lolitahhhloves

[lolitahhhloves]

I panicked and cried a little and had a glass of wine

I sent this to my boyfriend earlier today. He’s a passive, neutral guy, so he has been helpful through this stage of writing and what’s soon going to be presenting too. I faintly want a cigarette. I want things when I’m at my lowest point, things I could be wanting whenever. I only let myself enjoy things when there is no other way to fight my feelings. I think there could be a better way to do life.

I’m about to edit my powerpoint. I don’t really want to. Someone on a show, the show called GLOW, on Netflix, said she got tired of doing things for other people. It’s strange to realize that the hardest things I’ve done were done selfishly and imagined as needs solely by me. Other people I needed to please were pleased much sooner. Except nothing ever pleases them long term. Maybe I was the issue. Maybe I created their standards somehow. What is nurture anyway? Maybe all of this is nature. And while caretakers can be responsible for nurture, it’s hard to make them responsible for their own genes as well.

I’ve recently wondered why people have the freedom of reproducing with just about any human of the opposite sex. Why isn’t there some sort of variety or a puzzle where you only turn out compatible with the people who you’re meant to be with? Supposedly it’s all freedom but why did my freedom bring me right here? How come nothing is wrong when I reproduce with people I never would have been able to geographically meet before modern transportation got launched? On a similar note, are we actually held responsible for our genes? My boyfriend has some genes I dislike, like bad eye sight, bad teeth, and a down’s syndrome presence in his family. I have some genes I dislike too, like bad toe nails, some bad teeth. Should we be held responsible for our own genes?

I have no idea where I’m trying to go with this. All I know is that I’m trying to escape this feeling of nervousness and panic and mood uprise. I really need to regain a normal feeling. Contemplating going to the dollar store again to feel a little bit alive, because everything is cheap there.

[lolitahhhloves]

Catastrophic thinking

My boyfriend has been taking a lot of interest in learning about me. Among things he’d learned in the time we’ve been dating is my habit of catastrophic thinking. I don’t fully know why I have it, but it feels like some small failure somewhere along the way left me relatively traumatized and easily scared. For one, I am easily scared of very mildly scary things. For two, I am scared of what-if-s. So scared, in fact, that I often completely default into a particularly bad what-if scenario and end up not enjoying the possible (and likely) good outcome.

Today is one of the days I know my thoughts are simply driven by anxiety. Lately, I’ve been more observant of myself. I used to blindly trust my gut feeling of something possibly being wrong, but there have been a few days more recently where I had a gut feeling that everything would go wrong: 1) I was totally going to find out I was pregnant; 2) I was totally going to have issues with situation A; 3) I was totally going to have issues with situation B; 4) my boyfriend and I were just not meant for each other and weren’t going to last; 5) I was going to fail a major PhD exam I was headed towards. Generally speaking, all of these have a slight chance of happening, but only ever so slight that it made no sense to assume things would go badly. To top it all off, no changes to any of these situations had happened on that specific day. On the grounds of my gut feeling being right, it would have made more sense for it to be consistently present on every day rather than spike on that one day instead. It had been a bad day, and I kept talking through worry 1, worry 2, worry 3... I argued with my boyfriend how we could turn out completely incompatible and then what... I told him I was so preoccupied with the chance of getting pregnant because we had done like one hardly at all risky thing that whole month.

Then it hit me. I summarized the day and realized that all day long all I had done was worry through one thing, and another, and another, and another. The feelings were to a degree valid, but rationally thinking, unlikely to prove right. I wrapped up the thoughts for the day and went to sleep.

Today I watched two shows that each made me recall unpleasant memories and thoughts that make me nervous. I paused and refused to continue tormenting myself. As I paused all shows, I calmed down slightly. My boyfriend had a busy day and as promised took me out to dinner, but had to leave a bit sooner than I had thought we should end it, since he watches Game of Thrones and the new episode was out, which had him excited to go back. Unlike him, I had neither followed the show nor had the time for it today of all days, so it wasn’t something we could do together. Nevertheless, I kept having this lingering feeling like he’s been distant. He eventually texted back after the show and went to bed and I started worrying about the possibility of him just breaking up with me. This entire time, I had thought about the possibility of breaking up with him, but not the possibility of him breaking up with me. I wondered if the gut feeling could be right. I then worried about situation B and situation A from above again. I googled a bit to calm my nerves about the questions I keep asking myself about these two. I then turned back around and realized that this entire day has been pure anxiety. I’ve been extremely nervous, to the degree that I couldn’t handle watching shows with content related to sources of nervousness for me. I felt needy. I played a word puzzle game for 2 or 3 hours to calm down and it barely worked enough for me to realize I should go to sleep and worry about things tomorrow.

In the grand scheme of things, I am realizing that my catastrophic thinking often tricks me into highly anxious days which feel like they’re full of real intuition and real feeling of things going badly. But considering the low chance of this, that’s all this is: an anxious day. And it’s very hard to shake off the feeling of anxiety being real. But it helps to look back and realize that it had permiated into every possible area I could be concerned of, all in one day, during which nothing new had happened to add concerns. This is what makes a day an anxious day, and it’s so important for me to remember that next time I get worried about random things at random times.

[lolitahhhloves]

Do men love women and women hate men?

It’s common knowledge that women are stereotyped as more nurturing than men, and while never stated as such, it is implied that women are therefore more loving than men. And to a degree that is almost everyone’s experience.

That said, one thing that becomes apparent once you “figure out men” is that if one likes/loves you, he will want to do almost anything you ask for. He will simply be bad at initiating things before you ask.

Unlike this, women are better at reading men but I don’t often hear of them being better at doing things for men. Even when they do do things for them, those things become chores and are accompanied by huffs and puffs and annoyance with the men they should be caring for, at least to a degree, no? I’m no exception. Every single thing I’ve done for any boyfriend I’ve ever had has later been gossiped about with great annoyance and the said boyfriend was mocked for not knowing how to do it himself, and it even led to some breakups due to this heavy feeling of being the only one that cared, and thus the only one that actually did important things for the relationship.

