I don't know where to hide now that the sky is falling

To be completely simplistic, I think all relationships can boil down to two moments, tops:

This is why I love this person
Why the fuck do I love this person

Sometimes, you only get one of those moments. I was thinking about this last night. For hours.

I didn't have any "why the fuck do I love this person" or "this is why I love this person" moments with my daughter's dad. I told him I loved him, but I never did. I just wanted to have someone love me, and Chris did a really good job at pretending he did sometimes. Enough to sway my better judgment into thinking it wasn't weird for a 24 year old to be fucking around with a 17 year old, and for sure, we should be together, and for even more sure, we should have a baby together even though I didn't want to have children. The birth of my daughter, and the year and a half I got to spend with her almost made me love Chris, because I loved her so much. I wanted, for a fleeting moment, to be a family. The pesky thing was, I didn't want Chris. I despised him, and god damn, did he make me fucking miserable. He managed to be everything wrong with my life, and I loathed him. Hearing him breathe made me fucking ANGRY, and I legitimately contemplated strangling him in his sleep on more than one occasion. I wish I could say it was my daughter that kept me from doing it, or some higher calling to behave morally. It wasn't...it was logistics. Chris was a huge dude, and I'm not sure my hands and unnaturally weak arms would have done anything but worn myself out without even waking Chris up. It's hard to have either of those moments in a relationship if you don't love the person. I didn't love Chris. I didn't even really pretend to try. I paid the word lip service, but we both did. And we were both terrible at it.

Allen was different. I loved Allen so much, and it was all consuming. And he loved me back. He made me laugh, he was smart, he engaged me, he wanted me to love him, and I did. Allen was, to be a cliche, an addiction. There was one exceptionally rainy day where Allen and I just played outside in the rain, splashed around in the puddles, and after an hour of running around with each other, we kissed each other in the rain, and it's the most honest display of raw affection I think I'll ever experience. It was young, it was honest, it wasn't the least bit jaded, and I looked into his face and thought to myself, "this is why I love this person". My relationship with Allen is fucking littered with those kinds of moments. One night, we were making dinner, and we listened to Head Automatica's Beating Hearts Baby over and over and over, and we danced around in our underwear and laughed and sweated and had bagels smashed full of cold cuts because we were poor as fuck and in our early twenties and what the fuck did we know about a good meal? I just knew that this feeling was why I loved Allen. When we were on the hard streets of Vegas together, when we didn't know where our next dollar was coming from, or how we were going to eat, Allen's parents offered to bail him out and send him back to Colorado if he left me behind. He said no. We were together, end of story, and we didn't go anywhere without each other. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. That was why I loved Allen. Allen and I were together for five years. Four and a half years in, I was trying to get Allen to watch a movie with me so I could put my hands on his man parts and do things with them, and he wasn't listening to me, he was playing his xbox. So I went into the room, put on lacey panties and a flimsy, see through shirt, and went back into the living room. I put on some music and started dancing in the living room, and when Allen told me I was getting in his way, I angrily wondered, "why the FUCK do I love this person". Maybe that sounds superficial, and that may be because it was, but it was the beginning of the end. The next six months were at least one episode of wondering why the fuck I loved him a day, and those knitted together furiously. I credit Allen with showing me what it feels like to be loved, though. It wasn't jaded, it wasn't overly optimistic. It was just love, and that was all I wanted it to be.

I didn't have any this is why I love this person moments with Dan. I had two years of "why the fuck do I love this person" moments that made me feel ashamed of myself, because I was suffering all of these abuses (for lack of a better word), and I couldn't vocalize my feelings (of love, or of anger at feeling so fucking trodden over), and I was allowing myself to get walked all over by some guy that didn't have the sack to either tell me he couldn't stomach being with me like a human, or that he loved me. I think about my relationship with Dan, and it plays like a Bukowski poem in my head. It looks dingy and used, and large and small at the same time. I see Dan the way I think Dan saw Dan...bigger than me, better than me, the powerhouse of our imbalanced relationship, and I'm exceptionally mousy, and chasing the crumbs Dan threw down to me when he could be bothered. Dan was going on a trip about three months into our relationship, and I remember sitting on his lap in his living room, and looking down at his face when he said, "Are you going to miss me?" And it felt like such a delicious trap. I could answer yes and look foolish and alone, I could answer no and be a guarded cunt, or I could say what I said, which was, "are you going to miss me?" Smooth. He said he didn't know, with a very wry smile and an obnoxiously smug twinkle in his eyes, and I remember having two thoughts, both of them equally mortifying. I'm not sure which came first, because they kind of collided into my ears simultaneously:

Fuck. I love him
Why the fuck do I love him.

