Inner turmoil. That’s the theme of today, and I can’t shake a certain feeling and I hate it.
Reece is applying for another role and I know these feelings will all be worthless if he doesn’t get it, and there’s no guarantee he will, but I hope he does.
Way back when (also known as 2022) Reece worked in hospitality and moved from Wetherspoons to Mr Mulligans, our relationship hit Roommate Mode. We’d be like passing ships. I’d wake up for work at 7am, he’d be asleep from his shift the night before and I’d go to work for 8:30am. I’d be there until 4:30pm, and I’d get home around 5pm. He’d be up and ready and be at work for just before I’d get home – and I wouldn’t see him in the evening. We spent months not seeing each other properly, or for no longer than a couple of hours a week.
I will be honest – my mental health really struggled with this and it came to quite a head when I went out for a Taylor Swift ‘Swiftogeddon’ club night in the city and came home quite drunk, and breaking down. I just wanted to see him and to feel loved again – it really started to feel like I’d never see him again.
We kind of managed to patch things up and soon enough he was out of hospitality anyway so our relationship has healed somewhat since then. We currently work very similar hours – his longer than mine, I’ll admit, but we see each other in the evenings and on weekends.
This role he’s applying for is his perfect, dream job (besides the Navy, but we don’t talk about that, for pretty much the same reasons I’m struggling now) and I really don’t want to stop him from working towards that. I’d hate myself if he didn’t take this role because of me.
But it’s an apprenticeship, and the risk is he’d have to take a significant pay cut for the role (we’re talking £20k less a year) which is a shocking amount and I am not financially well-off enough to fill the gap.
This has came far sooner than I was ready for, I was hoping to be paid more, have a different job myself which means I could financially support him much like he’s supported me in the past.
To fill that gap… He’d have to take a second job. His apprenticeship would take him to Great Yarmouth and sometimes abroad and that’s an hour or more commute Monday-Friday. That would take him up to the 50 hours he already works, and his second job would need to be another 12+ hours, which would mean we’d go back to nothing more than roommates.
My problem isn’t all of this (besides never seeing him for a year or so until he gets back up to full time minimum wage). It’s the fact we can’t talk about it, because I get upset (rightly so) and he goes silent and no productive conversation is had because I’m left feeling crap for needing to speak my feelings and it feels like I’m hurting him when it shouldn’t, I should just be able to talk and say my piece and he says his and the air is cleared.
I don’t want to lose him, I don’t want our relationship to end but honestly I just don’t see us reaching 15 years together (we’d be together 10 years next year) if he doesn’t start talking to me and having productive conversations about things that affect us both.
There’s more to it than just feeling like we’re roommates once again. There’s a lot of mental trauma that came from that period of time, I was a touch suicidal and my coping mechanisms were less than healthy. I would spend evenings crying and drinking and believing that no one wanted to spend time with me at all, and everyone else had someone else. I was (and still am) currently no one’s ‘person’. Everyone has someone else and I don’t want to be so alone again.
This all coming back is a stark reminder that while I have grown a lot since then and I do have healthier coping mechanisms, it’s all just a slight inconvenience from falling apart again.
If I lose Reece I also lose a lot of people who I love. I’d lose my niece, Reece’s family who I’ve finally started to settle and feel comfortable around, I’d lose all of Reece’s friends who despite not being my direct friends, are friends all the same and besides my one close friend I literally have no one else.
If this risks our relationship I risk making myself even lonelier and it’s hard to weigh up which loneliness I’d prefer.
Neither.
No Comments