Fall semester: day fifty-eight
It's been a really rough past few days, though you wouldn't know if you talked to me. When under large amounts of stress and anxiety, I tend to keep walls up. Thick walls, walls built to keep everyone and everything out. And, additionally, my mind doesn't necessarily work as well as it should. Anxiety and stress begets depression and sleeplessness, and occasionally makes me sick -- it batters down my immune system, as well. Running headlong into Hell Month, as I tend to call November (as well as April, in the Spring semester), this is bad. I have way too much to do, and not nearly enough time to get it all finished. Hence why I'm awake at 3:20 AM on a Wednesday morning working on no less than three different things for my classes.
This week started out with Daisy and I having problems. Mind you, Daisy and I have a wonderful relationship. It's the only relationship I've ever been in -- in my entire life -- where there hasn't been any conflict, there haven't been any real "fights" (disagreements, yes; irritations on both sides, yes; squabbles, yes, but no real fights), and it's the most stable relationship I've ever had. We love each other, we know we love each other, and that's all we need. We've always had our differences, both interest-wise and ethically (read: she's not nerdy in the least, and very staunchly vegan), but these haven't really been huge concerns. We compromise, we realize that each of us is our own person, etc.
I say this now because for about twelve hours between Sunday and Monday, we were broken up. Again.
If it feels like we've been through this twice before, we have. To recap, Daisy and I were officially together for a short time in June. Then again in July, for about the same amount of time. After a few months of trying to figure one another out and mostly succeeding, we got together officially again in the beginning of October and have stayed together since.
You may think that with this rollercoaster of on-again, off-again status, that the statement above about us being stable is laughable. In reality, we needed those times. We needed those back-and-forth scenarios, the on-and-off, to help stabilize us. To let us sort ourselves out. To realize that yes, we're both a little wrecked when it comes to our emotional states sometimes, and that's okay.
I am under a lot of stress and anxiety right now, as I mentioned before. I can keep a cool exterior, and can be relatively laid-back in my day-to-day life, but underneath everything is bubbling. Underneath, everything is ready to boil over. I've got way too many proverbial balls in the air, and way too many things to take care of between now and finals week -- grading two more sets of papers, creating a final exam, scheduling and attending a "reader's theater" for my Playwriting class, giving a presentation in Surrealism, writing a paper for Surrealism, see a play this weekend and write a paper on it, rewriting my own play for Playwriting (which must be done by Monday, and is part of what I'm doing tonight), registering for spring classes, having conferences with my students, and in there somewhere trying to get enough sleep, take care of the household chores/bills/shopping, and trying to spend enough time with Daisy. It's all exhausting, both mentally and physically. I can barely keep up as it is, and every day something else seems to be added to the list of shit I absolutely have to do and can't get out of. And my friends wonder why I never go out with them after class on any given night of the week. I have way, way too much to do.
Daisy, meanwhile, is losing her job. Her last day of work is Saturday. She hasn't been able to find a replacement job as of yet, which severely stresses her out (despite the fact that she tells me she doesn't let stress get to her) and to top all of that off, this afternoon she had to get two new tires put on her car at the cost of about $220 or so, further carving into her finances. Daisy lives with her parents, so she will still have a place to live, but the entire situation is less than helpful, and I know it bothers her more than she lets on. It must.
Because of all of these things, neither of us are in the greatest of mental states at this point. Again, when I'm anxious, I get depressed, and when I get depressed I not only look for things to "go wrong," but I expect them to -- sometimes very vocally. The entire discussion that led to our twelve-hour breakup was basically precipitated by me saying something along the lines of "Don't worry, I'll start to drive you crazy eventually, and sooner or later you'll end up hating me. Everyone else I've ever been with has."
Note: for the most part, this is true. I've been in four serious relationships over the course of my life. Of those four women, Daisy included, two of them now despise me. So it's a decent average, at least. 50/50-ish.
Anyway. That set off a chain reaction of a discussion where all of my fears, apprehensions, and irritations about my relationship with Daisy played out in real-time.
I love you. You're perfect. You're great, she told me.
But really, I'm not. As much as I love Daisy, having her -- or anyone else -- tell me I'm perfect for any reason troubles me. A lot. I know what she means. I know it's a compliment, I know it means she's very happy and content with us. Emotionally invested, in love, everything's good. And I feel the same way about her. But I do have my flaws. I have many, many flaws. I have flaws that she overlooks, that she ignores because she loves me. I know this. Everyone has flaws they overlook in their partner. And I am my own worst critic -- not just when it comes to my writing, but myself as a person. While I do have high self-esteem and a bit of an ego (anyone who knows me well could tell you that), I am also just as critical of my faults. I don't do anything to change said faults, mind you, but I am indeed critical of them. Self-loathing, I suppose you could say. With a dash of "eh, fuck it" thrown into the mix as well, for good measure. And with Daisy, everything has been going so well -- we've been so happy together, so content -- that I subconsciously start looking for cracks at the seams, start looking for signs that everything is too good to be true.
That's where the problems started this weekend, but it goes back much further than that.
