Immolation

I feel like I’m out of options, or I have no good options. If I tell you the truth, you will get angry and nothing will change anyway. If I hide it and sweep it under the rug, I will end up having dreams where you are talking over me and I am screaming and you will eventually end it with me for not having respect for myself anyway. If I walk away, I feel immense pain and I lose one of my best friends.

You might be within your technical rights to ask me to leave when you don’t enjoy my company, but by normal social standards that reaction, that face you made when I was talking, is reserved for the person you hate that you happen to be near at a party. And you don’t say anything you just walk away, and that person sees that face you made and sees you walk away and knows you fucking hate them.

You planned Fourth of July for us to be a special night, to show me those fireworks and for us to connect and I’m sorry I’m not the person you want or need me to be, not the fucking fart joke cracking space cadet I have no idea. but for me, you couldn’t keep it together and not mistreat me for a single important night. And you’re not stressed at work anymore. There’s no excuse. The curry was setting you off. You were in a bad mood. You were maybe ill at ease with the thought of connecting. Idk you fucking tell me. If I kicked you out of my house every time you inconvenienced me…you would never take your own shit. You know it, I know it. You know it all, but your defense mechanisms kick in and it’s like we’re back to square one.

And you telling me you can’t stand me and the way I am and the things I talk about is bringing a bazooka to the fight, but me holding your hands and asking you to identify what it is that’s really bothering you is not an escalation. I almost never bring a baxooka to the fight. Like once or twice total have I brought a bazooka. “You and your mommy issues” that’s fighting words, that’s a bazooka. Asking “what did I say that I upset you so badly? Can you tell me? You don’t have to right now, just try to get in touch with it so you can connect with your partner, so they can soothe you. Vulnerability is a necessary condition of connection” Not a fucking bazooka. In what goddamn twisted distorted version of reality is that a goddamn bazooka?!

You sent me the video about boundaries becoming a cage around someone else. I suggested like nearly a year ago you call them limits so they are about you instead of everyone else, inside you instead of outside. You didn’t like it because you knew it meant you wouldn’t be able to attack anymore. You’d have to take responsibility for your own emotions and you wouldn’t be able to justify and attack. Those boundaries are so far outside your body everyone is in the line of fire and you like it that way. You have the concepts you have the knowledge you are just not ready or willing to apply them, not able to hold the truth for any period of time.

I am over functioning in this relationship. I am taking heat, trying desperately to repair, keeping my own anger and pain restrained, even trying to grow and be honest about how I’m feeling in the moment even though it’s hard for me especially when I’m facing off with YOU who are actively terrifying and you know it, telling fart jokes to diffuse—and you hated that too, and you hated me talking about what I’m learning at school in the pool, just because you’re in that mode now that “k is ruining my night mood”. and you just can’t seem to wrap your head around how completely socially abnormal it all is. How it is not conducive to a 50/50 give/take healthy happy relationship to prioritize your own comfort so completely, to have these super intense reactions to anything that displeases you, justify them, and ultimately punish me no matter what I do. It was my night too. I was looking forward to it for months. And probably it’s all about A. And I can’t even comfort you about it because you just can’t ever let anyone in. AND I LOVE YOU YOU IDIOT GODDAMN

This is the trap i find myself in and rather than analyze and solutionize maybe it’s best I just make it easy on you. You don’t like me. In fact often you cannot stand me.

It’s not gonna stop. It’s not gonna get better. You might’ve taken me on that boat, or you might’ve gotten mad at me right before we left and gone without me again and left me crying again wondering why the fuck, how the fuck I fucked up this time. You are. You are repeating your childhood on me this time as the completely impossible to please parent.

Immolation. Burning alive. Walking through the fire. To be reborn. Willing to accept the truth and give up the hope of that goddamn boat that some other girl deserved more than me somehow. I got the goddamn tinkerbell outfit. Don’t tell me I didn’t love you right. Don’t tell me I wasn’t willing to grow. Dont tell me I projected my past on you and made shit up about you and I didn’t understand and I wasn’t willing to take responsibility and I was weak and I didn’t respect myself. YOU understand perfectly. You’re not dumb. You’d just really prefer not to see it.