We're not having a kiddie poem this time.

I've been meaning to update for a while and have been resistant. Other than posting the bleeding heart of my own adolescent self, which I have long staunched.

I've been resistant because I'm actually really lousy at talking about things that are going on with me -at the moment-.

And in characteristic fashion I have decided to do this at work. Hopefully I won't start crying. But I was thinking maybe if I tried writing all this down it would help me sort it out.

Don't quite know where to start. I guess chronologically. Last week I realized that I was really starting to feel a lot better than I had for the past year. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I feel like I'm actually accomplishing something with Client -- doing some real work, something I haven't done much of for a while. It also has to do with having gotten through some really rough spots with the company, and feeling like we're a much stronger group and that this bunch of people is solid and loyal. Not that the future is all sweetness and light, but that I feel like we're on the right track, feel less lost than I had.

Also it has helped to make the friends I have here, and to have had a place to ... say some things. And feel less lonely. And even that after firing Z, I feel like I've actually gotten her back as a friend, something that I was having a lot of trouble with until now. And I admit even having crushing client has helped a little in terms of ego buffering.

So Boy and I walk the dog on Thursday night, and I start trying to say something about all of this to him. First, I've never been any good at the emotional expression thing. Second, you know...your girlfriend starts talking about all of the above, it sounds at least a little important, right?

Boy interrupts me to mention something about work.

And the backstory here: He was pissed at me last week for going out with friends a bunch of times while he "stayed home and worked". FIRST, you little shit, I invited you (sorry, switched to yelling at stupid boy) a WHOLE bunch of times and you turned me down because you were too busy.

THEN, after we got into that on Thursday night he basically says he hates my friends. but I don't much care how much he likes my friends -- he has plenty of his own, some of whom I like and some of whom I don't -- that if he wanted to go out with he certainly could.

AND I made a point (before all the fighting) of asking him to have dinner out with me on Saturday which we hadn't done in a long time.

After he interrupted me I basically just exploded. I told him that I was trying to talk about something important, and he just isn't even fucking listening, and that it's hard enough for me to talk about how I feel as it is, let alone if I feel like he doesn't even fucking CARE enough to fucking LISTEN for FIVE FUCKING SECONDS

And he says "well I didn't expect you to start talking about important stuff while we were just out walking the dog" -- WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? I have to fit my Important Stuff Discussions into a particular time and/or activity?

And we got off-subject a bit and I was yelling about other things, including such fun facts as that he doesn't pay for a goddamn thing in the house -- NOT ONE, and he was griping about how he always does the cleaning, not because I ASK, mind you, but because he FEELS like it -- and I'm like, well maybe if I didn't have to pay for EVERYTHING I would just hire a fucking cleaning lady

Anyway the point I'm trying to get to here is that it sort of dawned on me that part of the reason I've BEEN so fucking lonely to begin with is because he's like some sort of half-human semi-present being that only gives a shit about me when it affects him personally.

More fun facts. I have NEVER met *anybody* who, when hearing someone say "ow!" didn't ask "you okay?" Not him. Maybe Hitler didn't.

I have actually had to tell him that it might be nice to ask me how I'm feeling if I'm sick or my lung is collapsed.

In four years, excluding holidays (but not all of them certainly, since he's pretty lousy at those too), he has thought of me exactly once when he wasn't in trouble in terms of seeing something I might like in a store. I don't give much of a fuck about presents. And I don't often go out and buy him something for the hell of it, either. But I think he may possibly have bought me flowers once when he wasn't in the doghouse. *I* buy HIM flowers more often than that. Like a lot more often.

He can't have a conversation if his mind has been on anything other than what the conversation is to be about for some unspecified period of time.

In fact, he can't be bothered while he's in the middle of something for nearly any reason at all. I don't like to be bothered while I'm in the middle of something. But first, Something doesn't usually take up 18 hours of every day, 7 days a week. And second, if it's not like a constant interruption, I deal. Especially if it seems important.

To give him some credit, he's better than he was when we first got together. But not a lot. And I don't feel like having to train my fucking boyfriend.

Just having a conversation or an argument with him is practically impossible. He focuses on tiny, totally insignificant details and I wind up having futile arguments about things I don't even fucking CARE about while I can't get him to understand what the actual fucking PROBLEM is.

So essentially the upshot is this: I've been pretty depressed and lonely for a year or so, which first he doesn't seem to have noticed at all, and second, doesn't appear to give a shit about either, and third, doesn't particularly want to hear it when I try to talk to him about it.

No fucking wonder I'm so lonely.

I don't think I really sorted anything out. But there it is. And I am crying, although I'm biting my lip really really hard so I don't start weeping at my desk here.

- onehanded