TW: abuse, suicide, self-harm, sex, mental health related stuff
It’s been almost 6 weeks since my 2 year tumultuous, co-dependent, live-in relationship, which never really stopped feeling like a never-ending onslaught of emotional warfare-ended, officially. If I’m going to be honest with myself, and now seems like the time to finally do that, I checked out on Halloween of last year, when they left the house angrily as I lay sobbing on the floor after a particularly poor attempt at telling them I wasn’t happy and things had to change. So that meant experiencing three months of existing in mostly a haze of depressive, dishonest, indifference, refusing to accept the inevitable, maybe still hoping that miraculously something would change. Once in a while my rage would bubble over and I would scratch out an angry journal entry, which I would then stuff in some hidden corner, under the underwear in my plastic target dresser, in my laptop case, my bedside table, etc.. I’d revisit them in a more cordial state and be shocked and afraid of the pent up anger and resentment I was capable of unleashing when I felt provoked.
The relationship before this one had been a nightmare. He was an addict, had unsuccessfully been to rehab, had untreated ADHD, untreated clinical depression, never cleaned, never cooked, remained perpetually stoned, blew through his paycheck every month (thank god he has rich parents), and was fired from two jobs during our time splitting rent together. He refused to go to therapy, see a psychiatrist, or go on any medication. And, he was a terminally online gamer which, who knows, may very well have been the root of it all. He was truly repulsive but casual acquaintances thought he was pretty and charming. He asked me to move in with him on the 2nd, maybe 3rd date. Lockdown had just started and we were only seeing each other. I was, unfortunately, entranced by his erratic intensity. The week before we started renting our room in a Berkeley sharehouse together I saw the first obvious signs of his manic-depressive tendencies. He took acid, temporarily lost his mind, and made me stay overnight with him. I drove from Fremont to El Cerrito as soon as I got his call, not even taking the time to do my makeup. I’ll never forget the confused look in his blown out, tripped out eyes when he saw me bare-faced for the first time, truly horrifying. I also met his family at his younger half-sister’s birthday party in their three (maybe four?) story North Berkeley abode, where she was accidentally gifted two pairs of airpods. He broke down sobbing in the car afterwards in total devastation that he would never be loved and cared for like his sister. He said, as I tried to comfort him, “You probably don’t want to move in with me anymore now that you see how I really am.” I shook my head and tried to repress a wave of fear.
Christmas Eve of 2020 my ex slit his wrists with a butcher’s knife in the kitchen of our new downtown Berkeley studio apartment. This was after I had chastised him for not doing the laundry all day and then proceeding to leave it in a damp pile in the closet. He chased after me as I fled from the apartment and threw my keys at the window of my car. He stalked the area until I came back in and forced the bathroom door open so I would have no where to hide from his insanity. The night ended at 4am with me holding him as he sobbed on the bathroom floor. I woke up an hour later to work my Christmas day shift at the cafe. I broke up with him a month later and it didn’t take long until he did it all over again.
Initially, my next relationship felt like a dream. We had harbored a secret attraction for six months, and finally being able to act on it was heavenly. But there were always red flags and I chose to ignore them because “nobody’s perfect”, “relationships take work”, “there are always compromises”, “people can get better”, and so forth. We tried to put off the idea of moving in together for as long as we could but with us both living with exes it felt inevitable. I felt uncomfortable filling the space in the apartment that their ex used to take up, but it was still better than living with my suicidal ex. Maybe three days after I had moved with my scant five boxes and complete lack of furniture, they sat me down on the bed and told me they weren’t doing okay and that we should break up. I was in complete shock-I asked them if they still wanted me. They said something along the lines of, “I don’t know how to answer that”. I wheeled my suitcase full of just the essentials across Berkeley campus and back to my exes apartment. Even he was shocked. Less than 24 hours later they tearfully asked for me back and I, with my severely damaged sense of self-worth and identity, obliged, and moved back.
We could never spend more than five hours together without getting in a fight. Usually it happened like this-1.) I would say something that made them feel insecure, 2.) They would give me the cold shoulder, 3.) After much prodding, perhaps 1+ days of it, they would tell me how I triggered them, and 4.) I would apologize. For the entirety of our relationship I was afraid of hanging out with friends for longer than a few hours at a time in fear that I was truly an extremely insensitive and callous person who was destined to push everybody in my life away. I think I can be, but not as much as they would have liked me to believe. Despite this, I really did love them more than I had loved anyone. I kept going.
