To the friend I never thought I’d find, the girl I never thought I’d heart, the woman I never thought I’d need, and the other half I never knew I was truly missing~
I woke up this morning with a sickening feeling in my stomach. I had turned over in the night and noticed my girl laying there next to me and was overwhelmed with that warm feeling of how much I care about this girl and how much I just wanted to hold Her. Then, memories of how we had ended our previous night came rushing in like a flood I couldn’t keep at bay. I remembered everything, all the words that were said and how we had reached an entirely new level in our fights… somewhere we had never gone before but that I knew we needed desperately to come back from if we were going to have any kind of happiness in our lives. All of the good memories, the cherished moments that make me lover Her so incredibly much were overshadowed in that moment by the endless nightmare that we’re living in; it all felt like a bad dream. I would have given anything to wake up in that moment, for it all to have been a dream and for us to once again be the happy couple that we were back in 2009. Oshkosh marks the 5 year mark since we were the happiest we’ve ever been, and it finds us at the worst point we’ve ever been able to achieve to date. How did we get Here? How do we get back? Questions upon questions upon questions with seemingly no answers in sight.
I rolled out of bed knowing what was next. For Christmas last year She had given me a picture with all the dates that were most important to us and told me that there was a letter in it that was to be opened when it felt like our relationship was about to crumble. I had avoided it and passed off many of our fights up until now, but this morning I woke up knowing that if there were ever a time to read whatever was in that frame, it was today. So, I opened up that picture frame and found a letter from Her. I sat in our bathroom reading Her words poured out on paper only 7 months ago. It caught me entirely off guard… it threw me more than I ever expected it to when I read how She had come to choose a Red Robin gift card because of everything that it meant to us and the memories that we had built together. Without meaning to (I NEVER cry… I didn’t cry when I lost my ex over and over, even at the end. I don’t cry over emotional stuff like this, I never really have even in this relationship) tears started pouring down my face as I read Her words: ”Tonight is for remembering… remembering what brought us together and why we said we’d never let go. No matter how bad it is right now, it’s nothing. Nothing compared to what we’ve already gone through. Girlfriend, parents, distance… we did the impossible, anything now is just a bump in the road.” And looking back on the words that were said last night, it felt like anything but a bump in the road… but there it was, Her reminder from the past telling me that we would make it through this… to keep hanging on.
I bit the tears back and knew that whatever it was that was keeping us apart, it had to end. I didn’t know how to describe to Her what I was really feeling… why I was really acting the way that I act lately… because I don’t even know myself. I literally believe that I suffer from multi-personality disorder, because the way that I am when I wake up in the morning and the way that I am most of the time is night and day from the person that I become when She pushes exactly the right buttons and says exactly the right things. At that point, everything fades and it’s like I lose myself in someone else… and I hate it. – She wants me to be the guy that just gives Her what She wants… and I want to be that guy. But then, then She goes and pushes the wrong buttons until I literally want nothing more than to end it all… but why? I can’t fight with who She becomes… because who I become will push it to the literal end. I want that part of me gone so badly I would give anything in the world. – Last night, after a huge fight about control and how She wants all of it, I went out and ran for an hour. I kept thinking over and over how I can totally give up control to Her… how I can let Her run things and make it a 50/50 partnership. I tried for literally the entire hour to peg what exactly it is that causes me to go from totally willing to have a partner and compromise to 100% shut down and and pushing Her away at all costs. I couldn’t totally pin it down. – I think it must be the way that She responds to me. She has spent the past 3 years pinning down exactly what She doesn’t like in me and drawing conclusions about the way that I am, but they are entirely based on that 30% of me that will push it to the end. They are fully based on a guy that doesn’t care and wants everything his way… She makes these ideas in Her mind and then when I want to do something a certain way, She responds with hostility and entitlement control, and that is the one trigger that pushes me into that person every single time. If I could just get in control of that person and reign him in, this could be resolved… but just like She can’t change who She is, I can’t seem to control that. That guy, whoever he is, is entirely willing to throw this relationship away when all I want more than anything in the world is to keep it… to cherish it and to murder him and bury him in the darkest, deepest hole I can find. I’m sitting here at the edge of a cliff hanging onto a rope with our relationship dangling on the other side, and it’s like he comes up and pushes me that much closer to the edge. My toes are hanging over the edge now and my hands are fatigued and worn… I see the fall coming and I would literally give up everything to prevent it.
