More of the Same...

[bookofmirrors]

So, where to go with all this? blckwngdorcl used some of his precious cell phone minutes to talk with me on his cell during his drive to work, shortly after we had discussed some of what I wrote before. I told him I was afraid of letting go, of letting us both live our own lives, basically. 'Cause if you're just two people living your own lives, then what's the point of being in a relationship? I can live my own life alone, so can he. I, sadly, am having trouble trusting in the old "If you love something, set it free........" adage. I'm afraid I'm not worth coming back to, I suppose. blckwngdorcl said that he thought he'd be more likely to want to hang around me if it weren't enforced, scheduled. And he said it on his own, not as a response to what I said above, so it carries more weight to me, in that it was an assertion, not reassurance. I'm also afraid that if we live our own lives, I'll end up doing everything alone. I really enjoy spending the day driving around with him while we go all over hell's half acre to pay bills and do other stuff that needs done, like grocery shopping and stuff. But, doing that takes much scheduling, which is exactly part of the issue. Sure, I can do it myself. I just don't want to. It makes me sad to think of doing that alone. Not to mention cleaning the house. Cleaning the house was an issue a while back. Not sure if I've ever mentioned it before, so I'll explain now.

Used to be that cleaning the house was something I did alone, by choice. In fact, I COULDN'T seem to do it if anyone else was around. I remember when there were 7 of us living together, I would get a bug up my ass about the house being a mess, and would go into the family room and tell everyone I was going to clean the house, they had 10 minutes to get the hell out, and they couldn't come back until I turned the porch light on. (This was one of the first instances of me being assertive.) They pretty much scattered, and, I must admit, they did it with good humor. I'd go around the house like a whirlwind, clean it from top to bottom, shower, relax for a little while, and give the all-clear signal, and was able to enjoy the company of my friends and the atmosphere of my house again. I did this when I was living with Fig. I remember even tormenting his boss for changing his schedule, because he had disrupted my housecleaning, which I did on Sundays, when Fig worked all day, and I was off. I did the same thing when I lived with Shayne.

Somewhere, I realized that I no longer wanted that responsibility all to myself. I was tired of it. I didn't want to be the sole person in charge of it. This was kind of a big deal for me, and it took me a while to even realize what was going on in my head, much less express it to blckwngdorcl. When I did tell him that I wanted help, he was very cool about it. There have been some issues with it since then, some external because of (gasp!) scheduling around our new job schedules and such, and some internal, because I ended up associating housecleaning with regard for me, so any reluctance on his part (regardless of the reason) became, in my head, him having no regard for me.

So, giving up all that scheduling puts me in a position of doing something which is really no biggie (paying the bills) and doing something which is (cleaning the house). Of course, either is only an issue if I make it one, but I'm making it one right now, and that's just the way it is.

blckwngdorcl said, unprompted by any of the above commentary, and with no sense of regret (that I could tell) that he would still help me clean the house, but I guess I'm afraid that, in order to let go of this whole clingy thing, I have to let go of everything. I told him that in my head, I could picture a pendulum that was all the way over to the right, just at that moment of non-motion, about to swing the other way, but that the ball had been grabbed and forced to the middle, and the energy had been disrupted, and was struggling to get back to where it was. That's kinda what I feel about the scheduling. If I left go of the ball, it's going to swing back where it was, and probably back and forth for a while before resting. And, I can hope that the resting point will be this kickass happy medium where he and I are coming together naturally, without scheduling, but my fear is that he'll just ... go away. Another reason I hate it when he games. Gaming is the other woman, so to speak. The irony being that another woman wouldn't even be an issue. Go figure.

In the meantime, he's being great on the phone. He's being honest about his own feelings on the issue, and they aren't always glowing towards me or the situation, but he's not being hurtful about it. Somehow, we got on the subject of my getting waxed, which I scheduled for this week after my physical, kinda tentatively, based on our money situation. It's a total luxury for me to get waxed under the circumstances, but something I've really been wanting to do for months. I have more reason to want to do it NOW (more on that later), but it's still walking a precarious financial tightrope for me to do it. Anyway, he brought it up, and I said that I was planning on cancelling the appointment, 'cause I didn't think we could afford it. I had actually planned a way we could, but I decided it was too risky. This went into a back and forth argument about it, where he basically insisted that I do it. I lamented that he wasn't getting to do anything of equal value for himself, and that it was financially implausible, and a zillion other reasons (some voiced, some not) why I shouldn't do it. He insisted, anyway. Even to the point where he said that if it came down to blowing his entire paycheck on that (or something similar), he'd want to do it. (Seeing it on paper, it sounds like he was making a desperate attempt to appease me, which is pretty far from the truth. It was much more like he was doing the Tough Love thing, insisting I do something for myself for a change, which is something I avoid like the plague, and rarely do. To the point where I sometimes resent it when he does things for himself.)

So, I guess I'm getting waxed on Thursday. I'm still dragging my feet, though.

We never really discussed what exactly was going to happen regarding this. I think the general unspoken consensus was that I was just gonna quit cold turkey, and we were gonna buy some big calendars where we could each put our schedules down, so we at least knew what the other person was gonna be doing. This scares the hell outta me, of course, but not sure what else to say about it.

I did mention to him that I hated that this became my issue. In yet another example of the truth hiding within the truth, just because I have my own issues with Glenn's gaming and such, doesn't mean it's not his issue, too. I didn't like being the bad guy. He says he feels like he's improved a great deal in this area, and he probably has. I'm sure I'm seeing a lot of phantoms, or making a big deal about what's real. Not sure what to do about that. Am also scared of the move later, when all things gaming become even more accessible.

Again, that fear thing. I can see Glenn's fear clearly, and once told him that I felt very bad for him, because it must be an awful thing to live your life in fear, to make decisions from that place, and to constantly have that sense of it. I haven't reached the point where I have that compassion for myself. Mostly I'm still assimilating and acknowledging it, and berating myself for being this way. Never mind the fact that I don't fault OTHER people for doing it. It's natural, right? Human nature. Ah, the joys of hubris. I don't WANT to be human when it comes to that. And I've done a pretty good job of fooling myself all these years.

Comments

Re: The Grace of Being and/or AARRGH!!! Just STOP IT

[bookofmirrors.livejournal.com]

Aw, I actually like your tirades. :)

And yeah, much of what you say is true. Although I think after dinner tonight, there's a bit better perception of how much time blckwngdorcl actually does spend gaming, which isn't nearly as much as it appears to come across. I am oversensitive to it. And he does do it quite a bit.

Somewhere in between lies the truth.

But, you're right. The issue here isn't so much about gaming as it is my being able to deal with the spectrum of my emotions. And it IS hard for me to not see that as a "lack" of some kind. I feel like I "lack" the ability to get angry, when obviously I must be, or I wouldn't be reacting to things the way I do. But, your advice is good. If I were to just BE, maybe ALL of me would come out, including the anger. And the fear.

Scary as hell, though.