In my other blog, ‘Someone’ has become a handy shorthand for the boyfriend I don’t have. The one who exists purely in my mind, laughs at me good-naturedly and tries to hide the fact that he adores me, likes the things that I like, challenges me, spends rainy sunday mornings companionably drinking coffee and reading the paper, sprawled in his bed or mine while I wear his hoodies and we recover from our hangovers. Whatever. Actually, the point of this entry is not what he’s like, screw that, I mean, he doesn’t exist, does he?
No, it’s a response to L’s latest entry on Patchwork Dreams – about her experience with relationships and her current relationship, and the ever-present ‘third wheel’ that is depression.
Basically, this. Right now I am fine, I am in a good place, and if I were to meet someone, get along with them, go out for a drink with them, and end up actually (shock) being in a grown-up, functional relationship, as I am, that would be fine. But part of the reason why I avoided such a relationship for so many years was because I’m terrified of being in a relationship that isn’t equal, where I rely on my partner too much, where he has to bear the brunt of the chaos in my head and help me through that with very little reward. I know that’s not how Someone would see it, if they loved me, they’d live for the good days and all the rest of it. And I’m sure that’s not how L’s boyfriend sees it either. But it terrifies me, this idea of being ‘obliged’ to someone. I can’t place that burden on anyone else’s back but mine.
More than that, I’m petrified that I’ll make it as a functioning adult, more or less, and actually get to the point where I end up marrying someone and having their children. This is in some ways a dream I, in my more melodramatic moments, think I’ll have to sacrifice. I’m convinced I’d be a hopeless mother: honestly, sincerely, imagine having a depressive mother. It would be impossible, for me, for my husband, for my children, and if I was depressed it would almost be selfish to actually go down that route. At least from my point of view. I couldn’t look after them, I couldn’t hold down a job as well, not if I was anywhere near as bad as I was last semester, and essentially my husband would have to be primary carer and breadwinner and look after not only our children, but me, as well. Someone’s got to make sure I don’t dehydrate and starve to death because I don’t want to get out of bed! Seriously. Anyway, it’s something I’m terrified about, because I can’t – simply can’t – trust my brain from one month, week, even day or hour to the next not to throw me a total loop and knock me down altogether. And if I can’t trust my own mind, who the hell can? And who the hell should have to? I can just about get my head around a boyfriend who has to deal with that, but not a husband, children – Mummy’s ill in bed, please don’t disturb her, when they can clearly see there’s nothing wrong. It would be just too unsettling for weeks on end.
So yes, I worry about my future. Because that worry extends to everything in life. If I carry on the way I’m going, I’ll get a good degree and I should be able to get into graduate medicine and pass taht pretty comfortably too, get a good job, depending on the market at the time, and put together a good life for myself. But if I’m not OK, then I might not make it through to finishing this degree, I may not get into graduate medicine, and I’ll struggle to hold down a job. I have no certainty. No-one does, but I have, well, negative certainty, I guess, because I know I have this ‘tendency to melancholy’ which has a brilliant habit of rearing its ugly head just when I least need it.
However, L gives me hope in her entry – right now, a few months on, and she and her Someone are doing well, as far as she’ll let us know, and if I can get past my island mentality and learn that if someone wants to be there and be that person for you no matter how difficult, maybe you should let them, and it’ll work, and you’ll be as happy as you can reasonably be at that time.
Not only that, but you’re right on another score, L – I got a lot more attention a few months ago (admittedly not once I’d got really bad but I guess that was just because I barely left my room) than I do now. I got a lot more attention over the last three years, ranging from the merely sexual to the mad declarations of love that S threw at me despite his girlfriend and all of that shit. How much of a correlation there is I do not know, but I used to be more aware that people liked me than I am now. Perhaps that’s just becuase I’m meeting fewer unattached, new people, and I have a lot more competition here than I ever did in P’d.
So yes. I am nigglingly terrified about my future becuase I’m terrified that I won’t always be OK, and it’s also almost certain that I won’t always be OK from here on in, that in a few months I’ll be flat on my back again, staring at the sky and waiting for it all to go away.
4 Comments
March 19, 2009 at 8:25 am
W.r.t. the attention thing, I have a theory, and it’s only a theory – but in my good periods in the past, one or two people have told me that I seem quite intimidating. Confident, assertive, assured, which I’m really not and have never been, but that’s how some people have seen it, at least. I wonder if it’s partly to do with my height?
But the thing is, girls aren’t ‘meant’ to be like that. They’re ‘meant’ to be the submissive ones who gaze adorably up at their boyfriends, not the ones who raise an eyebrow and answer back. And I do wonder whether having no choice but to show who I actually am has just lowered some of those barriers and brought out my ‘feminine weakness’, if you want to put it in such antiquated terms.
Possibly I just value the comments more
March 19, 2009 at 12:17 pm
You could well be right. When I’m OK I’m pretty confident as well, independent, possibly even dismissive, I guess. People have told me I can be intimidating, too. You have to be a certain sort of man to want to try to keep up, and I guess most people aren’t. And so they wait until I’m emasculated by my own mind… *cackles*…
March 25, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Calm. Cross the children bridge when you come to it. Things will be fine.
Naive optimism, perhaps, but worrying about it NOW isn’t going to help.
Cxxx
March 26, 2009 at 12:21 am
Organised I may not be, but there are some things I always think ahead about. I have plans, and things, and I need to think through everything before it comes to pass.