cheez

I'm uncertain about the future. I try not to think about it too much, for the most part. Because most days, and especially these days, I feel like it's bleak.

Realistically these back issues aren't going to magically heal themselves, and the older you get the more your body fails. I try to have hope about making a full recovery or something close enough because I am in my early 30s and being young helps (probably). But it's been over 2.5 years now of these ups and downs and I just... I don't know how much longer I can keep holding on for. Having hope is harder than not having hope sometimes. Because it feels like I'm getting there, I'm getting closer, I see the light at the end of the tunnel and oh, no, not you, you can get kicked back down into the dark again.

Like I spend so much time knowing and imagining what could be. When I get better I will do a, b, c. Making bucketlists of things that now feel like they may never happen for me. Having dreams that only ever come true in my dreams.

There's already steps between now and the dreams I have that I think about constantly. Things like when I'm x% enough along in the recovery process, I'll make an attempt at a short bike ride, which would be step 0 of being able to bike. But even that, I just never get there. And the daily things, like I want to be able to sleep without feeling an ache in my shoulder, or that strange slightly off feeling in my back that is less real pain than an ache but somehow worse.

When will I be free? Will I ever be free?

I've thought a lot this year, very unseriously, about ending things. Lots of different things. My life, my relationship, my dreams. I think everyone does, sometimes. One of the visions I have is of going to the seaside and just swimming out as far as I can until I'm too tired to come back. I know it would be awful and I would regret it at the end, but I still think about it, often. Or using helium.

And my relationship... that's another reason why I think more about the future, it's stupid that it's because of a boy, I know, but now that he's in my life, I find myself thinking about the other beautiful vision of the future. Where I'm healed and we're both happy and healthy and able to go on all the adventures we've dreamed of. But visions are just visions, not real. The bad and the good ones. The reality is that right now I cannot do those things. And that as I get older and weaker, my odds only grow worse.

So I'm uncertain about us. I love him a lot, but I guess what I've always thought of love is that if you truly love someone you should do what's good for them, not just want you want for yourself. Of course I want us to be together. Of course I don't know what I'd do without him, and even imagining it makes me want to cry. Seeing him is one of the few things that still makes me happy these days. But it's unfair to put all of your happiness on someone else, I know that. I don't want him to be my whole world or my whole happiness or an escape from my sadness. It's doomed anyway if I can't learn to live with myself.

And what I do see, what is true too, is that he can't handle my despair or my sadness. It really hurt me that time when I was really upset and crying on the phone and he couldn't take it and said, "I have to go" and left to play video games with his friends. Or even yesterday when I was hurting and having a bit of hard time and he was more interested in doomscrolling than offering any comfort.

I understand that the sadness is too much for him, and that he has to protect his own mental health too. And I don't want him to get pulled down by my sadness. But it is really painful that the choices seem to be either that I make him turn away from me or that I have to put in the effort to cover up as much of my sadness as I can when we're together. To put on that happy face when this whole year I've felt like the walls are shrinking in on me. When I can't think about the future without thinking that I don't have a place in it.

He's right that I don't have a right to complain when I haven't put in as much effort as I can to find help. But it's so hard and I'm so tired. I want to complain. I don't want to try anymore. I want to feel like a person again who has hopes and dreams and a future.

Each day feels like I'm trudging through mud. I work because I have to, I find no joy in it. After work, I exist, I find no joy in it either. I do my PT exercises, I sleep, I rinse and repeat. I wonder every day why I'm doing this. What the point of going on is. I have no dreams, I have no hobbies, I have no outlet. My friends are all off living their own lives. I tell myself I will get better and then I will be able to do all these things that bring me fun and joy and whatever, but really, what is that but wishful thinking? What are the actual odds this will ever happen for me?

There's a lot of days where I wish there was a painless way to turn everything off. A light switch for my life. When I have hope things are getting better I don't want this but... there's so much more time when I feel like I'm just enduring the sludge mud slime gruel of daily life.

I've tried long enough haven't I?

I know the only person who can carry your own burdens is yourself. I know it's not his or anyone's duty or responsibility to help me through this, and that there is no right thing you can say to make me feel better, and that he really tries when he can. But I can't help feeling uncertain about us staying in a relationship when it's like this, when I feel like a burden to myself all the time, and a burden to him when I show negative emotions. Like maybe in the same way I want to be free, if I really love him I should set him free.

