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.