performingmyself

[performingmyself]

Well this is a journal I guess. Lets journal then.

I think what I'm having trouble with is that I am literally always going through my life focused on other people and it has already nearly killed my a half dozen times which seems to REALLY worry everyone around me right up until I ask them for the things I need to deal with that. Then all of a sudden I'm being unreasonable and unfair to think other people don't have their own shit such that they can help me with mine.

Like. I literally haven't stopped working for even a goddamn minute outside of the one medical episode where I literally wasn't allowed to. I have been desperate for my break meanwhile we're literal YEARS into their break and I still haven't given them enough room and support. When do I get to set all this down? When do I get to care about me and my needs and my goals in life? When do I get the credit for how much I have sustained everyone around me at cost to myself? I can tolerate missing out on one or the other, but both just makes me suicidal in a way I'm not sure I'll come back from.

Trying to date again was almost worse because I could see all those same patterns starting up where nothing I do or say is quite understood or enjoyed

Maybe I'm just a genuinely unpleasant person to be around. I dunno. Certainly I've never felt like people have an easy time enjoying my company.

[performingmyself]

I am struggling tonight. I feel isolated and alone in ways I am having a hard time dealing with.

I don't know how to ask for what I need without screaming and raving and making no sense. I'm not even sure I know what I need.

I guess I want to feel seen. It's the one thing I've never really had, whether by force or by choice. I'm not sure I know how to have it at this point.

I feel alone in the world, and I feel like even when I scream I'm the only person who hears what I'm saying.

I wish I could talk to Beloved about it, but unfortunately as much as I love her, as much as I know she loves me, she's part of it for me. Even when she makes progress on the few asks I've allowed myself to continue making of her, it often feels like nothing more than a painful reminder of the asks I still cannot make of her or - apparently - of anyone.

There are times I wish I actually WAS alone. Maybe it would be easier to cope with feeling isolated if it didn't like a choice others were making at me.

[performingmyself]

Beloved and I have been working on our communication for a while now, and we're having trouble finding a balance.

Today's hiccup:

Beloved came in talking to me about something and realized on her own that my brain was already On Task, so she asked if I was busy and I said, yes, I would need a minute but she was welcome to return in a time. When she did come back, I had turned the water in the shower on and didn't quite hear what she asked but presumed she was returning to talk so I popped my head out and asked her to repeat. She did, and I answered, and ideally this would have been when we moved on to talking about what she had come to talk to me about.

Instead I got "I'm only asking because..."

I'm trying to work on managing my irritation at this. It is deeply agitating for me to be treated like I am upset or aggressive when I'm being neither, especially since Beloved continues to struggle with her own tone in ways I am currently taking a break from trying to influence [unfortunately me taking a break from asking anything tone wise of Beloved doesn't change the fact that I *have* brought it up in the past, so now every time she reacts to MY tone, I am treated to her frustration that I get to ask her to manage her tone but she can't get me to manage mine. This is said without irony about once every other month, despite weekly check ins about how I've been doing in which she has no feedback other than "everything was fine"]. It's....hard. to bit back the agitation, and I don't think I quite got the balance today because I couldn't manage to let her finish defending her question that I had just answered with zero criticism or discontent, and cut her off. But I did at least manage to make what I said a fairly even toned "I know. You don't need to defend the question to me, I was just answering the question."

This in turn clearly afitated Beloved. To her credit, she didn't escalate herself and contained her feelings, and we did then get to talk about the thing she came to talk to me about, and it went just fine.

But it's hard. It's hard to spend every conversation with Beloved biting my tongue and swallowing my hurt and deciding not to "pick the fight" when Beloved is unable to actually hear what I'm saying to her and I know I can't have the conversation without getting overwhelmed. It's just been so long since talking to someone didn't feel like wrestling a shark, and I have been really struggling with the feelings of isolation lately. Beloved is, as always, Beloved, but she is also no longer someone I feel like I am in sync with, and more importantly no longer someone who meets my emotional needs. I want that to change. I know a lot has happened in our relationship and our time sharing each other's lives, so it's not like I'm expecting us to be word perfect on each other. But. It would be nice to feel like we were still compatible? And I'm just not sure we are. Even the sex isn't what it could be (not to say it's BAD just to acknowledge that I've gotten really comfortable faking an orgasm and maybe that's not a good thing)

Anyway. Back to the hiccup. I have a hard time deciding what lines I need to hold, and that leads to a lot of split second decisions on the subject that I'm not sure are helpful.

