"All of my change I spent on you"

What bugs me
Is that you believe what you're saying
What bothers me
Is that you don't know how you feel
What scares me
Is that while you're telling me stories
You actually
Believe that they are real - "As Is" Ani DiFranco

Sometimes i think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom and we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that i have figured what it's worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse.

But if i move my place in line i'll lose.
And i have waited, the anticipation's got me glued.

I am waiting for something to go wrong.
I am waiting for familiar resolve.

Sometimes it seems that i don't have the skills to recollect
The twists and turns of plots that turned us from lovers to friends
I'm thinking i should take that volume back up off the shelf
And crack it's weary spine and read to help remind myself

But if i move my place in line i'll lose.
And I have waited, the anticipation's got me glued.

I am waiting for something to wrong
I am waiting for familiar resolve
I am waiting for another repeat
Another diet fed by crippling defeat
And i am waiting for that sense of relief
I am waiting for you to flee the scene
As if you held in your hand the smoking gun
And on the floor lay the one you said you loved.

And it's strange
They are basically the same
So i don't ask names anymore.

Sometimes i think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom and we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that i have figured what it's worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse.

The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse - "Expo '86" Death Cab for Cutie

So I know that a lot of people are not going to get why I'm so mad. The Professor even gave voice to this earlier this week: "It's not like he cheated on you." Well, no it's not. You cheated on a (very very nice and amazing and lovely) woman you'd known for a year who you were already feeling like it was over with because you couldn't fall in love with her. But you broke a promise to and lied to your best friend, who's been in your life for 13 years and who's lived through you doing this multiple times, with you promising that you've changed after each time. The person who let you work your way back from all of those trust deficits only to have you do this same thing. Though at least you had the good sense not to involve me in the cheating part this time, even if that would have been pretty hard since I set up several safe guards against that. The other difference is that she, amazingly, seems to be willing to try to work through this with you and forgive you and help you change, whereas I'm not sure I am this time.

I hear the tiniest sparks in the tenderest sound. 
Diving music, drowning the sound. 
waltzing with the hairs upon my arms. 
And your final flight alarm, and you tremble, and you stumble, and you scrape up your palms. 
I can't stay here to hold your hand. 
I've been away for so long. 
I've lost my taste for home, and that's a dirty fallow feeling.
To be the dangling ceiling. 
From the roof came crashing down. 
Peeling in the heat.
Vanish in the rain.
The next time you say forever, I'll punch you in your face. 
Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean I didn't mean it.
You never know when I'll show you the never.
You never know when I'll show you the never.-"The Next Time You Say Forever" Neko Case

Last time this happened, I felt like we worked through a bunch of shit, both with each other and that you were able to see things that you might not have liked but that you needed to see, that maybe you needed someone else to see with you so that you couldn't just ignore it anymore. Even though I wasn't sure that enough had been done, I thought that maybe at least you wouldn't repeat the same things in the same way as before. And I would have warned off this girlfriend if I had thought that you would do the same thing over again. But all that work seems to have been for nothing. Now you feel like you are really actually ready to make changes because this time the hurt in other people was enough to push you to really change, to really grow up and be a man. But it's the same old story I've heard again and again. Last time, I told you that if you just owned this as who you are, I could probably just accept that. I could put that label under your name along with all the other things I know about you, good and bad, and act and expect accordingly. But you didn't. You refused to believe that that was who you are. And now I'm not sure I'm willing to or will even be able to work back from the trust deficit this time or to accept that I just can't trust to tell the truth in matters such as these, ever. The Therapist pointed out that it appears that I had moved from criticism to contempt, criticism being "I don't hate this thing you do" and contempt being "I hate this thing you are." or "I hate you for being this thing that you are." Yep, that about sums it up.

I'm at a payphone trying to call home
All of my change I spent on you
Where have the times gone? Baby, it's all wrong
Where are the plans we made for two?

If "Happy Ever After" did exist,
I would still be holding you like this
All those fairy tales are full of shit
One more fucking love song, I'll be sick.-"Payphone" Maroon 5


There's another thing that's been bugging me though and it might sound petty. One of the times that we overhauled our past romantic relationship and talked about why we didn't work, you said that you couldn't be with someone that you didn't trust to make, if not the same decision that you would make, to consistently make a decision that you would be ok with. Back in December, by which time you'd already cheated on her, I remember expressing my frustration to TyRoy about the fact that I felt like you might have actually found someone who was that kind of a person, someone who could make all the practical household things work, even if she wasn't as deep and philosophical as you might have hoped your long-term partner to me. When I told him about that whole "decision" thing, the divorced man scoffed, "No one is ever going to be able to do that. Everyone is going to make decisions you don't agree with or like." Ginger's response when I had told her about your statement was about how I feel, especially after having been in this relationship, "The best you can hope for is that they make decisions you can live with and, when really back, can come back from." But this belief of yours, that I can't be trusted to consistently make good decisions, has seeped into my beliefs about myself. Looking back, I can remember that each time I've met someone knew after you, I took pains to express how much this was true, how I wasn't actually a very good person or even a very moral person. That was because I knew you and you believed you to be this paragon of virtue. A 'virgin' who didn't drink and had never even wanted to try drugs, who'd been a 'good kid' and never stolen or cheated or lied. (Well, except when you did, which I always seemed to conveniently forget about.) Next to you, my wanton hedonism and habit of doing the exactly what I knew those I loved would disapprove of most demonstrated my complete immorality. And obviously that my decision-making was not to be trusted.

But you are the one who blew up your relationship, who hurt a good woman who you've been using these past 4 months or so to prop up you and your ego while you went through your seasonal depression, even though you felt like there was no future and you had promised her that you'd let her go if/when you felt like that. It is you who lies. It is you who can't be trusted to make the right decisions. I took pains to set up almost all of our interactions so that nothing inappropriate would happen, hanging out so much with your girlfriend present, that you stayed at my house with my people and not with us alone at my parents' house like we usually would, not laying with my head on your shoulder when being comforted because our faces are too close and I know what generally happens when that happens, setting up extreme punishments for myself from Professor if I did anything inappropriate with or to you. I feel like I took more careful considerations and pains with your relationship and monogamous fidelity than you could be bothered to. In my own relationship, with the exceptions of one thing I didn't remember us talking about and a minor freak out early on which pushed me to intentionally and flagrantly break the rules, I've not stepped outside of the boundaries of it. Those times that I have, I was quick to confess, be punished, and mercifully receive a clean slate. Though I tried to be as honest as possible about how shit of a person and a partner I could be, I have consistently been met with the same response in this relationship, "Though we appreciate your attempts to warn us, you really aren't as bad as you make yourself out to be." What makes me angry, what makes me furious, is that my relationship with you has led me to believe that I am way worse of a person than I probably am, especially because I have this false image of you and how good of a person you are. When you are not that good of a person.

I'm supposed to talk to you tonight and I want to say that I'm done. All of these things above lead me to say that I'm done.

But, after my significant others, you were the first person I wanted to tell about my interview on Monday. The person I want to share good news with first and the person I want to cry about bad news with first.

Fuck.

Yeah, I, I know it's hard to remember
The people we used to be...
It's even harder to picture,
That you're not here next to me.

You say it's too late to make it,
But is it too late to try?
And in our time that you wasted
All of our bridges burned down- "Payphone" Maroon 5