What all these situations have in common is my lack of interest in asking for any single thing I actually wanted. It sucks to ask for basic things. It really does. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I need to ask for things my boyfriend so eagerly jumps on when he’s clearly already more than willing to do them. Why does it take asking for a specific type of dinner or a specific little favor for him to get on top of it? For example, expecting a gift for holidays gets me no gift, but asking for gifts to become a norm gets me fabulous gifts. Saying I had a rough time in a specific situation gets me “oh geez” but asking to talk about it gets me a great deal of understanding. Saying “I’m hungry” gets me “hope you’ll find something nice to eat” but saying “will you make me dinner?” gets me a dinner better than I could have imagined. Waiting for my boyfriend to eat me out leaves us at unfair odds of who goes down more, but telling him to do it gets him more excited about it than anything.

I don’t fluctuate like this. If I am excited, I initiate things, and if I am not interested no amount of asking will make me interested, even if I might do whatever is being asked of me.

This made me think: does my boyfriend actually love me more than I love him? And in relationship to that, I realized that looking back a lot of men I know would act similarly to how he acts. As such, I wonder, do men simply love women more than women love men? And what does love mean to either gender anyway? Is the love I give lesser or just different? Or do I feel like my entire body and mind are so giving that when I consciously think about it, all I want to do is pump breaks?

My boyfriend loves the relaxed version of me. The one that’s slightly narcissistic, usually tired, wears sweatpants, has absolutely no manners, worries about nothing and no one (including him) and is about to take on the world. And I try to be a sweet girlfriend who worries about him and wants to do nice things for him or avoid being overbearing. Mostly, I just like to avoid any possible criticism my organic self might run into (as I always do), because I don’t want to feel bad about something I did while relaxed. But he finds the thoughtful and sweet version of me overbearing. So we oscillate.

I guess more than who loves whom more, I wonder if women actually love men. Do we? Or do we see them as objects that help us rise in status and bring in dual income to support children we could have with a sperm donor just the same? What do men mean to women in 2019? Are they there to bring us the validation we so deeply desire, or to please us, or to support us, or are they there for us to love? I feel like the answer is just “yes”. All of it. How do we then reconcile all aspects of heterosexual relationships, while being purely loving? And is it a privilege to be purely loving towards men -- something our mothers and grand mothers didn’t necessarily have a chance to experience if the men they loved weren’t good providers or better providers could be found among suitors? Obviously we still want men who earn money rather than men who cannot keep a job, but we have the luxury of dating anyone we want as long as we remain on top of our own careers.

But what are the men doing? Men are remaining loving and adapting to times. The good ones, at least. It is possible to find them, it seems, and they don’t expect a mom they can cheat on. They know how to do their laundry, cook, clean, live their lives, and they on top of all of that want to help us whenever we ask for help. Is this the secret? Like an “Open Sesame” of gender attributes? Or did I just get lucky and found a really great guy who is like this? Or is he just like this to win me over now and will show his real face later to be just how we stereotype men?

If, and only if, men truly love women so deeply, on a physical, active, and emotional level, then did we invent all the expectations that we feel as women? Do we walk the earth thinking men need us to be a certain way but it’s actually us needing us to be that way and men would love us all the same as long as we had vaginas, mouths, need for them, and “I love you”-s to spare? Are men really like unconditionally loving puppies and we walk around scared of them like they’re wolves? Or is it actually a spectrum at that? All I know is that tonight is the first night this idea, of men possibly loving more, came to mind, and it’s so pleasant, I think I’ll hold onto it and cherish it as a thought, because it’s so fucking hard to be a woman in this world and I love the thought that I am loved unconditionally by men.

[lolitahhhloves]

Motivation

I’m so inherently bored and boring. I think I’ve quoted this song a million times: I’ve been thinking too much, help me....

It’s like I’m here and have up to an hour of focused work to finish and I can’t. I am repelled by it. I want to do anything else I can and be anywhere else I can be. I want to be happier, have more money, have a car, feel excited about my future, feel valuable in ways that are meaningful to me. I want it all. And it’s nerve wrecking.

[lolitahhhloves]

An urge to be productive

I feel it. I am typing this because I feel blocked from moving along and wish that moving along involved typing up coarse notes which I could type up as consistently and mindlessly as I am typing this.

[lolitahhhloves]

What your partner is like later on

I remember when I got dropped off at Dinosaur Coffee. He was a huge, ginger going into blond bearded man who looked so dear. I instantly said “you are a ginger giant” with a big smile, and gave him a big hug. He felt natural and genuine.

We talked. You know the kind of conversation that people create when they want to get to know each other. Who grew up where and how, what we’re like, what we like, what we’re hoping to do, what we want out of dating. It was a nice conversation. Anyone else who would talk to my boyfriend for the first time, with the intention of knowing him better would have a similarly nice experience, provided they’d actually like how and who he is.

We just got off the phone. I really wanted to talk, and I wanted a conversation like that first, early one. I wanted to talk about what things are like for him, what things are like for me, or discuss something neutral. I wanted to listen to him speak. It’s been about 10 days since we’ve last seen each other. I have been sick and asleep for most of this past week. He spent it lounging around and doing nothing in anticipation of his start date at the new company he was just hired into. Now he’s about to go into the day 3 at the new place and he already sounds exhausted. I guess I hoped that he’d be excited or energized by the change of pace, and possibly happy to be working again, considering he was on a bit of a special vacation for the past few weeks.

But there is very little to add to where we’re at right now. I’m working a lot and my usual interesting stories and observations are not as easy to add to talks when they simply don’t occur (when I’m trapped inside my apartment every day all day). And he’s mopey again. He was doing so well during his vacation weeks. He got happier, ordered sunglasses he was talking about for months, reorganized his office into a home gym, counted calories en route to making weight progress, and talked to me a whole lot. Obviously, this is unsustainable, but it felt nice to see him shell out. He’s stressed, he has a lot of debt heavily sitting above his head, and he stress eats all the time. I asked him if he’s happy with the type of work he’s doing and he said he was, but sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. Perhaps he’s simply unhappy with the routine feeling, one my mother and I argue about non-stop. I guess I just don’t 100% get it and I would like to. Or perhaps I’m a privileged one and will never get the chance to experience that routine or rut of a standard 9-5. Perhaps he was just tired.

