Chasing a Ghost

I don’t know where to begin with this entry.

Michael and I just had a fight, and every time we fight, it brings a wave of huge thoughts and feelings.

Right now I feel like I’ve been wasting my time chasing a ghost.

When Michael and I got together, as with all relationships, there were things I was crazy about and things I wasn’t so crazy about. The things that I was crazy about, I was so crazy about that it was super easy to look the other way the things I wasn’t so crazy about–which if I’m completely honest in any other case would have been deal breakers for me.

Michael is so different from anyone that I’ve ever dated that I failed to notice how he’s exactly the same in a lot of ways.

When I first met Michael, he used to give me these embarassingly explosive kisses right out in the open. His face would smash into mine like a magnet and he’d give me these crazy deep kisses, then we would go home and make love for hours and hours and hours. We used to play like crazy, tried all kinds of fun and wild things. I felt close to him. I felt safe. I felt valued. I felt wanted. He didn’t treat me like an object. It was fulfilling. We used to make out, just out of nowhere. He would turn and kiss me and we would lock onto each other for 15 minutes. He used to rub my feet and rub my back for hours and hours while we watched TV together.

I remember thinking to myself, even if this is the honeymoon phase, if our love life is even just 10% of this for the rest of my life, I’d be very happy.

Physicality is very important to me. I don’t mean just sex. I’m actually not a person that even really needs sex. I’ve never been a one night stand person. It’s the intimacy, the togetherness important. What I need is to be touched. What I need is to be loved. If it feels empty, I can’t do it.

One day it all just dried up, completely. Just completely went away. That was years ago.

Ever since then, I’ve been changing and bending myself in every way possible to earn that back from him. I’ve realized I’m doing the exact same thing I did with my mother, and every other adult relationship. I’m trying to earn someone’s love back.

When I try to talk to him about it, he puts all the blame on me. I’m the reason we’re not physical anymore. He says, “we can get back there, it just takes time.” I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve stopped going out. I’ve stopped expressing myself in ways that feel natural to me. I’m trying every day to be a good, calm, gentle wife and mother. I’m trying every day to be on my best behavior, in hopes that he might want me again. He says we don’t do the things that used to make him attracted to me anymore and that I’ve done emotional damage that will “take time”.

I just don’t know if I can do it much longer. I don’t even know what that means, but I know that I’m exhausted. I literally have to beg him for just kisses. When I mention it, he turns into a robot and verbally compiles a list of all the kisses of the day, what time they were, how long they lasted. I wait for him to finish, and then all I can say is, no but you haven’t kissed me. And he acts like he doesn’t understand. It makes me feel crazy. I want to scream, do you not know what I’m talking about?? Really??? Fucking really??? You think a peck on mouth when you come home from work counts towards what I’m talking about?? I told him the sex we had to conceive our son felt utilitarian, because it did! He said he didn’t feel that way at all, that he though it was lovely and he felt so close to me. It makes my head reel. That?? That sex was absolutely nothing like the sex we used to have. It felt like he was barely even there, yet he says he felt close to me…? Something is missing. Something doesn’t make sense.

But I have to believe him. I just have to.

The first year we were together he used to hold me so tight, all night long. I thought, this is heaven. I can do this. Here’s a man who doesn’t give a goddamn about PDA, and who wants to snuggle at night long.

Now I have to literally ask his permission to hug him at night.

I’m a person that needs to be touched, needs to be held. Some people don’t like that. Some people don’t care about that at all, but I do. I care a lot.

It feels like a chicken and the egg scenario. He says I’m angry and that’s a turn off, but I’m angry because he’s not making love to me! I swear to God, if he would just give me some tenderness like once a week, my whole vibe would change. We had sex for 10 minutes in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and I was on cloud 9 for 3 whole days.

It’s a really horrible feeling to carry around this big weight, that I’m the problem. It’s my fault he doesn’t want me. And I’m trying so hard to listen. I’m trying to hard comply. But I still feel like I’m getting it so wrong. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

I’m so confused.

