Seeing as I was clearly a crazy person, I started to take Paxil. Truth is, I definitely needed medication, but I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. I continued to feel like I was hitting my head against a wall. My OCD (obsessive thoughts...look it up...me and Maria Bamford) got worse than ever. I started to have full-fledged panic attacks during class. I developed a tick -- I would tap the fingers of my hand against my palm constantly, speeding up as my anxiety rose. I had always had problems, but I kept them in check, I worked thru my crazy. I had never been out of control. I found myself thinking about cutting, about punching walls. It was fight or flight, and I was running from some huge fucking lion CONSTANTLY.
But no matter what, he remained calm, cold, and composed. He never comforted me, not once. He never tried to help. He just told me I was crazy and tuned me out. So what did I do? I continued to pay all the bills, take care of him, and work my ass off trying to make him love me like he had. I continued to ignore his total sloth, his lack of personal hygiene (dude never brushed), and I collapsed into total desperate depression.
Side note: when we moved in together, I suggested we talk about a good way to balance out chores. His response was, "This is exactly what I was worried about, I don't want to talk about this." Uh? What? You don't want to talk about an equitable division of chores? Are you serious?
So where was I? Ah yes, total desperation. Thank GOD something came up that was totes going to cure everything that ailed us. He needed student loan money for school, and I had just the kind of good credit that could get it for him! This will totally bring him back around! Yup, I co-signed that 30k sucker of a private loan. I mean, I knew it meant he'd start to be nice again! How awesome would that shit be? STUPIDEST MOVE I'VE EVER MADE. Continues to haunt me to this day as he continues to pursue nonsense degree after useless degree just to avoid becoming a functional, working adult. So every month he defers his payments, and every month the interest grows, and it's a ticking time bomb that keeps this whole fucked up story fresh like some smelly ass paint.
Shit, this story is getting long, and the fuck of it is that I'm not even half way through! So lemme speed it up. We stayed together for awhile longer. At one point, my mom got breast cancer. I had lost my dad, and my grandparents (who I was closer to than my dad), to cancer. My mom is my LIFE. I was fucking scared shitless. And do you know what he did? When I cried and told him how scared I was? He told me he couldn't deal with my drama and LEFT. Ugh. I kick myself as I spill this out onto the page. Who does that? Not even a friend. Not even a SHITTY friend. I'm not even sure an ENEMY does that.
When we finally DID break up, it was because we had another ridiculous fight and when he said he wasn't going to listen to/talk to/engage me in any way I said, "FINE. I'M DONE." The next day, he went to some conference thing (he had finally gotten a job -- which lasted like two seconds) and did not come home. Eventually, he contacted me to say that he was not coming home, because I had broken up with him. We didn't actually have any sort of conversation about this. That was it. And I began my pathetic clawing mess of trying to convince him to come back because...uh...I was totally in love or happy with him or something? Who EVEN KNOWS why now, but then, it felt VERY important.
But there was no conversation. There was nothing. It was done. And he was going to stay in our apartment, while I was going to go home and cry on my mom's couch. Even though the apartment was mine... uh. Yea. I finally told him he had to leave (when I learned that, the day we broke up, he was already back scamming OKCupid), and eventually he did. And so did I. I couldn't stay there.
*=DSM still stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, criteria for classifying mental disorders.
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