I was completely and totally wrong yesterday. What an awesome thing to be wrong! I want to change my relationship to moments of acknowledging when I’m wrong, from something that leaves a sour taste in the mouth to something that signals growth, new perspective, and happy surprises.
We actually had a really nice day together yesterday. Spent time hanging out and having deep conversations. I woke up this morning in an alarmingly good mood. Alarming because it is hours before I usually get up and alarming because I’m happy, and it’s such a foreign feeling.
It’s not all fixed and perfect though—my brain still snags at the one possible thing it can, supplied by a thoughtless “tiny little girls” comment he made about grown women that I pointed out in the moment (he elaborated he meant really skinny and now naturally I can’t help but feel entirely self conscious instead of just letting that one quick moment in time go).
But we were intimate last night for the first time in a long time, definitely the longest we’ve ever gone. I’m glad I waited, glad I was able to tell him those other times last week I wasn’t in the right headspace, wasn’t ready to be penetrated. Last night was so worth it. I really, really hope the landlords didn’t hear me all but screaming into the pillows.
Last night he said we’d “talk tomorrow.” And when he came home from work, we sat on the couch for a little bit together. There was a long, comfortable silence. I decided not to break it. If he wanted to talk or address anything (like he said last night) he could. If I’m not bursting at the seams to talk, why should I talk? So in silence we sat and it was nice, really.
But the world keeps turning. He has other things he’s interested in hearing about, giving his attention too. So he left to stand in the kitchen on his phone with a baseball podcast blaring. Nothing was addressed. Nothing was talked about. Oh well.
Why am I so surprised? The surprise leads to hurt because I took his words last night so literally. He meant it was too late and we’d continue that discussion today, but we didn’t, and that moment has so passed now. I knew it. I knew it was bullshit as soon as he said it yet I still got my hopes up — did I even want to continue the talk? Maybe. So we could wrap it up nice and neat, not hanging painfully like it did last night. But you suck it up you keep going you let time distance yourself from the hurt till the next emotional storm when he’ll act surprised that I feel so lonely and twisted up inside.
Living means sucking it up. Breaking down before a meeting? Wipe away the tears, plaster a fake smile, and suck it up.
Head filled with cruel thoughts and the urge to disappear from everything and everyone? Keep it to yourself and suck it up.
The world keeps turning and no one has the time or patience to tune deeply into anyone else. Not for long, anyway. I’m still here so I need to make money and do my tasks and do what I’m told.
I wanted to say it just once, very clearly, so Saturday when I was too numb to move I told him how bad the suicidal thoughts are. Not too much detail, just needing to lay it out what a struggle it has been in my mind lately. At first I regretted it—for a long stretch of time he didn’t say a word, he seemed dazed himself. But for the whole rest of the day, he held me. He was with me. We spent virtually the whole day together, and I felt filled up for maybe the first time since I’ve moved in. It’s like I’ve been saying all along, I just need more attention. I need more of his undivided attention (and he can’t give me that very often at all).
The next day was business as usual. He has to meal prep, has to drum, has to work out, has to be on his phone glued to Red Sox news. The day passes by in a blur and we’ve not interacted much. And I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, too. I made a reading syllabus. Outlined some goals. Went over upcoming flights. Read.
But it was so difficult to read because my mind wouldn’t stop buzzing with heavy thoughts. Anytime I talked to him yesterday, it felt like I was talking AT him. I wasn’t trying to be heavy and depressing again. I wanted to have interesting conversation. I wanted to share interesting things I’d heard. He never seemed fully receptive. The whole day. Meanwhile my mind was a dark place to sit in alone. But he seemed too preoccupied for me. And then he stayed up late playing video games, and when I couldn’t stop pointing out that his horse was panicking so much and he told me it wasn’t real, that was the final straw for me—I went to the bathroom and instantly burst into tears.
