatballs--but at this point all pasta and sauce mixtures literally trigger memories of being kicked off food stamps while living in a food desert and eating it for a month straight.



Also got her some lime Daiya cheesecake, another one of her favorites, even though we both knew her body would ultimately reject it.



Kickin' collard greens with bacon and seven-grain chicken tenders fried in barbecue sauce! My first time trying to prepare collards came out perfectly!

January 11th
After dinner, I started experiencing a really sharp abdominal pain that extended up into my chest. I never got sick or felt sudden pains, so things like that always caught my attention and caused concern really quickly. Tara seemed worried, but her frame of reference for illness was the worst case scenario for everything. I tried to ignore it and hope it'd go away, but nine hours later, by midnight, it had only gotten worse. I'd forced myself to go to the bathroom a number of times, tried to push out every hint of a burp or fart, and took some ibuprofen, but nothing was working. The pain was getting to a point that it was giving me a headache and making laying down or watching something impossible. We decided to go to the emergency room.

On the drive there, Tara seemed really angry with me. I brought it up to her and she told me she was just worried about me, but went directly into ranting about all the reasons she was angry, such as having to go to a hospital in the middle of the night, being up late when she had an early appointment the next day, and being unable to relate to someone who never got sick. I'd already felt uncomfortable bringing up the pain because I knew it was nothing compared to what she dealt with every single day, and she was making me feel even worse as she sat there at the wheel and listed all of these bitter complaints about having to take me to the hospital. As we sat in the waiting room, she asked me who my primary care was, and I told her I didn't know because I never went to the doctor's.
"Oh, that's right, you're privileged enough to never be sick!" she angrily shot back while throwing her arms up.
I told her it was really shitty for her to respond that way and she argued, "You're shitty to me while I'm sick, so!"
I had a rule, which was to always shut down an argument if she told me she wasn't feeling well, so I knew this wasn't true. When I asked her, "When?!" she explained that since she was always sick and I sometimes was shitty to her, it had to be, by default, true. She apologized, but her trying to defend herself negated it.

They got me out of the waiting room pretty quickly. The first thing they did was an EKG just to rule out any heart problems. I of course didn't have any. I sat in a new room for two hours and waited. Tara sat in a chair by me, texting on her phone. The man on the other side of the curtain from me smelled really awful. I got some blood work done, and they took me in for a CT scan of my abdomen. The pain persisted, so they offered me morphine. I'd never used a strong painkiller before, let alone intravenously, and I expressed discomfort with drugs like opiates to the nurse. She let out an audibly annoyed sigh and sarcastically responded, "Good thing you're in a hospital!" and went on to tell me I had to do something about my anxiety. I felt peer-pressured to do it, practically. When she administered it, I instantly felt a weird sensation crawl up my spine, just for a second, and then I spontaneously began to cry, which I was told happens to some people but was still humiliated by. The morphine didn't even help. I took a picture of my IV because it was such a different life experience for me, which angered Tara.
"Going to the ER isn't some 'funny tee-hee' novelty!" she scolded.
I understood where she was coming from, and it made me feel stupid.
She added, "I'd kill for some morphine!" even though she had already told me that morphine didn't even work on her pain.
She'd later blame her attitude problem on a headache she hadn't mentioned until right then.
In the end, over six hours later, they had me drink something that would numb the inner lining of my stomach, and that relieved the pain within minutes. It never came back after that, and no one could explain what had caused it in the first place. I had to assume it was either gas, or another stress-induced ulcer, which I was prone to getting because of my anxiety.



When she told me watching porn was cheating, I stopped watching it. When she saw naked women show up while we browsed my Reddit feed together, I unsubscribed from all of them. When she told me it was disrespectful to reblog a picture of another woman's body on Tumblr, I never did it again. When she told me I should unfollow a girl I'd slept with on Instagram because she had a picture of her bare breasts on it, I unfollowed her. When my brother brought up another girl being attractive at Food Not Bombs, I didn't say anything back. When she told me liking certain pictures of certain girls on Instagram upset her, I stopped liking those kinds of posts. Her feelings were more important than these things and I truly understood where most of them came from. I wasn't above childish and insecure jealousy, after all, though I kept those things to myself because I knew they were more my problem than hers. But it wasn't hard for me to stop watching porn (porn kinda disgusted me, anyway). It wasn't hard to avoid vocalizing that I found other people attractive sometimes. It wasn't hard to not like pictures of friends on Instagram when they showed what she would consider too much skin. I loved her and respected her feelings enough to accommodate them even when I didn't really understand them. I was also just genuinely uninterested in other women. I was totally and fully devoted to her--and not just because I naturally leaned toward monogamy and was "following the rules", but because she was everything I wanted in another human being, her particular imperfections and all. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and I wanted her to be the only person I touched for the rest of my life. I felt so lucky to have the privilege of being physically affectionate and intimate with her. She was by all means my soul mate.

