So, this weekend has been very… I’m not sure what a good word is to describe it. But closest one I can think of is 心酸 , which I guess loosely translates to feeling sad but in a particularly sad way.
As I write this, my birthday is in two days. Around this time of year, I think I feel particularly pensive and sensitive, for a lot of reasons. But I think the most important one being that it feels like one of the few times of the year I feel like it’s a lot harder to run away from my fear, belief, even, that I am unlovable, unloved or some mixture of the two. It’s the same at Christmas, the same at New Year’s (Lunar or otherwise) and generally holidays that involve some notion of being with loved ones. My birthday is the worst, though, because it’s supposed to be about me.
This weekend has been one of conflict. You see, about a month ago, Naia and I had planned to go to Paris to celebrate my birthday. I think throughout the whole thing I constantly told myself, and at times shared it with her, that “Paris is no big deal”. And to some extent it’s true – cities are just cities – but I think to an equally large extent it has been me trying to downplay the importance of this to me. After all, god forbid something go wrong and I’m disappointed, right?
Well, as luck would have it, things did go wrong. Strikes took place all over France – especially in Paris, over an issue with their national pension system. Some of these strikes got violent, too. And when I started reading about it a couple days before we were set to leave for Paris, I had this sinking feeling that we’d have to cancel. I held out hope, though – the strikes were on the 23rd of March – we were set to leave on the 25th, and if the 23rd’s strikes worked out, it might just be the last of the month, and we’d be in the clear. It would not work out that way, because they declared another two strikes, landing on the first and last days we’d intended to be there. Bummer.
Somewhere in me, I just kinda went “well, it just had to happen”. It felt like some divine intervention to say “hey you – you can’t catch a break”. And in that place within me I felt such a deep sense of sadness and disappointment.
And amidst this, Naia made a case for continuing our trip anyway. I said that I think we should cancel, and I still think so – largely because I doubt either of us would enjoy trash-filled streets while spending close to 1000 euros doing so or feel secure despite the reasonably high risk of traffic disruptions. We had a fight about it. In the end, we did not go, and thankfully we were able to refund most things. So yay to that.
For me, though, this felt like a proverbial punch to the gut. I just felt so overwhelmed, so confused, so angry. And I suppose situations like that really serve to simply amplify low-burning feelings that are often tucked away in the background. I lashed out at Naia and said how I felt like sometimes she didn’t care about me.
Now, I think our relationship has challenges. Every relationship does, and particularly one where one has ADHD and both have permanent and not-insignificant health conditions. And I think both of us were right to be upset with each other – doing long distance has taken its toll on us individually and as a couple: it’s made communication a lot more opaque, injected a lot of friction into making up, and generally left us with less valves to release resentment-building pressures. And indeed, resentment has built up. But surely we, or at least I, could have communicated with more love, more maturity, more kindness. I mean, isn’t that what a relationship is about, at the end of the day? To say that I love you, I accept you as you are, I trust that you know more about your reality than I do, and I trust that you accept that I know more about my reality than you? To, despite our differences, trust in each other and protect each other? Well, I failed on that.
Naia, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry.
I’ve taken most of this weekend off. I’ve spent a lot of time just thinking, pacing around the room, going on random walks (I, sadly, even got caught in the rain today on one of said walks). In this time thinking I also tried to read up a bit more on ADHD relationships – for both the ADHD-er and ADHD-ee and managing long-distance relationships. A lot of posts came up, and some were more helpful than others. I think some were a little too negative – the internet is probably biased towards negative content, some were kinda meh but helpful-ish, and reddit (both for people with ADHD and ADHD-partners) was certainly and interesting ride. When it came to long-distance content, things were generally less spicy and more constructive, sometimes devolving into begrudgingly helpful listicles.
But at some point, I landed on an article that mentioned how individuals with different attachment styles might struggle differently when doing long distance. And that got me thinking about my attachment style. So I read up. Attachment theory low-key feels like a bit of a pseudoscience (kinda like MBTI), but it at least gives me a language to talk about certain behavioural patterns I notice in myself and Naia in our relationship. I found this article on anxious attachment and disorganized attachment particularly… relevant.
Going deeper into this rabbit hole, I came across this youtube video. I watched it at 2x speed, lol, while walking around town just to get some fresh air. It makes plenty of observations that have rocked me to my core.
One of the ideas raised was how someone like me might – for a variety of reasons – associate love and pain together. That is, there is not one without the other. And I’ve never quite come across anyone word like that, but indeed, that feels deeply and hauntingly true. It then points out that sometimes, that can lead to someone like me acting out and starting fights, because love and pain together are what feel right.
It also makes a point about hot-and-cold behaviour, something that I do – have never understood why I do – and I am deeply ashamed of and sorry for. She suggests that it’s because it’s me bouncing between being anxious and desperately wanting to be loved (true) and then either refusing to believe that someone actually could love me (true) or thinking something is wrong with them for loving me (also true), and then kinda shutting down. That’s me, to a tee.
Another point she raises – about being harsh and binary inwardly. It really struck me, because I’ve always been like this deep down, but those who are close to me but not-that-close would probably be surprised at this, because I think I can outwardly present as a very warm and caring person. She suggests that for someone who anxiously craves love and fears pain, who associates relationships with both to an extreme degree, it can often be overwhelming and scary to get and feel the emotions that come with a deepening and growing relationship. And simplifying things by being black-and-white makes things easier – as in, “he is wrong” or “he is an asshole” or “this is unacceptable”. She mentions that it can help someone like me to stand up for unfairness – which I think is true to a degree – but it’s also very harsh, cruel and unkind.
I reflected a lot on these, because they feel like a lot of problems I have and have noticed but never had the vocabulary to describe. It would appear that the closer someone gets to me, the less boundaries there are, the more I treat them the way I treat myself. And it would also appear that I treat myself like shit, and I probably need help.
So all that brings us to now, at 10:01pm, as I sit in my room typing this, wondering what I’m going to do moving forward. Naia is coming to visit tomorrow. I hope we can talk about it and talk things out. I hope she can find the strength to forgive me.
For now, though, I think I’m going to check myself back into therapy. I’m going to need to do better, because I don’t want to live like this forever.
On a separate but relevant note, I’m thinking of just not overdoing things anymore. Someone I used to care for deeply once told me “life doesn’t have to be hard to be good”. I’ve thought about that phrase a lot, and recently I think I understand it a little better. And I think this feels like a good time of realization – indeed, life doesn’t have to be hard to be good. And maybe, just maybe, I should make my life easier. I think I’m going to quit research, and close that door.
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