bandhag
gibbon-arsed ramblings of a hopeless underachiever


Saturday, July 28, 2012

This is why  

This is why I swore a long time time ago I would never, ever get involved with anyone again. And I meant it. I really did.

It's too good.

And it's too new.

We haven't sat and had that uncomfortable conversation where we lay it all on the line - what we think, what we're doing, all of that.

Which means that all those doubts creep in and drive you mental. Ok, so now you're calling me your girlfriend. But you haven't actually asked me to be your girlfriend. And you seem to be going out of your way to avoid meeting anyone either of us knows, or telling anyone you're in a relationship (so far as I know, but I don't know because you keep me at arm's length regarding your life). So...

I know that you're really good friends with your ex. And I'm totally fine with that. And you know that I don't have a problem with people being friends with their exes. And yet you told me you were on a day out with an old friend, but didn't mention she's your ex (even though this is something I could deduce/find out very easily). Because...? It makes me really uncomfortable that you weren't honest about it.

And you're still logging on to dating sites all the time.


Right now, I'm happy to put this down to the uncertainty I've built up over several years of dealing with arseholes. Hell, 'happy'? I'd be fucking ecstatic if that was what it was.

But there's the other stuff. You *never* ask anything about me. At all. From how my day was to where I grew up to what my favourite colour is. If I ever mention myself in conversation - an experience, or a fact about me - you literally blank it. Not even that you act uninterested, just that you simply don't respond. Past the two first dates, you've never mentioned when we're going to see each other again - it's always been very vague, and down to me to actually ask for the date and initiate sorting out the details. If there were two ways to tell someone you're not interested, those would be them.

But then, there's so much else that is absolutely awesome. There's no-one else I've met who I've been more intellectually, sexually, politically and culturally compatible with. we have ridiculous amounts in common. You make me laugh like the best of my friends do. Maybe even more so. I feel excited and energised by your company. I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard as I do when I'm with you, nor felt such a genuine awe and joy at the world around me. You show me things I've never seen before. You make me feel smart, but teach me new things all the time. I literally wait for the next time I can see you, because I know that no matter what we do, it's going to be amazing. There will be something weird, or something funny, or something romantic, or something sexy or - as pretty much every time so far - all of the above.

The thing is, I've been fucked over before - I know what it's like. And the reason I'm so het up about this one is, I really want it to be something. I really don't want to have been fooled into believing something that isn't true, when it's this good. I don't want to come across the damaged mentalist, because I'm not. But I *really* like you and if you could give me just some sign I'm something more than an amusement that will do until the real thing comes along, I'd be unendingly grateful.

posted by bandhag | 7/28/2012 11:31:00 PM


Saturday, August 27, 2011

All change  

This has been the strangest couple of months of my life.

I've struggled a lot with living with him and now just kind of resigned myself to how things are. Some of the time, he's very kind to me. He's very kind to me when I'm around. And when things get hairy, he's the one I call. I don't even know why. At least this time, I tried other people first. But he was the only one who answered.

But I had to go away, for a month, to the other side of the world. And I'd send him messages, and he wouldn't reply. The only times he contacted me first was when he wanted something (once, at 4 in the morning, because he'd lost his keys). He didn't contact just to say "How are you? Is everything ok?". Nobody did, actually.

And I've done so much thinking.

All I've ever wanted from life, is love. I've been told more than once that what puts people off being with me - and being kinder to me - is the fact that I just...love. I love people. I give and I give, and it's not to try and buy love or to force it in return, it really isn't. It's just because I want to love. And I want to be loved. I want just one person in the world to think I'm really special. To think I matter more than anything. To want to make me feel safe and happy as much as I want everyone I know to feel safe and happy. And yes, I know, no-one else MAKES you safe or happy. But I still think it's a valid thing to want for people you love.