At that point, she had been starting arguments about really petty things, though, and it was starting to make me feel unappreciated; like I would never be good enough and that she had this standard of perfection I'd never live up to. I was a really good partner--not perfect, but really fucking close. I would do nearly anything for her, and I'd demonstrated that to her time and time again. So it was outrageous to me that she'd treat these childish things like massive screw-ups on my end. I found myself walking on eggshells, never knowing when she'd jump down my throat next. Because I didn't yell, call names, lie, cheat, or put my hands on her, the only things she had to grab at were all so stupid. Even still, I'd find myself shifting from refusing to dignify her grievances with a full response, to groveling. One night, she got mad when I had messaged a girl on Instagram who I had kissed twice seven years prior, and even accused me of, "looking for plan B," and wanting to break up. Another night, she suddenly brought up a LiveJournal entry I'd written months earlier, about a sexual encounter I'd had almost a year before I'd written about it. She said it was disrespectful, and she didn't like that I described the woman as "angelic".

One particularly stupid argument somehow blew up into one of the loudest we'd ever had as she seemingly began to lose her mind. It was like she had become possessed, by her mother or mold spores or something. I forget what exactly led to the subject, but she had brought up cartoons being made into porn. Since Spongebob was her favorite cartoon, I told her there was actually a full-length porn parody of it that was quite horrifying...


She didn't believe me, so I got on YouTube and showed her the trailer for it. I thought she'd think it was funny, and she did laugh as we watched it.
At one point, she asked out loud, "Who would even jerk off to that?!"
I looked at her with an embarrassed grin because I totally had before, years earlier. As usual, my stupid ass was instinctively honest. Her face dropped. She erupted into lamentations about how her boyfriend was a gross sexual deviant who jerked off to children's shows. She was inconsolable. It didn't matter that it was years ago, it didn't matter that it was a professionally produced porn parody that was legal and geared toward adults, and it didn't even matter that I no longer watched porn. She began repeatedly asking me what I thought was so hot about it. She needed to understand what exactly I found arousing about this video. I was backed into a corner: she wasn't going to stop pestering me about this, and apparently was going to assume that I was some deranged pervert, unless I told her the truth, which was honestly that I simply thought Skin Diamond looked incredibly hot in the blowjob scene. I knew hearing me state that I'd even found another woman sexually attractive years ago would still infuriate her, so I had no idea what to say. Eventually, I confessed. As expected, it only escalated things until she was screaming at me and pacing in and out of her bedroom.

I could not handle being yelled at, and my endurance for these constant arguments was growing thin, so I calmly asked if I could take the car and go somewhere to think, so we could both get some space from each other and breathe before we continued the conversation. We lived miles away from anywhere, and I obviously wasn't going to ask her for a ride. She told me no, and then suddenly told me she was going to leave, spitefully adding that it was her car and not mine, like she was holding her possessions over my head the same way her mother always would do to her when angry. Instead, I left on foot, and walked five and a half miles in 20-degree weather to the nearest Denny's in downtown Schenectady. Meanwhile, she went over to her friend Molly's house. A few hours later, I texted her to see what she was doing and how she was feeling, hoping the space and time calmed her down a bit. Unfortunately, it hadn't. She'd gone as far as watching the blowjob scene from the Spongebob porn parody, and was now asking me why I would show a porn video to her, even though it was totally obvious that it was relevant to what we were talking about and that most others would find it amusing. She picked me up and, back at home, she started saying she needed therapy and that we needed to be celibate. I had no idea what the hell was going on. We talked a lot, but it didn't go anywhere. If there had ever been a chance of it being resolved, she stymied it by changing the subject to me liking pictures of other women on Instagram, which had become the highest priority excuse to start an argument for the past month...