He's a positive, bright, handsome guy, who has a lot of love and affection in him. I know that if I end things, he'll be able to find someone that's better for him than I am. Who isn't sad, and who has the physical capabilities to go on the adventures we've dreamt of. Who can go around the world when they retire early. Maybe someone who can game with him this time, who will let him go to the strip club haha, who can climb mountains and cross rivers and dive into the unknown. Who can share more jokes and laughter and happiness and not so much tears and whining and despair.

If I really care, isn't this the right logical step? I am pretty confident he would recover a lot better and faster than I would—I know he loves me too now, but I think I've always liked him more than he likes me. Which is a little hard to digest for me sometimes but mostly I'm okay with, and it does help to know he wouldn't be as devastated.

It's just really hard to let him go. Really really hard.

I'm selfish, I guess. I'm not ready yet. I don't know if I ever will be.

What I've learned from most of my life is that most people don't want someone sad around. And maybe I'm tried of pretending not to be...

I've realized that maybe it's in both of our best interest to give up on this. Maybe we're too different and what we want is too different too.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who thinks about this so much. Who feels conflicted. Who hurts and has hurt. I think it still bothers me that going no contact "made him realize what he wanted". If that was what it took, despite me being myself, being there the whole time, maybe he doesn't want me all that much. I still don't really believe he does. Want *me*, I mean. Maybe it's more that he wants someone to be around, and I am someone convenient, easy, available. Sometimes, it really doesn't feel like it has to be me. It feels like it could be anyone.

I just happen to be here, right now. Easy companionship, easy sex. And it's not like I don't want that too. It's not like I'm not lonely, like I'm not into the hanging out, or the sex.

But if after all this time he's still unsure about me, I doubt that's going to change. And maybe I deserve to be with someone who is sure about me. Even if I don't know if I will be able to find someone like that, maybe it's worth it to try. And him too, I think he deserves to be with someone he feels sure about.

I just. I don't want to lose him yet.

It bothers me too that him, us, this thing of ours takes up so much of my mental space. And I doubt that the idea of us, and how little chance there is of us working out, crosses his mind often. Or that it bothers him as much as it does me.

Sometimes I wish these feelings would go away. Then I could stop clinging onto the sliver of hope that we might work out, and let it all go. I want to walk away. I don't want to be in this ambiguous space anymore, where this clawing wanting digs its little teeth into the crevices of my heart and chews and chews. I thought I had made my peace with this, that I was okay to see where things go, but I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it's not worth feeling like I'm not good enough, that I can't be wanted, that I'm being kept around twiddling my thumbs while he figures himself out.

I know I don't have to stay around. I know I'm making my own choice here, that no one is making me do anything I don't want to.

And I keep wondering if it's time to say goodbye. It feels like it's slowly reaching that point. I just...don't want to.

It makes me sad thinking about it. But a part of me also feels like sooner or later I will have to, and if I have to eventually, why not walk away now? Have things really changed much from before? Will they change much from here on out?

I don't know. And so maybe I'm staying just for a chance. A chance with a guy who after over a year is not 100% certain about me. Doesn't that just mean we should let each other go? So why can't I? Why doesn't he?

This goddamned hope. Emotions make me so stupid.

I think... I need to let this go. Maybe in a few months. Let's say the end of June. Or July. If he's not ready by then to commit to me, maybe it's time to move on. Let's be brave. Let's say it's okay, let's make peace with it. Some things are not meant to be, and that's okay. We can't force things.

But even though I say that, I don't know if I'll be able to when the time comes. But at least I've told myself this. At least I've put it down in writing. Writing that no one can hold me to, but writing is better than nothing.

An ending is a new beginning, or whatever the hell they like to say. And this time I'd like to think I can truly force myself to walk away. To go no contact until the emotions die down and we can talk without me feeling this way about him. And that even before then that I can look back on everything with a smile, and think about the fun times we had together.

Sometimes I wonder if the child thing is just an excuse to avoid something more serious with me, though I don't think it is. That's another thing. I think he truly does want to be a parent, and I am very very uncertain. I definitely definitely don't want to be pregnant or give birth to a child.

Surrogacy and adoption I... could consider. But that prohibitively expensive price tag on surrogacy though...