Two months later, when I sent a very veiled email to Dan about being in love with him and getting no response back, I stared at my computer and wondered why the fuck I loved him, and then lied to myself and told myself he'd say it when he got back from California.

When Dan had a wedding and I didn't get to go with him but I helped him buy his outfit for it, I remember telling him how handsome he looked and wondering inside why the fuck did I love someone who hurt me in new and inventive ways every single fucking day.

When Dan told his mom on Christmas Eve that he was alone because everybody was out of town, despite the fact that we had been together for over a year AND I was sitting right there, I stood outside in a blizzard, calling my girlfriend Anali and bawling, "why the fuck do I love him? I'm going home." And if Anali hadn't talked sense into me to stay until the blizzard was over, I would have been. I had had it that night, because Dan managed to make me feel alone in the universe, and I'd never felt so abandoned and pathetic and unloved in my life. And I couldn't do it anymore. But Anali was right, it was white out conditions and freezing and I was crying so hard I was damn near blind and I probably would have died on the way home. So I stayed, and gave Dan the "I don't understand why I  love you" speech without actually using the words I love you because it's embarrassing to say that to someone who'll never ever ever in their life verbalize that nebulous idea to you. And the next morning, on Christmas, I had morning tea with Dan, we fucked, and I cried in the bathroom because I didn't understand why I loved him and why I stayed.

I could go on that way for hours. I loved Dan so much, and it was so different from Allen and Chris, because it was love, but it wasn't as real or as honest as Allen's, it was a cover up. I loved Dan privately because that's all he'd let me do, and I wanted it to work because that's how dumb some people are when they love someone.

I have simultaneous moments like this with Derek. I love my husband more than I ever loved Allen, but in a reserved way, because Dan is the reason I can't have nice things. I love Derek as much as I am fucking capable of, and I love him hard and I'm not ashamed of it. I love my husband so much it makes me angry. He makes me angry. I wake up almost every day and I know why I love him, but at some point during every day, I will have a moment where I growl inside and yell into my own brain about why the fuck do I love him. It's different, though. It's not the same as before. When I wondered why I loved Allen, I was digging myself out of the hole we'd buried ourselves in. I wondered because I was trying to remind myself, and the reminders never came, and I was sad and miserable and I hated and resented my situation. With Dan, I wondered because, while he gave me everything I vocalized wanting, and he spoiled me in ways I didn't deserve, I knew every day that he was fucking heartless and cruel enough to string along a person who was obviously too fucking weak and scared to let go of the robot that didn't love her back. I wondered why to try and make myself understand so maybe I could leave.

But with Derek, I don't wonder for any of those reasons. I wonder because he says he loves me so much, but when I'm not looking, he does a complete 180. Derek and I just had our two year anniversary, and the first year of our marriage was pretty good, but the second year has been awful. Derek has had issue after issue with flirting with other women, and breaking promises to me regarding other women. Derek swears he's not flirting, and these women mean nothing. And he'll eventually get to a place where he wants to soothe his crying wife and tell her that he never thought of it from my point of view, and I am so beautiful and he loves me more than anything, and he's searched for me for 40 years, why would he fuck it up? And he gets to this place only after he continues talking to women he promised me he wouldn't talk to. Or confided in other women after he promised me he'd stop, because it felt to me like a betrayal of our marriage. Or waxes rhapsodic about how things could have been SO different to a woman he didn't really get the opportunity to date after finding one of her letters in his closet. Or chatting up women on a seemingly harmless app like Words with Friends and telling them they're beautiful, and then inviting them to snapchat and saving their beautiful and adorable snaps to his phone. Or saving beautiful snaps of your beautiful best friend that you've ALWAYS felt like second fiddle to in his phone, with the added bonus of wondering how the fuck someone with such inside information about your insecurities and marital problems can send your husband selfies of her looking beautiful. An extra twist of the knife there. Or after telling someone that they are so nice and so beautiful, and he would love to get to know them better. Or after all of this, promising to give up all social media platforms and then taking two days to actually go through with deleting only one. After posting on facebook that it's time to delete facebook because there are too many distractions for his impulsive mind, and then twelve hours later, posting a complete and total lie so he could get away with posting a tasteful nude photo he took of himself to his Korean adoptee page. His post reads:

I've always had a low self esteem and self image issue due to being teased as a kid for not looking caucasian. My photographer wife finally talked me into a photoshoot even though I don't have an "ideal" body. It is taking a great amount of courage for me to post this, but in the name of positive body image and self-esteem, here it is.

Let me explain why this post is bullshit. It's very probably my husband was teased for being Korean when he was younger. In fact, he's DEFINITELY mentioned to me that he was teased a fuckload. So that part is verifiable in as much as he's told me this story before. Now, his photographer wife said this, as we just had a huge weekend of doing boudoir/maternity/milk bath shoots: should we take photos of ourselves to put up on the website, as well? To which he replied, well, yeah! And he was SO fucking into it. He bought props to prepare for this shoot. He bought cigars to prepare for his shoot. He made a few comments about his tummy not being as cut as it used to be, but other than that, he was really raring to do this shoot, knowing full well that there would be nudes involved. When it came time to do my shoot, I had an absolute breakdown about my body and threw a fit about  having more photos done, and I shut down. I woke up to Derek taking his own gallery of artistic nudes, having a fucking BLAST doing it, and I commented on his comfort and bravery a day or two later, and he responded with, "well, I  know I look fucking good." One of two things is going on here. Either he's lying to me about his struggles with self image, which...why, when I can relate so wholly and maybe we can help each other? Or he's lying to a page full of Korean adoptees just like him because he just fucking craves validation and doesn't get enough of it at home. He's been really nagging me about throwing that photo up on his instagram and on his facebook page. He REALLY wanted to share it. I kept asking him why, because in my head, he wanted to post it for specific people to see. I never told him he couldn't, I'd just ask him why and when he responded with "because" and nothing more, I'd tell him to do what he wanted to do. It looks like he did. He even went so far as letting me get all of the credit for taking the photo, which I did not, because I'm pretty fucking sure he knows it would look like a fresh pile of shit to tell everyone he took the photos himself while stringing along his low self esteem story. I don't know how to reconcile the fact that I am not enough for my husband, and my attention is not enough for my husband, and that he cannot be fucking honest about how and why I'm not enough so maybe I can fix it, or maybe we can part ways so he doesn't keep breaking my heart all the fucking time. And if all of this shit isn't enough, knowing that, when one of the females I've had a problem with in the past asks my husband why he's deleting his facebook, his response is, "Oh, Drea thinks I flirt too much, apparently." A 40 year old man cannot even take a tablespoon of responsibility for his actions. If we pretend for just a moment that saying, "mmmm, imaging you going HAM on something is tempting" to another woman isn't flirting, and it's completely harmless, my finding a problem with it and asking for that kind of behavior to stop should be enough. Even if it's me being wildly jealous and crazy, promising to stop something and then not doing it is a conscious choice that devastates people for far less than issues of fidelity. Hell, I get fucking twisted when a commercial promises me lustrous, luscious locks and all I get are hay bales for hair. It's been a year of all of this behavior, and of all the gaslighting by Derek to make every issue I have with him my fault instead of having anything to do with him, and I'm so fucking exhausted of waking up every day and going, "why the fuck do I love him?"