In June of 2022 they told me that in the first month or two of us being together, they had cheated on me. They didn’t use that word though. When I said “I can’t believe you cheated on me”, they responded with a corrective, “I was unfaithful”. Unfaithful<Cheating. The first night I was devastated. The next day I was angry, and they couldn’t take it. They called up their two friends who reassured them that I was overreacting, and when I spoke to them again they stared into me with a defiant, angry look of ‘Break up with me already, see if I care’. I didn’t want to. Somehow I still wanted to hold on. We were beginning to search for our next apartment and I canceled a tour to my dream spot-then tore up my throat in a solo karaoke room for two hours. Things were never the same and I wish that’s where it had ended.
Now I'm waiting out the lease on our last apartment together. 74 more days. Sounds like a lot but I’m sure it’ll go by quickly just like the rest of these last three years. People tell me that I’m all the better for what I’ve gone through-more confident, intelligent, brave, interesting. I think they’re right but I also think that, if given the option, I would give it all up to have had an easier time of things. I’m graduating in two months and the only thing I really have to show for it is the degree itself. I want to be angry at myself for wasting time while my peers are finishing up their theses, getting into grad school, setting up their first real jobs, already with internships and lab experience under their belts. I don’t want to be a victim of my circumstances, it’s much more attractive to be able to say that despite it all, I thrived. But I haven’t been thriving in the way that a 22 year old Cal student is supposed to-even though I’ve been fighting every step of the way. Being able to afford living in the university bubble, financially or otherwise, is a great privilege. My dad and the working class republicans know this, and they resent those who can.
When I got into Cal my dad told me that going there was “the worst thing I could do”, that I would turn out “even worse” than I already was, and that I wouldn’t end up making money with an English degree. I still remember those words every day that I step onto campus. I vacillated between believing he was right, that this was all an inevitable waste of time and money, and feeling like I didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. I’m now a geriatric undergrad senior, because I took three semesters off and an extra semester to finish. When I started I was a month shy of turning 19 and expecting to graduate by 20. I turned 22 last September. It took me two extra years, and it’s been three years since this-the pandemic, my adult life, my attempt at independence and resulting lack thereof-all started.
Three years of doing odd jobs and customer service-petsitting, babysitting, uber eats, barista, then bartender. Three years of living alone for the first time, and without financial assistance, as my family moved two states over into the midwest. Three years of apartment hunting, seven different housemates, five different spots. Three years of fighting for two seperate relationships which I didn’t know were not worth fighting for. Three years of self-doubt, anxiety, insecurity, depression, of being in and out of therapy. Three years of silently wiping away tears on the train, in class, at work. Three years of screaming in the car. Three years of friends made and lost and missed.
For many years I thought I hated people and I thought I wanted to be as alone as I could be. Now I know I don’t and I want to embrace the world and vice versa-which unfortunately is not really ‘a thing’, as humanity is starkly divided by our many differences and some people are going to dislike me and vice versa. So now I must walk the tricky tightrope of trying to give love to as many people as possible but only if they deserve it. Here I speak mostly of friendship, which I remain convinced of the merits of, which is not the case for my feelings on romantic love. Nonetheless, I’m back on tinder in search of somebody to temporarily relieve me of my sudden lack of intimacy. I was already burned/disappointed/traumatized severely on the second “date” with the first guy, who went to Cal to read Judith Butler with Judith Butler and forgot all his leftist feminist education (I guess) when he completely disregarded any and all boundaries that I might have. I was left feeling used, young (especially compared to him…), stupid, and, even worse, completely unknown. None of the physical stuff feels the same when you know you’re unknown. I’m now wondering if I’m a sex and love addict or if this is how everyone feels despite what my Mormon upbringing would lead me to assume. Right now, I really wish that I didn’t need sex or love, I’d rather avoid all the ensuing drama/conflict and be a stone-cold girl-boss bitch.
I think I’ll end this here, I hope whoever reads this enjoys it. Thank you for everyone who has cared for me in these past three years. I don’t know if I’ll continue doing this but I hope that I can/do.