I have never allowed myself to consider this before. From when I was young, always in my head when I thought about children, I would think, if a child turned out like my brother, strange, ungrateful, spoiled, unable to socialize with...anyone, really, but not at his core a bad person, I would hate myself and hate my life. Now that I'm older I do feel like some of what he became is what the world told him he was, that I wasn't faultless in this, and I wonder too if he has autism or a similar condition that made everything harder for him. If things could've turned out differently if his environment had been different. If he'd had a single friend. But even still it is true. I don't have the emotional or mental strength to care for someone like him. I would be miserable.

But for the first time I've allowed myself to think that it doesn't have to turn out that way. That there might be an ideal world where I have a partner who I love who loves me, and we have a child we love who loves us, who plays with our friends' children, who grows up to have a happy, fulfilling life of their own.

But there's so many more ways it could go wrong. A child is a bigger gamble than any card game. And at the end of all those losing paths is resentment and misery.

Especially for us. There's so many reasons why we would be bad parents together, aside from me never wanting children before. Neither of us are great at scheduling and planning. We're both bad communicators and he's worse. Both of us can barely cook. Financially it would be tough. His spending habits aren't great. He hasn't gone to a doctor in over a decade—so realistically, would I be able to rely on him to handle a child's medical care?

I refuse to be stuck carrying most of the weight of child rearing the way my mom was, working full-time and doing most of the cooking and cleaning, and I don't know if I trust that he'd be an equal partner. I know he said he would, but much easier said than done. I have no proof of that.

It makes me really sad to think of it, but it does feel like we aren't going to make it.

I have to be ready to say goodbye.

I don't know if I can.

Some things are clearer now. Whether or not he wants to be real friends? That's not really clear. I think there's a chance he does, but I don't think he understands—or maybe it's that he doesn't care—that if we're hooking up when he meets his next girl, there's very little chance we can stay friends when they're together.

I'm starting to think it's more the latter—he doesn't care. Or more that the doesn't care enough to give up the sex. Either way, the result is the same, and I can't really be bothered to figure out which. I won't say it doesn't matter to me at all. The idea of maintaining a friendship did feel...nice. But a real friendship takes time, isn't one-sided, and while I do think that there can be platonic friendship and sex at the same time, I think you have to want the friendship part too. You have to work for it. You have to care. And while I think he does a little of all of the above, I don't think it's enough for me. My friendships matter a lot to me, and after everything, he's more between a 'friend' and a 'friendquaintance' now. Not quite a friendquaintance because he knows too many intimate details about my life, but he has been removed from the inner circle. It was a fool move to let him in there in the first place.

Time will tell if he makes it back into a place closer to me. I kind of suspect it's not going to happen, and that thought... actually doesn't make me sad, which is nice. I think reconnecting has helped. Because it's clear now neither of us wants to go back to that painful but beautiful space of limerence I used to live in. A space between love and friendship, that was never meant to last.

Oddly, I feel kind of removed from it all. Things feel more clear now. That he cares for me in a friend-ish way, aka hopes for my wellbeing/happiness, would cheer on my life accomplishments and wants to spend time together, but also that he has always cared more about what he wants than how what he wants might affect me. I don't begrudge this necessarily, since people in general will put themselves first, and I think that's fine and generally healthy as long as you're not hurting someone else. But that isn't something I want in a lover, and it is helping quash any lingering feelings of want. They feel smaller and smaller by the day :D.

I'm glad too that he isn't completely acting like nothing happened, which I thought he might. He is trying harder this time around not to hurt me, to ask me if things are okay. He spoke up first this time, 'I don't want to cross any lines with you and I want to make sure things feel casual. Let me know if anything bothers you.'

That part has been good. The distance feels more real, and more safe.

I feel like he does want friendship, but if he can get it he also wants to eventually start hooking up again. I think for him there's no conflict between being friends and hooking up. Friendships are easy for him. And if he can get free conversation, company, cuddles, closeness with someone in the interim between relationships, all the better.

The problem is I'm not good at making friends. So I place high value on friendships, and even getting too attached in a friend way could be a problem. Because when I get attached as a friend I don't want to be thrown away when it's inconvenient and reached out to again when it's convenient. So for now, I'm not putting in much effort on my side. He can contact me, we can hang out, he can send me memes, but I haven't felt too much like reaching out first myself.