There’s always little things like that that build up over the course of a day, a week. I hate being reminded how extraordinarily sensitive I am, like I don’t already know it. There were more little things after that but long story short, we ended up in an argument until probably midnight because when he comes up he asks why I’m mad, like always, and I have to explain again I’m not MAD at anyone but myself and the feelings are more sad than anything, but then we both get defensive about our points and it flares up.
He didn’t say anything for a long time and I thought he had fallen asleep, and the heavy heavy heavy force in my mind that I try to keep at a distance finally came crashing through into me. It’s like a possession. That’s when I get mad. I get so angry I need to hit things, destroy things, scream and wail and lose myself in sensation. That’s when I harm myself, because I don’t know how else to vent that pressure out and it’s like torture to just sit in it quietly suffocating.
He had told me to talk to him when I’m in crisis mode, instead of isolating and hurting myself. So I asked if he was awake and he stirred and laid closer to me to hear my words. Tentatively I told him how I felt. It’s the first time I think I’ve told anyone, because I’m so ashamed of this feeling more than anything else. And again, for a long stretch of time he didn’t say anything, long enough I thought he fell asleep for good. But then he finally said, “I don’t know what to say.”
It felt like a light went off inside me. What did I expect? I didn’t really need him to say anything, but the way he responded felt like a rejection. We didn’t go to sleep right away; he talked about how he’s not equipped to deal with this, how I need to seek professional help, which always makes me mad to hear because I’ve never had the means to do so and it’s not like I DON’T want that, why wouldn’t I want someone to give me their full attention for an hour and just listen to me talk about my feelings? That’s my fucking dream.
Anyway, to sum up—I didn’t know where the line was between what I could confide in him and what I needed to keep to myself, and I guess I stumbled upon it. I am trying not to regret opening up about that specific part of me because otherwise I wouldn’t have known to keep my mouth shut about it going forward. He has said to talk to him… I was trying to do just that. But he’s right. It’s too much. “Too much weight to carry.”
I don’t, believe it or not, want to drown in self-pity every day. I want to be able to grow stronger and move past this. I want to get to a point where I’m amazed that I ever seriously thought about taking my life, like it was an inevitability.
The older I get, the smaller and darker the world becomes. Simple pleasures are locked behind an ever-increasing paywall. Even having the freedom to go for a walk depends entirely on where you live. Being able to sit outside in peace and quiet and take in the night sky.
I feel flat today, which is no surprise. Mondays are always filled with meetings. I wish I cared more. I actually have such a great job and I just can’t bring myself to care enough about it. Everything is losing its meaning.
I cry for hours. I cry until I’m gasping for air. I cry myself to sleep.
I fall asleep long after you do and wake up long before you do. I wait, because I don’t want to exist. Hours later you find me and hold me for a minute or two, asking what’s wrong. We talk a little about it. You touch my hand, pet my hair for a moment. And then the day commences.
You scroll on your phone. I read my book. You go downstairs to drum. I am alone. I am pushed farther out to sea. I am always alone.
I cannot beg for your time anymore. I can’t do that to myself. So once you fulfill your obligation as a good boyfriend to comfort me and then want to immediately go away from me, that’s just you, that’s just what you want to do. You don’t want what I want—to hold, to be held, for a long time until I start to feel normal again.
Everything feels meaningless. You and I don’t want the same things in our lives. We will always have to find a hard compromise. You want all the larger than life experiences, to be up close to people and what’s happening. I want to go further and further away. I want peace and quiet. We don’t want the same thing in our daily routines. I need too much of your attention. I need too much.
I’m good all week, keep myself in check, healthy amount of distance, but my fatal flaw! Put expectations on the weekend! Why the fuck do I do that!
You’ve wanted to be intimate nearly all week and today for the first time all fucking week I am shaved and perfumed and ready for your attention and you’re out. You’re just out. Dead to the world. Dazed and then beyond the realm of sleep. I’ve woken you up three times now and you just grunt at me. You refuse to get in our bed. I at least—at LEAST thought I’d fall asleep next to you like usual.