But now, I'm done. I know that it just isn't going to happen. I don't think it's because I'm a bad person but I do think I'm just not going to get what I've wanted. So I'm going to stop looking. 'Situations' have already presented themselves but I've not taken them up. I can do without sex and a few nights/weeks/months of intimacy - it just means I won't get hurt again. I never, ever want to feel the way that love makes me feel again. Because it isn't safe and it isn't happy. Maybe you could interpret it a goth way - my heart's just scar tissue so it won't feel any more. I don't think it's that. I think I'm just tired. Tired of looking. Tired of trying. And the only way I can think of to get rid of that tiredness is to stop.

I was having an...er...mind-altering experience the other weekend and a woman said to me (or maybe she didn't) "Until she has a child, a woman doesn't know herself". Well, I'm not going to have a child. That much is clear. So maybe I'll never know myself. But I know enough now to understand that the endless pursuit of love is futile and just another of the rods we use to beat ourselves with through life. "I'm not thin enough, clever enough, I don't make enough money, I'm not popular, my house isn't good enough, I don't have a career" - all those undermining things we tell ourselves.

I've only ever had myself. Time to be happy with what I've got.

posted by bandhag | 8/27/2011 08:37:00 PM


Monday, May 30, 2011

Much as predicted  

this is a fucking nightmare.

He moved in. On the first night, he gave me a speech that went "Our relationship has to change. We're just housemates. I don't love you." and continued in a similar 'Wow, man, stick a nail through that bludgeon - I might just get the point' vein. He likes to share meals and sit in the room I'm sitting in while he reads his comics etc but he also visibly cringes if I'm physically within a metre of him. I have cried every night he's been here. This is not me. I don't know why I've done this to myself. Or why he's done this to me - why, WHY the FUCK has he moved in here? Is it because up until now, he's been the arsehole, but if I say (shortly after he moves in) "I need you to go. This isn't working and I need you to get out of my flat" that makes me the bad guy and him the victim? Or is it that he really thinks I'm such a soft touch that I will be able to let it all go and let him stay here, on cheap rent and running around the place like he owns it?

I worry about the thought processes that led me to this decision. Before, I've always had somehwere to go when he's acted like a cunt and hurt me. Before, I've had a chance to get over it, sort my head out, move on. And - ultimately - forgive him, and have some kind of friendship with him. What am I trying to do to myself? Am I hoping I can get over him, by forcing myself to live with the reality of how little he actually cares, how much he actually seems to enjoy hurting me, day by day?

That was probably it. But it was a bad idea. Less than a week in and I already know - I want him out. I need him out. I need to take my life back, start looking for someone who might actually give a shit.

What the fuck?

How do I get out of this?

posted by bandhag | 5/30/2011 09:49:00 PM


Sunday, May 22, 2011

Inevitability  

I almost feel more comfortable with the fact that nobody reads this now. I want to get thoughts out of my head but I don't really want anyone to hear them.


Anyway. So. The guy I spoke about in my last post? He's moving in to my flat. In three days' time.

I had to go away for almost a month - lovely holiday and not-so-lovely work stuff. We'd talked, briefly, about him renting my spare room. He, and we, decided that that could work.

Before I went away, he told me he loved me. That no-one had ever known him like I know him. That the thought of me in India tore him to shreds. The idea of me not being near was more than he could bear. We talked a lot about 'what we are' and decided that we didn't know, we couldn't know, we'd have to just see how things went.

I went to Cornwall. And I went to India. And when I got back, he didn't want to talk. And he got drunk and said stuff like "you know how to handle a hard-on. That's all there is to you and that's all you are to me". And then he apologised and said he didn't remember saying it and that it wasn't true. And I let it go.

He's. Moving. In. To. My. Flat. In. Three. Days.

And it's clear, from other things he's said since, that if it wasn't true it was a close approximation of something that is.

It would be easy, and childish, to blame this all on him. To say that HE is the one that has changed his mind, moved the goalposts, and so on. But I know. I've always known - from the moment I suggested it to the moment I closed the door on his room, containing the furniture that I've bought and I've put together, while he's been out doing something less boring instead. Him moving in here is necessary.