I've been hurt a lot, folks. Emotionally and spiritually. Taking a quick browse through my blog posts here over the course of the past year or so will tell you that 2012 has not been the best year on record, and most of 2011 was fucking terrible as well. The hits, as it seems, just keep coming -- in the past six months alone, I've lost one girlfriend, lost my best friend and "sister," ran myself almost completely out of money, had to sell a ton of my possessions (including my beautiful Dean guitar) and get a loan from my parents to stay afloat, and later had to spend $1400 on car repairs and tires just to keep the Monte Carlo on the road. I've been bleeding money like water through a sieve, my last year of graduate school has been less than pleasant so far (for the most part, anyway), and I have no clue where I'm going to be six months from now when I graduate, something that is also incredibly scary to me.
And, somehow, in the midst of this turmoil, I meet Daisy. And we hit it off. And we fall in love, and it's really good. Something inside me was waiting, preparing for the other proverbial shoe to drop, since my luck generally betrays me at some point once I begin to get happy and comfortable in life. Something inside me told me wait for it, Brandon; something bad will happen, something will sour. You're rarely wrong.
So, under stress, I subconsciously started looking for cracks, for warning signs, for red flags. Things which would give me that "a-ha!" moment that would prove to me that somehow, my cynicism was right. When I didn't find any outright, my mind started creating them. She's not nerdy enough. She doesn't share any real interests with me. Her taste in music is frightening. She doesn't get and/or appreciate my sense of humor enough. We don't share the same ethical and health concerns, insomuch that I smoke and am not vegan like she is. Mind you, none of these have been problems in the past -- if anything, they've been minor irritations that I've noted and have mostly gotten over, if not completely, or they're things that we've addressed in compromises and understandings long ago. Yet some part of me wouldn't let it go, some part of my wounded, fatigued and beat down mind told me that these things are important, they're things which will eat at you over and over for the rest of your life -- when, really, they won't. At all. If I had big concerns, I would've voiced them long ago. But I don't. Daisy is wonderful. It's those little things that drove me nuts, the things that weren't even worth getting worked up about. But, in my mental state then, they seemed much larger than they actually are.
Regardless, all of this came to a head on Sunday night. All of my apprehensions, all of my issues exploded forth.
This, of course, was my fault. On Monday morning, with a clearer mind, I apologized, told her I loved her and that I was sorry, and asked for her forgiveness, asked that we let the events of the night before be tossed out the window and be forgotten about. She understood. Of course she did; she's Daisy. She loves me. She doesn't want to lose me any more than I ever want to lose her, no matter what. We were fine again. We were okay again. And I learned a valuable lesson about letting my ragged mind, on little sleep, dictate my thoughts, actions, and impulses. No, I'm not the best man I can be, not for myself or for anyone else -- including Daisy -- but I am learning, slowly, that not everyone is out to get me, and that there are sometimes things or people that are good for me, that sometimes there aren't bad things to be found.
Daisy loves me unconditionally. She doesn't care about the things we don't agree on, doesn't care about my little quirks or my nerdiness, my taste in humor or music, any of it. She loves me for who I am, all of that stuff included. This is unique for me. It's scary for me. Nobody else ever has. There's always been caveats, things not to say, not to talk about, not to ask, not to do. Every other relationship I've ever been in has had set rules. With Daisy? All that matters is that we love each other. Everything else is unimportant. Everything else. And I'm finally realizing that now.
She later asked me, as per a comment one of her friends made, if I'm frightened that Daisy is "the one."
"Yes," I immediately replied. I didn't even have to think about it. Yes, Daisy may be "the one," even though I don't necessarily believe in "the one," and yes, that thought does scare me on some level.
Regardless, we're fine now, and still very content and happy. She's coming in next weekend to see our "reader's theater" performance for Playwriting, which will be on the night of the 16th. The next day, Rae and Jay are planning to come up here to Newton so that we can go out to dinner and go to the discount grocery store here in town that I've brought up numerous times. She wanted to come down this weekend (I wanted her to come see the play all of us have to see and write a paper on, and we're going to the Saturday show) but she can't, as it's her last day of work.
When I leave the house in about 45 minutes, I have a long day ahead of me, as well. I have to grade about five or six papers this morning (the remnants of them, people who turned them in after I'd already gone home from campus on Thursday) as well as do some other around-the-office stuff. It's a Wednesday, so of course I am stuck on campus for fifteen hours. While I did sleep eight hours last night (3PM or so to 11PM or so), I've been awake since, taking care of various tasks like laundry and homework stuff. By the time I get home tonight, I will have been awake for almost 24 hours straight, if not a full 24 hours straight. Despite this, I am fairly energized right now...with only 17 hours or so to stay awake. Am I tired? Yes. I'm always tired. It's part of being a grad student.
But, on the plus side, Obama won the election. This means, as my officemate Zac wrote on Facebook last night, that none of us have to move to Canada for at least four more years. It also means that we won't be under a Mormon Republican dictatorship waging a war against women's vaginas and what they can do with them, amongst many other nightmare scenarios. It also means that hey, we may eventually get universal healthcare in the United States, just like all other first world countries but us already have. While I'm sure the man is fine as a person, I cannot fathom why any intelligent individual would vote him based on his policies. Sorry, Republicans, we need healthcare for everyone. Sorry, Republicans, we need to keep abortion legal, get out of the wars we're in, and make sure separation of church and state is still upheld. Yes, everyone should be allowed to marry whoever they so choose. Yes, we need Medicare, Medicaid, and well-funded public schools -- as well as well-funded and supported programs for the arts and sciences. So, this morning, I am breathing a huge sigh of relief. Let's hope Romney just, well, goes away now.
Anyway, yeah. That's my blog post.
And boom goes the dynamite.
