But you can’t make it drink. Just like you can’t make a person do something. And you can’t open their eyes to the truth of they don’t want to see it. And a million other related cliches.
It’s been a while since I posted anything really personal in here. For a while, I guess I was worried that I might say something about someone I know in the real world ™ and they’re be angry. I also worried that I might say something which someone would use as ammunition against Ryan and/or myself. So I stopped talking even when it might have done me well to speak. In the process, my blog lost its cathartic tendencies and I posted a whole lot less but, truthfully, I miss it. And, truthfully, sometimes there are things you need to get out but the person who needs to hear them isn’t ready or willing or even able to listen. But my blog will.
We fight, like any normal couple. We’re not one of those couples you see on TV who have never had a fight or who freak out because they just had their first fight. No, we fight. Not as much anymore, thank God. It was bad for a while. Sometimes it felt like our relationship was only made of the fighting and the good times were abnormal. There was a lot of other shit going on which affected it so maybe, this time last year or the year before, the fighting was necessary. Maybe we’ve moved to a point where we need to fight less. I hope so. But we still fight.
The fact that we fight is not the problem. I think, when it’s all said and done, we generally understand eachother or can at least agree to disagree. I believe neither of us intentionally wants to hurt the other but we are both sensitive in our own ways, sometimes oversensitive.
The problem is the way we fight. It’s the same every time. We go about discussing the issues in the wrong way and, before you know it, we’re fighting just to fight. We’re fighting about the fight. Except, I think that sometimes I’m the only one who knows it. There are certain triggers and in my mind I think “Oh shit. This is going to set us back 3 months” and then I try everything in my power to avoid the fight which becomes increasingly difficult as I find myself frustrated at the fact that we have let this happen again. That we have not changed.
That he has not changed. I feel guilty typing that because I know I am not perfect. I know I contributed to last night’s fight. I know I am not selfless. If I were, I’d glad want children. I wouldn’t care about school for myself or what kind of job I work. I wouldn’t tell Ryan I want him out of the military or that I don’t like his family. I would grin and bare it and maybe earn myself some just rewards in the afterlife.
No, I am not selfless but I do think I am more selfless than he is when we fight. Except, he doesn’t see it. He can’t see it. It’s like he has some sort of filter that interprets everything I do as selfish no matter how contradictory that may be to the truth. If I tell him to calm down because I know it does no one any good for him to be so upset, he thinks I am defending whatever offense I have committed, rather than trying to keep the fight in check. If I try to explain this, he thinks I am just saying “I am always right and you are wrong.” But how can I say that is not what I am saying? Wouldn’t that just enforce his mindset that I am implying that? I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I’m right. I’m saying what we are doing, what you are doing is hurtful to us? It’s not my pride I’m worried about. I don’t care about saving face, I care about us!
So you see my dilemma. I cannot explain to him that maybe he isn’t seeing things clearly without damaging my platform, without “proving” to him that he is right and I am just being stubborn, stupid or selfish. But I’m not.
Faced with a lose-lose situation, I took the easier route. And by “easier,” I mean that I gave up on trying to explain to him and I told him it didn’t matter despite the fact that it does matter. We have this gigantic issue that he can’t even understand and I cannot possibly explain but I know that it could easily make or break us. The nature of the beast makes it seemingly impossible to tame but fighting like this cannot go unchecked. Because even if the subject of the fight can be resolved, resolution can only come if we can work together and we can’t as long as he sees things this way.
I choked back tears because I don’t know how I can show him the way I see things, how detrimental his thought process and behaviours can be to us. And instead of talking to him, which I knew would do no good, I told him good bye which did us no good anyway. What choice do I have?
It was a shitty answer, I know. Fighting is a stupid waste of time even in the best conditions. It’s even stupider when you fight like we do. It’s absolutely ridiculous when you are separated by thousands of miles of ocean and several time zones. And even as we fight I cannot help but think of how we are squandering time. His internet might decide to act up any minute, as we in the middle of our fight. Or even worse. We shouldn’t be fighting when there is a possibility that he might not even come home.
If I am selfish in any way it is because I do not want to fight. I want to spend every possible moment I can loving him and being loved in return. That is what I fight for.
The funny thing about this all – and I use a very loose definition of funny – is that I understood where he was coming from one he stopped being defensive enough to explain it. And I felt bad. I was sorry. Except he can’t see that I wasn’t fighting with him about how he felt, rather how he went about telling me.
He says I don’t listen but does he realize how hard he makes it? There’s nothing to even listen to when he’s so busy being defensive and brooding and angry and, dare I say, selfish. He thinks I don’t listen but the truth is, sometimes he’s not even saying anything. He jumps to the point where he accuses me of not listening right away, without giving me the chance to listen. Had he told me right away how he felt, I would have been happy to recognize it. Instead, he immediately lets himself get angry and the first I head of how he feels comes as a shock. I’m blown away and if I don’t react maturely, it’s no wonder.
I’m so busy trying to hold everything together and he mistakes the fight in me as fighting him, instead of fighting for us. In return, he fights me. And it’s tiring. I know it won’t be any better if I stop fighting for us but I also know it can’t possibly get any better unless he stops fighting me over false perceptions. In the meantime, I’m surrounded by a rock and a hard place. I know, enough with the cliches already. But they’re so suiting.
So I lied. It does matter and it is important but I don’t know how to get through to him. He’ll read this and I want to hope that he’ll “see the light” but I know he won’t. Maybe we’ll talk about it. It’ll probably turn into a fight and I’ll lie, again, to end it. I guess I’ll just keep lying because it’s the easier difficult choice to make. In doing that, what cliche am I fulfilling?