Toward the end of the relationship, me liking pictures of other girls on Instagram became a bigger and bigger deal. The entire relationship, she had never brought it up. I'd skim through my feed right in front of her and she'd sometimes say in a sarcastic tone, "Why you likin' other girls' pictures?" but that was it. I stopped liking photos of anyone who were even a little bit nude as soon as she told me it bothered her. One night, I was looking through my likes for a specific photo, in full view of her since I didn't have anything I felt I needed to hide. Somehow, her prying eyes zoomed in and magnified two tiny thumbnails out of the twenty or more on the screen, both of women pulling their shirts up to show their new torso tattoos. They were both friends of mine, but I had apparently fucked up, and she was very upset. After a while, I felt this was so blown out of proportion that I needed to communicate to her that, while I would try to be even more choosy than I already had been being about what pictures of other women I liked on Instagram, I did not think she was reacting in a rational or fair way. Part of me didn't want to admit to having hurt her in the first place because of the guilt it would cause me, of course, but another part of me always worried in the back of my mind that she'd start trying to control me and take advantage of my loyalty as a partner because that's what my last abusive partner had done. As far as she was concerned, this was "basic boyfriend stuff" and I should have already known better. I tried to explain to her that I liked everyone's photos, and that a hearted post was not an indicator of physical attraction. When I told her that her feelings about it were irrational, the fighting got worse, and when I suggested she was being kinda controlling, that exacerbated it further.

Being stubborn and hurt that she would make such a big deal out of something I felt was so petty when we had more serious things to worry about (her declining health, my living situation since her mom wanted me out of the house), especially considering I normally unquestioningly catered to her every whim and accommodated every neuroses, I didn't back down from telling her exactly how I felt this time. I of course still stopped liking any photos with skin revealed in them, but I needed to let her know that I didn't think it was reasonable and that I was only doing it because her feelings were more important to me than my right to click a heart on a stupid picture on my phone. As she got louder and angrier whenever we'd talk about it, so would I, and the synonyms for "irrational" I'd use definitely got harsher. I had technically done what she wanted, but I'd also questioned it and criticized it, which made her feel like I didn't take her feelings seriously and that I was invalidating them. It ultimately didn't matter that, nine times out of ten, I did everything she asked, because this time I didn't also agree with her line of thinking. Before she went to bed that night, she made sure to tell me it was weird and immature to jerk off to what I did.

The next day, she stormed into the room to call me "passive-aggressive" for making a Facebook status expressing the catch-22 that always being honest has proven itself to be in all of my relationships. She later accused me of having "ulterior motives" for showing her the porn parody trailer, but would not elaborate on what she was alluding to. She once again repeated that I didn't respect her for liking pictures of other women on Instagram, and said that I was manipulative for saying she was being controlling. She told me I'd had feelings she thought were stupid before, but she decided the relationship was more important--literally exactly what I'd been doing.
When I pointed out the contradiction, she added, "You didn't let me finish! I meant I initially think they're stupid, but then I respect them."
She would amend and retract things as needed to justify continuing to be upset with me. I was starting to feel like I was going crazy. I told her I felt unappreciated, but she did the usual reversal thing she had been doing and countered that she felt unappreciated. When I asked her how, she stuttered a little before bringing up that I wouldn't talk to her mother. I lost it. I could not believe she had just said that. I brought up that I had pushed and pushed to start a relationship with her mom because I knew how important it was to her, but that she had repeatedly refused it. Realizing she couldn't possibly rationalize that, she brought up that I, "didn't like the house," and that, "she let me live with her and drive her car." Was she seriously using material possessions as some sort of reason why I was obligated to do anything she asked, or worse, as a measurement of her love for me? Her mother was pulling the strings attached to Tara.
She asked me, "What would you do if you couldn't live here?"
"I'd make it work somehow," I confidently answered, adding, "Why wouldn't I?"
She clearly didn't know what to say.
"I need to know you're not here just because it's easy. I need to know you're here for me," she eventually mustered.
I was in disbelief that she'd even imply I might be with her solely for a place to crash.
"Tara, I'd live in a cardboard box on the side of the road with you if I had to. I don't care about any of this stuff. In fact, the only reason I'm even here right now is because of you!"