Was he ever that person or was it an act? How can you go from a waterfall to a tiny ice cream cone like that and just be cool with it. Does he not want intimacy, too? Did he ever, or was it a trick? I just can’t understand how what I’ve done could be so bad that he can be fine with just…nothing. The weird thing is when I call it nothing, he pushes back and says the strangest things, like “I feel really close to you right now, closer than ever.” He tries to convince me that it’s not nothing, that there’s something there, but it sure feels like nothing to me. Especially in comparison to how things were before.

Something isn’t adding up. Something isn’t right, here. I’ve been getting this gross feeling lately that maybe he was love bombing me. I don’t want to think that about him. I can’t think that about him. I can’t go through that again. I can’t live with that.

I moved to LA to live. I moved here to experience the weird and wonderful. I came here to feel alive. But here I am, a mother, all alone all the time in the suburbs, watching the baby while my husband achieves his goals and plays his video games and has band practice.

I think I have to let it go. I think I have to just do what I want to do. It’s going to be tiring. I’m going to have to do it all at night since I watch the baby all day every day, but I have to do it. I have to get my body strong, and I have to start fighting for the life I want in some way.

Michael wants me to be a streamer, to make videos. I honestly don’t really want to, but it feels like the only creative outlet available to me as a mother. I’m really luke warm about making “content”, opening myself for the kids to shred me apart, for men to say gross things to me. I feel like he just wants me to stay in the house, where he knows where I am and what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like a kept woman. Like I have to do every single thing within his parameters, or else. It feels like my parameters don’t matter.

I don’t know if he means to do it, but he messes with my head and makes me feel all flustered and confused. If he read the above paragraph, he would find a way to convince me that I’m free to do whatever I want, I just have to do it. But that’s not the truth, and I’m not smart enough to explain it to him.

During the pandemic, there were things I wanted to experience–once in a lifetime things. I couldn’t believe I was living in LA, the epicenter of the riots, and I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t go to the marches. I couldn’t celebrate with everyone in the streets when Biden won the election. We would fight and fight and fight about it and finally he would pull his trump card–if you get Corona and bring it into this house, I will die, and you will carry that around forever. So I complied. And I comply today.

I feel so confused sometimes because he feels very controlling, but he convinces me he’s not. And I believe him. I accept that I had it all wrong. The world is mine for the taking and it’s me that’s holding me back. Yet whenever something really important comes up, there’s always a problem. When we were in Nashville for my baby shower, he wouldn’t leave the house with me. He always has a trump card. We saw a violent crime while we were there and he said he didn’t want to go out because of that. How can you argue with that? You can’t.

There was that whole thing with Bev and the hotel. He told me I was being an irresponsible mother by going. When I went to Kristin’s birthday party, that was a huge problem. When I wanted to fly to Nashville to see my best friend and my family on my own, we argued about that for literal weeks. When I had my friends over to make cookies, that degraded into a horrible experience. The trip to Palm Springs for my birthday got so fucked up we ended up leaving a day early.

When we talk about these incidents, by the end of the conversation, he has it all worked out where I’m the problem. If I had just done XY and Z differently, things wouldn’t have gone bad–his parameters. And by the end of the conversation, I believe him. I try to live in those parameters. A trip to Nashville gets changed into a visit from a friend to go to a hotel which turns into going to a friend’s house for her birthday which turns into having people over at the house. Shave down, shave down, shave down, try to fit the parameters. But still somehow I always get it wrong, and I’m always in trouble. I did it wrong. And then he’s distant for weeks. I have to earn it back.

He’s so smart and he thinks so fast, he really turns it on me. I believe he has my best interest at heart, so I succumb. I’ll be better next time. I’ll do it different next time. It doesn’t feel right. It feels like I have to just stay home and be quiet, never get angry, never get sad. I have to beg people to drive out here to visit me, and eventually they stop coming.

I have a son now, and I would never sell him short. Never. So I have to start fighting for my life. I have to start going and doing things at night that make me feel alive. I have to make my body stronger. I have to make my mind stronger. No more sitting around waiting and hoping he might fuck me, he might kiss me. If I’m just good enough. Am I good enough?