Angsty angst with a side order of - you guessed it - more angst

2005-01-18 - 11:11 p.m.

I can't sleep tonight, at least not so far, and since my brain doesn't seem to be slowing down, it'll probably be another night where I doze more than actually sleep.

Pookie and I had a fight today, mainly because I'm currently stiffing him about $90 for January's rent and I have no prospects for February, unless the EI comes through, and since my life's lesson is either "Don't count on things because then they won't come through" or "you've had enough good luck already in our life, so now you'll do without any ever again", I'm not holding my breath. He wants to know what my plan is, so that then he can make his plans, which is reasonable enough, so we should be able to sit down and talk like human beings, hell, like friends, and think things through.

I don't feel, these days, like he's my friend at all. Even before I stiffed him on the rent, really. Even before I moved in. For a long time it's felt like he hasn't been interested or able to give me what I need in our friendship. I can't remember the last time he invited me out or to go someplace or to do something with him that wasn't shopping for groceries or work-related or to drop off or deliver something for him. We're talking months. I think the last time he invited me to anything was in September for his school's barbeque. Even when we were dating, I was starting to learn that I couldn't talk with him about anything I felt strongly about, because he would either say "I can't handle this right now" or he would get over-involved. I have close friends that he still doesn't trust because I told him some of the stuff they did that made me angry. And I know that doesn't sound bad, more like "Hey, he cares about things!" but it got to the point that even letting off steam couldn't be done without considering the long-term consequences.

I'm just angry at him, really, and I'm having a hard time always understanding why. I feel like he judges me all the time: if he comes home and the house isn't as clean as he needs it to be, or whatever. He disappears for days at a time and then is disappointed when there's less food in the house.

It's a million little things, but they all basically scream at me: "This door is closed." It's probably something I've done, but he didn't tell me at the time, and now it's too late.

He said today that he was tired of walking around on eggshells, and it's true: I have no patience for anything right now, least of all him. He still has friends who can take him out to dinner or let him stay over, or have a night on the town, or whatever. He hasn't been employed for two and a half years and yet somehow his ends are met more often than not. He stresses about it all the time, but in the end he gets gifts and loans from all sides. I'm not jealous exactly, because my parents have given me what they can (even dad, I guess: he lives beneath his means, but only just, I think). I don't know what it is.

I've started this paragraph about 7 times, because I want to say some things, but as soon as they're out I realise that they aren't fair, or they aren't quite being honest. When we fought today, I started to compare the relative effort Pookie and I have been putting into our respective job searches, but even at the time I didn't want that. I don't want a "who's the better person" thing going on, whether out loud or in my head. I just...he wants to know my plan so that he can make his plan, and for some reason that's asking the impossible of me. My plan was to get the EI ball rolling and to send out resumes. The EI ball is rolling and it's out of my hands and the resumes are out there and nobody is calling. I don't have a plan after that. I just can't think that far.

He wants to know when I'll start selling my things, or when I'll apply to welfare, and I don't have a good answer (except that I want to ask him the same questions, but that doesn't answer anything about me, does it?). I never really thought of myself as materialistic, but I look at my 20 DVDs and suddenly selling them feels like putting a gun to my head. It feels like the same sort of defeat, except in miniature. Most of those I bought for myself, one or two a month, as a sign that I was doing well with my life, that I was reaching a point where I could afford small luxuries. Same with what furniture I have: a bed, a desk, a bookshelf, a bureau. Those things helped to make my apartment feel like a home, the first home I've had since I struck out on my own. It hurts, deep down where I don't like being hurt, to think about starting over, about one day moving out to live by myself and once again having only an empty apartment to come home to.

I guess I'll look into welfare, but I have no idea how that works, except that it's a scary place where everyone has a horror story. You can't, for example, start your own business or attend classes when you're on welfare. It feels like a sinkhole, and I know that's not really what welfare is, but it feels like a great big "Failure" stamp on my life. When Pookie suggested it, I just felt a great big wave of "Fuck you!" rise up, and I don't know where it came from.

So maybe this is where the anger is coming from: my choice is to do the duck-and-cover and wait for a miracle or to do something that will hurt. There are stories of mountain climbers who eventually chewed or cut off their limbs to get free of a boulder that had pinned them, and every time I hear one of those stories, I realise that I couldn't do it. Or that to do it, I'd have to change in a fundamental way. Because otherwise I would just stare and stare at my arm until I got too weak to do anything about it.

I have to at least start thinking about what happens after February 3rd, if I don't qualify for EI and haven't found employment. Most likely it would mean moving back to Halifax and living with mom in her tiny basement apartment and her dreams for my going to medical school and neurosciencing old people back to health or with dad and his wife who can barely stand me (and the feeling's mutual) and his ideas that it's silly to quit a job just because your boss can't keep her temper and your workplace grinds you down. Halifax would be chopping off another limb.

Okay. I feel a bit better. I think I've seperated the life-anxiety stuff from the friendship-anxiety stuff a bit. I don't know if it will help me sleep, and I'm sure it won't help my friendship with Pookie, but at least I know what anger deserves to go where. The intention is to keep the Pookie stuff in the "Important but not as important as other stuff right now" box and to pull that box out later, after this is overwith. It'll be a big box.

I hate being this low. I hate it more than anything. I want to go back to being a relatively good person again.

Cheers,

The Magus

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