I want to throw things, I want to throw a complete raging temper tantrum with no consequences, I want to scream, I am so sick and tired of being the one left alone at night wide awake and lonely and thinking too much and putting in whatever effort allows me to feel like I can be close to you and NOW you don’t want to be close with me and why does this happen so fucking often, nearly every single time?
I have insufferable opinions about film. The way I feel about film is the way I feel about patriarchy and the experience of being a woman in a world where even alone I look at myself through the lens of a man, never allowing myself to fully breathe without a perpetual voyeur who expects more, more, more.
When a man gives me a film recommendation, it is almost guaranteed to be horror or some kind of gritty depiction of violence (often brutal physical violence on women). It drives me crazy. It makes me think about Robert Greene and something he wrote about why the siren archetype is so alluring to men—it promises the danger modern men collectively miss now that we live in a sanitized, “peaceful” world where they are no longer herded up and sent to war.
Maybe film is a type of battlefield. Horror and violence and brutality in the media is some sort of outlet for them since most men don’t feel threatened in their everyday lives. My pulse is too quick nearly all the time, why would I want to worsen that anxiety even for the sake of art?
I can’t remember the last time I lived without feeling a target on my back. Even when it’s unwarranted. Even when it feels ridiculous. But we all hear the stories of what happens to unaware, careless women every single day. You never think it’ll be you until it is. I’ve glimpsed just a peek of what lies behind certain smiles and “innocent” compliments, “harmless” touches. I know intimately how it feels to be evicted from your own body while it is used by another. How it feels to be silenced when you try to get away. Is it any wonder I don’t want to participate as a willing spectator against more abuse on bodies like mine? Whether it’s simple exploitation of the gaze and we’re all collectively forced to stare at women’s bodies for titillation, to keep our attention, even when it drives the plot nowhere. Especially when the vulnerable body is stripped and brutalized in never-ending creative ways. All I can think about is that it’s happening somewhere. And that the men watching with me don’t care, don’t feel the same rising level of panic these scenes always drive me mad with.
I wish I could live my life high. When I’m high, I don’t feel so ruinously up-close to the hurt. I can see the bigger picture. I can see the art more objectively. I can place my past experiences and my wounds and my panic off to the side where it waits far more patiently than it ever does when I’m perfectly sober and grounded and on edge. I was thinking about this just last night. It’s all about where I “place” myself, and usually I can’t help but put myself right up against the film, or the conversation, whatever is making me so uncomfortable, so it is filtered directly through me and me alone. My instant, knee jerk emotional reactions. I don’t want to be that kind of person who can’t take in the bigger meaning of something because I’m automatically uncomfortable. I don’t want to be someone who denounces so much art in the world because I can’t look past my own unhealed traumas.
But god—why is it asking for so much for more movies that feel good? That restore my view of goodness and beauty in the world? Why does nearly everything feel designed to depress and shock and twist up painfully? Am I childish for wanting to feel hopeful and warm?
I’m terrified of walking into a room while he’s watching a film with scenes that make me freeze up. It’s happened so many times before that I feel burned by it, with someone else I lived with in a place I should have felt safe, or with a crowd at the movie theater, all laughing while I went so still into that very dark, drowning place deep, deep, deep inside of me to shut down everything that wanted to scream aloud.
And it only gets worse as I get older. I feel uglier by the day. Everyone on screen is so beautiful, presented so fresh. I can hardly stand it. It all feels so cruel to me. I don’t want to be like this, to think like this.
The older I get, the harder it is to grapple with the evil in the world. I do not want to be held suspended in some director’s visions for an extended period of time when the visions are formed from a perspective that is careless to my existence. I have so many visions of my own to dive into. Music and books to fuel new visions, to hear new voices. It is just film—the heavy material beamed straight into my brain. I often find myself struggling against what it shows me. It feels like I am being assaulted all over again.
Getting back into things. Reading. Anime. In the last episode I watched, there was a scene that really started to move me, the way art creeps up on you as you register the subtext and become intensely more invested before you realize why, and then she states “Resolve is everything.”
I’ve been thinking about that line ever since.
