from the perspective of the proverbial ‘watcher’ my life is pretty perfect, i suppose. I live in a beautiful house with a beautiful man who tells me i’m beautiful. we’re engaged and getting married. . the natural progression of this version of life, to settle down and squirt out children… for the last five years, no for ever, i have thought that i wanted that. to settle and breed… and everything would just make sense when my life was no longer my own. but i am literally in the process of realising that i DONT actually want this, i have but one life and im going to waste it on the circular futility of creating another life that has to wonder what its point was.. why? to make my life seem more meaningful? that’s selfish.. and yet i feel selfish for not wanting to conform to it.
dont get me wrong i love my partner and dont for any reason want to leave him, we are very happy. so in love. so in love that we are able to share that love with others, even. there are often more than two people in our bed and i love that. never does it make me question ‘us’. it strengthens ‘us’. what i question is the stereo-reality that i thought i wanted to be part of.
but now we have our home and are getting married and its all just happening.
and so in the meantime what have i achieved? nothing, nothing but sitting here waiting for the story to roll on and the children to arrive and the happily ever after blah blah BLAH. but it wont fix anything, not only because that is a ridiculous notion, but also because it is in itself a notion i never even considered properly, due to its inevitability.
so here i sit. still sitting alone with my thoughts, confused to fuck and spinning silently out of control. again. every time life gets better it gets worse.
and the one person i love the most is the one person i cannot share this with. and hes also the only person i could share this with. there is no one else. i have no other relationships of any worth in my life apart from family ( i dont think this would fall well on thier ears either…) imagine hearing this after eight years. that still, after saving me from myself all those years ago, still deep down i feel the same. im not content. maybe you cant. well, i’ve tried, and i will not for anything look upon that look in anothers eyes again. i cannot cause that pain. so here i sit with mine.
i do not want to die. i want to live. i want to break everything that i have always been and run screaming for something more. but what. here lies the problem. there is no more. and so my head spins and my life snaps and the my head screams and all i want is just to feel nothing. which is exactly what i feel, really. white noise, senseless.
im just stuck in this spiral of what i want to want and what i do want. i dont know what i want. and its so LOUD in its nothingness. a screaming silence
i have slashed and stabbed and burned and starved and binged and drugged and over drugged and fucked and screamed and cried for years and nothing dulls the pain. or rather nothing hurts hard enough to dull the aching silent numbness. the horrifying reality of the monotiny of the fact that whatever i do, how ever far i come it all comes back around to the same fucking thing. its all pointless, all nothing.
9 comments
really beautiful writing.
Well, as bad as you feel, you do have some nice things going for you, so that’s a small plus on the good side of the ledger.
Without a doubt you understand that there is tremendous pressure in our society to pair up and breed. Not wanting to be a part of it is perfectly OK. So please don’t give yourself grief over that.
So it sounds to me that there are some serious unresolved issues in your life from years ago. You’ve been successful in shoving the darkness back in a closet, but inevitably it manages to get out again. Now you are at the point you are ready to make a serious commitment and the stress and pressure is not helping you keep the darkness at bay.
Not having a support network is definitely a problem. I highly recommend buying one; as in paying a therapist to work with you, listen to you, and train you in constructive coping skills. I also recommend seeing a psychiatrist and exploring any medications that will help you gain some clarity.
You will have to tell your fiancee that you are having trouble coping. If he is a good guy he won’t dismiss your feelings or say you are simply getting cold feet. If he gives you a hard time about needing help then kick him in the shin.
I know asking for help and allowing yourself to be helped is a hard thing to do. Just keep in mind that having a marriage and babies and an epic meltdown is much worse.
You sound like someone that’s come very far in her life. I want you to keep doing that, and doing it in a rational, healthy way. With help you can switch from a cycle of futility to a cycle of growth. Doing this will make those hard choices about marriage and babies much easier.
