It took all the man in me to be the dog you wanted me to be

I rushed the last post because roommate came home, and I had spent the whole day cleaning his bathroom, so after getting sidetracked from whatever I WANTED to write about by writing about how he responds to different things, it felt like a good time to test how accurate my predictions were.

Not that they were like, actual predictions. But the long and short of it is that I said my roommate would react more positively to coming home to find I had trashed the place and he would react negatively to coming home to find I had cleaned the place.

I swear it's like he knows before he gets home when certain things happened, and he makes a game of pretending he doesn't know, cuz he was acting weird as soon as he came home, but that might just be the fact I've been stuck in the same small space for years with the same surroundings and the same fucking speeches every fucking week with the same fucking asshole so his ability to sense when I'm THINKING about doing things is akin to that of a dog owner knowing when the dog needs a walk.

So I don't know if he could tell as soon as he came home that I was feeling more accomplished than normal or such, and he was just reacting to that, but he seemed really angry and said he was just going to go straight to bed instead of the usual after-work routine. I'd say it felt like getting slapped in the face but I honestly kinda like getting slapped in the face and there was nothing fun about him doing what he did.

Now, everyone would think it makes me sound paranoid to say he's trying to make me feel like I need to end myself by going to bed, especially considering he works 12 hour shifts and gets home at midnight, so it seems EXTREMELY paranoid/assholish of me to be like "he hates me cuz he went to sleeeeep!!!!!" but that's the kind of games he plays, he'll do something that appears perfectly normal to make me look crazy, after years of doing everything the crazy way with me. normally he never goes to sleep after work, he's always awake for a few hours, and he usually spends time talking about his day or watching something with me.

Anyway, so, I was kinda proud of myself for cleaning his bathroom and he came home from work and made me feel like a little piece of shit he can't scrape off his shoe. And he did it by acting perfectly normal and doing perfectly normal things while making me look like a wailing lunatic.

He went to the bathroom before going to bed and didn't make any mention about how clean things were at all. For reference, I filled up two large trash bags and scrubbed multiple surfaces that hadn't been so much as wiped down in over a year. I swear he had to have known before he saw the bathroom that I'd cleaned the bathroom to actually see it and not make any kind of noise of shock or surprise.

It wasn't until halfway through the next day that he "thanked" me, but like how a bully sounds when the teacher drags him to the principals office to force him to apologize and say something nice to their victim, he said very succinctly "thank you for cleaning my bathroom." in a low monotone voice, sitting down, staring at his phone, and he said something about how it's easier to shower for work.

Now, I know it sounds crazy to analyze every single word or whatever, but if you were there it would make sense when I say he only brought up showering for work as a way to insult me and the fact I don't have a job and how I don't shower as often as he needs to for work.

It did make me feel shitty, the way he "thanked" me for it, like I assume he wanted, but then this is where things got kind of fun for me.

Cuz I started laughing and saying that I called it. That I wrote a prediction about how he'd react to a cleaner place, that I knew he'd try to make me feel like I invaded his space by cleaning (for the record, when he invited me to live with him, it was under the agreement that I would clean after him in exchange for not paying as much rent, so this "invading privacy" bullshit is just want he thinks sounds reasonable to anyone who doesn't live here.

It's crazy how much he loves the way I know him so well, but how much he hates when I actually describe who he is.

So I said something about how he acts pissed when I do things he should be grateful for and
he initially tried to say he wouldn't know how to act happy or grateful, and he went on about how he just... NEVER expresses his emotions. He thinks He is the most stoic emotionless rock solid man. He started explaining how growing up with five brothers taught him that having emotions gets you bullied and you have to hide them, and so he doesn't know how to express joy or anger or any emotion! He doesn't even know how to identify how he feels because of how horribly abused by his brothers he was for any slight sign of emotion growing up!

So then

hahaa this part was fun

I started describing the multiple times he's been excited. How easy it is to tell he is excited, how his emotions shine through his entire body.

One of the best stories I have is the time a few years ago I was in a weird "learning to cook and make low calorie versions of things I never liked in the first place" phase, and I was trying to make low calorie pancakes, I used egg whites and oat fiber and created some horrible choking hazard. It wasn't even "inedible food" It was straight up hostile chemicals larping as pancakes.

I went into his room to tell him about my atrocious cooking failure but I got as far as saying "So I tried to make pancakes..." when he turned around so fast, eyes lit up, he exclaimed "YOU MADE PANCAKEs?!?@?" before running past me to the kitchen so fast it damn near spun me around like a cartoon.

I felt SO BAD limping my ass after him to break it to him, that, no... No there was nothing remotely close to "pancakes" in our kitchen. I found him in the kitchen looking around with his hands raised up almost flapping like an excited little kid, and boy, did his face melt when I actually got the words out about what pancake failure occurred.

(...I did make him pancakes after that. Like, half an hour later he had real pancakes. I'm not a monster)

(I didn't go on to describe how it felt to watch him enjoy the pancakes. It's too hard these days to think about things like that. I was really getting into cooking and learning how to ... be more normal about food. And that was one moment that really marked how bad things were for me here, because I really do hate myself and I hate so much of what I've seen of this world, and one of the only things that makes me feel better is doing nice things for people? Like it's just so fucking simple. I like cleaning up for someone who doesn't have the time. I like cooking for people, I like when they enjoy something I've done, I like helping, it's the only thing I can easily say I like cuz I feel guilty for so much. and I have been so fucking sick my whole life and that moment, that fukcing day with the fucking pancakes was one of those moments where I was really trying to get better and in one day, one moment of him excitedly asking about pancakes, I made more progress learning to cook in half an hour than three months because I wasn't trying to make something for myself and I wasn't afraid to make something enjoyable to eat. )

He said he wouldn't know how to show gratitude. He asks what I expect him to do, like, throw a parade cuz I cleaned the toilet? Fuck no, dude turns everything into the most extreme bullshit ever.

What do I expect? nothing, cuz I know him by now. But- What would make me feel like he appreciated the work I spent hours in his bathroom doing? A short gasp!! or maybe A little "Oh my god it's so clean!", it wouldn't take much, a matter of literal seconds, that's it. A brief exclaimation acknowledging the work I have done is all it would have taken to make me feel like a real human being deserving of a name when he came home after I spent the day cleaning his bathroom.

But he made sure he didn't say anything for most of a day and when he did he did it with the most unenthusiastic voice possible and attached it to a subtle insult because he doesn't want me to feel like I deserve a name. Maybe he doesn't want me to end myself, but he sure as fuck doesn't want me to live.

I keep forgetting what I mean to say. I don't want to say anything about any of this, I want to shut the fuck up about him and never say another thing about him again but I don't even know how to imagine that as a possibility anymore.