Resolve is all it takes. It doesn’t matter what you want to do unless you have the resolve to carry it out. It doesn’t matter if you’re scared; resolve will push you through the fear.
If the act of living feels so difficult now but I know I need to stay here anyway, then I need to muster up my own resolve.
I’ve only got a little bit right now. Maybe too little to actually call Resolve. But I resolve to be a good girlfriend, a good living companion. So now it’s Wednesday and we haven’t spent the “proper” amount of time together needed for my delicate mental health but my new resolve has carried me out this far into the week without any breakdowns or arguments. I observe. I let it pass. I let life unfold as it will.
And then we had a nice conversation in bed last night. I know we wouldn’t have had that talk if I’d let my emotions take the wheel every time I encountered a slight hurt.
I don’t want to be pushy. I don’t want to be obnoxious. Above all else, I don’t want to be smothering. So I resolve to… chill the fuck out.
I resolve to try. I finally cleaned the bathroom today (I’d told him I would do it since Sunday).
I resolve to keep my head. Make a role model of stoic characters who take everything in and react from a calm, curious state of mind.
I can’t say how long this will last, but I’m doing okay for the time being.
Next week I’ll leave to see my family. A couple weeks after that I’ll be away on the company retreat. Two months later I’ll probably be gone for some time on another company trip.
I think it’ll be very good for me, getting out of here. Talking to other people.
I don’t feel right. Like, in the head. Even more scattered and strange than usual.
Thoughts of how to leave this world keep plaguing me. I even have different road maps on how and when to do it. The earliest timeline is doing it in winter—overdose and trying to stumble out into the snow so I can pass away hopefully looking up at the sky. It seems poetic.
The second is not going anywhere until after Ginger’s time has come, because it seems wrong to not be there for her at the end.
Alternatively, I could wait even longer. Stick it out and see if things get better. Find myself completely alone in the future, since I don’t full-heartedly believe Z and I will last forever and that it’s only a matter of time before my issues are too much to bear (and I wouldn’t blame him). Wait until there’s less people to hurt.
The older I get, the less tragic it would be. Isn’t that terrible? That that’s a lead factor in these already horrible thoughts. The bullshit notion of leaving behind a beautiful corpse and so many years of wasted potential. Being able to haunt people that way. It’s really selfish.
I laid in bed most of yesterday, not even wanting to exist. Then after Z and I talked and he kept encouraging me to go downstairs with him, I was okay. I enjoyed eating dinner and watching TV with him. I felt almost normal. It’s so weird how much my emotional state can swing back and forth on the pendulum. Today, I feel a little blank and adrift. Like I’m not all there. Even more so than usual.
My life seems so incredibly boring to me. It’s awful that I secretly wish I’d attempted and failed in the past to take my life, like that would make me somewhat more interesting. Maybe it would.
Z said he’d stop going to therapy and pay for me to go instead. Isn’t that just going to make me feel worse though? I feel bad for him. We’re young. He’s so full of life and drive. I hate that I’m a dark stain on his days. I hate that he feels partly responsible for my declining mental health. He shouldn’t have to make sacrifices like that for me. I wish I had plenty of money of my own. I wish I could financially support myself—both of us. I wish I had more energy to do things. I wish I wasn’t so easily triggered by film and TV and certain conversations. There are so many needling pains each day it just almost doesn’t seem worth it to fight to get to the next “this is great” fleeting moment. Every day is an exercise in existential humiliation—petal-soft feelings, a rotting body, limbs that grow weaker, dreams that never see the light of day.
If I could just step outside and not be me. If I could travel the world with no threat of harm or violence. If I could take in the wonders of life without needing to be wealthy and sharp and observant and a master of self-protection. If it could just be enough to exist and want to look upon the world with my eyes—but it is not. That is not the kind of world we live in.
Why should I work? What is it all for?
I’ve even been writing lately, actually writing—wading ankle-deep into the waters, at least—and it’s just as infuriating as not writing was. Nothing feels right. None of these stories wish to be told.