Whatever you decide, I hope you find peace and self love.
thanks. perspectives other than my own are very helpful. it’s not that i feel bad for the sake of what society may want me to do, more that i feel completely shocked by the sudden realisation that i dont want something that i thought was all i wanted. i feel like i dont know myself at all. it isnt the commitment that scares me, like i said i love my partner, im just scared by the fact that i am falling into a way of life that seems to lead to an inevitable path and im not ready. but i thought i was so ready. its been all i wanted for so long, and yet something has suddenly switched. its hard to explain. like ive just woken up from a dream of my own thoughts and they arent rreal any more. and you’re right, at the moment its very hard to keep the darkness at bay but im beginning to realise that in my life i go up and down like this all the time, but this is a real CHANGE in something i thought was a fundamental part of who i wanted to be.
not having a ‘support network’ as you put it is without doubt the hardest part of all, having no one to talk to, no one to either validate or point out the madness in my musings makes me all the more confused. but i can tell you with great certainty that PAYING some one to listen to me, or talking to some one who is payed to talk to me, is one of the most crushing things i have ever had to come to terms with, and was the reason for my first attempt on my life all those years ago. it made me feel more worthless than ever to realise that at thirteen someone had to be paid to pretend to care about me. i will never do that again. what i want is something real. friendship.
and i have tried various medications, to extremely detrimental effect. all that happened was that i thought that everything was fine, where in reality i was being more destructive than ever.
he knows im not coping. i just cant be entirely honest, mainly as i dont know what im trying to say, really. im very confused and dont want to hurt him.
i really havent come very far at all. im still sitting here feeling the same whirling nothingness i felt 5, 10, 15 years ago. i always crash back down.
I will live this life only one time.
I won’t waste a day.
The only thing holding me back is my own fear
most importantly during this one trip through life I’m not spending one minute more propping up people who are toxic or wasting my life doubting what I am doing.
Examine the love, re read what you wrote. and then run like hell.
If she’s happy being polyamorous, then there’s no reason to leave her p.artner unless she truly feels she can’t connect with him, or if he’s adamant about the thought of marriage and kids but she isn’t. Something to consider is that if you do have children, well, your husband might keep sleeping with other people… without you.
If you don’t feel a yearning for children then don’t have any. If the thought of marrying your guy doesn’t feel right then don’t marry him. Tbh I can’t see a polyamorous relationship working out once kids are in the picture, plus it might be emotionally scarring for children if they realize that their parents have a few “lovers.” Again, that may or may not be important but it’s a thought to keep in mind.
If you’re so alone I’d suggest reaching out to people in your community, try to make a few friends. It’s not good to be emotionally dependent on one person who is your *only* friend.
i think part of my sudden confusion may have to do with realising that i cant live those two lives simultaneously. as far as my partner and i, i have never had reason to believe that this is going to be a problem in terms of fidelity, everything we do we do together, and all this started by accident but is something that after eight years together we are both very comfortable with. it heightens our relationship with each other. but it is very difficult to see how we could continue to behave like that and have a ‘normal family life’ ..we just couldnt. getting married i have no problem with, its what follows, what is expected to follow, what i thought i wanted to follow it, that’s troubling me. i really thought i did have a yearning to be a mother but its like that part of me is.. i dont know. im not even sure that what i feel about children would bother him, it just bothers me, that i thought i knew myself and what i wanted so well and its all changed. and i really dont know why im just realising this now. we’ve been engaged for 2 years and sharing for 3. so why now.
i am spending too much time alone with my own thoughts.
try to make a few friends… ahh yes. its that simple… its alot easier to find people to share your bed than it is to find people who actually want to know you. and this has nothing to do with what we do as very few people know. ive always been a loner but living here in the middle of nowhere and spending day in day out seeing the same five or six people is really amplifying the fact that i need more normal human interaction! i dont know how to make friends :/
All the really stable poly couples I know are married and have kids. It’s no big deal. But they are the type of people that if they invite you to bed, then, by God, you really are part of the family.
I can understand that, if you simply don’t have anyone nearby who can actually befriend… I’m in the same situation. (Though I don’t live with a p.artner.)
“its alot easier to find people to share your bed than it is to find people who actually want to know you.” – Yep. Very true.
Hold off on the children and marriage for now. Maybe later you’ll change your mind, maybe you won’t. Best not to get into anything if you don’t feel fully committed.
P.S. I’m just saying what I would do in your situation, though of course you may feel differently. 😉