I know he doesn't want me, but I still cling to some ridiculous hope. But living together, with him taking, taking, taking and me giving, giving, giving...him bringing other people here, taking me for granted in a way I can't forgive or ignore, it's what's needed. It's what's needed for me to get it through my skull that he's using me, he doesn't want or love me and he never ever will. There's more. But my fingers can't keep up with my brain right now.

posted by bandhag | 5/22/2011 10:14:00 PM


Tuesday, February 08, 2011

It gets better  

He's been seeing someone else, and went on a couple of dates with them while he was 'having the time to think'. Gee, I'm so glad I'm one of his favourite people, one of the most important people in his life and someone he could never hurt and always wants around. I just can't imagine how he'd have treated me if that wasn't the case!

I can't remember what my last blog post said because, frankly, I'm a bit drunk but I do know this: the next person to tell me how great I am, how funny and smart and kind and how good in bed, BUT.... is going to lose their teeth. Seriously, are all single men over a certain age complete liars/emotional cowards, or is it just some kind of pheromone I give off that attracts them?

posted by bandhag | 2/08/2011 11:40:00 PM


Thursday, February 03, 2011

Been a while  

Today, I found out that I may lose my job soon.

I also found out that the person I'm in love with, who I'd been giving some time and space to figure out his conflict between the fact that he's made a conscious decision not to be in a relationship at the moment and the fact that he has started to feel something more for me than just a companion and sexual partner, has decided we are, after all, 'just friends'.

About a year ago, my sister punched me in the face when I tried to explain to her that her insistence that I find ten grand to refund her what she stood to lose if she insisted on us selling our jointly-owned house at the peak of the recession was unreasonable and not something I was going to be able to do even if I wanted to. I'm now renting a studio flat alone and paying into the mortgage while she lives rent-free with her boyfriend and mostly refuses to speak to me.

I know that at some point soon, life will take a positive turn and that things will, one way or the other, turn out alright. But right now, that's a reach too far. I know it, somewhere, but I don't feel it yet. I *feel* that I have nothing and nobody and I can't really see the point in anything or a future where I don't feel alone and empty.

posted by bandhag | 2/03/2011 12:25:00 AM


Thursday, October 08, 2009

Delighted to see  

that on the other blog I used to write - the one where I kept my private teen-angst shit, I have six comments on my last post. Two tell me they read my blog with interest, before offering me fake degrees. Two tell me they read my blog with interest, and that I should read theirs, which "is just about my daily life as a park ranger". Two tell me they read my blog with interest and that I should get a 50 DOLLAR ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH VOUCHER just like they did.

I've been to Abercrombie and Fitch once. In New York. It was really dark and the assistants all acted like they wanted to be your best mate when you walked in and asked you if they could help with anything and what have you but they weren't really looking at you when they said it so you kind of felt like maybe they weren't really all that bothered in knowing what they could help you with so you were probably best off just going and looking for yourself and they had sofas and rugs in the middle of the bit where the clothes should be and not much lights on, which I expect was to add to the AMBIENCE and I tripped on a rug that the sofa in the middle of the bit where the clothes should be was sitting on and felt a bit stupid and a bit cross that even if I'd have had a question to ask the assistant that I would think they'd answer, rather than just pointing and sneering, I wouldn't have been able to do it on account of the music being SO FUCKING LOUD AND UTTERLY SHIT MY BRAIN WAS BLEEDING.

I didn't much care for it.

posted by bandhag | 10/08/2009 10:12:00 PM


Mayday  

So. I went quite again. I know. I guess I felt like I didn't have anything to write about, or like I didn't 'need' to write or whatever. For the longest time, it felt like there weren't any words in my head.

But right now, there are a lot of words in my head. And it feels like I need to get them out of my head. And someone needs to suffer the brunt of them, so I guess it's blogworld. Lucky, lucky blogworld...

I don't really know where to start.

posted by bandhag | 10/08/2009 08:32:00 PM
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