But I really wanted to talk to him tonight because I missed him and I got a shell of a person on the other end of the line. Someone half asleep, trying to mutter the bare minimum of words. And it feels slightly disappointing. I so wish there were more layers to him to get to know and more to learn about, but for right now, they are either non-existent or inaccessible, and it feels unfortunate that that’s so. Perhaps I need to seek more engaging communication elsewhere on days he’s tired, but I sometimes really want specifically that good type of conversation with him, not a friend from college or a prospective student. My boyfriend. And it sucks when that need can’t be met.

[lolitahhhloves]

I’m trying to continue to edit

By Thursday of next week, my work should be final and edited, ready to hand over for printing. I feel like I can do this quite fine. I started editing my pronouns. For some reason, I was under the impression that the collective “we” was a proper way to express oneself academically. It took handing in 60 pages of work that is mostly written in collective “we” to learn that for dissertations, “we” is not recommended, to ensure that the communication is about the work “I” did, rather than had collaborators do. While this makes sense, it is difficult to know upfront and it feels stupid that I now have to go through the whole thing, word by word, and not only go through it, but on the spot come up with passive forms of said “we” statements. I am always tempted to simply switch to “I”, but I feel like I do want the work to read more professionally than that.

In many ways, I’ve used “we” as an authority pronoun to hide my own work behind. I really wanted the shelter of collectivity. While it is the most academic thing, I don’t love the idea of standing alone and indicating that I only represent myself. I’ve always liked it better, the idea that I represent more than just one person. The idea of being a CEO rather than a founder. Or if I have to be a founder as well, the goal is to grow out any such business so I can feel like it isn’t just me alone in the wind, so I can feel like my business (or, in this case, my PhD) is recognized by others who stand behind me.

I decided to type up this post, because this blog has, in part, always helped me initiate writing projects. The clicks of keyboard as I write smooth and fitting sentences in one steady stream of words and thoughts, something which can so rarely be done in academic or non-fiction writing, these clicks are so very motivating and satisfying. I needed them tonight. When I told my boyfriend how much I loved the clicks, he suggested I get a mechanical keyboard, something I actually did, and still use. It helped me write those 60 pages I handed in, and for months now, I had kept it on the backburner, sort of forgotten on a shelf, because a lot of my computer work needed to be mobile or simply wasn’t heavy on typing. It felt so good to pull it down and start clicking and clacking again, which is what I am doing for this post too. It’s so satisfying. The keys sink down so deeply, they feel so tall. Hearing them makes me want to fire through the rest of the writing I have, or even hear some clicks through the editing process. I love typing. I’ve always loved it. It’s worth remembering that when the going gets tough with writing and submitting typed up work. I hope this post fuels some motivation into me and I get everything done, just how I am aiming to!

[lolitahhhloves]

Living together before marriage

It’s Los Angeles. Of course the expectation is that we’ll be living together before marriage. But I don’t really want to. Not unless there is an intention to get married, like we are certain we would like to do it, and we need to see how well we get along before we do it.

But external factors play a role. It is appealing, the idea of living together with a significant other. Sort of like a dream come true before it has to actually come true. It’s easier to attain than marriage and easier to plan on. It is also a lot easier to simply slip into being engaged and then being married that way, or so it seems. But is it what I want? The honest answer is no, from the relationship perspective. Our relationship has only been going on for 6 months now, and most of those have kind of been shit. The entire relationship exists off a thread that things will get better for my boyfriend and then in turn he will start acting more decent. In many ways, that is already starting to happen, but I am struggling to believe in it because the entire time I’ve known him he’s had a way of turning things his way.

I wanted to go out a lot. He found ways to keep me in, at home, watching Netflix, feeling like it’s hard to breathe and eating the same food all the time. I looked back and felt sorry for myself. The months of that were not what I wanted out of my relationship at all. 

In many ways, I am afraid that his offer to be comfortable and have a smooth transition with a place to live and a boyfriend to live with is going to backfire because it’s not ultimately what I want. He also wanted me to tell him where I see this going, and I honestly don’t like how much he wants to bend my deadlines and life plans. I don’t want to date forever. If we decide that we are each other’s person then I want to get married, and if we decide that we’re not, then I want to break up. I don’t want to forever date until neither of us has any other options but to stay together forever no matter what, instead of confidently choosing each other early on, or confidently walking away.

People live in the grey zone, but his is more like the white zone with stints of grey here and there. It’s not like it’s all vague, it’s more like there isn’t anything in it. He doesn’t know a first thing about what he wants, and I know exactly what I want, and his indecisiveness is driving me pretty crazy. He doesn’t want to live under deadlines, but frankly, I don’t want to give him all my time and then get nothing out of it. His indecisiveness is scary as fuck to me. So the more lost he seems the more I feel like I need to communicate boundaries to him, which in turn scares him more and more.

A part of me also wonders why he’s trying so hard to make this work. I don’t think there are many people like me, but I don’t think it’s that impossible to find someone a little closer in thinking to me than he is. Yet each time we disagree he begrudgingly decides to compromise out of his undirected and confused state of mind and just go along with my flow. It makes me feel like I am some kind of a dictator rather than a normal person with normal wants from a relationship.

Neither of us is abnormal. We are just so different in terms of what we envision for ourselves: I envision things very exactly. He doesn’t envision things at all. It’s a problem.

A very shy, intimidated little part of me is excited that he wants to live with me. A much larger, more responsible part of me is terrified of when it imminently doesn’t work out and we need to break up by moving out and breaking leases and starting over after a divorce-like event. No one wants that. I also don’t want to leave him in a lease if I move away after graduation and he cannot exactly move away with me as is. A part of me does want to wake up together and go to sleep together. The tactile part of our relationship has always been a mutual favorite. When he talks about it, it’s so obvious how much he loves it too. A part of me wants to have him as the default part of my life, because I already feel like he is that. We text so much it’s starting to drive me a little crazy. I also want to give him the chance to cook for me and give me the chance to do the laundry for us.