If I could have 100% certainty that we would be okay and that this would all resolve if I gave up complete control, I could do that. I could be entirely secondary to Her decisions and sacrifice all control in my life, if I knew I could keep Her from that, that the devil in me would be entirely and eternally destroyed, and everything would be okay.
But I don’t know that, and we’re here with Her pushing and pushing to get more control and for equality and rights and what not. She thinks I want Her to approach me “asking” for permission… I don’t want Her to ask for anything. I want to partner with Her and talk through everything with Her and come to decisions together. I compare our relationship to that of a close friend who lives with us and what She doesn’t see is that he and I get along so well because he’s willing to talk it out with me, explain fully logically where he’s coming from, and HALF THE TIME I REALIZE HE’S RIGHT AND WE GO WITH HIS WAY. All I want from Her is to be willing to logically talk it out and to go with the logical solution. – That opens another can of worms because apparently we have different logic, but in the event that we actually do that and we come up with different logic I think we should meet in the middle. That will never happen the way that She goes about it though because it becomes a matter of Her “right” to have things be this way and Her “right” to get control. Push me for control and I’ll push back taking more and more. She wonders why I’ve taken more and more over the years, and what She doesn’t see is that She’s pushing the fairness button when all that does it takes more away. If She used reverse psychology or something different, She could push things back in the other direction.
I say that like it’s something I’ve decided… it’s not. It’s the way I am and I hate it, but just like I can’t expect Her to change the way She is, I have spent 23 years and haven’t found a way to change that part of me yet. If I ever do, I’ll praise God and change my life… but right now I can’t. Right now I know that there is an angry, testosterone driven side of me that has triggers that I wish I knew how to control, and there’s the guy that She fell in love with who wants nothing more than to love Her and give up everything for Her. I don’t know how but I have to find a way to get him primary and front before my dark passenger pushes me over that cliff and everything I know is gone away.
I came downstairs after getting ready for work with every intention of writing every word on this page when I got into the office. Then, I found the second letter. – After I had said the worst words I ever remember saying to anyone and the most damaging words ever to our relationship, I had fallen asleep from pure exhaustion. Yes, part of all of this is the fact that I’m STILL more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life from the past year and a half of school and life, and the more exhausted I am, the more that person comes out in me. At any rate, She had come downstairs and written this 4 page letter to me explaining everything, every side from where She stands. The letter was much less optimistic than Her letter from december. I was reading the words of a girl who was speaking from an angle that I know far too well; from absolute despair. I was hearing the words of someone who hates that side of them and sees what it’s doing but has no idea how to fix it. I guess I knew this already, but a part of me saw the girl that was facing the exact same terror I described above, the exact same inability to control the sides of Her that push the buttons, that try desperately to get what She wants. I truly believe She doesn’t do the things She does to set me off on purpose, I know it has to be beyond Her control… but what do we do when we both have zero control of the two conflicting sides that make us into the monsters that go boom in the night? How do we come back from that?