In and out of forgiveness for him. Or more like I keep randomly remembering how I felt in that moment he raised his voice and slammed the center console, the moment he cranked the music back up and lit another cigarette, and how I spiraled deep inside myself the whole way home. I’ve already forgiven him but I’m in and out of remembrance.
Last night I had a new needling thought about Saturday night, which was that his explosion had to come from somewhere and maybe had been brewing longer than just that drive home. Maybe he feels more restricted by my presence in his life than he initially anticipated. Maybe I’m a big part of the reason he feels like he can’t do anything. It seemed so completely obvious from my point of view—you don’t turn music up high enough to hurt other people. You don’t expect the people around you to be up for constant cigarette smoke. You don’t subject your easily overstimulated girlfriend to these things when she’s stuck in a car late at night after a long day.
But from his point of view, maybe it is weird to suddenly not be able to freely light a cigarette and turn the music up on your birthday. To do simple adult things like that, on the one night you should have permission to let go and have fun.
It’s a constant tug of war. He’ll be so sweet and considerate and I’ll feel so soft in return. *He* proposes a movie night. *He* wonders aloud what Disney VHS tapes we haven’t watched yet. *He* asks me what I want to watch and I pick something I think we’ll both enjoy. It’s all sugary sweet until I can’t stop noticing him on his phone or getting up to do something or never actually cuddling me and then I’m in my head about him feeling like he has to appease me and do these things he doesn’t actually want to do. Watch baby movies because that’s all I can handle. Then I remember his comment that one day, like a sigh of relief when he realized I wasn’t asking him to watch my favorite film The Last Unicorn with me (because it’s too kiddy). And then I just keep feeling worse about things.
I don’t want anyone hanging around me or doing things with me out of obligation. I’d rather be alone.
I meant it when I told him I can’t just instantly be over what happened Saturday night. It’s not something I want to argue about or let hang over our heads, but now I’m struggling to reconcile the version of him that I know with the man who practically yelled at me and threw a drunken temper tantrum when I was having a quiet meltdown from his actions and needed help. He hadn’t realized how bad it was for me. I told him I wouldn’t just request people not do things I don’t like out of personal distaste like a brat. That I only push past my embarrassment and speak up like that when it’s really affecting my headspace in a bad way.
Then today I found my dirty, smelly jersey in the closet—the tiny closet where there’s no ventilation and all the clothes smell like each other. He had offered to wash it. I don’t know why he just decided to put it in there with my clean clothes ???
I am on my period and I don’t want to do anything or process anything and I don’t know how to be around him today. Last night weirdly hurt my feelings. He was trying to do something for me and it felt so forced, but I’m not the one who asked him for a movie night and he shouldn’t spend time with me unless that’s what he actually wants to do.
3 sleeping pills (I am too wuss to push it further).
The teeniest of cat scratches on my hip (can’t find anything that works as good and clean as the tool I threw away back home).
Home. This isn’t home. This is where a fight I didn’t see coming has me waiting for everything to come crumbling down. Not too scared right now. Very numb. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. Nothing matters.
I am alone in the dark downstairs because I can’t stand to spend another night in bed crying myself to sleep. I don’t know how to regulate myself. How to pull back. How to not take every little thing to heart. I don’t know how to let things roll off my back.
I get choked up multiple times a day. I finally get to a place where I can function and then I’m so easily whisked to the other end of the spectrum where I can barely breathe or speak or think straight. I don’t know how to fake normal. He saw the self-inflected bite mark on my wrist after our heated “debate” about expressing attraction about other people and when it is/is not a big deal—all started because I HATE when he refers to certain athletes as “his girl.” And that is apparently a difficult thing for him to “GIVE UP” as he put it. I didn’t want to get heated about it at all. I felt playful and relaxed at first. But it kept going and he kept digging and finally made me feel awful, without meaning to, about being “in the minority” with my views on partners expressing any attraction whatsoever and—whatever. That set me off. And then we were fine. We were okay. We talked it out. We ate dinner, and then cake. He showered while I posed in bed. I should know by now, if I dress for it, if I bathe for it and use my yummy smelling products, if I am CRAVING it, I won’t get it. He’ll be too tired. I’ll feel undesired and rejected and end the night feeling sore at best, quietly sobbing for hours at worst. Tonight is a crying night because every day lately has been full of tears.
