We are back to blogging!!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!
Today
Activity: Blogging with the bestie
Activity Prompt: Write about a time you were in a toxic relationship. How did you recognize that toxicity and what did you do to get out of it?
Alone or with partners: I SAID BLOGGING WITH THE BESTIE
Drink and snack with activity: I had an Italian sparkling mineral water and some keto candied nuts, because I'm a fucking grown up.
This is a tough choice for me. Do I want to write about my relationship with my mother? riting about Rhyann's dad is too easy and also too painful, because of all of the toxic relationships I've had and walked away from, that's the only one that cost me anything real, and that wound is forever fresh, even with my amazing baby now living wih me. I am making the conscious choice to not include Chris on this list, even though I could write about that for years and never be done. Do I want to write about my relationship with Allen, which is both the healthiest relationship I've ever had and violently toxic? Should I write about Dan, who gets all of my emotional turmoil heat? Should I write about my husband? How about my friends, as I think a good deal of my friendships have an element of toxicity to them, as well?
.....It is looking like I make bad choices.
I think I'm going to try and write about everyone, and we'll see how far I get by the time Amber is done.
Starting with my mother:
I feel like, to some degree, all children have a toxic relationship with their parents. I did not ask to be born, I did not get a say in my parents or family, and yet I have been conditioned and expected to love my parents unconditionally, by virtue of their status in my life. Which...again...wasn't earned. I read a little quote on Tumblr once that said. "just because your mother didn't break every generational curse doesn't mean she didn't break any", and while I want to give my mother credit for trying in the ways I'm sure she did, I can also recognize that she still fucking sucks as an individual. My father has said to me that she's my mom, and I owe her my love, and the thing is...I fucking don't owe her shit. I am not sure how to fully write about how toxic she is, but I can point some things out. When I asked my mom how she'd react if I told her I was queer, she freaked out and then was visibly relieved when I said I was asking for a friend. My mom told me I wasn't allowed to dress like a whore or have male friends, imparting ideas to me that I was not going to be afforded agency or trust. I wasn't allowed to dress myself, or wear make up, or listen to the music I wanted. My mom chose everything for me until I was kicked out of the house. My mom talked shit about my friends to my face, my mom was physically and emotionally abusive, my mom was never at all willing to undersand that other people have feelings and always centered herself. My mom treated me like her personal therapis and best friend, which is a line I do not think parents should cross. My mom is racist, sexist, ableist, and transphobic. I have thirty some odd years of seeing how toxic my mother is and dealing with it out of some weird sense of obligation because she gave birth to me, and the most freeing aspect of my relationship with her was realizing that it IS my choice, and I took that relatioship away because she didn't deserve it. I have been no contact with my mother since 2018, and my life is all the richer for her absence. Her ideologies make me embarassed that I am biologically forced to share space with her, and I wish her exactly the kind of life her vileness deserves. I have known about her toxicity for years and tried to gently meet her where she's at in the hopes of moving the needle, but when I understood there was no hope to be found and she didn't deserve my kindness, and that I was also doing my own unlearning journey a disservice by keeping active shitheels in my circle, I cut her the fuck off. And good fuckin' riddance to terribly, awful rubbish.
My relationship with Allen is trickier. In so many aspects of our time as a unit, Allen is the healthiest relationship I've ever had. The first argument we ever had, I called Allen a piece of shit, or an asshole, or something to hat effect and he stopped me and said, "hey, I know we're mad at each other, but let's not call each other names". And like...freshly out of my terrible relationship with Chris, I didn't know what to do with that. Allen and I were young, I think I speak for both of us when I say we were really and truly in love with each other in the way that only really fucking young, unjaded kids get to enjoy, it only happens once like that in a lifetime, I think. For a few years, we were amazing partners. We had each other's backs, I would have readily stabbed someone for Allen. In so many ways, I would still stab someone for him...but I may also just be looking for reasons to knife a bitch. Even our breaak up, while not fun because no break up ever is, was so amicable and loving that we were roommates for years. Allen was my best friend for such a long time. He was my rock. But the last...oh, I think 14 years? It's taken a nasty turn. I think so many people don't remain friends with their exes so they don't get exmples of how their exes ACTUALLY see them outside of being a partner. Allen thinks very little of me. He thinks less of his responsibilities to our daughter. Allen has been content to let me shoulder the burden of Alex's deep lows while taking part in her high highs and acting like he's the most involved parent. In his most recent visit here, while discussing that it's his turn to be Alex's primary parent because she fucking needs him, he told me that this isn't something he can just say yes to, he has to talk to his wife. But like...has he given me and Derek any kind of agency or ask about whether or not we're ok with having Alex? No. It's a luxury he thinks he deserves and an obligation he demands I fulfill. It is toxic to the very core to lay all of the responsibility at one parent's feet and then expect them to give you all the space in the world to faff about and do whatever. The last two years have really shown me how toxic his view of our relationship is, because I've called on him in emergenies when I was at my wits end and he ignored me. Couldn't even lie and say he was busy but be heard my message and would respond to me as soon as he could. Allen assumes I am going to handle everything and that he has none responsibility to help. He sends money for Alex's wegovy, but none to help me care for his daughter, and his relationship wih her sucks, too. He's not engaged, and while this blog isn't about heir relationship, it certainly says some pretty fucked up shit when you can't even engage with your kid and you have to be bullied into it. I feel like Allen has turned me into a fucking bully, because if I don't nag him to take an interest in the help I need, he will ignore the fuck out of me. What kind of a fucking depraved, unkind, dick of a human does that to a person that he once loved so much. I remember once listetning...very drunkenly...to the Eels' song Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor, and Allen got so upset about the idea of me dying that he cried for two hours inconsolably. This was in the beginning of our relationship, in the idyllic era where I was 21, he was 23, an the world couldn't touch us for anything. Not poverty, not homelessness, not distance. We loved each other once, and now all I feel is a profound sadness that I was either lied to or blind about who Allen is and how he really thought of me. We are not close like we used to be, though we aren't unfriendly, but I do not like who Allen is, and I am frankly fucking sick of him being such a cunt about how he handles our relationship as parents and as people who know the darkest things about each other and still chose to love each other once upon a time.
