emberstrum

[emberstrum]

I don't feel like i know how to talk to you anymore. I feel like I constantly have to bite my tongue and let things that bother me go, and it's made my resentment build up a lot. I feel like whenever I try to express discontent with your actions I'm met with such a pissed attitude in response that it just makes my life harder.

I feel like I do a lot of the labor in our relationship. And I've taken that on more overtime because I love you and I want to make your life easier. But it's a double edged sword because now I feel like I'm always the one dropping what I'm doing to help you or help us, and when I ask you for help it feels like I might as well have asked you to cut a limb off. I know you work hard and your job is stressful, but I also feel stress and I also work hard. But I'm always looking for ways to make your life a little better, and meanwhile I feel like I can't get you to even turn off the lights or put your dishes into the dishwasher instead of leaving them in the sink for someone - and I do not think that someone is intended to be you. I feel like an assistant that you tolerate being around, not someone that you want to be active partners with. I don't feel like you want to spend time with me, or talk to me, nevermind touching me. And you get upset with me for trying to bring back the smallest kinds of intimacy to our relationship. I just don't know

[emberstrum]

12.14.24

I feel like bf does not try to take interest in my interests. I feel like he doesn't ask me about my work, or my art; he didn't ask me at all about the art I did for that project I got paid real money for which was kind of a big deal; he doesn't ask me about water polo, he doesn't ask me about my work outs, he doesn't ask me about the books I'm reading or the games I'm playing or DND or my interest in terrariums. And when I try to tell him about those things I feel like I might as well be talking to a plant for all of the response I'm getting; "oh interesting," "oh cool," "uh huh, uh huh, uh huh."

Meanwhile I feel like I am always trying to take interest in the things he's doing - trying to learn more about them and spend time doing them with him to be able to keep up in conversation. I've done that with medicine, I've done it with dragon age and with skyrim, I've done it with lord of the rings, I'm doing it now with volleyball. I feel like I'm trying so much more and the reason I do it is because I love him very much and I am genuinely interested in the things that make him tick and make him happy. So why does it feel like I do not have that same treatment? I'll tell you that it is a shitty feeling.

And this drills down to a deeper, more root cause issue: I feel like he does not consider me in the same way I consider him in just about everything I do. I am always thinking about him and how what I am doing might impact him. I am always looking for the places to include him. I always ask him if he needs help with things, and whether he wants something from the place I'm going to, and I make sure to think about his schedule when I'm making plans. I am always looking for ways to make his life easier. I make sure the dishes are clean because I know he has a draining schedule and also I want to make sure he has a clean mug to have coffee in the morning. But why, when he has time off, doesn't he return that energy, knowing that I'm also struggling lately? I wash his laundry and clean his room without asking. I plan and cook meals without complaint. I tiptoe around things to not add stress to his already stressful experiences. I know what gifts to get him because I pay attention to what he says, and he tells me that he doesn't know what he should get for me.

I do think that he tends to err on the side of self centered. I've known that for years now and it's not something that tends to bother me, until it does. Typically I can sympathize and make peace with it. You have to put yourself first in a career path like his; he wouldn't have made it out of med school as successfully as he did without that attitude.

I think this has been slowly, slowly, improving as of late. I can see that he at least remembers I exist, and recently he casually mentioned our future together, as partners. But sometimes it feels like I am just an accessory. A tool. A convenience. I go back and forth between feeling loved and appreciated and feeling like I am only around because it's comfortable and because there's nobody else to load the dishwasher without complaint - and it's heavily skewed because there are always dishes to be done.

[emberstrum]

12.12.24

Fuck me I am so burnt out. My brain is not functioning at any capacity. I cannot focus - let alone care - long enough to get work done. And at such a terrible time too, when work is so busy. I feel enormous pressure and like the threat of getting in trouble is looming over me, waiting to sink its teeth any moment. I don't give a shit about what I'm working on right now - I don't even have the motivation to do things I enjoy as hobbies. I almost cancelled playing dnd tonight last minute because I just felt like total ass. Just frozen, locked inside of my own mind. I didn't want to interact with anyone. It happened yesterday too and that sucked because bf was in a genuinely lovely mood, which seems to be rarer and rarer these days, and I could hardly enjoy it because /I/ was the one in a bad mood.

I hate this brain so much sometimes. I've been doing it fucking all - going outside, talking to people and being social and pushing past my shyness and insecurities to make friends, exercising regularly throughout the week, eating better, sleeping better (more or less), reading, making things - and still I am not able to function normally. What the fuck gives????

Ultimately I did play DND and I had a nice time. I laughed and was creative and funny. And then I spent about a half hour trying to do some work until I just gave up. Tomorrow is gonna be a shit show trying to make up for the lost time in time for a deadline. I guess I'll just have to push and hope it's enough and that some switch will flip and I'll be able to drag my own brain over the finish line.

I lay here in bed and think about how I'm not good enough. And how all of this feels like it's one wrong move from a cascade failure. Like it could all fall apart if I don't do more. There's that thing they say that when you're juggling a lot of balls you have to figure out which balls are made of glass and which ones are rubber and can bounce if you drop them, but right now it's glass and Faberge eggs all the way down as far as I can see. And baby I'm gods worst clown college student. I'm a bull in this china shop and they're asking me to juggle but my hands are hooves and the aisles are too narrowly spaced and everything around me is just suffocating me and I can't make more room for myself or it all goes to shit. I am deep sighing