Boy managed to get significantly less stupid as of last night.

Now, one thing I know is that I am pretty lousy at this whole talking things out and everything deal. Well, that's sort of true. I'm perfectly good at talking things out. It's the *getting there* part I suck at. I have a really bad tendency to get pissed and shut up for some indeterminate amount of time. I've already mentioned this. Basically I sort of instantly revert into "I don't Need You or ANY MAN in my Life EVER" mode and it's extremely hard to get myself out of that.

This time it was particularly bad because first I was trying to talk to him about how I felt and I got blown off and then when I WAS trying to talk to him about it afterwards I wasn't getting *anywhere* with him AND he kept changing the subject to other things and it was so frustrating that it honestly took me a couple of days, more, really, since that was last Thursday night and it was only yesterday that I was able to talk about anything, to get past all the anger and frustration and shit that I could deal.

And of course in the meantime it had sort of exploded in my head. I was SO frustrated that I was seriously considering breaking up with him. Just felt like I couldn't get through, at all, and didn't hardly even feel like trying anymore.

Probably writing here yesterday DID help. Made it feel a little more manageable and/or defined. I felt more like I might be able to say what I was feeling without spluttering with rage.

And making it worse on Sunday night HE was getting pissed at me having just shut down for so long and then that didn't help either.

But anyway went and had a drink with Z last night, so I was also well-lubricated. I have a hard time somehow talking about me and Boy with her, and I didn't, but I think it was useful just to have some time to relax a little bit and talk to someone other than him.

So anyway I got home and I said I needed to talk and that I was really not happy about Us, which is true, even in the larger sense, because I feel like we're practically more roommates even than a couple, and that just can't be good.

Which was probably a good way to begin because I think he was scared for a minute there that I was breaking up with him.

At any rate, he listened to me, and I told him how much it hurt me last week when I felt like he couldn't even listen to me then for five minutes, and all of that sort of thing, and he understood, finally and for once, and was actually sorry.

And I talked to him about the fact that me going out -- with him or with other friends -- is actually a *good* thing, because I haven't barely had the energy to leave the house for like at least a year. And he understood that too. And said that he was in a shitty mood at that point and he took it out on me and that wasn't okay.

Most of you all I think were reading me during my Great Nervous Breakdown of '01 after the big blowup with Insane Client. So most of you are probably aware of how incredibly hard that was for me. To feel like I had worked so fucking hard and to have it not even matter at all was a real major blow to me. It's actually better when I just plain old fuck up. I can admit when I fuck up. I can try to do better next time. I can learn something from it. When it's just insane fucked-up bullshit, I can't even take responsibility, and that depressive part of me just immediately heads back into the land of "nothing you will ever do will ever be right, ever be good enough".

I don't like that land. That land is an ugly and sad land. And it doesn't do me or anybody else any good.

But the upshot here is that recovering from that, and coming out of it after feeling like the whole world had crashed down on me and I wasn't even sure if we could keep the company alive, and having it really not be THAT BAD, and doing the shitty things I've had to do like fire my friends, doing what it takes, that has felt like turning a corner. Parts of it I have been avoiding for a long time, especially firing my friends. Part of it was just feeling like I got through that and it was all right. Not great, but all right.

So between that and the work I've been doing at Large Unnamed Client where I've honestly felt like I've really been actually *accomplishing* something, I've felt better actually than I have in a long time. It hasn't felt so onerous to wake up in the morning. It hasn't felt like a chore to do work. It hasn't been awful heading to the office and not knowing what to do, what I could do.

And I told all that to the Boy, and he seemed to understand that as well.

We really do need to spend some time together not talking about work or just watching tv. I told him I don't want to lose him because we can't have a conversation. This is true. That would be sad.

And thank you all for all of the guestbook support. It was good to see that I'm not just a looney, and that he was being unreasonable and stupid. Oh, shit, MG, I promised to mention why I pay for everything.

Now, the first thing that's relevant here I wrote about WAY back when I started this sucker, Boy In A Nutshell. If you haven't read it some of the following won't make a ton of sense.

So. When he first moved in with me, his semi-estranged wife was living in their apartment. There are all kinds of insanity here, but suffice it to say that he was paying for everything for her and that he felt obligated to continue to do so. My own personal issues with the whole shebang were far less related to money and far more related to...everything else. All things considered, I must say I think I dealt very well, though.

At that point neither of us really thought this whole co-habitation business would be permanent. In fact, I think he was living with me for like a YEAR or something before he brought anything here more than he could fit in a duffel bag. Although honestly in retrospect after living together for more than x amount of time I don't know how you stop except for breaking up. But at the time it was more like weeks kept going by and Wife kept living in apartment and Boy kept living with me. Nobody planned anything.

And he didn't have enough money to pay for both places, and I had enough to keep up my place, since I'd been doing it since way before he came along.

And both of us always assumed, not even assumed, we spoke about it, that he would always keep that apartment, one way or another. It was rent-stabilized in the Upper East Side, and New Yorkers do NOT take that lightly.

Then the wife dies. I wrote about that too, don't feel much like rehashing the whole thing. But Boy is no longer okay with keeping the apartment, can't even imagine living there at any point. Moves all the stuff he wants to keep into my place. That was last April.

And in the meantime, we never really graduated to splitting any of the bills. I don't think about it much. Every once in a while it occurs to me and I realize it bugs me. And when I mentioned it the other night he said that well all the money is both of ours. Which is sort of true, yeah. Except that all my money goes to bills, and he's got all of his. Last November or so he bought $1600 worth of clothes, which, yeah, he needed. I bought a pair of jeans last March --that's it, literally the last clothing I purchased -- and guess what? I need clothes too. The only major purchase I've made in a year was his Christmas present, the Tivo.

And yeah, he's got a bunch of wife-related debt to pay off. It comes to around $8k or so. I, on the other hand, have an EIGHTY thousand dollar loan from my grandpa to pay back.

Which makes me think. I think I need to talk to the Boy about this one. Zees is no good.

onehanded