2004-05-17 - 11:29 p.m.
I wish that I had written here more often. I've been really busy for the last few months, though happy for the most part. School is over with now, I've got my plans set out for the summer, and I've been greatly enjoying my relationship with Lisa, most of the time. I've been really happy with her, and I wish I'd written more during those times because at this point in time, our relationship is not going well.
I don't want to seem overly dramatic, but currently, I feel we are at a place where either our relationship must change or it must end. Well, it could remain the same, but I have to decide if that is worth it to me.
Here is the problem. For a long time now, I have been less than satisfied with the nature of our relationship. I do not think that our treatment of eachother is very equal, and this is bothering me. Perhaps it is equal, and I am just skewing things with my perspective, but regardless, I cannot help the fact that I do not feel that we are equal in this relationship.
At first, I accepted this. Lisa has a lot of problems that she needs help with, especially after the way David broke up with her. I was willing to take the brunt of her problems on to help her, and that was fine. But much time has passed, David has, I hope, begun to fade from her mind, yet the same problems persist. I would still do this if I felt it were helping, but since very little has changed, I think that my effort serves only to save the relationship, and not to improve upon it.
Why do I think we are unequal? Well, Lisa gets upset very easily. Fine, we all have different temperments. The problem is that when she gets upset with me, her response is to shun me and get mad at me for anything she can devise. She does not really believe she does this though, so I can't talk to her about it. The best part is, that her response to me being upset with her, is to get angry with me for being upset, and then to shun and get mad at me some more.
The result it, if she gets upset, I try and make her feel better, but most everything I do only pisses her off further until she cools down. Of course, most of the time, doing nothing is even worse than the other mistakes I make, so I do have to try, and eventually she calms down. Because this is so tedious, I find the best way is to simply avoid upsetting her in the first place. However, if I get upset, instead of trying to make me feel better, like I do for her(regardless of how fruitless that may be), she gets angry with me instead, and won't stop until I try to console her.
So, this causes me to try and not be upset with her. For the most part I'm not, except that after a while, the way she treats me starts to get to me. She is not polite, she is often annoyed, swears and teases me constantly. Most of the time, this is fine, it is just the way she is (though I do recal a time when we first started talking that she treated me with some more decency), but after a while, it gets to me on occasion, and something she says saddens me. I try to not let it get to me, but it just does from time to time, and when it does, she gets angry, because I'm being stupid for being upset by something so trivial.
It is usually that she says I'm stupid for not remembering something, or that something I'm doing is wrong... she is very critical. She means well from it, but she does not do anything to curb the blows. "What the fuck do you think your doing?" or "Why the hell would you even think that?" She apparently sees this as a normal, friendly way to speak to someone, so I try to treat it as such, but at some level, I can't help but feel hurt by it. She gives commands rather than requests, expects much of others that she says she would do for them, but never does, and I don't think she realizes this.
If only she would be curteous, maybe I could help getting upset with her, but she isn't, so on occasion, I do get upset, for something little, like her saying "move!" instead of "excuse me", or her laughing at me trying to use photoshop, when if the situation were reversed, she would become extremely offended if I accidentally suggested the possibility that she might benefit from some aid in doing something.
Fuck. That is a lot of shit that I've been keeping down. I was thinking that I could just work on one thing at a time, that way she wouldn't get too discouraged, but it is no wonder I haven't felt terribly comfortable with this plan. The thing is, I would like to spare her all of this, I wish that I didn't have to tell her how much *any* of this bothers me, and frankly, I'm willing to settle for just resolving some of it. But I worry that I can't just resolve some of it, or that I can't reolve any of it at all.
Actually, I don't care all that much about all of this. If she would just act differently when she gets angry, I could just forget about the rest of this entirely. I do love her, which is why I'm considering dealing with all of this and whatever else that might bother me even if nothing does change. I have to be fair to myself though... and to her too. She wouldn't want me to just let her do all of this and to ignore it. But she isn't going to like hearing about it either.