I can’t decide why he wants me so bad. In part because in spite how much I do want him and love him, I feel like there are gaps and the relationship lacks. Even though he seems like he’d go to the end of the world for me, he is selfish with the smaller things, even something as little as thinking about how I would feel if he said something or did something that affects me. I also feel like he wants to put on a show as someone who he isn’t. He presents as wealthier than he is, happier than he is, and more thoughtful than he is. I don’t know anymore which side is real: the side he shows in crisis or the side he shows when he’s relaxed and his mood is down. He also acts like this is his first relationship and I am someone he’s learning on. He shows a lot of hope for it going long term, but I don’t really know how much he believes in it. Sometimes it seems as illsuited as his last job, which was a notch above what he could handle. Similarly, I feel like I am a notch above what he could handle, probably many notches above.

But I can feel him caring and being loving. And to my current self that means so much. I looked for love for so long. People laughed at it, people challenged it, people mocked it. From the very start, I wanted love. And he gave me love. He is still giving me love. What we have feels like love. But it also feels painful and difficult and uncomfortable. A part of me wants love but with ease and comfort, not disagreements and depression and push-pull non-stop. A part of me simply wants a different love. And I can’t decide if that part is wrong, because in important situations, he always does such lovely things. And he’s so sexy to me. And he feels and smells so good. And he talks to me so much and so often. And he cares about a lot of the things I care about. But I don’t know if this is my one and only forever person. Right now, he feels like my maybe person. And I don’t think it’s a good idea to move in together with one’s maybe person, because maybe people are usually just no-people, working hard on winning one over.

[lolitahhhloves]

$10 = $50 = equality

I’ve felt like his eyes are on me every time there is a cost. He had been getting all our dates and then for a good month took us absolutely nowhere. Maybe because he was saving for things, maybe because he had bills to pay. Bottom line is he wanted to cook for us which meant we stayed in his gloomy 4 walls and wallowed in our misery.

He is most certainly depressed. Cross that. He most certainly has depression. One he is doing nothing about. Maybe it’s getting better, but I don’t see it so yet. His depression makes him want to do nothing but sit in his house, eat food, and watch Netflix, which is nothing like the things I like to do. And I am tired of dealing with a moapy self-centered 350 lb man. He is kind and he is a good person, but he is also selfish when needed, materialistic, full of expectations, often lazy, and often snappy with me. I really honestly keep losing reasons for staying together. Maybe the reason is that we are sort of similar and he is physically attractive to me and does care about me, but is that enough? Maybe the reasons are that I don’t want to worry about another partner having HPV or any of the STDs. Maybe I don’t want to have raw sex with any more people. I’m tired of giving away intimacy and going through bodies. I’m tired of getting to know people. But I also worry about committing everything I’ve got to someone who is turning out to be more and more wrong for me each day. Am I being stupid to consider leaving or stupid to consider staying?

He wants me to show appreciation by getting cheap things from time to time. He makes $120k and I make $21-25k depending on the year. If we converted that, my $10 mean to me as much as his $50 mean to him. And rarely does he actually treat me to things that cost $50 or more in one go. So why am I supposed to nonchalantly treat him to things that cost $10, when so many pairs of shoes I own didn’t even cost that much -- I got sneakers for $7, flats for $2, flats for $7, heels for $10... I just got 4 toothpastes for $8 because they were on sale and I can normally barely make ends meet on their regular price and couldn’t hold my excitement at the lack of need to worry. This month, also, I spent $90 on my annual Norton subscription, $85 on coloring my hair, $50 on a word processor I needed for my dissertation, $10 on new panties and I basically have $50 left for the next 15 days after other costs factor in. I’ve explained my budget and its limitations and difficulties and overdraws and painpoints and got a feedback that $10 here and there really isn’t much. But Jesus, just 2x$10 and I could have a new pair of jeans. He spends $200 easily on just a tshirt, and he regularly buys sneakers ranging from $150-250.... Regularly meaning at least twice a month. He now owns about 50 pairs of sneakers. And sure, he has taken me out to dinners and made dinners and bought us sex toys, but seriously it’s all either food or something he wants. And he wants me to appreciate him with my drained budget and I’m tired. He shows up and doesn’t find things that are difficult for me to get, things I plan for an entire month, like his Valentine’s day gift or his Christmas gift, perfectly suitable and then wants more. And I feel so bad about this but I just want my own $10 to keep to do with as I please. He already buys me nothing special to wear or no special nail or hair treatments, so what is his problem? He’s just getting us some damn food and I don’t need it expensive like he always makes it. And I just want some cheaper food but without this random co-pay he’s asking for. I want to get him sweet little gifts here and there and maybe do something nice too, but I don’t want to trade my left-over budget for his food. Not to mention there is no leftover budget. It’s all fucking fiction. I am spent for the month already. I am already tired and frustrated and on the edge. And I just spent $40 on our tickets to two shows and honestly I wish I didn’t have to. But I just feel so cornered with his insistence that $10 here and there isn’t much. Fuck that. I need freedom and personal comfort and he already has it, with or without me. And for the little food he gives me, he gets all of my company and free time. And I’m exhausted and over something “as little as $10 here and there” just wish I could have my time and freedom back. Because I don’t have $10 and he is cornering himself into an image that makes him look like a cheap asshole who doesn’t care one bit about what I need or what I have to spend for the rest of the month. It’s pointless and it’s pointless trying to explain to him what is actually left. He is as distanced as if he was an acquaintance, not my actual boyfriend, whose job should be to worry about my sanity, and if $10 here and there makes me lose it, he should know that I simply don’t have these fucking $10 to spare whenever he thinks I should.

[lolitahhhloves]

“I’d love love it if you could get a job in LA”

It’s been a sad few days for me. My advisor got critical of my lack of work in the past month. I used to get angry with him because he wasn’t helping me gain even a single semester of funding outside of being a TA, but I no longer do. Somewhere in my head, I’ve made peace with it being an obligation I’d have throughout the program. If I actually graduated in 4.5 years all the while having TA’d, I would be a scientific miracle, and all my therapists would deserve medals and ordains. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. This weekend has made me feel like I won’t. My advisor has made me feel emotionally bruised yet again. He does this about every other month. I’m lucky when he forgets. Due to the nature of our relationship being so nebulous and confusing, he generally has the ability to criticize me for anything under the sun, and the only thing he can’t take away from me is my 9 months of funding, solely because it does not come from him. A part of me actually thinks he would take that away too if he could.

