The weight of the world

WARNING! WARNING!  Extremely long entry ahead!  Proceed at one's own risk!

There are many things that can set me off into ornery moods, including:  being talked down to, being ignored, stubbing my toe, making mistakes, having something break right when I need to use it, not finding something I desperately need... All of these things are simply parts of life, but lately it feels like the weight of the world, my world anyway, has been bearing down on my in a crushing manner. 

Sitting at my desk at work, I scribbled out a list of situations and issues that I believe are currently causing me to flip from laughter and happiness to anger and despair.  They are (currently):

-lack of sleep:  I've become accustomed to falling asleep with M. rubbing his thumb or his hand against my skin, talking to me until I fall into a state of dreaming.  This entire week he has fallen asleep before me, leaving me laying awake beside him trying to dream, while wishing he was rubbing my back or hip.
(Dreams:  such funny things, revealing our subconscious desires and longings.  Before I met M., I was consumed with the idea of being loved and being in a relationship, finding security and happiness.  I would dream every night of a white knight scenario, which in the day I knew was ridiculous but in the night was so comforting.  Now I no longer dream of a white knight as I have found my Person, and I lay awake and wonder what to dream about now.)

-anxiety:  This is typically directly triggered by lack of sleep.  Last night I lay awake and tried to sleep, listening to the rhythmic sound of his breathing next to me.  The more I tried to sleep, the more anxious I became, the more afraid I great that I would never be able to fall asleep again.  Eventually, I told myself, I will go crazy from lack of sleep and I'll have to be chucked into a nut house, although M. maintains that I would simply fall into a coma while walking down a sidewalk if I was sleep deprived.  In the middle of the night I reached for him and said aloud, "I'm getting anxious", but there was just silence, punctuated by Licorice's heavy breathing and Mr. Cat's paws hitting the floor as he raced through the apartment on his nightly exercise ritual.

-U.T.I.:  Urinary Tract Infection.  It's very common among women, usually triggered by, no kidding, having too much sex at one time.  The tract gets irritated by bacteria that slip up there during sex.  The friction, the motion of having sex causes the tract to become even more irritated.  Urinating becomes painful and frequent.  I love having sex...but this causes sex to become very...not enjoyable.  I should just plead time off, but I feel bad for M. so I just go along with it, frustrating him because he wants me to enjoy it as much as he does.  I know I don't give his generosity enough credit;  if I told him I needed a break, he would gladly give it to me, wanting me to be well and healthy.

-financial worries:  Well, honestly, who doesn't have these?  Money is something we all struggle with and frustratingly are chained to until we die.  It's annoying to live in a society where everything is measured by money, including relationships and stature.  I carry around a financial burden of being in debt a few thousand and who doesn't?  But I want it paid off and out of my life, yet I'm struggling to make minimum payments due to extremely high interest (28%, WTF) on my credit card.  My car is still being paid for, I'm tied down in one place due to these payments I need to make.... I just want freedom from this weight and I'm reluctant to make any big purchases because I have this foreboding sensation that I'm somehow going to need that money for my debt.  Which brings me to the next thing that has been irking me:

-a broken computer:  I've had this behemoth for quite a few years now...six? Seven?  I truly have no idea, although I'm sure I could figure it out.  Anyway, it was the first real "adult" purchase I made, the entire system of tower/monitor/printer costing me a cool $900 or so.  Computers were much slower and more expensive back then, along with every other technological item.  This beast has done me well, requiring repair only twice in all those years.  I think it's finally just hitting the wall.  The hardware isn't partitioning, cyclic data redundancy errors...the hard-drive is failing.  I'd like to pay out the $500 it's going to cost to get a new computer, but there's that debt just hanging over me like the rain cloud featured in the Snoopy comic.  I'm also hesitant to get a new computer because I know everyone in the apartment is going to be all over it.   I miss writing and checking my email at home in the privacy of my dining room:(

-P.M.S.:  no other explanation required, except it involved sitting in the bathtub under a shower, crying my eyes out and feeling lonely, oh so lonely... P.M.S. turns me into Little Miss Drama.