The other, new, problem I run into with Derek is not  understanding why he "loves" me. And it makes me sad and miserable and unhappy and I ask myself every day why he loves me, and I look at myself and I think about how he could nail someone prettier, and I remember Dan telling me, in another "why the fuck do I love this person" moment, that I was holding him back from everything, but chasing skirts in particular, and I wonder if I'm doing that to Derek. If I'm just a placeholder. I feel that way all the time; like an ugly placeholder that he really suckered into believing he was different, and he thought I was special. That he feels smug about making someone who looks like me believe that they were beautiful and amazing and unique and just so....so NEEDED in his life. And I fell for it. I fell for it, despite having reservations and telling Allen that I didn't believe him, and I thought this was just his MO. That I was just the next girl in line. Allen told me that I would be a fucking fool for dropping Derek, because he was obviously so different than everybody else thus far, and he was obviously so available to me and so wrapped in adoration, and maybe I needed to try something different. So I listened to my best friend. And I ended up with someone just like everybody else. Just like Dan, who I was so anxious to escape a repeat performance of. I wonder constantly about what I have going for me, and the list is small. I'm creative, and I'm smart, and I'm brash in a way that can be kinda fun, some of the time. But none of those things will ever trump being thin and pretty, and I'm not those things, and I won't ever BE those things, because they aren't in my wheelhouse. And with every knife dig of a new woman that I have to deal with and try and find the internal strength to forgive my husband for, I see more and more of the small bit of self-assuredness I have chip away. And it's left me how I am now. I am terrified to be naked around my own husband, because I  know there are women with better bodies that he's shown keen interest in putting above his wife, and I feel embarrassed to be in my own skin now. When I have sex with my husband, four times out of ten I get blasted out of the moment because I'll feel my hips jiggle, or I'll feel my stomach move, or I'l notice how my breasts aren't perfect and I'll have a panic attack about how he's got to be judging me and resenting me for not being any other woman that's prettier and thinner. I don't greet him at the door anymore when he gets home, because I don't see the point. when he tells me he loves me, I don't reciprocate, I just stare at him for awhile and then respond with, "why?" because I don't like saying I love you to someone who doesn't act like they love me when it matters. It's easy to be a fair weather friend when all eyes are on you, and Derek excels at that. He fails at being a good husband when I'm not looking, and his slip  ups recently have brought me to the conclusion that he just doesn't care.

And the hardest thing to admit is, I can't blame him. And I don't know if it's because he has completely eroded away my self worth, or if I can just logically see it from his point of view, but I really fucking understand. And I think that's why I'm so exhausted. Because asking myself, "why do I love him" has a lot of answers. He's so fucking handsome it's practically a crime, he's smart, he's clever, he has this laugh that sticks to my ribs like comfort food, and I think about it when I'm by myself and need a pick me up. He's engaging, and knowledgeable, and friendly, and can always chat with people and make them feel completely at ease. He's smooth and self aware and confident. All the marks of someone that is an irresistible, sought after presence. He's electric. I'm not those things. When I ask myself why he loves me, I come up empty. Especially now. Whether it's all  his fault or not, I am quite the shell of who I used to be when we first met. I'm not confident, I'm not interesting, I'm not beautiful, I'm not friendly and boisterous and vivacious. I'm barely present, and I'm sad, and I'm unsure and I'm heartbroken. And none of those things are desirable. Nobody wants to be with a sad sack. People like Derek need other people like them. It's so painful that I understand why he looks for things outside of me, and it's changed the way I yell at him and approach him when I find some new and hurtful thing to be upset about. I barely cry anymore, and I just go through the anger motions because I feel like I have to. But in my head, I am so caught up in "I AM SO SORRY. I am so sorry that I'm who you tethered yourself too, and that I am not enough because I don't know how to be. And I am so fucking sorry that you can't be honest with me about it, because this all hurts me, too. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I know it's all my fault. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to tell you I'm sorry without it sounding like I'm having a pity party. I understand you. I know you need this and I'm sorry that I cannot move the fuck on and let you find what you need, and I'm so sorry that I keep asking you to stay with someone you obviously do  not fucking love or want." I apologize profusely to him in my head, because I know. I get it. And I can't anymore. I'm so tired of apologizing for who I am to the imaginary husband in my head. I know why he doesn't love me. I don't need to ask myself.