Amber just said she is done, so I am going to try an wrap this up. I would like to write about Dan and Derek, but I think I'm just going to choose my relatinship with Derek. You win this round, Dan!
I want to be clear that I deeply and truly love my husband. While I do not think I love him in the limitless way I loved Dan and Allen, I do think I love Derek with an understanding of what love is and a clarity about it thtt I've never had before. I actively choose my husband every day, and there are days where it's hard and I really weigh my options, but more often than not choosing Derek is easy, and I am happy to have him as my husband 11 years later. For whatever it's worth, I am still so wildly attracted to him, he just gets sexier eveery fucking day and I don't know how he manages that, but I'm nott going to complain about it.
However.
I've born the brunt of Derek's extremely fragile ego, and his need for validation...a thing he has vocalized is pathetic in others when he notices it. For several years at the beginning of our marriage, Derek was straddling the line between flirting with other women and inappropriate behavior with other women. While Derek assures me he never once touched another woman sexually since we've been monogamous, in my heart I do not believe him. And it's a horrendous thing, to carry that around. For all outward appearances, Derek has not worked at understanding that the distrust he sowed in me doesn't go away, and he is just...not a trustworthy person to me. He ridicules me and tells me I'm "crazy" about his female friends, has told me he can't evevn ttalk to me about his female friends because he knows how I'll get...but when I remind him that I struggle with his female friendships because of HIM, not them, he rolls his eyes an is outright dismissive. He doesn't understand that I WANT to have a male partner who sees women as valuable and worthy of friendship, because women arevaluable and worthy of friendship. I WANT to have a male partner who doesn't see women a just objects he can fuck as a means of chasing his own validation, or seeking his own pleaure, I want to have a male partner who is capable of real, true friendship with women because of who they are, sex would never be on the menu even if that male partner were single. I want that so fucking badly, because I am tired of hearing about the friend zone like i's a dirty word, and that the worst thing you can have as a man is a female friend who never wants to fuck you. I want the things he thinks I'm crazy about, and it is forever irksome that he can't understand that it's HIM who makes me nervous, not the women he knows. I hear how Derek talks about women, I've heard him when he thought I was asleep eating up all of the heinously vile and sexist stories one of his best friends old him about how he treats women, I heard how Derek talks about women's bodies especially if they're fat, I know how many lines he crossed (or, more upsettingly, I don't), and I don't trust Derek's motives. I really and truly don't. And he is so self assured that he didn't do anything wrong that he still, eight years later, prefers to say the distrust is about me and not him. I don't even get the benfit of his admittance or contrition. I am told that this is all in my head when I tell Derek that I STILL feel ugly and not good enough. I don't feel desired, or like I'm his first choice. Or a choice at all.
I could write more. Again, I love my husband, but he is not a good partner, and I deserve better in a lot of ways. He loves me in the ways that work for him, I think, but so often I find myself wondering if that is actually love he feels for me, or just...habit. In a lot of ways I feel the same way I felt when I was with Dan. Dan bought me things a lot as a means of placation, I think, because he either couldn't give me what I wanted or needed, or didn't want to. But I just want to feel loved by someone, and I feel like I love Derek, but I am not really sure Derek loves me. Maybe the thing I mean to say is that I want to feel loved and CHOSEN. I want to feel chosen, and I don't. I mostly feel like I am afforded things because Derek loves me, but it's the limit of the way he can. Loving me in a way that ACTUALLY puts me first by acknowledging me and seeing me? That's the thing I want. I like being spoiled and having my whims catered to, and make no mistake that Derek works hard as fuck to realize things for me. He is downstairs right now making me a pair of emarald green wings for my studio. But at the same time, I told him I would do them today so he didn't have to, and he told me fuck no, I would do them wrong and I don't have any idea how to space the feathers, and he was not terribly nice about me wanting to be involve when he said he was super tired. And when I said I would help him do them he said, "no, I don't want you tto touch them, you just get frustrated". I can'trelly explain how much that hurts without taking up way more time than I already have, but trust that it stings an doesn't really feel like him doing something FOR ME.
I didn't sell his toxicity becaue I am pressed for time, but it's there. I ould write about it! One day!
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