Things began to calm down. She said she was really hungry, so I drove us to Bomber's and got us food. On the ride back to the house, she was suddenly acting very rueful.
"Why are you being so nice to me?" she whimpered.
"Because I love you?" I answered, confused by the question.
We sat in silence for a little while. I eventually asked her if she wanted to go lay in bed.
"What's the point?" she grumbled.
I ignored it and, once in bed, I told her, "Whether or not this relationship continues is up to you. I've apologized for my shit, I'm making changes for you and working on whatever you want me to. Now it's time for you to."
I brought up all the trivial shit she'd recently started fights over, but the moment I uttered the word "ridiculous" she snapped and began sobbing.
"Why would you say that?!" she yelled with tears running down her face.
She said I was telling her that her feelings didn't matter or mean anything and began repeating, "My feelings are important!" over and over again like a crazy person. I didn't know what else to do, so I called Tia for support. When she noticed me on the phone, she freaked out and started gathering things to leave, so I hung up until she agreed to stay home. I was able to call Tia back and talk to her about everything for two hours. It was really helpful and validating. When I got off, Tara asked me if Tia now hated her. She didn't, of course. She asked what Tia thought about everything and, before I could even answer, came up with two excuses why anything Tia could have said would be invalid: Tia would obviously take my side because we're friends, and her opinion didn't matter because she was not in a relationship.
I tried again to talk calmly with her and asked, "Do you still feel like I don't care about your feelings? Do you still think it's that simple?"
She angrily responded, "Are you seriously still trying to argue?!"
I started saying something about how it was unfair she was already coming up with reasons to dismiss anything Tia could have said, which only provoked her screaming, "ARE YOU REALLY TRYING TO ARGUE AGAIN RIGHT NOW?! DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO QUIT?!"
At the same time, literally while screaming, she told me I was "being aggressive" with her. So I shut my mouth. She would go on to tell me I was starting to convince her her feelings didn't matter. I felt she was projecting her repressed feelings toward her mother at me. She asked me what I wanted, and I told her.
"These things are important to me," she told me.
"That's what terrifies me," I responded.
"I guess I won't communicate with you anymore."
"That's just as bad!"
I had no idea what else to say.
"I don't think we're gonna fix this at 3AM," she eventually said.
"I don't think we will at all," I told her.

January 27th
I slept until 5 in the afternoon. When I got up, I discovered one of the cats had peed on something. I went out into the kitchen and tried to tell Tara, but she became visibly angry with me for interrupting what was just one of her many routine calls with her mother. I turned around and started heading back to the bedroom, and that somehow got her even angrier with me, so I went back to the kitchen and sat at the table until she was done with her phone call.
"I just wanna get the next few months over with," I groaned out loud.
This sent her on another tirade. She started yelling, saying I didn't appreciate anything she did for me because she let me live in her house. She brought up being sick, and complained about what she described as "incessant bitching" from me. I told her that she was taking her bad mood out on me, but it didn't stop her, and only led to her saying that was why she didn't want to be around anyone while sick. She went on to accuse me of caring more about being bored than her illness, but later complained that I talked about her illness all the time. I avoided her until 7, when we had to take Cato to the vet, who was yanking his fur out because of fleas that we couldn't seem to eradicate. I'd been trying to tell Tara that any more flea treatments would be worthless until we were able to pinpoint the source of the fleas. I'd read it on the internet. But we went, anyway, and she spent another $54 on more flea medicine that wouldn't be able to solve the root problem. I asked her what the point of it was, but it just upset her. She said that me asking that question meant that I hadn't been listening to her, that I never listen to her, and it hurt her feelings. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, so I just sighed and said, "I'm sorry for what I have done."

It only got worse back at the house. She began repeating that I was unappreciative of her, the implication I assumed being that I should miraculously be cured of my depression even under the crappy circumstances just because she let me live at her house with her. She even went as far as telling me I was "insensitive" for being depressed. I whimpered to her that she was really hurting my feelings, but all she did was shoot back, "You hurt my feelings all the time!" It got to a point where I just started sobbing. I just felt completely cornered and at my wit's end. I begged her to just leave me alone, but she wouldn't. Instead, she stood over me as I sat on the couch with my face in my hands and told me I was "dramatic" and "playing the victim". Minutes later, she started to cry, too, and began apologizing, before just as abruptly returning to shooting criticism at me. When it all finally died down, I was so emotionally and mentally exhausted that I just passed out on the couch.

