it is what it is, take it at face value

December 23, 2007

I have to attempt to put these words down on paper so maybe they’ll leave my head alone. I’m terrified. Terrified I’m going to do something incredibly stupid because my brain refuses to function like it should. This has been an emotionally distressing year. Funny thing is nothing externally much has been going on to make me FEEL like I do. I feel like I hate my life and I want to start over and like all the major decision I’ve made should be undone. I want to be able to say it’s over if I feel like it and not destroy someone’s life in the process. And by that person I mean my child. My precious, sweet, demonic child.
I love my husband, because it’s comfortable and it’s what I’m used to, we’ve been together since we were 17 what choice do I have at this point? Even if I decide to do anything drastic I will always love him. I just don’t want to be with him anymore. I’ve gone back and forth with this so many times. I hate failing. And for the first time in my life, I’ve considered cheating as an alternative to just calling it quits. That’s not me; ask any of my exes, several of whom are some of my best friends. I’m not that person. I am the person that I am though that meets someone and develops strong feelings for that person before ending the current relationship. This is a HUGE part of my “I’m not going to leave my husband” thing. Because I’m not going to leave my husband. I will fantasize about it. I will dream about other people while sleeping next to my husband. But I will not leave him. Because I am restless and reckless. And I know this. It hasn’t always turned out well for me in the past and almost always I have regretted it. Following my restless has left me alone and lonely too many times for me to screw up something as concrete as where I am right now. Which is why I am restless, I feel cemented here and it’s all about the grass being greener on the other side. It all ends up the same, almost always. I wouldn’t leave him for this other person anyways. It’s all wrong. Wrong of me to even think it. But it nags at the corners of my mind until I lose control of my rational thoughts. Like I could have someone who gets me. But not necessarily the person that started this train wreck of a thought anyways. I know this is all me. It’s just easier to put it on someone else. Someone who doesn’t even know. Someone who I’m hoping doesn’t see it. Someone who would think I am even more insane than I’ve admitted to. Someone who probably doesn’t really understand me as well as I’d like to think because it’s easier to tell myself that simply because it’s someone who really listens to me. Someone rarer than I am, and who I feel is unappreciated. Funny isn’t it how we always feel like we could love someone so much better than anyone else, until it’s on us to love them better. I think most humans screw it up. Why do we think we can do this? My husband, I fought for him. We “took a break” after we had been dating 6 or 7 months, he took it as broken up, I took it for what it was, time and space I needed to wrap my head around the fact that I thought I had found that ONE that was my future, my forever person, my penguin. He took a vacation and hooked up with his best friend/ex-girlfriend. I was friends with her too even though we had never met because she lives 1000 miles away. It nearly broke me. I was his first, and would have been his only. A relapse I could somewhat understand, I get that, been there, done that. But this was different, this was somewhere they had never taken their relationship before this point in time. And I found out from someone else. And I was so blind that we worked through it and I FOUGHT to keep him. Five and half years later from that point I see that they are so much better for each other. I don’t think it would ever go there because he fears my wrath. How do you tell someone you’ve spent a quarter of your life with that you think they’d be better off with the one person you fought to keep out of their life? It hurts me sometimes to look at him and know that we’ve glued ourselves to each other and I don’t think either of us is truly happy. But we’re comfortable together. We don’t know any better at this point. I’ve spent three times the amount of time with him than I have in all of my other dating adventures combined. That’s a lot. Today I feel like it’s too much. If I didn’t have a child with him, it would have been long over, possibly before we even got married. But we got pregnant and we rushed everything. My brother-in-law turned 20 today. I think that is part of my problem. When I turned 20, I had a 5 month old baby and had been married nearly a year. I had been on my own for almost two years. My life was not just beginning, it was concrete and it was set the way that it would be for the rest of my life. Everything that there was to look forward to had already passed. my mother was right. She told me all the time when I was a teenager “you’re going to be an adult for the rest of your life, don’t rush your childhood, you only get to do it once.” Mom, I’m sorry to say this but I take a lot of your life advice with a grain of salt. I should have listened more. I can’t make the decisions that you have. I know that you tried to do what you thought was best and I can understand how hard it was for you not having me all the time, but most of my childhood was miserable. Not necessarily your fault, and I’m not blaming you for that, but I can’t bring myself to even risk my daughter having to go through what I have. I would willingly bear the weight of all the unhappiness in the world if it means that she can be happier than I was. I love you, mom, but at 8 years old knowing that you can’t count of your mom to be stable is not a good feeling. As an adult I understand, but as a child I had very little faith in you as a role model. Unfortunately I’ve been cursed with the same disease. But I am aware. I will fight it until the day I die. Or at least until I’m committed.