I then wound up watching a Netflix reality show called “Back with the Ex” and afterwards talking to my boyfriend a pretty large amount. Because I watched couples communicate intensely, I did so with my boyfriend as well and he said many things I found sweet and sincere. We talked what would happen if I had to move away, and we talked about why his lack of thought on this makes me feel like he’s not as committed to me. But he actually cleared everything up. He explained how he felt and he explained that he would have a long distance relationship if I moved away, as long as I was looking to return or he could find a way to move to wherever I went. It was extremely comforting and I appreciated him so much during the entire talk. I told him a bunch of worries and doubts when it came to job search and graduation, and he was nothing but supportive and encouraging of finding any solution that helps me. We ended on a high note of talking some more about this when we spend time together in person next.

However, one text led to another and another text led to a third text, and we ended up in this messy talk of sex, toys, and kink. I ordered a thursting dildo and showed it to him. He ordered a ball gag and showed it to me. I sent him a sexy meme and he sent me his sexy thoughts. And before we knew it it was almost 11 and logically he would be heading to bed soon, except I was close to having an orgasm and he made an abrupt stop. He promised he wanted to give me orgasms in person while trying to interupt the conversation. I told him I understand he has to sleep, but that I would normally be upset if he disappeared like that. He said he was sorry, then actually went offline. I wondered for a split second what caused this. He must have known I was close to an orgasm, so why not help me get there before disappearing? He had also talked to me all through the night, so why not extend the talk a little more? Clearly he wasn’t horny enough for it to be bad before, so what made that particular instant such a breaking point? More than anything, I thought that he should clearly see that had he been in my shoes, he would have wanted me to keep talking to him, and that should have been enough of a motivator to keep talking for the tiny bit more, if not under 2 more minutes. A part of me decided that he was pulling off a bit of a subconscious eye for an eye: “I can’t find an alone space and can’t cum, so you don’t get to cum either”, which felt unhealthy. I had made him cum so many times more than he had ever made me. It wasn’t, according to any calculation, fair to ever bail on me trying to have an orgasm. I guess I can’t really know. I am really hoping it isn’t the weird tit for tat logic I’ve come up with, but I also know that I can’t exactly ask about it tonight, since he does have a big day ahead and wanting to sleep is perfectly normal in a situation like this. I just also think it’s perfectly normal to have some flexibility with that when dealing with humans, and especially so with humans you’re giving the majority of your time and interest to, such as your girlfriend. It didn’t make sense. But I came anyway, and while doing so, a thought that he might want one of those strong independent in-charge girlfriends crossed my mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that, but I am definitely not that right now. Not in a relationship. Not interpersonally. I’m like a shell of having once been that, and a part of me likes being in a place where I demand others take some care of me. It makes me feel like I attract people who have an ability to care, which is definitely not everybody, and especially so not everybody male. So perhaps he is running into an incompatibility. Or perhaps he never realized he needed someone who is already financially established and can help him, because he has lately been acting cheap. And I can’t understand if it’s because I have been financially relaxed (he makes 5-6 times more money than I do, so why not relax, Jesus?) or for a different reason, but bottom line is that I am worried he might be showing a more selfish side of him and less caring side of him, and I am not sure this is the same guy I agreed to date. So many thoughts. Some wonderful, some strange. Bottom line is, he deserves a chance to answer my questions, and he has so far answered them in ways that are surprisingly great. I just need to have a little bit of faith in him. Even though that’s extremely hard and counter-intuitive sometimes.

[lolitahhhloves]

Valentine’s is over

It’s the night between Monday and Tuesday, meaning both Valentine’s day and Valentine’s weekend are behind us. It was all so stupid, but after much thinking and conversations with both the therapist and my friends, I am becoming less and less sure that we are anywhere near soulmates. I’ve watched my Instagram posts from these past few months and there are very few with him; in fact most of my favorite photos were taken at events he opted out of, or in fact argued against attending. I remember LA art show being the big one. I watched a couple after a couple show up and the guys would take all kinds of pictures for their girlfriends. My boyfriend was home, being upset or unhappy for reasons unbeknownst to anyone including him. If he cared enough, could he have been at LA art show with me? Possibly. Maybe the depression wouldn’t be so heavy. Or maybe it wasn’t depression at all. People who speak of depression as a disease are interesting to me. Yes, it sort of is, but it is often extremely consequential. Our brain chemistry gets conditioned by early development or by founding experiences, by the way our parents raise us, and by the way we are socialized, from the very start until this very moment. Emotions exist, in part, to warn us about something being wrong somewhere, like a person needing help nearby, or there being danger, or the need to maintain global population, or even the basics like being hungry and needing to ensure we are fed, and thus, alive. Since in the earliest development we are fed, cleaned, and soothed by other humans, we learn to separate sadness from hunger by going off to feed our own selves in adulthood. If, for some reason, we had never been taught how to feed ourselves, it is possible that we would grow to also feel sadness, instead of just hunger, when hungry. This is why embracing depression, an extreme form of sadness, as an illness becomes bothersome. If our earliest form of sadness comes from having unmet physical needs, then why do we assume that it later on comes from inside our own bodies, rather than from the environmental factors that affect us or have affected us in the past? Like everything else, there is a reason why my boyfriend felt particularly depressed on the weekend of LA art show. It might have nothing to do with the show or me, but there is going to exist a definite reason for it, and that very fact makes it dangerous to embrace. If I am never to take his depression personally when I would like to have him by my side, outside of the house, I need to make amends with the definition of depression being uncircumstantial, or being circumstantial to other aspects of his life, but that is easier said than done if it manifests onto me. Disease or not, depression is extremely difficult to handle when one’s own, but possibly even worse when it occurs in someone close to us, as we feel like our perfectly normal emotional state and mood is constantly being disrupted by the other person’s inability to feel any joy whatsoever.

My happy place is out on the town. I want to always be seeing the next coolest thing, trying the next hip ice cream place, and watching the most current theatrical production of virtually anything. I’m like a sponge of city life. There are days when I want to watch comedy and lounge around, but provided I can afford it, I generally prefer to be out and about. Not only do I prefer it, but I am more than willing to lose sleep for it, if I can experience another cool thing in life that I had not seen the day prior. This mindset, as I am learning, is difficult to find in people accessible to me. I don’t exactly know who has it, but it certainly isn’t any of my exes. They are always mopey, hiding in a mouse hole somewhere. And the men I had dated who were actually outgoing had nearly always turned out to be misogynistic assholes.

