the outsider

 it’s been … awhile.  I’ve wanted to write, but have been avoiding my diary like the plague.  Writing about things makes them real, in a way, even if they aren’t–writing about things means that things that were previously in my head, and which I could dismiss as my own neuroses, are now out there for other people to read.  And I’ve never been good at this kind of sharing.  

I constantly accuse Nick of being dishonest, of keeping things from me, namely continuing to flirt when he said months ago that it had stopped and he was changing.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been *thiiis close* to telling him he had until the end of the month to get his stuff out because I was tired of waiting around for him to get his life together.  I often wonder how attached I actually am, and there are days when I’m pretty sure I don’t love him at all.  And then I wonder whether the only reason we’re still together is that I lack the courage to break up with him.  

He pointed out recently that I’ve always been an outsider, and it’s completely true.  Growing up, I would sometimes wonder whether I had been switched at birth, I felt so detached from the rest of my family.  School and college weren’t that much better.  The circle of music students at M’side was so tiny, in fact, that it was probably entirely responsible for what was, temporarily, the friendship between my roommate and I … for three years, we spent nearly every moment together, more out of necessity than anything else.  I’ve felt like an outsider in my own life after moving to New York … it took almost a year before I felt like the grotesquely expensive apartment I was renting was actually my home, and not just the abode of some friend for whom I was housesitting or something.  I felt like an outsider as a religious Jew living in Iowa, and I felt like an outsider as an ex-religious Jew living … everywhere.  I’ve never been too adept with personal friendships or even casual acquaintances, especially after becoming a musicologist and abandoning most of the behaviors of a performer.  Maybe even sometimes with Nick I feel like an outsider, as if by being in a state of solitude for so long, I missed the window of opportunity that might have provided the je-ne-sais-quoi which would make me feel more confident in my ability to be in a relationship.

The discovery of the last couple of entries, in some ways, intensified all of the effusive neuroses I have about being in a relationship.  I keep thinking about Lindsay, Nick’s (last) ex-girlfriend.  There had to have been a fair amount of self-deception on her part, whether she has ever admitted to it or not, but for most of the time that I knew Nick before those two hellish years when the three of us, plus two additional roommates, all lived under one tiny roof, he was pretty clear about his love for Lindsay, telling anyone who would listen how wonderful she was, even though since then he’s admitted his own guilt in deceiving all parties as far as his emotions.  And so a lot of the time I feel like my relationship with Nick has improved immensely in the time we’ve been together, and the last year especially has been pretty productive, if one sort of ignores all of the external relationship bullshit that came just before.  But then a part of me thinks that Lindsay must have felt this way too, and I am so sure  that if I just acquire enough information on what Nick is like with his other friends, and ask him constantly if he’s sure he really wants to be in a relationship with me, and if he really would break up with me if he were unhappy,    ….. I don’t even know where that line of thought ends.  I can’t imagine that confronting him about snooping in on his virtual communications and asking him for the thousandth time whether he’s really sure he wants to be here is doing anything to encourage openness or honesty.  This rational knowledge is no match for my neurotic compulsions, and so even though I keep hoping this neurotic cycle might come to a final conclusion at some point, it has not yet happened.

The most recent iteration of this discussion, which happened few days ago ended with him repeatedly reassuring me that whatever flirting was still going on was out of unconscious habit, that he really did want to be in a relationship with only me, and that he actually did like it, that he would let me know within weeks, not years, if that changed.  And I wanted to feel reassured … but somehow I couldn’t tell him that I knew that he had finally gotten around to changing the passcode on his old phone sometime in the last few months, that Kate is in his ‘girlfriends’ circle on Google Plus, even though it didn’t develop until years after they broke up, that I know that he was … less than honest about his friendship with a girl about whom I had discreetly inquired during our conversation (it seems as though he found time to meet up with her for drinks when she visited the city in January, though he has never mentioned it, and he chats with her more frequently than he implied during our conversation).  I swear I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, since my behavior has probably not helped anything … but I just can’t help but wonder whether there is some new development in his personal life that he is trying to hide.  

But going back to Nick’s dishonesty …. the whole truth is, I don’t know whether I’m much better.  Unlike Nick, however, my problem isn’t so much with flirting as with emotional transparency, even though I keep telling both of us I’m getting better (this is probably doubtful).  In some ways, hiding is so inherent to my conscious nature that it is starting to seem pretty ridiculous that I’m so obsessed with Nick’s dishonesty when openness–just being … present— is such a challenge for me.  But worse–I’m emotionally detached a lot of the time, for no reason I can pinpoint, and I had trust issues long before Nick’s flirtatious foibles first came to light several months ago.    

The thing about being in a relationship with Nick is that for once, finally, I’m not always, or even mostly, an outsider.  I know he loves me, regardless of his many personal shortcomings, and I feel a sense of belonging in his family that I have struggled to find with my own.  He’s there, even if he’s not always competent or helpful, and after having had to deal with so many life events on my own, that means a fucking lot, even though my first instinct is invariably to state, somewhat defensively, that I’m perfectly capable of handling the situation myself.  Companionship is something about which I used to scoff, but the truth is, faced with an entire week left to my own solitary devices, I feel dismay, not relief, and I’d rather be with him, not apart.  

(In other news, most other areas of my life are actually going spectacularly well, and are happily devoid of the sort of nurishkeit that has plagued this entry.)