I'm considering the merits of a few different ways I could have handled the hiccup and trying to understand the functional and the dysfunctional in it all.

Option 1) wait through defense of question, do not acknowledge in any way, and simply wait for the question to come [optional prompt if a response appears to be expected "what did you want to chat about?" To remove the option to discuss the defense.] If this approach does not lead to a decreased impulse to explain after a month or two, name the concern: "I notice you often defend your questions even when I don't criticize them or ask for clarity on anything. Can you tell me more about what that's doing for you?" Hear the answer, reflect content for understanding, and identify potential alternatives that meet everyone's needs.

Option 2) wait through defense of question, reflect back understanding, then ask if anything I did or said indicated that these concerns were present/should be addressed. If yes, ask for specifics and discuss whether this is a "tolerate" or "accommodate" question for us. If no, ask if this is an internal impulse I can support her in reducing, and if yes, discuss. If no, identify with Beloved the impact of the behavior and communicate that while this is not inherently an ask for change, it is an ask to continue participating in the work of attending to that impact in collaboration with me, as I am able and willing to either tolerate the change process independently or tolerate lack of change with certain accommodations (e.g. acknowledging that if I get irritated at being exposed to a known-distressing-to-me self-solthing technique of Beloved's, that while I still do not have the right to be unkind in any way, it is also not her right to ask me to not feel agitated rather than ask me to manage my agitation appropriately)

Option 3) respond to every self-soothing defense with "okay." And an immediate pivot back into the last functional floor of the conversation (e.g. in the case of today, "okay. You came up to say something, we can talk about that if you're ready") and explicitly decline to engage in any defensive/self-soothing explanations (e.g. "I understand why you asked, however I don't understand why that explanation is important to discuss right now. If you disagree, we can bring that to couples' counseling, but for now, what did you come to talk about?")

I think the big downside *I'm* finding with all of these is that they're still coming entirely from the perspective of me holding the floor of Beloved's emotional regulation, which is precisely what I'm trying to get away from.

But ultimately I don't know that any of the approaches likely to be effective at this stage would be any different. It feels very hard to motivate myself towards that level of investment in Beloved's infrastructure when I am also carrying so much of my own without her support [not to mention the places where Beloved's challenges add to or exaccerbate my own needs and ability to meet them] but I also acknowledge that I can't rightly ask her to do this without ME so if I want to ask this of her, I do need to do my part.

I've been starting to realize how little of that I have left in me though. I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to keep up that much investment when it means all my energy going out and no one's energy going back into me. I don't know how much room there is left before it starts to feel like work to let her have intimate moments with me anymore, like that intimacy is one sided and I'm not actually getting any in return so much as facilitating Beloved's illusion of an intimacy that isn't real. That doesn't seem terribly healthy to me, so I'm really hoping not to hit that point, but the resentment creeps in now, more than I'd like it to.

It's hard to be there for her in ways she keeps explicitly refusing to acknowledge while she talks about how alone she is and how I ask too much, unfair things, from her. It's hard to have been through everything I chose to put myself through on her behalf, and have the outcome be feeling shamed and inadequate to the one person I have ever truly believed loved me. I know she didn't ask those things of me, even though they're valuable to me. I know I can't blame her for my choices. It's not even my right to expect her appreciation or gratitude for what I did, seeing how she never asked for it and it was offered as a gift. I do wish she acknowledged it happened [and is still happening] though.

But that's still her choice. I can't make her. And if I am not willing to keep offerring those things under the current circumstances of our relationship, that's my right, but it's also my responsibility. I can feel sad or hurt or alone. But it's still my job to address that, either by deciding to tolerate it or by deciding to take away her access to having that conversation with me.

Sometimes after a long day of work and the third week in a row that the kitchen went uncleaned, I struggle with making the choices that are in line with my long term goals and values, and I feel a little more like disappearing into my own world rather than leaning into the one Beloved and I share. And maybe it's worth finding a way to acknowledge that between us so that I can have that time when needed. Maybe it doesn't need to be a criticism of Beloved's needs when we are together so much as a negotiation of when I am and am not available to meet them.

I will think about how and when to share these thoughts with Beloved

[performingmyself]

Gonna just be using this blog to process for now I think.