Okay, but anywhere, here is what I'm going to try to do. I just want her to reciprocate. When I get mad, I think, how can I forgive her, what can I do to make things better. When she gets mad, I think, what have I done, how can I make it up to her? When I get mad, I get the feeling she thinks, "its his own fault, if he just weren't being so stupid", or "he shouldn't get mad about that". And when she gets mad, she seems to try her best to find more things to fuel her fury. We all do things to annoy eachother, and we try to let them pass. When she is angry though, she latches onto them. If I try to pat her on the back, I'm hitting her. If I try to explain a misunderstanding, I'm rationalizing. If I give her a hug, she is too hot.
Anyway, I'm just ranting again. I would just like her to try more when things go wrong. Right now, I just feel that she expects me to do all the work, that regardless of who is hurt, it is my fault.
Actually, that is one of my greatest concerns with her. She seems to have a need to find blame. She can't let anything go, she always has to find out whose fault it is. Or if anything goes wrong, she can't just say, "that is too bad", no, she must find a source and chastize it, "this is too bad because you did this." She is just not very considerate in general.
I'm a fool for trying to help her... I'm probably actually hurting her. I want her to be happy, and I think she probably has to change in order to do that. But I can not get her to change. I think that she should visit a therapist in order to discover just why she acts the way she does, and what she can do about it. I also know that she is not going to want to do this, and will not for a very long time. If I were to suggest it to her, she would probably become angry with me. She has had bad experiences with therapists in the past, and thus does not trust any of them. I don't know what the hell to do.
My greatest worry, is that she will hate me for this. I wish to keep seeing her. If we can't change, then I would at least like to still be her friend. But I don't think she is going to like me if she understands how much the way she acts bothers me. She wouldn't like the feeling that I put up with her, and I don't like it either. I love her, and I have never been able to be so close and so comfortable around another person. This love is unconditional, and though I may not be her boyfriend if things stay the same, I will still love her. But, will she love me? Will she still be able to stand me?
How is it, that I can never understand what the hell I'm doing wrong, that I am always trying my hardest to do the right thing and to make things better, yet I still feel like everything is my fault, and I'm the worst person in the world for failing. I feel even worse because I can't see what I've done wrong, that I can only see these things in her that must be changed. Because I believe that I am doing everything right, and she is the one at fault, at heart, that is what I feel. And because of this, I feel like I bad person, because I am assuming that I'm doing the right thing.
Yet despite this, I am doing my best. I feel like an asshole, but I do have that one relief in knowing that I'm at least trying.
Anyone I tell this to will probably tell me to leave her. It isn't a fair perspective, she doesn't have her say. I hate it. The way she treats me in my eyes makes her seem worthless to others, like trash. Like I'd be doing myself a favor to let her go. And frankly, I probably would be happier with someone else right now, I probably would be more productive. But she isn't worthless, and if I give up on her, I'll just be agreeing with everyone else, proving them right. She is a clever person, capable of much in her life, if she can only get over her current problems. Even as it is, I have gained much from our relationship, which has been worth all the toil.
I hope that she does prove them all wrong. I hope that she understands that I love her no matter what she does that bothers me. I hope she understands that I want to help her with her problems, not ridicule or blame her. I hope that she will find it in her heart to love me too.
I believe, that if she can get past this point in her life, that if she could overcome this negative energy that so regularly consumes her, that I will mary her. She has her deficiencies, things that make her less than perfect in my eyes, but they are all a result of this one problem. She could be one of the best people that I know.
But, here is my real prediction of the future, which is even still optomistic. She will not understand that I want to help her. She will hate me for seeing her the way that I do, and shun me. She will continue being depressed for sometime, but eventually decide to do something about and seek therapy, or something. Maybe her anger with me, or a new love will bring her to it. She will become a better person, but remember me as the person who didn't believe in her. She will be the person I would mary, but she will not have any desire for me. She'll get married someday, and start a family, and perhaps, if I'm lucky, after many years, forgive me. And I'll still be happy to at least be her friend. But right now, it makes me cry to think that I'll have to wait so long to see her like that.
I don't believe this because I don't think she is capable of understanding. I just don't feel like I deserve such luck. That I'm asking too much for this to work out just right. Mostly, I believe that she is perfectly capable of doing it, if I make the right decision, but that I'm going to fuck everything up like I always do. Hell, probably just writing this, I've messed everything up for good.