I guess a part of me feels like I could have a domestic relationship at home and go to functions, events, and parties by my own self, but another part of me worries I will eventually lose everything in common with that type of partner. I’m not very domestic, am I? But there is security and comfort in domesticity. I’ve never experienced a relationship focused on anything else.

I’m sitting around and it’s Monday. My boyfriend last texted me yesterday and it was bleak. He asked how my day was. It pissed me off how little he was putting forward with that question. After all, this is the same guy I started dating after he constantly had great questions for me. How is my day going? It’s going same as any day... It has 24 hours and 12 of them are long gone. I didn’t really try to be funny or anything. I responded in an equally bleak and mundane way that it was good and busy. He said that was good. And now he is watching my stories on Instagram. He isn’t commenting on any of them. One was about how people who care will always find the time, and he did not find it. I asked for Valentine’s weekend time and he shut me down completely. I didn’t even ask for anything much. I wanted coffee and sex. Apparently that’s too much, and he is doing a variety of things that can’t be postponed to the Tuesday he was trying to meet me on. He acts entitled to my time and honestly I don’t want to tolerate it. Just because I’m flexible doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes have time-sensitive needs. I wanted to do something on Valentine’s weekend because it felt meaningful and he is now waiting for me to crack and do things on his own schedule. An Instagram post said “A girl could be thinking about you 24/7 and still never speak to you again” and it’s true. I think about him 24/7, but I don’t want to see him right now. A part of me doesn’t really even want to talk to him. But I do miss him, very strongly, and I do hope he actually shows he cares about my feelings and our relationship. If he shows nothing, I will spend time with him as he needs me to during his mom’s visit, and have another honest discussion over the apparent lies about his salary as well as values and things in common, but I’m not an educational institution. If he doesn’t understand women or relationships, it is in many ways his job to learn as he goes or asks questions. If I just lecture about it, we will have another San Diego situation, since he currently simply doesn’t care and doesn’t want to listen.

Above all else, he is in extremely dire need of therapy and self-improvement, but he won’t do it, and if he won’t do it, I can’t do it for him, but I am thinking more and more that the current emotional and physical state he is in is not something I can actually handle, physically and emotionally, myself.

[lolitahhhloves]

Valentine’s Day

My boyfriend was sweet and cooked us food. He also got me flowers and heart-shaped chocolates, which was also sweet.

Why am I upset, you ask? Because I said specifically I wanted to go out for dinner, then have a lot of sex. He was talking about a comedy show, so I wanted to make it more sex-friendly by going out for something simple, but still going out. I also said, I wanted to go to San Diego on the Valentine’s weekend. He said something along the lines of “Yeah? Okay.” every time I’d talk about it. He clearly wasn’t listening. He also wasn’t listening when I showed him the chocolates I wanted and told him what my favorite flowers were. He was basically not listening to me, almost at all, for at least the last month. When I told him I got him a gift, I thought he’d also get me a gift, but he didn’t. He got flowers and chocolates, so I guess he did something. He didn’t even get me a pair of socks or some kind of skin care item. He absolutely got me no particular gift. He got me no card. I sat in stores for hours picking out his cards. He didn’t even think about getting me one. When I said “just get one of each you see”, referring to flowers, chocolates, card, and a plushie, he argued against that being a normal thing. He ARGUED that he did a good job, but while he did a job, and while I feel bad criticizing him for still doing something, he didn’t do anything he let me expect of him, and even the little he did was hardly different from a normal day. This was SUPPOSED to be a special fucking day. He is the only guy I’m dating/fucking/spending time with. He is supposed to do a better than mediocre job at the whole damn thing. Because I’m not mediocre and this makes me feel like I am.

I told him the fact that he couldn’t make it special or even plan me into this weekend felt like he didn’t even know me. And he just pulled away. My feelings are hurt. I have reasons to be upset. My thinking is valid. I won’t be made feel crazy or selfish by this. There are women out there getting so much more who care about this so much less. Honestly, fuck this. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. I’m tired. I’ve been dating a robot for the past month. He couldn’t even take me out on the one special day of this fucking month. 

I’m taking myself out. I’m going to go buy myself the chocolates I wanted, a cute item I wanted, and maybe some face masks I wanted. I’m going to take my own self to the movies, and go get the food I wanted with a friend. I’m going to be my own fucking Valentine, like I’ve done every year.

An Instagram post recently said “we are scared to let others take care of us, because when we have, in the past, people have done a poor job”, or something like that. It holds true. It especially holds true every Valentine’s day. Fuck men and fuck this. I feel like we’re complete strangers.

Also, not only are we not going to San Diego, but we are not even seeing each other this weekend. And he’ll be gone for basically days after that, so good luck to this whole relationship. Fuck this shit. And fuck him lasting 2 fucking minutes and pissing me off so much I couldn’t even have an orgasm from anything he did. FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT.

[lolitahhhloves]

Conversations

I keep recognizing something interesting. I have met many people and with all of these people, I had immediately jumped into talking about my favorite topic: sex. I had made out with them, done all kinds of teasing with them, and made them want me for the sexuality I exude. I had gone to daytime coffee dates I found boring because I found it harder to intermingle the sex talk into them. I was getting busier, which meant I was trying to fit people into early evenings, while the days were getting shorter, making it more alike to night-time dates and thus being more sexual. I can’t remember when I last wanted someone’s company without the sex. And in many ways, I still want the sex to be a huge part of a relationship.

