Two Battles
I thought she was beautiful, and everything that I wanted. I am intense person, so I come on strong. At the time it was all I knew, and now I realized that the people that are okay with that are the ones that need it. The thrill of the chase is enough come back for more and more. Things moved pretty fast, it wasn’t long before we were having sex and we were together. I was on a high, we would be so great, and a day later fighting until we were blue in the face. We made up for hours, and days later repeated the cycle. All those motions and constant exchange of emotions? You couldn't tell me we weren't in the deepest love.
You know when you avoid things long enough; they grow and begin to take up the whole room. About four months into our relationship, the honey mooning was over and we were figuring out who we really were. I was out of undergrad, working and starting a master’s program. She hated working retail, living with her homophobic mother, and struggling with an oncoming depression. I saw such great potential in us that I thought I could fix everything. I wanted to fix her, and that was my plan. I helped people do all sorts of things and I just knew that a depression was something we could work through together. She needed me, and I wasn’t going to leave her. No matter how many times she told me that she had to do it on her own, I begged her to not let me go. I convinced her that she needed me to survive, but the reality was I was so addicted to being needed that I needed her.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watch someone you are in a relationship with go through a depression. But to watch that and not take it personal is something that I couldn’t do on my best day. I tried so many things, so many trips, so many new adventures, and so many attempts to make her smile and to her credit she loved and appreciated it all. But at the end of the night when we were in bed together, she would still remind me she had no reason to be alive. Here I was right in front of her, begging to be her reason. So that made me fight harder, in my mind we were just a few good days away from bliss.
She quit her job, and moved in with me. Which was fine for me, I could cater to her more and have her to myself. Once the depression started, the sex stopped. She didn’t have any sort of sex drive and for me that was a battle because that’s how I fixed things. I used sex to avoid dealing with just about anything and everything. But because we weren’t having sex I told myself I cared even more because sex wasn’t my main objective. She eventually started seeing a therapist and her therapist told her that she needed to get out of the relationship if she wanted to work on herself. She also was put on three different pill combinations of anti- depressants. The anti-depressants killed any ounce of sex drive that was left. We went against the better judgment of the therapist and stayed together.
Around that time I was fired from my job and lost my apartment, so I had to move back in with my mom. Her living situation got rough so she moved in with my mom and I. You know how it said that men date their mothers, well the same goes for lesbians. I realized that there were so many things about my mother that I just couldn't work through, but I sought out a partner who mirrored my mother’s image. They both needed me, and I felt so exhausted from them. But the addict in me craved it. She began to express that she didn't want to live with me anymore. I fought it. I wanted her to get happy, because of all our potential. We were going to get through this.
Potential is probably the most dangerous word in a relationship. Society teaches us to be so engulfed in the future that we lose touch of reality. The reality was that I was in a relationship with someone who contemplated 20 hours of the day if they deserved to be alive, and I thought that our relationship was more important than that. She moved out and went back to live with her mother, and I resented her for it. I no longer felt needed. Now the addict in me craved attention and I wasn't getting it. I cheated shortly after, and she forgave me. I felt less and less needed, and she was getting to a better place, without me.
She was becoming so strong, and I was getting so weak. She finally had to go to Texas for training for three months, and I was left to deal with my shit. We were no longer together, and I had one of two choices. To drag this on and keep fighting, or to leave her in her self-granted happiness and continue on to find my own. I found my own, and it has been a blessing for the both of us. I haven’t seen her in months. We are still good friends. I learned more about myself during our duration of dating and I appreciate her and love her every day for it. To see her in such a good place, gives me so much hope for myself.
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