I woke up two hours later, feeling like my heart had been broken. She granted me permission to drive to Denny's and recuperate. I sat alone in my booth, ate even though I wasn't hungry, and sulked, texting Tia and just processing the last couple of weeks. I was so scared Tara was going to leave me, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that I should be the one leaving. I really did love her unconditionally, it seemed. On my drive back home, I passed by a cop car that was lurking in the darkness of a street corner. I didn't think much of it since I wasn't doing anything wrong, but a few seconds later, they were behind me with their lights swirling blindingly. I had no idea what their excuse for pulling me over was, and when the cop approached my window and asked for my ID and registration, I asked him why I was being pulled over.
"I'll tell you that in a minute. License and registration."
I shot back, "No, that's not how it works. Why am I being pulled over? I want to make sure this is a legal detainment before I provide identification."
He was visibly frustrated, as if he had to be doing this, when we both knew all he was doing was some night fishing for people with warrants, unregistered vehicles, and any other excuses to ticket or arrest someone. He told me I had a brake light out. He wrote me a ticket and told me it'd get tossed if I got it fixed within 24 hours. Of course, it was a Friday, and I wouldn't be able to turn it in until Monday. Being a new driver, I also wasn't even sure where someone got a brake light changed on the weekend. I thanked him for wasting my time and was on my way, gradually becoming more and more worried about telling Tara. I decided I'd wait until she woke up the next day.



Fuck the police.

It was around noon when I heard Tara stirring in her bedroom through the wall separating us. She instantly went into screaming at me, called her mother right away, and began crying to her about how stressed out she was. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. She made some snide remarks about, "having to explain these things to a grown man." It wasn't something the Tara I knew would say, and sounded straight out of her mother's judgmental mouth. Tara knew my entire life history and exactly why I didn't start driving until that year, and she also knew that I'd only finally learned so I could help her, since she was usually too sick to do it herself. My head hurt from all the pressure, but also from how much I'd been hitting myself in private with closed fists. It was the closest thing to self-harm I'd done in years, but it did offer me some relief in those moments since I otherwise didn't have any other ways to let it out--I didn't yell and scream, I didn't break things, I didn't storm off, and communicating my feelings to Tara only upset her.

I figured it all out on my own and had it fixed at Walmart. I felt stupid and small and weak. I tried to share these feelings with her back at home, but she just went off on the same rant: I didn't respect her, I didn't listen to her, I didn't appreciate her. I asked her what she wanted me to do, what would solve all of this and give her peace; what could I do to demonstrate my respect and appreciation for her. She didn't know what to say at first, but blindsided me with, "You could pay my mother rent."
I couldn't believe my ears. I had literally offered that over and over again, and she would turn it down every time, instead telling me she would take care of everything with her mother and to not worry about it. I finally snapped. I found myself screaming as loud as I was physically capable, inches away from her face. The very instant I reached the period in whatever paragraph I bellowed at her, a wave of shame came over me. I couldn't believe I was screaming at someone, let alone the person responsible for me working on my anger issues almost eight years earlier. I felt so guilty, so embarrassed. I fell to the couch and just started apologizing over and over again. She took the opportunity to compare me to one of her abusive exes and tell me she was scared of me. I wanted to disappear. I didn't even care about what I was saying before, I was now too caught up in how guilty I felt about yelling at her.

"I gave you a house, a car, I stopped hanging out with all my friends, I traveled the country even though I'm sick!" she yelled at me.
More things that took me by surprise. It seemed she had been making deposits in what I always referred to as the "resentment bank". Was I going to have to hear a bunch of things never communicated to me until now, like with Kara?
"I want to get rid of the house and the car part of the relationship, to see if you're really here for me," she added.
I asked her, "Are you suggesting I might be using you?!"
She said she wasn't, but what else could that have meant? It again sounded like someone else talking for her. Unsurprisingly, she then went on to complain that I, "still hadn't talked to her mom," despite repeatedly telling me not to. Was she trying to drive me insane? I sent her mom a text right then and there, but she told me it wasn't good enough because she, "had to put a gun to my head," for me to do it. No matter what I did, if it wasn't perfectly and precisely in the way and at the speed with which she wanted me to, it wasn't good enough for her. I told her again that I felt she didn't appreciate me as a partner, and she fired back that me saying that showed that I didn't appreciate her. What? She went on to tell me that the last five or so arguments we'd gotten into had shown her my true character and that she was disappointed in me. She told me she had been patient with me. I asked her what about me she had to even be patient with and, after some silent thinking, all she could say, "Your anger." I was so confused. She continued, saying that we moved too fast, that she needed her space, she wanted to be alone while sick, that I was just another thing to worry about, and that us living together was the problem. Another rant erupted about me disrespecting her mother just by being there and having moved in without her permission, once again disregarding her own involvement.