But it is fascinating that when I met my giant, I sort of fangirl-ed inside my own head. I arrived second and straight out of the Uber said “you are a ginger giant!”. He looked different from the rest of guys I had gone out with. It was as if he had picked out my favorite features from every guy and merged them together. He walked with me to the cashier and since he didn’t particularly push it, I got my own coffee. I was not in the mood for being moody about it. I just wanted to unwind after driving a bunch and giving him a stare about paying for my coffee was not my version of relaxation. It felt like a power move around him, since he clearly, especially looking back from right now, wanted to get it. We also got the same type of coffee, which we keep feeling preoccupied by, not that anyone drinks anything but cold brew in California. We said something about him being a ginger, and I asked if he also tasted like ginger, so he tasted his own beard and noted he didn’t. It’s so strange to follow the progression of things from almost 3 months in. You rarely start from nothing and build something that feels wonderful, with another person. We talked and particularly today, I remember it being about his school and school issues, his life, his “homeless” two months, his likes of stand-up comedy. We probably repeated everything on date 2, since my short-term memory is often all fucked. The date 1 ended and I offered him a hug and felt like I was the only one that got animated by it. He was nervous. I wore such a short crop-top that it lifted up and I panicked that he had seen my bra, but he didn’t react. The distance was good for me, although it surprised me.

It took another long conversation on the second date and it didn’t get us any closer to going into the sex talk. We kissed at the end. Our third date involved lunch and coffee and we practiced making out in an alley of my choosing. I thought it was cute. Then we spent Halloween together, and he spent the night. I set boundaries and he respected them. I got nothing but sweetness and care from this guy. I don’t know what exactly, if not everything all together, about me makes him so thoughtful and so sweet, but he has treated me like a princess and not how he thinks a princess should be treated, but how I thought a princess should be treated, and that takes a lot of thought and empathy. And I’m somehow super in love. But it doesn’t feel bad. It feels just right. And I want to be around for so much more of it.

[lolitahhhloves]

Mood swings

I wish I understood why my mood has been going so far up and down. It started with wanting sex on Friday, not getting it and feeling on the edge about it, getting upset thinking my period had started the next day, then finally getting enough of it to feel completely satisfied. I did feel like a slight asshole for wanting it on demand so badly, but my boyfriend followed through when he was in a better mood and it all worked out. Sometimes I feel generous in bed and sometimes I want 1:1 ratio of orgasms. This weekend was the latter.

I then went on to simply feel out of balance. I told him I loved him, which was true, but it was also scary, and although he said it back, a part of me wishes he had said it first so I could feel absolutely secure. Luckily, he didn’t do anything weird and appreciated the initiative.

After that, I was out of the mood to slice carrots for his carrot cake, although I offered help. I just don’t like to handle vegetables and for some reason didn’t think he would ask me to do that. I should make a mental note that the people who like cooking will have others help with the parts they dislike, and no one is that stoked about peeling veggies. I helped with dishes after half-assing the carrots and expressing my apologies about it.

Then we went to bed and I feel blurry about the rest. I feel like we overwhelmed me with time away from my own apartment and my own things. I spent nearly the entire week at his place and while it is a very nice place and he spoils me there, I have made my own apartment exactly to my liking and when I’m away, I miss it. My place is also a lot sunnier and has a giant window that is most likely bigger than all of his windows combined. He says they pay $3500 for the entire 3-bedroom, but considering that aside from being new and feeling homey, it doesn’t have the best of features, I don’t really understand why it’s worth the cost. I would have rather taken a 2 bedroom with nice big windows in a better neighborhood for the same price, but who knows. The more I learn about him the less some of his choices make sense, this being one of them, so a part of me feels like he might have made a similar choice dating me (although I know that’s wrong) and another part worries about him making wrong choices even at later times, when they are more likely to affect me. He also calls a lot, if not most things gross, which makes me feel disheartened. Honda Civic is not gross. It’s quite nice. It’s just not very expensive. I get worried because I am used to being around heavily critical people, but in the end it makes me unhappy or uncomfortable, except for the rare friendships that align their criticism with mine.

We have also spent more time around other people and I realize I am jealous of virtually anyone that gets to talk to him. Considering how similar we are, he could also be jealous of the same things when I talk to other people, but for now, I mostly feel like an asshole and don’t have a terribly great interest in being social as a couple. This does appear common enough. My friends who do have significant others are rarely going anywhere other than 1:1 dates with them. And a part of me understands, but a part of me wonder why this is. I guess it’s LA. Everyone is somehow scared that their perfect, prized, and carefully selected significant other might become the object of an inevitable single person who might be present at a social gathering. Or maybe it’s about having some space for oneself. I don’t really know, but I know that I somehow don’t feel particularly great when I am supposed to be happy that I invited him somewhere and he showed up. Perhaps it’s also because I usually invite him instead of him inviting me.

I then wanted to catch up with him, after our social dinner, so I asked what he’s up to and he offered I come over. But I had just gotten home after that, so I said I would come and then Uber home within an hour, which made him rethink the situation and suggest he drops me off at my place instead, joking about being all spread out all over his bed. For some reason, something in this whole mess of situations is making me prone to overthinking, and I am aware that the overthinking might lead absolutely nowhere or to something pointless like waiting for my period to start or waiting for a very back-logger reimbursement to come through, which would be the ideal reasons.

Sometimes, I look at him and feel this unimaginable urge to have his babies. It sounds so stupid, I know, and I feel so ditsy for thinking it up like that, but the urge is real and I consider it a positive portrayal of attraction that I wouldn’t act upon in any disorganized situation comparing to the present one. I simply think fondly about the idea of it. But then the very next thought is whether a kid like that would have crooked teeth, and weird toes, and be needing -4.5 glasses, and could it have Down’s Syndrome like his brother’s son, and how weird would it be if we had a girl who turned out as tall as him. So I panic a little. Today I saw an extremely unattractive guy pass me by on the street and a part of me panicked we could create a kid like that. But other times all I can think of is a cute bundle of baby fat and red curls with piercing blue eyes, and it’s literally all I can imagine wanting.

Bottom line is, today was difficult to motivate myself for. Last night felt annoying and sad before and sad after. Today has been lifted up a bit by texting, so perhaps I was just missing my texting fix while we were spending all of our days together. Who the fuck knows. But getting all of this out onto my screen has definitely felt good and felt therapeutic.

[lolitahhhloves]

Holidays aren’t over, I pretend

Today, I received an email that said my advisor will no longer be able to hire assistants who grade assignments, for the class I TA. This implies that for the first 5-7 weeks of the semester, it will most likely be me who grades 50 assignments per week. This is disheartening, as usual.

