misery again

I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you about it, many times I feel very uncomfortable bringing things up to you

I generally avoid talking to you about things I feel you may disagree with, which makes me hesitate to tell you things until I brace myself for it

this is also the case when I’m not 100% certain about something; I will not bring things up to you if it’s not nearly-guaranteed, because doing so has burnt us really bad in the past

I know you’re trying to change, I’m also trying to change 💚💛

I wanted to tell you some stuff but I didn’t want to take time away from your work (and didn’t want to risk distracting you with emotions) so I scheduled this msg. 

I didn’t tell you this but on Friday I missed my morning meeting for work. I know that’s nothing new but it’s been a while since it’s happened I think. Anyway my boss emailed me about it, and for whatever reason I chose to use the reason of the death that happened a little while back (because at that time I didn’t say anything to work about it or anything, I kinda just kept going). However I got the feeling that either they didn’t believe me or they didn’t care. I can’t confirm that ofc, just a feeling I had. Then today I had a 1:1 with my boss. He didn’t ask about Friday at all, just jumped straight into performance stuff (which reaffirmed my gut feeling). And everything he said was negative, and it was also absolutely true. Nobody at work knows much if anything about my personal life, and nobody is at all interested to know either. Nobody mentions their personal life ever, nobody talks about anything going on in their life or family or anything, so maybe that’s just the norm. For reference, most people (especially anyone that is a sr mgr and above) are all old dudes, so I’m guessing they set the overall tone and culture. Anyway I realized from what he said that it’s the same patterns I’ve had since my last coops, and my previous job, and since I joined at this job. I realized that I’m simply not cut out for this sort of work, or maybe this type of company, or maybe the whole paradigm of being employed by an organization. And I think over the last 2 months my performance at work has taken a massive hit, which in my mind makes total sense because I essentially haven’t focused on work for such a long time now, maybe ever since we moved to Toronto or shortly thereafter. It’s not that things were great before that though, but my employment has been in third place priority for a while.

I have just laid down and accepted things I’m not okay with and things I’m not happy with across my work, my friendships, and with you and our relationship. I’m not blaming you, I’m not saying anything bad about us, I’m still excited to marry you and be with you, I’m just saying I’ve damaged myself so much by never pushing back enough or enforcing boundaries hard enough, and in the end every pillar of my life is going poorly and the consensus seems to be that I’m the root of it. From my perspective the only thing I’ve accomplished is either disappointing people, or appeasing people temporarily by trading in my own well-being. When I say the word “no”, I feel like the world looks at me like I’ve committed treason. I have no ability to decline or reject anything without being punished for it. I feel like nobody has ever respected me saying “no”, they always just find a way around it. This, coupled with me being unable to enforce my own boundaries, has trained every single person who interacts with me to manipulate me into agreeing with them or doing what they want.

I’m not happy. Actually, I’m miserable. I wasn’t happy just living in Brampton in the dynamics of my house, that’s why I saw our developing relationship as my ticket to move out. But if I’m being honest I’m unhappy in Toronto too, maybe even more unhappy. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel comfortable and peaceful in our place many times. I have no idea whether it’s the city, the dynamics with the office being next door, maybe it’s the size of our place, or the new responsibilities of taking care of the place, or adapting to living together, or maybe it’s simply navigating the most busy most stressful period of my life right now across all life’s pillars, or maybe everything above altogether simultaneously, I don’t know. All I know is when I think about 2023 or 2022 or earlier, or even 2024, I feel grief because I feel like I lost something. I don’t know what this all means, and I’m not even asking you for help or to do anything about it. I’m just saying that I’m out of ideas for how to climb out of misery, I’m out of capacity for adding anything onto my life’s stage, and I’m close to the point where I’m tired of trying. Again, I’m not saying our relationship is the reason, rather it was a source of light for me for a long time. It made me believe that maybe there’s a way out of misery, that maybe it’s you. I’ve learned now that the truth isn’t so simple; our relationship and our marriage, like everything else in life, will be absolutely wonderful and will be brutally wicked. It’s not that I can be happy and escape sadness as long as I’m hugging you, but we will have each other to embrace throughout the things in life we each haven’t faced yet. This is because you and I will always be two individual human beings, and must each carry the burdens of that until we’re each alive.