She was right that we moved in together way too soon, and it certainly wasn't ideal. She knew her mother wouldn't like it, and so did I, but she decided to just avoid the subject and hope her mother realized I was staying there without issue, while I never brought it up because my allegiance and consideration was only to Tara and I had no reason to give a shit what her mother thought. What became most important at this point in the yelling was that I openly admit that it was nice of her mother to let me stay there for as long as she had. I told her I didn't really know what her mother's motivations were and that I didn't think it was from a place of sincere kindness. I started packing my shit, throwing as much as I could into a purple duffle bag and my backpack. I told her I was leaving and that I couldn't have the house held over my head any longer. If me being there was going to cause so much trouble for our relationship, then I wanted to remove it from the equation.

Before I left, I got next to her in bed and tried one last time to talk about things. When all was said and done, I was the only one who needed to change anything, and I needed to accept any feelings she had about anything and change accordingly because, "that's what a good boyfriend/human does." I told her that sort of expectation was really concerning to me.
She added, "I mean, within reason."
But what if I didn't agree that some of her feelings, and specifically the demands that they inspired, were reasonable? I was also absolutely never allowed to say anything negative or critical about her mother, which I had already stopped doing back in October, the first time she ever told me how much it bothered her. There wasn't anything left to say. We were at an impasse, and it seemed I basically needed to decide how much I loved Tara. Did I love her enough to become what seemed to me like a docile, obedient dog?

I left on my bike with my backpack on and the big purple duffle bag over one shoulder. It was frigid out, but I rode in the dark for almost three miles until I reached the tiny Scotia Motel. I paid $145 for two nights. I couldn't have possibly afforded more than that. The room was small, but decent. I picked up Chinese food from the takeout place behind the motel. It wasn't long before I noticed an intense itch on my arm. I inspected it and right away identified it as a bedbug bite. It had already formed a thick welt topped in dry skin aching with the most extreme itch I'd ever felt. I lifted the mattress and looked all over the room. There weren't any signs of an infestation or anything, but I did eventually find a single bedbug on the pillow. My heart dropped. It was just my fucking luck that I'd get the room with what appeared to be a single lone bedbug straggler who likely survived their last spray or something. I went to the main office and notified the friendly little Indian woman. She repeated that she had never had a problem with bedbugs there before, but I knew there weren't any bedbugs at Tara's house and that there was at least one living bedbug in the room I got. She refunded me for the two nights, but wouldn't give me another room, saying she didn't want to potentially let me bring more bedbugs into other rooms. I was at a loss as to what to do next. I sat in the little lobby and finished my General Tso's tofu, and then decided to call Tara since there wasn't anyone else in the city I could have possibly called for help in that moment. She sounded so pissed off right away, devoid of any signs of sympathy. I felt pathetic and annoying--I couldn't even last one night without needing her. She told me she had already taken her pills for the night and was feeling drowsy, so she didn't want to get behind the wheel to come and get me, and said she'd call me back. When I heard from her again, she told me she had called her mother to ask for help, but she thankfully didn't answer. I told her to not worry about me and let her go to sleep.

From there, I rode my bike another three miles to a disgusting Best Value Inn in a particularly bad part of downtown Schenectady. I paid $78 for one night in this shit hole. People were banging and yelling from every direction around me in the room. The walls were so thin. The room lacked any electrical outlets and the TV only had about five sticky channels to choose from. I inspected the mattress for bedbugs extra hard, and surprisingly didn't find any. My heart was in so much pain, and my lungs burned from the six-mile ride in the cold with two heavy bags hanging from my sore shoulders. I managed to fall asleep until about six in the morning. Tara's mother responded to my text, and I tried to engage with her. I loved Tara, and apparently would do just about anything for her, so for one of the first times in my life, I swallowed my pride and obsequiously said anything I could to stroke her authoritative ego and hopefully earn her pity. It didn't work, and she did not hold back from telling me exactly what I always knew she felt about me...