Because I don't know yet if we can be friends. I need time. I'm also trying to decide if this is something I want in my life, if there is no friendship in the picture. Because it's not like I don't want the sex or the company. I do. So it could be convenient for me too. Especially since I'm still injured so I don't really want to look for anyone else yet. Navigating the sex part would be hard with someone new.

But the thing is, right now I could walk away and it wouldn't hurt me much. If we become real friends, it would hurt me. So I'm unsure. And while I'm unsure I'm just going to keep it here, at a distance. I think it's okay for me to be the selfish one this time, to get what I want out of it and do nothing more.

To give little of myself, if anything.

I'm also kind of hoping he finds someone soon? Because I think it would give me more clarity too.

I don't think it was love. We were never emotionally vulnerable to each other, and the two hard conversations we had were so hard, so stilted. It shouldn't be so hard to tell someone how you feel if you trust them, if you feel safe with them, should it? And I don't believe you can love without vulnerability and trust.

If I think about it, he never said, "I miss you."

I said it once.

Maybe I should've known then I was already too far gone. But hey, the denial is strong in me. And friends miss friends too. A lot. I should know.

And I know. I know. It wouldn't have worked out anyway. But I had thought this way the whole time, even up until the end, and it didn't change anything. I still felt those feelings. And when he turned to me, I knew before a single word passed his lips, that he didn't feel the same way. I saw it in that soft gaze, an answer more than the answer he gave. Was there pity? I thought there was. Or was that guilt? Guilt was probably too much to ask for. Consternation, maybe. Maybe he didn't know how to deal with the me in front of him, my emotions bursting from my seams, unraveling me into that barest version of myself I'd never wanted to show him. And that worse, that as I unraveled, it felt like this was a version of me he couldn't bear to see. That I was alone there, feeling like a boat torn from the dock, sent into the sea.

But if it wasn't love, am I allowed to hurt this much?

I wonder what it is that hurts me so much. To know that my delusions were never real? Or to be so alone in the hurting. To know now that I felt so much when he didn't. And that he never will. And that like a fool I had hoped even a little that he felt the same way. But at least now maybe I'm glad he didn't.

When this first happened I wanted him to hurt, I wanted him to feel that tearing empty hollow beating in my chest. To lose his appetite. To struggle to get up in the morning. To actually cry, for once. To not be able to stop.

To think of me and be in pain. To miss me, even a little.

I don't think he did these things. I think he went about his happy days, playing his games, meeting his friends, going on adventures. He always seemed to know how to enjoy life. Unlike me. I had always been the one growing up that thought, when everyone else seemed to be having fun, is this really so fun? Why are all of you happy? Are you acting? Or is it just me that feels like we're laughing because everyone else is? We're pretending, hoping we'll feel something.

But he wasn't like that. He really seemed to enjoy the moment, and from him I was able to learn to enjoy the moment a little too. He made me feel like I didn't need to be good at something to be happy, that it wasn't that those 'fun' moments had never been 'fun' before, but just that I had been alone. That having someone by my side was enough. That to laugh together was happiness. That was something I liked about him.

I'm not saying he can't feel emotions, or loss, or love. He has lost and loved more than me, and that's probably why it was easier for him to know he didn't have feelings for me. Because he has felt that depth of emotion before, and this time it probably wasn't there. That's okay. I know that's not something he or I could've changed.

I just wish...he had told me.

Anyway, it's easier now. To be happy for him even, that he didn't have these feelings. It's good only one of us had to grieve the loss of what never was. And what never could've been.

It's over.

It's so hard even to type that. Two words but they hurt so much. All that we had gone up in smoke, even though it was probably not worth much to him in the first place. But it was worth something to me. It was worth a lot.

I feel like a fool. I feel like I played myself. The classic story: you get into a friends with benefits relationship and then you catch feelings.

But even that is wrong. That time I remember, in the dark of the night, my nerves jangling, 6, 7 months into the undefined blur that was the thing between us, asking, "So what are we?" Unable to say what I might want myself. Too full of pride, denial, fear, uncertainty. He says, he said, "Good question, I want to keep things the way they are. Like friends with benefits." And I agreed, thinking I could do it, I wasn't even in love, I was into him, sure, but not thaaat into him. Too scared to end things then. Too scared to be alone. But here I am alone anyway. And even then I knew I was probably too attached. I wouldn't have worked up the courage to ask the question if I wasn't.

