This blog often contains uncomfortable subject matter and occasional sexual content. If you don't want to read about it, empower yourself to close the page. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- . I have noticed that when I'm feeling dissatisfied in my relationship, I seek more validation from other men, especially at work. I don't go out of my way to get their attention, but I do feel validated when I catch one of the "men" (I use the term loosely as they are mostly nineteen year old, polo-shirt-wearing, college bro-dudes) at work looking at me. There are two in particular that I've been fixated on lately. One is dark-skinned with black hair, in a dumb emo haircut. I'm pretty sure he wears the same thing every time he comes in. The other has brown hair and stubbly facial hair, and bushy eyebrows. Eyebrow boy looks at me a lot. It's sad, I thought I was over this whole high school, is-he-looking-at-me thing. It's just, BK seems mostly disinterested lately. We're back to not having sex very often, and we haven't been talking much, except for "how was your day" kind of stuff. Mostly I bitch about work, and he bitches about his band. I've been very depressed lately because of how dissatisfied I feel with the relationship, but I don't feel comfortable talking about it with him. I think he realizes that the relationship is the cause of my depressed mood, and he reacts by becoming all distant and depressed himself, but neither of us will come out and talk about it. I've stopped trying to ask him to get a job, or to take my feelings into consideration when he "forgets" to call to say he'll be out late. I have a hard time telling him when his behavior has hurt me, because he isn't willing to accept that he has played a part in the tension between us. When I try to talk to him about it, he says I am being assumptive, accusing, that my own insecurities are leading me to jump to false conclusions about his regard for me. I'll give him some credit and admit that sometimes that's true, but come on, would it kill him to call, to show some responsibility, to prove that he can be more reliable than he's shown lately? I still have a hard time not blaming myself. I feel like it's my fault for ever getting involved with him in the first place. He is a musician with a strong dependency on weed, and an aversion to responsibility. I saw this coming and I turned a blind eye to it. I was so happy in the beginning. I had never felt so strongly for someone, hadn't believed that it was even possible for me to get so close to someone. And over the last year or so, I've realized we are not as close as we used to think. I was de-selfed, to use Harriet Lerner's term. I had no goals, no purpose, no opinions or values of my own. So it was very easy to just go along with what he said, what he thought, what he wanted. We didn't fight because I hate fighting, so I never spoke up, never put my foot down. Now the pattern than I'm seeing is, I'll try to assert myself and make my needs known, or just voice that I'm not happy about his behavior, maybe request a small change, and he acts like I've got no right, like I'm being irrational or overreacting. I'm really close to just cutting him loose. He wants to be a free spirit, let him. But that doesn't mean I have to sit here and take it when his actions end up hurting me. I'm still too scared to break up with him though, for now. 12:27 a.m. - 2010-07-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paralyzed I feel paralyzed. I am miserable. There are so many changes that I need to make, and I have not been making them. I need to either stand up for myself, put my foot down, tell BK when I'm feeling hurt by his actions, or end the relationship. I need to either reach out to my old friends, or try to make new ones. I need to start all of those art and craft projects I keep daydreaming about. But something is keeping me from making a move in any direction. 10:07 p.m. - 2010-07-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Today is a bad day. I found out that I overdrew my bank account because my automatic electric bill payment posted on the 7th. I was charged an overdraft fee, and on top of that, because I already had a negative balance of $1.13 for a few days, they stuck me with a negative balance fee. I hadn't realized they could do that when the amount was less than ten dollars. I also hadn't realized my electric bill would post on the 7th, which seems like an arbitrary date to take my money. What happened to the 1st, or 30th? So I feel really stupid, because my mom had given me a hundred bucks cash to buy groceries, and I insisted on not depositing it. I told people I wasn't depositing it because I'd already made sure all of my auto bill payments weren't going to post until after payday. Really though, this is yet another example of how I allow my agoraphobia and bizarre bank phobia to prevent me from being a responsible adult. I hate going to the bank. I get all fuzzy-headed and second guess myself when filling out the deposit slip, so I have to ask how to do it. Every. Fucking. Time. I go to different branches in town so that I'm not identified as "that stupid girl who never learned how to fill out a deposit slip." But hey, turns out my mother was right (as usual, to my dismay) and I should have deposited it. Also, BK was right (also to my dismay), I should have canceled my auto bill payment, at least for a while while I'm piss poor. So I called during my lunch break and cried and cursed and played Bitchy Customer to get my way. They took off the negative balance fee, but not the overdraft charge. I'm not proud of cursing to the poor customer service rep, but fuck, how do they expect me to keep money in my account when they keep stealing it from me? If they're going to be predatory, I have to be predatory too. As always, when I run out of money, the resentment that I feel toward BK resurfaces. He's been unemployed since November. This is a college town. The students all went home for the summer to mooch off their parents. Lots of jobs probably opened up, and he still insists that nobody is hiring. I am paying his half of the rent and utilities, and his phone bill, because how's he going to find a job if his phone's shut off? I think about breaking up with him increasingly often. Or at least kicking him out until he sucks it up and gets a job to support