Just One Little Thing

What is it about one little word or situation that can fire off a chain reaction of wants, wishes, even regrets? Something about the winter time makes me focus so very much on regrets. One little thing tonight… and all I want to do now is cry myself to sleep. It’s all so very melodramatic, and in writing this all down I hope to sort it out. Maybe.
Over emotion aside, is this really my usual winter depression? It always hits in November, this need to stay in bed and never come out. When I was in college it never hit me to stay out of class it was that ever present desperate need to not show up to work. By November every year I was disgusted with the crew of people I was working with that never showed up or never did their job and so I wanted to be lazy for once. I wanted to be irresponsible just once. But I never did it. I always showed up, albeit five to ten minutes late and worked just as hard as I always do because that’s just who I am. I can resent it all I want but I can’t change who I am.
Tonight it feels very familiar and yet different. Tonight started with today in it’s usual fashion of me giving my heart a little more than normal and getting it handed back to me with an unintentional crack in it. What is it about my timing in relationships? I push and push and push until the guy is fit to throw down and walk away and then I give my all and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Something he says or does in the male matter-of-fact sort of fashion puts a little hole in my heart, and I run and hide again. That led into our evening where I realized that I was forcing someone to endure an activity that he really found no joy in. And because I knew that, my own joy went right out the window. That’s horribly frustrating on several levels. One, that I couldn’t enjoy myself because I was too worried about his lack of enjoyment, and two, that I can never seem to find someone who enjoys the same things that I do or at least give his all to enjoy something for my sake. But I realized that’s not a guy’s way. Men never endure things, they are physically incapable of it.
And so we head home and talk of things that are very important to him and his life at the moment. When asked my opinion, I give it and it is handed back to me twisted from its original intention and followed with a sarcastic and offended reply. It worries me so that the opinion of others are regarded so highly, high enough that at this point I think he would jump from that “bridge” if asked. But I can’t say that without it becoming an issue of my own selfishness. It’s just me having issue with his friends. Not me having issue with the situation.
Even with all that I didn’t begin this massive spiral until he asked for something that I felt he had no reason to be asking for. I hate saying no to him. I always want to be the one providing for him, but at that moment I felt like his mother and I hated him for it. I hated the way he had to “deal” with no being the answer and I had to get away. I had to get away from everything but where do I have to run? Home is merely a reminder of my failings in life. I live with my parents because my divorce left me to make years of stupid financial mistakes that I continue to make. My chance to get a head on my bills has put me farther in the hole since with no hope of surfacing.
But I have responsibilities and places I need to be so I went home, with a million things on my mind. Where the hell was I and how did I get here? If relationships really were what he had said, just two people biding their time until something better came along, then what did I want? What would be better for me? Why was I so overwhelmed by that statement and the fact that I had to say no to him tonight?
Everything in my life that was important to me paraded by and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. My job was only good for me if I felt needed and important, and I certainly didn’t feel either of those things. My band has been causing more stress in both my own head and in my relationship than it had been useful as a creative outlet. I was creating but every damn step of the way I was fighting tooth and nail to get what I wanted to happen. No one is behind me. No one gives enough of a shit to see what I’m doing as helpful or needed. No one cares. My relationship was in turmoil again, if only on my end because I am so completely confused right now as to what I want and how to get it. Was this like the band situation? Was I just being stubborn in order to keep things from changing because I wasn’t done with it yet? Has it all been done with me long ago?
I thought I had answered that question a million times. Every time the threat of breaking up came we always fought it through. But what if he changed his mind and really stuck to it this time. In this area do I feel the most of my life ticking away. I was married and divorced by 24 and now that 30 is coming quicker than I’d like to admit, I want to be making decisions that will continue to serve me for the rest of my life. I’m not a kid any more. I don’t have a million chances to figure out what I want to be or do when I grow up. I am grown up and this is where I am now. Is this what I wanted? For the most part the answer is no. But how can I be so certain when I don’t know what I want?
I drove around my home town tonight just feeling sad about everything. Sad that I’m never happy with anything that happens. Sad that I can’t take the good with the bad. Sad that there is a huge smoke shop now where my father once tried to teach me to fly a kite. Sad that there is some other family living in the home of my grandparents who have both gone from this earth. Sad that I was driving around wasting gas at the prices today, doing nothing more than wasting money and making myself more emotionally tore up. Sad that I don’t know anything more now than when I left the gas station tonight determined to do something spontaneous and clear my head with a drive, which use to work back when I was married and so alone all the time.
I am a walking, talking contradiction. I’ve done a million stupid things in my life and I’m dating someone who has their whole life ahead of them. I of all people should know that you have to learn most of life’s lessons on your own. But when the man I love told me he’d rather have the freedom to kill himself with cigarettes then deal with my stupid mood swings and constant emotional upheaval, why didn’t I walk away? What a completely humiliating and retarded thing to be faced with. And that’s what I think each and every time I watch him light up and completely give in to his addictive behavior. He lied on two different occasions, this last time I was a fool to believe him for the last six months. So what am I left with, the realization that he loves those little cancer sticks more than me and the friends that smoke them too. Is that any different than watching him put his hands all over some girl that he’s straight up told me he wants more? I would never stand for that. Hell that’d be better for his health, but I turn my head away and try to ignore him every time he runs after his band mates when they head out for smoke break.
Maybe that’s what it is, the constant reminder that those two things mean more to him than our relationship as a whole. I would honestly agree that after the shit I’ve put him through in the last two years, I’m a whole lot more trouble than I’m worth. He has the right to want what he wants. He has the right to think of himself and do what he needs to do. I just wish that for once in someone’s life I could be there right beside them, doing what I need and what they need together. My marriage was a sorry state of wishing and convenience. But I’ve realized in the last six months that I’ve been nothing but an obnoxious brat for the whole of my life. I want everything to just be perfect and work out, and life most certainly doesn’t fit that mold.
So I sit here crying with my cat staring up at me with the epitome of unconditional love in her eyes and I wonder what it’s all about. It’s about the fact that I spend all my money and he asks for one thing more. It’s about the fact that I fail myself constantly but never deal with it; I just ignore my wrongs and figure it will all work itself out in time. It’s about the fact that I can’t ever say no or show affection without there being money involved and then get offended when that practice isn’t returned or is taken for granted. It’s about the fact that I really was hungry tonight and all it took was one little thing to set me off when I’m in one of my hunger mood swings.
I spend all my money on it, it’s making me unhealthy, and it seems to have total power over even my ability to be reasonable. God what a damn scary thing to realize!