It's been several months since I wrote here last. I do acknowledge
that people are dying as I write this. Working for a charity has
sobered me to the revelation that no matter what, people are
always dying. I wish it wasn't like that. Somebody please kill
Putin, if you can.
Having that out of the way, my life keeps moving forward. I don't
mean that in any positive sense whatsoever. Forward =/= better.
I left my spouse this week. We had been together for eight years.
This is the only serious relationship I had.
At this moment I am in some type of an uncanny valley, I think.
She has not been very hard on me, nor I towards her, but I am
not sure it will stay that calm.
I find it very hard to find any concrete handle on the whole
affair. I just know that something started going wrong about four
years ago and then it just kept escalating. It's like we diverged
as people.
One thing was that she told me she had thought about killing
herself. After telling me that four years ago, she always
downplayed it, like it was not that serious, but it left a
serious mark on my mind.
Not long after that I had a burnout which I blamed on work stress
and other things.
During that time it started to dawn on me that my lady was not
very good at empathising. I remember one time during my burnout,
when I was struck by anxiety, curled up and sobbing, and she was
just unable to function at all. Almost like this was outside her
programming or something.
This is a person I thought was the only one I could be understood
by. How things change.
Even at that time, it was already becoming obvious that she was
eating and drinking in a way that was not sustainable. A mutual
friend told me they are thinking of confronting her about the
eating. I told them to reconsider since there was this suicide
threat. No one confronted her.
At the same time, her mom seems to be doing very well in the stock
market and keeps sponsoring her daughter. It would have been very
hard for me to find anything wrong with that in my past life. I
thought that the old folk should just give up their money instead
of clinging on to it. Why not, right?
But what happens when you have a person who is somehow chronically
"hungry" for something new, is you get a situation where money
loses it's value and also.. somehow I as her partner lost my
value. It's not anymore us against the world. Now it's more like
she and her mom against something..
Ok, a few steps back.
When I was living alone ten or so years ago, I was genuinely in a
desperate situation. I was living in a house that was actually
smelling like mold, although I am not sure if it was because of
the house or because of my housemate who I think was seriously
weird and had very strange ideas about hygiene and so
on. (Not joking!)
In any case, I am going somewhere with all this.
I was a loser, safe to say. Now, I find this girl living in
another country. After less than a year of dating her, she moves
to my country. We get a dog, it all seems to go towards greater
heights. Sure, there are some "issues" like the time we are
actually kicked out of our apartment for not paying rent for
several months.
But at the same time, I get a full time job, and we have quite
enough money to get by. We are finally starting to get on our
feet, but then her mom has all this so called luck on the stock
market and then it starts. What seems to me like unlimited amount
of material starts rolling our way. Now, many people would
probably welcome this, and I did for some time, even though I
think I always had some skeptisism towards it, for vaguely
green past of mine with the related anti-capitalism.
So, it goes on, her mom buys us a cabin on the countryside, she
buys stuff like the water system, a toilet, some porches, a dock
by the lake, a kitchen. It just keeps going.
What's wrong with that? Free stuff!
It's not free. You have to actually work to keep it all going.
The covid hits and we move to this country house to live full
time. In some ways it is the best time of my life. I really
feel like I am free of the constant buzz of the city.
In other ways, I am working to keep this place running. The
normal routine of washing the laundry involves stuff like
thawing the water pipe, warming up the water, pouring the water,
carrying the clothes, unjamming the washing machine, pulling
the clothesline inside the cabin, etc. Similar stuff about the
composting toilet, keeping the snow off the property, splitting
logs.
Now, all of this stuff is making me into this machine I never
really thought I was. I am in very good shape physically
compared to before. At the same time, my spouse is sitting
inside watching netflix.
Now, I am not exactly blaming her. What I want to point out
is that there is a very strange dynamic here: I used to be a
loser. When put into a situation where we are in the middle
of nowhere, I find it in me, pretty much automatically, that
I need to work to keep this shit running, for her. What she
finds in her is to let go and just focus on buying more stuff
and watching tv, drinking and eating.
I find this baffling. I even blame myself for somehow
"enabling" her to regress like this. She used to be a real
person. Now she's basically an addict.
It's exremely strange. Now, back to the present time: After
a week of us being separated she is being all productive,
finally driving that driver's license that she wouldn't do for
the past years, even learning my language to get an EU passport,
also something she kept putting off. All the while I am just
trying to scramble to even have an apartment. I am now living
at the summer house. The snow is up to my hip and I feel no
inspiration to keep it off the property.
The thing that really eats me is this question: If I was a good
person only for her, what am I alone? I just feel like screaming.