-Low carb diet:  Yeah, it's uber healthy, my skin has cleared up and I feel a bit better, I'm supposed to start losing weight and all I want to do is eat a giant plate of pasta, just eat up all the stuff I can get my hands on.  I'm thinking about a brownie from Second Cup, but my cheat day isn't until Saturday...Saturday, the day my sister and I were supposed to throw a party but she has cancelled on.  Great.  I just need to eat something sweet... Please world, hand me a cookie (peanut butter) and don't let me gain any weight.

-Strained family/friend relationships: Obviously when one starts full force into a committed long-term relationship, there's always a shifting of dynamics.  Parents that were so heavily involved in one's life tend to move to the back burner, especially as you begin to realize that in time you will be a parent yourself and you are becoming autonomous, your own person building your own little family, even if it only consists of a long-legged timid greyhound and a snarly yet cuddly fluffy cat.  When the four of us, M. with his arms wrapped around me, legs intertwined through mine, all squeeze onto my bed, I feel a swelling, a rush of contentment and happiness.  We all belong to each other, but there are pinpricks of sadness, the tiny awareness that things aren't the same anymore with friends and family.  Thrust apart by differing world views, I don't want to hear about condemnation or how I'm sinning.  Perhaps that's because I'm avoiding feeling of guilt, but I desire to know, to be told that I'm the same person  and I am loved just as much as I was before.
There are no more texts in the middle of night from random friends, asking how I'm doing and when we  can hang out next.  We have all become busy, absorbed in our own lives, and the sooner I settle down to that fact, the happier and more content I shall become with what I do have.  I want, more than anything, for my parents to accept the person I am today, to stop asking my sister (and roomie) if I've had sex with M. (she said yes, thanks for tooting the horn), to want to spend time with M., get to know how wonderful he is and how happy he makes me.


There it is, the numerous things, those weights in my world that I carry with me wherever I go and whoever I am with.  I look to the person who loves me as much as he can, who spends the most time with me, I look to him and I see problems, I seek out issues.
I always end up feeling as though our fights are due to my own idiocy.  Each disagreement pulls us closer to our edge, or so I dramatically feel.  Our existence has an expiry date and we're tumbling towards it, but I don't want it to end.  
There's a thread running through us:  I long to be chased, I long for him to seek me, to come for me when I say I want to be alone.  M. does not get this.  He speaks rationally. he does not persist with me and I fear his lack of persistance with his art, his dreams--it will all spill over to us, eventually he will give up as he has with so many other things.  History will repeat itself.  I want to help him, to encourage him to keep trying, to show him that I believe in him and his talent, but I also want him to persist with me;  I want him to try with me.

He walks out the door, me, with tears spilling down my cheeks, holding it open.  I slam it behind him with a force of vehemence, fear, love and hurt.  All I wanted was for him to look past the shower curtain and see me waiting for him, always waiting for him, watching for signs of dwindling persistance.  I sit here and feel frozen, hard to believe he is now on a bus, moving away from me instead of towards me, our chance to talk gone.
As with so many things in life, I regret this:  that I made our brief parting angry and sad, that I look for signs of his fading love, that I am attempting to harden my heart against him, that words should've been said but were left hanging like cobwebs, clinging elusively to us.

Please don't give up on me, M.  If he went away and never returned, a light would be snuffed out in my light and I would wander in the dark for a long time, perhaps for the rest of my life.  I'm scared to think of what my life would be without him, afraid I will discover the truth: that I could go on living without him and be self-sufficient and happy.  I want to rely on him and to trust him, I want to be a better person for him.   I want to maybe even be a better person for myself, to grow and change. 

Dr. F. sits down at the desk a few feet away from me, seemingly burdened as well with the weight of his world:  a nineteen-yr-old patient of his who suddenly died.  There you have it:  we're all carrying different problems with us and we're never free from those things.  They come to us in the middle of the night and keep us awake, our brains firing with little signals that jump from lobe to lobe, cerebral cortexes alive and charged with our failures and futures. 

Weight of the world, lighten your load please.
~Matt. 11:28-30