Every time he doesn’t want sex when I do, there are chains and padlocks crisscrossing in my mind with a loud, solemn vow to not give it to him ANY TIME soon. Make him miss it, make him regret every instance he was ever too tired or not as frisky as I was. But it’s all a house of cards. I fold as soon as he touches me. I used to love it but now I feel way too over my head and upset with everything.
It feels like the courting period all but ended as soon as I moved in. It’s been about a month and a half now. We barely saw each other before all this. All I thought about was all the dating and getting to know each other deeper we’d be able to do. And it’s been this instant hard smack of reality with new financial stress that is occupying most of his brain space with me begging “please I need more of your attention please I need to feel more loved please I need more one on one dedicated time with you” and he can’t seem to hear me.
I AM ALONE up here. I am cold and every day is gloomy and I am ALONE.
This weekend was full of spats and heated emotions and choking tears, but I still felt him processing my needs and making a better effort to spend time with me. And then it all ends like this—me feeling rejected, undesirable, stupid for expecting or wanting anything, crying as usual.
It is this wild, manic drive in me. This impulsive voice urges me to walk outside in the dark in my underwear. To just disappear down the street — and then come back— so I can get it out of my system. To take scissors and cut off a single braid. To do something dramatic to make him take notice. To get ATTENTION. I am like a child still. Maybe I will always be so.
He is acting like gradually we will learn to navigate each other and gradually everything will be fine and it’s really more productive for him to focus on finances right now but RIGHT NOW, in the present, I am not okay. Most of the time (for the past couple weeks) I am not at all okay. Most of the time I feel adrift and weak and lonely and confused and small and sad. With this rising mania. I am chomping down onto my small bones as hard as I can in a moment of anger just to regain some functionality. I am not okay and I don’t want to alarm him but I need to be taken seriously. And all I am asking for is love, the love I know he is capable of giving, but now he must be used to me and our relationship, my presence, is no longer exciting. So instead let’s settle down for the night like we’ve together for years and not just a month. Let’s force ourselves into this tired mundane routine before we actually, naturally fold our lives around one another. I can’t say it enough: everything. feels. off.
This is not what I expected. I don’t know why I thought things would be and feel so different, but I did, and I don’t know how to reconcile this. I want to savor the newness of it all. It feels like he is speeding along to recognize this all as tried and true and “the norm.” Dating is not a priority. Finances and where we’ll live in TWO YEARS is the priority. Not being present with me as I adjust. Not communicating with me about his own adjustments during this period.
I am so tired of crying. I am so tired of the internal tug of war that never ceases. Each day is a fresh wound followed by just enough clarity and love and good communication to draw me back out and raise my expectations again for something I want and need—ending the night with sexual intimacy. Being held for a certain amount of time. Spending most of the day together. Whatever.
But the expectation falls through and I’m left to crash and it tears the wounds from earlier open again. I feel so manic. Soothed and then rabid. Shut down and then soothed and then rabid. Give me more, more, more. I am a greedy creature but I only want you. Give me more love. Take care of me. My hands are open and my heart is bare and I feel so ugly naked but I stand before you again and again because that is love, I guess.
“I have work at 5” but you could have gone to bed earlier and you chose not to.
“I have work at 5” but we used to stay up late delirious with the feeling of finally having each other and that wasn’t long ago at all but now it seems like you’re already over-used to me.
“I have work at 5” but I am in constant war with myself about having sex with you because of my mental state and our miscommunications but I wanted, needed this, and when you need me I am just excited to be needed, and when I need you you—need sleep instead.
Sad Girl Hours @angelbluediary - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
areudirty
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
janainaart
annaxmalina
titsay
gummygunk
stormborns
snowghoul
germansingergirl