BACK TO MY ART

Letter 0001

I’ve been finding it hard to write something with ease like I usually can when it comes to things that bring on a lot of emotion. I’m trying to break out of the headspace where I put validating your emotions over mine. My therapist said I need to write this unfiltered, to remove the burden of worrying about what others think or feel about what I have to say or feel. So here I go…

Often when we were together I tried to hold space for both of us but if felt as if you had no space for me. If I tried to hold space for myself it was always received as an issue of our relationship, like that it was happening at all showed that our relationship was flawed and that was somehow my fault and that there was no criticism to be received on your end.

It was okay if you were upset but once I’m upset? You’re talking about how you don’t think you can do this anymore and how much you love me but how I’m not enough for you in my current state (a state where I felt like I was healing and not letting insecurities drive my motivations). I kept trying to patch this unhealthy attachment without sacrificing myself and my needs, and I surely ended up finding myself doing just that. Sacrificing some of my needs. Even though I continued to fight for us I still had yet to realize that I mentally was done and came to expect the bad things and got by mentally by “going with the flow”. I was fighting for something doomed to fail.

There was a big imbalance when it came to reciprocation. Something that shouldve tipped me off to the doom of us was the difference of us engaging with each other’s friends and loved ones.

Very rarely you would come along to my friends get togethers, yet they treated you as a friend they’d known for a long time. They were incredibly thoughtful and maybe got to interact with you 5 hours every couple of months.

Whereas with your friends, I would go on road trips to meet up with your friends and go to different events, house warmings, and cities whenever they’d pop up. There was one time where I didn’t go with and that was towards the end of the relationship because we were currently not getting along and I thought we both would do well to have time apart, you could get whatever support your friends had to offer you, and I could get my alone time that I soooo craved.

There is also the fact that there was like a pattern to anything we did together. We would go out together, where ever you wanted to go, if I asked to tack on a trip to somewhere I wanted to go the immediate tone shift of our day would happen, so I stopped asking to go places I needed unless it was dire (like urgent care) or if I was feeling brave (dispensary or grocery store).

When we would go to the places that you liked they were also places that interested me so that wasn’t the issue. The issue I had was when we would see something and I’d be like, “This is neat”, and you would be like, “Do you want it?”. I came to know this was like code for ‘Do you want me to buy it for you?’. So I would say, “No I don’t”, and you’d be like, “So you don’t want this? But look at this. You’re saying you DON’T want this?”. You’d always end up carrying it throughout and buying me something on our little outings and it usually wasn’t cheap after you treated yourself and me. I hated these gifts because I knew I was gonna hear later about how tight money is and that you “Need to stop buying stupid shit”.

I sincerely think you have an addiction to spending money/gambling. Even with out the things you’d pick up for me, you spent so much more on yourself on things you would later say, “Why did I buy this shiny item? I’m never gonna do anything with it”. I recognize that there is a seperate underlying issue here for you, but when you’re regretting your purchases later and asking me why I didn’t stop you (even when I did try to reason with you). I never asked for the gifts, in fact I would advise against it and state how it was not a need and I would be just fine going home without anything because I was here to sight see and spend time with you. I hope you realize it’s not fair to put that respondisibility on me or anyone else.

You know what mostly fucks me up when I think about it, is your response when I didn’t want to do any sexual activities. Gradually you would become more disappointed as time went on. I’m gray-asexual and have always been open about that. And maybe sometimes its a bummer when things don’t pan out how you expect or hope. However, there were a lot of red flags that I was feeling and had yet to explicitly identify, but what they were was enough to turn me off to the idea of making love with you I suppose. I’ve been thinking about what things contributed to this feeling, and there are two things I can assure had something to do with it.

One, you flaking on being with me for my surgery. I was very repetetive and informative to everyone in the house of what day my surgery was/the time/place. I truly wanted you there with me. We had gotten in some small disagreement/tiff and you decided to go back on the schedule for my surgery day so you could have a day at home to regulate. I would’ve been pretty understanding of the need to have time to yourself until I was saying to you a week before how our morning at the hospital was gonna be and you hit me with the, “What? You never told me what date your surgery was. I’m unable to schedule it off now, if only I had known earlier…” type of shit. The way when you were the only one home for my recovery you would roll your eyes when I would ask you to refill my water. We are ALL gonna grow old and disabled someday. I would hope as partners we would help each other in our illnesses and ailments if it’s in our capabilities. It struck a chord with me for sure. I wanted to keep it under wraps so as to not shake the boat but the boat was shaking inside me for sure I learned.

Secondly, we lived with my sister, and you said some not so nice things about her. There was a time where you were talking to me and tearing her down to build me up. I can’t believe I let that make me feel better in the moment. Looking back it’s disgusting. The weird shit you would indirectly say about her to her cats around me. You were pretty straight up about how you didn’t like her as well. That’s when I looked back on some of the things you’ve said and I realized if you hate my sister you don’t truly love me, no matter what you may say. We are so alike.

I also remember the time that earlier in the day you asked if we could do sexual stuff later and I said sure. Later came around and I said I didn’t want to/that we weren’t gonna do anything like that because I was tired and just wanted to fall asleep. Your demeanor and tone changed and you moved away from me and told me that you were upset and that I shouldn’t say Yes if I’m just gonna say No later. Typing that out I feel so fucking stupid staying with you after that night. In that moment I really thought to myself that it would be a good idea to leave the bed and just cut the shit out of myself to cope with how worthless I felt in that moment. It had been so long since someone had that effect on me.

I won’t go into detail about this other night but I will mention the very last time we had sex, it was the most aggressive and painful time we’ve had together and I felt like you were h*te f****** me at that point. Looking back you disgust me. What I saw in you when we got together was never there. You just wanted some pussy and someone who you found easy to manipulate. It truly felt to me that you would throw gifts at me to increase the chances of me fucking you like you were throwing diamonds into a pool in game to up your chance at pulling the lewd SSR+ character of the month.

I can’t begin to describe how freeing it felt to no longer be attached to you. I didn’t have to answer to anyone about everything I was doing. Buying groceries for myself wasn’t something I anticipated to be so different and better, but it was. When I talk to my partner nowadays, I find myself feeling anxious about very mundane conversations and am always relieved when certain things don’t trigger a huge ordeal and I can have the safe, patient, understanding relationship I have envisioned for myself and that I deserve to have. I hate that I became so familiar with what we had and accepted it for as long as I did.

I’m gonna end this with a memory we shared together. We were driving, I was the passenger as always, and somebody driving in front of us was pissing you off. So you yelled at them. This time you said something about how they were “r*t*rded”. I was shocked at your choice of words and didn’t say anything and kind of just clammed up/shutdown. That pissed you off and you pulled over and had a bit of a meltdown yourself. I felt uncomfortable and tried to process it/not say anything reactionary. And that pissed you off because it felt like I was giving you the cold shoulder. Once I started explaining my regulation process thats where the back and forth and the cycle would begin. Just like every time. You are such a dreadful person who won’t help themselves. Leaving whoever you latch onto drained with you and making it their problem and treating it like it’s their fault. Good riddance.

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