Kaye's Days

There are words and feelings I have constantly, constantly struggled to verbalize to my boyfriend. Mostly because I do not think he understands. So, I’m laying them out here. I don’t expect this to be read. I had a nightmare every night over the last three or four nights, presumably from stress. This is an attempt to lighten my mind.

Why do you call for more, for better, communication, only to cut it off?

I tell you I’m uncomfortable telling you certain things, so your reaction is… the very behavior that makes me uncomfortable.

Despite that, I still made the mistake of telling you things.

I told you I felt unloved. You only cared to be offended.

I told you I don’t feel you listen. You still don’t.

You accuse me of the things you do. You accused me of pitting having a relationship with me vs your family. I never did such. You say I care only about myself, but you didn’t say such only a week before when I shared my time and money with you and your family, or when I forgave your family member’s theft.

You claim to know more about my place of employment than myself, despite you do not work there and never set foot in it.

I feel you continually prove to me why I shouldn’t tell you things, yet the idea only makes you angry. To the extent you, at one point, almost threatened to break it off over my unwillingness, but rapidly deleted the message before I could read it.

Why am I supposed to tell you any and everything, and merely deal with your reaction, knowing it could – or will – be fire? Under what other circumstances do people bring up subjects to those they are certain will be made upset by said subject?

We are more distant now than when we met six years ago.

Why do I need to change how much I share to please you while still fearing what reaction I may receive?

You cannot ask someone to be more open while simultaneously showing them all the reasons they shouldn’t be. You cannot.

Why don’t you ask why I have certain feelings or what makes me feel these ways?

You absolutely did make fun of me for my social media, once to me and once behind my back to my sister. You may not remember, but the messages remain. Unlike the messaging built into phones, apps like Messenger and WhatsApp do not delete old messages. Would you like to see them?

Yet, as I said some paragraphs upward, I still made the mistake of sharing things with you. However, as of the last argument, I’ll no longer make that mistake. Even a friend asked how it was a mistake to tell you I was invited out. I envy her, to feel it’s okay to tell her partner such things and not worry what she’ll get in return.

You complained once I make you sound like an abuser to my friends. Yet, not a single one of my friends has suggested that. I never suggested that either. Only you did.

You say you’re tired of needing to prove you love me. Did it never occur to you it’s a problem you have that need, or these feelings of mine continue to resurface? Have you considered I don’t want a crisis to occur for you to “prove yourself”? Have you thought I don’t want you to need to prove it because I want to feel it’s already there? And there was a time I did?

I don’t want someone or something to nearly take my life for you to have a “chance” to prove you love me. I never believed you should need to go out of your way to prove you love me.

If you know how it feels to be depressed, why do you say things expected of those who don’t know? “Everyone is suffering.” Do you not think I know this? Do you think it helps? It didn’t help when I was sixteen. Why would it help now? Why would the idea everyone around me is in as much pain as I am help in any way?

Do you believe I like to feel this way? That I enjoy the feeling of losing a love that once changed my entire world? That I don’t lose myself in the memories of when I would beg time to go faster so I could get to you? I did that as recently as Christmas Eve.

These feelings are not fun. They are smothering. They choke me. They eat me alive.

I will always believe I screwed up by saying anything. It’s how I lost so many other things, after all. You aren’t the first.

Yet, despite all I said here, you’re unlikely the last.

I can’t read your mind. I have no idea if you want this relationship to continue. If you now deem me comparable to your worst ex, I don’t believe you consider any relationship with me worth pursuing.

Which you absolutely have the right to do. I can change nothing about that, nor would I try because that’s your decision. But tell me:

Do we still, per your words long ago, have too much history?

Or should it never have been written at all?