my ambivalent relationship with myself

by lifeonaxis1

I’m back.  For how long, I don’t know.  I took August off to prepare for the semester, but I haven’t had time since the semester started either.  Teaching 160 kids is more work than I could have imagined.  I’m behind, always.  Research is at a standstill.  I work 7 days a week.

Enough bitching about work.  Time to bitch about something else.

Relationships.  I hate them.  And it has occurred to me that I hate them, in part, because they reflect back all of my past and force me to face it.

Trust issues.  Abandonment issues.  The infamous daddy issues.  I fucking hate all of them.  But in a relationship, they’re all there staring me in the face.  Laughing at my inability to render them inert.

I can identify when they’re affecting me.  That’s not the hard part.  The hard part is reflecting on why they are there in the first place.  That they bring me to a place of pain and suffering.  A place where I feel helpless and unable to change things.  I feel weak and inferior.

So, I do the logical thing (sarcasm) and get angry.  I lash out because I feel pain so I need to inflict it too.  I need to make the person who hurt me suffer.

I run away to escape the overwhelming feelings.  I brood.  I hate relationships more and wish I could be single so I don’t have to face these things about myself.  Single me can move forward, and not be defined by those past experiences.  In a relationship, I don’t have that control.

And it’s a vicious cycle, having trust issues.  I have some insight but no trust to tell someone, no way to address them within the context of a relationship.  Rational or not, no one is safe.  Letting someone see me with all of my weaknesses is a threat I cannot bear.

I would rather be alone.