I suppose if I had been happier in this program, I would be more eager to take on whatever life throws at me, but I have been maxing myself out, waiting to be finished and to proceed to have nicer life, nicer things, nicer moods, and nicer opportunities. I have been waiting for these 5 years to pass me by, so I can be set free, equipped with higher credibility, higher knowledge, and higher earning potential, or at the very least, the ability to get a nicer, more comfortable job. It is now 3.5 years in and I am tired of dealing with bullshit. I guess if I give time to grading, maybe I will have better excuses for not making progress week to week if needed. But then again, I will have so much less time to give to making progress. 50 assignments converts to at least 25 hours of nothing but grading. It exceeds the prescribed commitment. But fuck it. Maybe then I’ll actually get summer funding as well. It would have been nice to have chosen a university that could actually afford its PhD students, or at least an advisor who understood that what the university can afford isn’t realistic. 

In my next job interview, I will ask if the manager who will be in charge of me has a working wife. No more husbands to stay at home moms. They think their own family doesn’t need extra income and they think that women are there to take care of kids. It’s a messed up mindset and I don’t want it in my vicinity after this.

In other news, my ginger boyfriend is still wonderful. He is starting to feel a little more real in some ways, but he has not alarmed me with anything yet. I told him I loved him and he told me he loved me too. Then he said it first on another occasion. We are so interpersonally similar. We are affection starved and we perceive our partner’s role in a compatible and similar way. We both seem to think that the other person’s primary job is to love us, which is so sweet. We both prioritize each other, which is also sweet. I can’t wait for literally all of the time that follows. 

[lolitahhhloves]

Overwhelmed, no panic

I’m writing a dissertation proposal due approximately January 10th. I would prefer to have it due January 20th, but I suppose I want to register for dissertation units this spring. While I want to graduate, a part of me also wants to be able to sleep how I have been able to sleep this semester, which clearly generated a delay in finishing the proposal. But it made me a brighter, more excitable individual. I constantly find opportunities that might be perfect for me and genuinely feel excited about them. I’ve gotten a TV on Cyber Monday, and feel more like a real person now that I have it. I’ve been learning how to drive, which has been making me feel more like a person as well. I’ve been staying away from conversations with family, since they consistently frustrate me and put me down. I do want to feel closer to them again sometime soon, but I feel like I can’t do the daily chatter anymore. My life doesn’t change enough for that to work out in any productive or even merely positive way.

A meme on Instagram asked “how old do you turn in 2019″ and I turn 27. A part of me feels age-displaced. I’ve had to learn so much. Most people I know are in objectively worse situations, but the fact that they didn’t have to always know what to do and always make the best choice makes me slightly envious. The only other girl in my PhD cohort just defended her dissertation proposal and all I could think of was “fuck you, why do you get to do this before me”, but I forget my circumstances. I always have. I forget them, especially when there is just one person like this, somewhere around me, poking out their competitive streak. I forget that she’s had fellowships her entire PhD, that she’s had a boyfriend who works (and seemingly lives with her), which makes things easier. I forget that she is local and knows how life works. But what I don’t forget is that we are all in a more or less the same race, and where we started from is not always taken into the account for where we are going.

It’s been beautiful two months with my ginger giant. He is thoughtful, he is funny and cute, he takes me out, he takes naps with me, and he makes plans for big days of the year like Halloween, Christmas and NYE. He is watching what I like and giving it to me. He even made the sex better when I complained. He calls me a goofball, con gusto, while his voice smiles. He is tall and big and smart and ambitious, and some days I wonder whether he deserves me, but most days I wonder how he found me and how he is so much of what I had wanted. Some days I worry about overdoing things, about kissing him too much, cuddling him too much, telling him he’s cute too much, or showing nice gestures too much. Some days I worry I’m not doing that nearly enough. Some days I’m terrified of the idea of ever having childen with him because he is so big so maybe his babies would be big too, and some days I think how perfect any kids we could ever have would be. All days he smells great and feels great and I want him. He usually does the right thing, and when he doesn’t he aims to understand me. I’ve never wondered what he is thinking, and never looked back thinking that an earlier time was better. With him, things keep getting better and better, and I love that.

[lolitahhhloves]

Control

The guy I am thinking of breaking up with, my gingerbread man, took a series of photos of me at a cafe. Google Photos went ahead and created an animation out of them, and I think we are both sort of in love with the animation. I can’t stop watching it on loop. I’ve posted it to my instagram story, instagram feed, and made it my facebook profile photo. It is simply wonderful. In it, I look like a happy itty bitty little princess loving my life. I’m brushing my hair past my ear, smiling widely and gleefully, having just enough body language, throwing my hair down (literally). That photo itself makes me feel less lonely. It makes me feel happy. It gives me a preview of what liking someone and feeling compatible does to a human. What belonging does. In it, you know I am smitten by my photographer. In it, you know how my eyes sparkle when I’m happy. In it, you understand what I could be. And in it, if you know me, you know I am so changed. I am the version of me I’ve dreamed of since I was 4? 7? 10? I’ve dreamed of romantic love, yet this is not even love, this is just my brain and my face on the love I feel. And not only is that beautiful, it is powerful. It gives hope and makes me feel like there is enough of me to love this whole wide world, fix it, nourish it, help it, and still be all me, still be glowing, still be throwing my hair down and behind my ears, still be loving.

My mom says she had dreamed of me throwing a small traveler’s sack on my back and walking out into the wide world, when I was little, before I had even started school. The dreams would make her cry. She’d connect them to fairytales she had read for me until she would fall asleep but I wouldn’t. Years later, she’d say that she saw my life unveil then. But it was her own dreams of departures she was dreaming on into the picture of me, the picture she would help create, for a good decade. I never fit in into my little hometown. The rest - I don’t know about. Do I even fit in now? I’m always somewhere at an intersection, not quite in the right and not quite in the wrong zone for anything. That’s how we create miracles, but it is a difficult place to be in, constantly. Where do I end? Will I be infinite? Will I be finite? Will I be gone tomorrow? Will I actually have the kind of love I have been dreaming of since I was an itty bitty little princess who knew how to sing and do math? What is my life going to be like? Because, baby, the best is just starting out!