himself. I know if I turned him out, he'd get a job in a hurry to make ends meet. I'm enabling him by paying his bills. So I had that on my mind all day at work. Then I went on break and they were mowing around the picnic area, so I went around the other side of the building and they were mowing there too. I went inside to sit in the quiet room, and discovered they had turned it into a fucking copy room behind my back! So I've lost the only place I can go to read or write in peace during my breaks. Finally, I got home after work to find that BK had broken the toilet, and then left town for the weekend. Luckily the landlord was in the building so I called him over to look at it. He's going to bring some new part over later this evening, so it'll be okay, but it was just the last straw. When he left, I started sobbing. I hate today. I fucking hate it. Things are not good lately. I can't stand up to BK. I can't put my foot down on anything. He does whatever he fucking wants and meanwhile I have to be the responsible one. I have to work forty hours a week, I have to watch my spending, I have to pay all the bills and buy the groceries. I've done most of the work getting the new apartment in order, and meanwhile he sits around smoking resin from the pipes (obviously we can't afford weed) and playing Need For Speed on Xbox. I should have put my foot down the second he told me he got fired. I should have told him he had three months to find a new job, or he had to find lodging elsewhere. And it's not just the money issue, it's everything. From my perspective, he doesn't seem to take me seriously. If I tell him something he's never heard before, he doesn't believe it. He furrows his brow and gives me a that-can't-be-right look. He's always going on about how he knows so much because he reads all the time, but when I've read something, he questions the validity of the source. This is why I'm always wondering or worrying (and yes, sometimes assuming) that he thinks he's smarter than me, and that he thinks he is superior. When I make a reasonable request, such as "Have some respect and don't call my grandmother, who I am very worried about, a crazy bitch when she's in the hospital for malnourishment," he'll roll his eyes, mutter something under his breath, and when I ask him what he said he'll say "Nothing." The other day, when I realized I had overdrawn my bank account by $1.13, I warned him that I probably wouldn't be pleasant while I was this broke, but that I was going to try my hardest not to take it out on him. He mumbled, "I won't hold my breath." He actually tried to bait me into fighting. I hadn't said that to be like, "Watch out, better not cross me!" I was warning him that I was going to be very depressed and anxious, and that I might not be much fun to be around for a while. It was not a threat! But he wanted it to be. He wanted me to pick a fight, and I didn't take the bait. I just said, "That's cute, sweetie," and explained to him that I wasn't trying to threaten him. Still, though. I'm sick of him trying to bait me into becoming emotionally reactive. He needs me to be that way, so that he can play the calm, rational man role and continue to dismiss my concerns. Sometimes, when we fight, and he gets dismissive like that, I lose my clarity and all I can really do is just lie down. I feel physically heavy, and I feel helpless. And I feel like that increasingly often, lately. I really need to get back into therapy, but I can't even afford the $100 it costs each session. I think about suicide a lot. Earlier, at work, I thought, how nice it would be to go home this evening and relax in the bathtub. And then I pictured myself in the tub, wrists slit, the water becoming red and cloudy. Of course I'm not going to do it. How terrible would that be, for BK to come home on Sunday to find me dead for two days? For him to realize why I hadn't answered my phone all weekend. For my parents to realize why I didn't come out to visit Sunday morning. I'm not going to do it, but I think about it a lot. 7:05 p.m. - 2010-07-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Self-inflicted revenge Since I was a kid, when I have been hurt by someone's actions, usually neglect or abandonment or disregard, I've often gotten the urge to physically harm myself. When I was a little kid, I'd cry in the bathroom and bang my forehead against the mirror. When I was in middle or high school, I'd cut myself with razor blades, scratch with pins, or even my fingernails. As an adult, I don't usually cut or scratch (except sometimes with my nails) because I don't want any more scars, and I don't want a mark that BK can see. I hit myself, usually in the head, or sometimes I use a heavy object to hit my leg to give myself a large, lingering bruise. I don't understand why, but there's a hint of "I'll show them!" in my reasoning when I hurt myself in response to feelings of abandonment. Hurting myself feels like revenge, even though I do it in secret and nobody knows about it but me. I am literally hurting nobody but myself, but I feel like I'm getting back at the person who's hurt me. Tonight I want to cut myself. I have the desire to leave a mark, to feel the kind of stinging pain that comes from a cut or scratch, instead of the ache that comes from a bruise. This is in response to BK's absence. He played a show that was supposed to last until 10:30. I know this because I checked the bar's website. So I was expecting him home sometime after 11:00. I was even giving him leeway, extra time to hang out at his guitarist's house and smoke. I was getting tired but I just wanted to see him before bed, so I waited up. Finally he texted me at 12:07 to tell me he was "afterpartying a bit" and that he wasn't sure when he'd be home. Really, you've been done with your show for an hour and a half, and you just now got the urge to tell me you wouldn't be home until late? How thoughtful of you, to make time to let me know that you probably won't be home until I've got to be at work in four hours. I feel stupid for waiting up. I feel stupid every time I wait up, every time I expect reliable behavior from BK. I really did pick an unreliable musician very much like my dad, and I feel so sick for being so fucking predictable. 12:16 a.m. - 2010-06-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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