But I thought, I wished, I hoped, that I wouldn't get more attached. That I could keep what we had, keep being happy, keep enjoying the good times, and not feel sad over the fact that one day things would end, that he would be with someone else.

And that's the lie. I don't know when I started to be sad to let him go, or if I had always felt that way. I don't know when I realized it would hurt seeing him with someone else. I just know that at some point, this was the truth. Which fucking sucked, but what could I do?

And no matter what I told myself, once I made those realizations, I knew I couldn't do this anymore. I knew I couldn't, but I kept pushing things off. I knew it would always end up like this, but I didn't want to lose him yet. I always managed to find an excuse to tell myself not yet. Not now. Next week, next month, next year. But when he wasn't around I'd be sad, I'd wonder what he was doing, if he missed me the way I did him. And I knew I shouldn't feel that way, that fwb wouldn't feel that way, and that the answer was almost certainly no. It hurt.

And the more it hurt the more I tried to convince myself I was okay. The good times felt so good, but whenever I was alone I felt so bad. Thoughts of him started to take over my daily life, crowd my mind. I felt so stupid, thinking so much about a boy I knew didn't like me back.

So stupid, unable to squash the tiny thread of hope that he might feel the same way.

I don't know why this week was the breaking point. Why the part of me that was trying to convince myself I was okay seemed to be failing. I didn't feel okay anymore. I felt untethered, wild, lost. Like if I didn't say something I would snap.

So I asked him to talk. He said that he had something to talk about too. Stupidly, this gave me hope. I know, logically that doesn't make sense. But I couldn't stop myself.

It was there in the car, in the parking lot of the restaurant we'd planned to get dinner at (haha we'd planned to talk over dinner), when I told him, "I'm getting too attached to be friends with benefits anymore." His answer was at once the one I expected, and yet the one I couldn't help hoping against. "I know we haven't been good at keeping things platonic. I'm sorry I let things get this far. I'm sorry for not communicating enough." It really hurt to hear, even though I saw it coming. I didn't realize how much I'd hoped for a different answer. How much I still hope. How I really wish he cared more about me.

How even then he was both caring and callous at the same time. Apologizing, saying he really valued our friendship and enjoyed my company and hoped that after some time and distance we could talk again. How he asked if I'd still feel up to going to the concert we'd planned to go to in February, how he'd understand if I didn't. Saying he was sorry he didn't communicate enough. All I could say to everything is I don't know.

How I said, "I understand that you feel how you feel, even though I wish we could've been more." How his answer was silence.

And I asked, "Did you ever feel anything for me?"

He said, "I thought I was catching feelings in the beginning, but I think it was just b/c was so excited for me. At some point I realized we weren't a good match."

I asked him, "Can you tell me why you think we aren't a good match?"

And what hurt me is he said, "I'd rather not say."

I asked, "Can you tell me why you'd rather not say?"

He said, "I need to process."

I said, "If you are able to process, can you tell me later? Through text or whatever, I think it would help me."

And he was able to say, over text later, that he wanted a family and a grounded life, a house. Since I don't want children I know a family is not in the cards with me, at least if having kids is your definition of family. Which his probably is, how would I know? I understand that's a dealbreaker, but I can't help thinking there was something more—how is family a reason that you 'prefer not to say'? And why could you never have brought this up to me in person?

I feel a little delusional. That even though now I know he never had real feelings for me, I can't stop thinking what if he realizes something different over time? (Never going to happen.) (Shouldn't matter if it happens.)

And why do I feel this way when he didn't try to communicate these things with me. When it was always me to bring up the hard conversations, the conversations I knew would hurt me. I wish so bad that he had cared just enough to have the courage to tell me his honest feelings without me asking. But maybe it's better this way—at least I have something to dislike him for. But I can't make myself dislike him, and I didn't, despite seeing the obvious flaws or incompatibilities like this.

It hurts so bad right now. I can't stop my thoughts from running around in circles in my head, regrets picking at my brain like little crow beaks. Thinking thoughts I know are max level stupid: if I can take back what I said and get back into our unjolly little fwb situation, if I should message him.

I'm scared I'll never be loved.