I saw a girl terrified of losing me in that letter, and no matter how scared She was I too was all too worried about what will happen when I’m pushed from the cliff. What She doesn’t get is the underlying knowledge I’ve had all along: we will always be together. Even as I hear the words come out of my mouth in our fights, that side of me knows that it’s the minority to a greater part of me that will sacrifice everything to keep Her. It knows that when it comes down to it, She and I will be together and there’s nothing it can do about it. Even if it does eventually push me off the ledge and I fall into despair with our relationship, She will be falling with me and wherever we land, we will land together. I can see how it must be so increasingly terrifying for Her, not knowing what I know, not seeing what I see and not having the ultimate assurance that at the end of the day we would make it. I can see how it must be horrible for Her without that realization… but reality is that I don’t want to fall into nothingness with Her… I want to pull our relationship back from that ledge, destroy that side of me and help Her do the same, and go back to when we were just kids in love, when the summer was full of mistakes we wouldn’t learn from. I want to feel that first kiss steal the breath from my lips, and I’ll never let the last one tear us apart.
So where from here? How do we make this happen? The answer is: I don’t know. I never did and despite how much I may push that I have all the answers and I know literally fucking everything, I really don’t. I am more unsure about this than I’ve ever been about anything in my entire life. I know only two things: 1. We will end up together, if it kills me. And 2: See number 1.
She has mentioned seeing a counselor. I fully intend to do that with Her, I really do. We actually sadly don’t have enough money to see one right now (we’re more broke than we’ve ever been in our entire lives… it’s freaking the hell out of me right now), but I Will see one with Her within the next 6 months. Somehow, someway, it will happen. – Secondly, we will carve out time and talk this out. However that happens, we will make time and we will truly find a way to compromise and start working on not bringing out the demons in each other, however we have to sacrifice to make that happen. We will be okay, and we will survive.
My mother Always told me never ever ever ever ever to get married before we were 25, because people change so much and are still developing until they’re 25. Her and I always said that we were changing together… that we defied that rule. Maybe we were, maybe we weren’t. What I do know is that we can still change ourselves to make this work. If we can’t control the demons in us, so be it. They’re the minority and what do have control over is the rest of us. However we have to talk things out, I will NEVER let our relationship get to the point it was at last night. I can’t. I see so much more now than I ever did then.
She said “If we’re gonna make this work, you gotta let me inside even though it hurts. Don’t hide the broken parts that I need to see”
She said “Like it or not it’s the way it’s gotta be… You gotta love yourself if you can ever love me”
I never would have imagined when I played that song that eventually became OUR song 6 years ago that I would come to live by those words. I never imagined that I’d see that strangled smile fall from Her face. She couldn’t possibly know how much it actually kills me that I hurt Her the way I did, the way that I do. I didn’t realize then that the actual worst part would be not even knowing what I had done… what I was doing… and let’s be real: I have given Her far above and beyond a million reasons to go… I’m not quite sure there’s even one single reason for Her to stay… but I’ll settle for half, or even a quarter?
With tears filling my eyes as I write this, I want more than anything to push the nightmare away, hold Her in my arms and show Her the world through my eyes, to make Her see that I really will do Whatever it takes to turn this around. She doesn’t think I get it, but I know what’s at stake and if She thinks that I believe it’s all Her, She’s far from understanding that I realize how much this is me, that 75% of this me, and that I’ve let Her down. But if She can find it in Her to give me one more chance… to believe that I can somehow pull this together and change me, kill that side of me and pull our relationship back from the edge… then hand and hand, I’ll keep us together; ~Whatever it takes~.
When that song became our song, it was beautiful because of the moments we had shared, not because of the significance of the lyrics. They really weren’t that applicable then other than the fact that I was leaving my girlfriend for Her and doing what it took to keep us together. I never dreamed I would come to sing each word from my heart as if they were my own, and I never dreamed it would be the song that brought tears streaming down my eyes reading the lyrics. But it is, and somehow, we’ve built a relationship that the strongest of demons can’t destroy. I love this girl with all of my heart, and no matter how bad it seems, we will make it through to the very end, hand in hand. How? By looking back on everything that got us where we our. By eating out at the restaurant that founded our relationship. By singing the words of OUR song through the sentences of our words telling our own story, a story begging to be kept together; and by ultimately, choosing to, above all else, ~Never Forget~.
I Love Her, till death do us part~
