crazyaway

I hate how you take advantage of me because I’m a good person.  I hate that I was the one who quit my job because you thought working together was putting a strain on our relationship.  Could it not have been the fact that you got in trouble for you substance abuse and couldn’t use your “herbal remedy” to quell your aggression anymore?  I hate that I had to start looking for a job in this economy because you cannot make a six-figure income meet all of ‘our’ needs.  Even though those needs are not mine - it’s your weed, your mushrooms, your alcohol that put a strain on our economic standing, put aside the fact that my weekly grocery budget keeps shrinking and the purchase of the net book I need for school has  been postponed indefinitely.  Put aside the fact that I have decreased the costs of running our small household since I’ve stopped working with you and found shortcuts to make the food last longer - somehow we still can’t seem to make it.  And according to you, that’s my fault.

I hate the way you constantly put down my younger brother and are currently making him face homelessness because you cannot control your aggressive impulses and are selfish.  Put aside the fact that I put up with your car thief, womanizing younger brother when he was staying with us or  your convict friend who didn’t take regular showers and brought over free-loading women.  Put aside the fact that I treated them both with dignity and respect they didn’t deserve, opened my home to their uncleanly habits and picked up after them because it made you happy to have them around.  The fact that my brother helps around the house and makes my day brighter has no impact on your selfish mine because he isn’t related to you.  Apparently my family doesn’t deserve the respect your family does because I come from good, intelligent people; therefore, my relatives should be held to standards that your relatives couldn’t even dream of reaching.  I despise that you laid off my brother under the guise that you couldn’t afford to pay another person, yet you pay your older brother who can’t manage money thirty dollars and hour to work that should only pay out ten to fifteen dollars an hour.  Let alone the fact that you underpaid my younger brother while he was working when you paid your younger brother and convict friend the standard, base pay of ten dollars an hour, even though they were living in our home at the time, just like my younger brother.

I hate the fact that I’ve been attempting to keep our home clean while I’ve been looking for work, but every time I get something completely clean, you take it as an invitation to destroy all my hard work.  The reason I wiped up all the ash from the countertops is because I didn’t like it there.  I do not like my kitchen counters to be as sticky as Peggy Bundy’s floors because I have to cook hearty meals there.  Meals that you look down upon because they are not exactly to your taste.  I’m sorry that I like my food cooked differently than yours, and I am a damn good cook, as well.  If you like your food a different way, you should make it yourself and see how hard it really is to make a palatable meal.

I hate how you are always undermining my decisions and dismissing my thoughts and ideas because you don’t see them as superseding the things you think and say.  Your decisions and money management skills have us living from month-to-month when we have quite a sufficient income, and yet you don’t even take a shred of my advice to heart.  My bank account is a hundred dollars overdrawn and we still haven’t paid the mortgage from last month, and all you keep saying is “Oh, we’ll pay that next week.”  Yet, next week never seems to come, does it?

I hate that throughout the duration of our relationship, I’ve changed my mannerisms, my schedule, my way of doing things, my way of organizing, my way of sleeping, my everything, and yet you haven’t changed at all.  Well, strike that, you seem to have changed for the worse.  You keep saying that you’ll find alternative ways to unwind and not be on such a quick trigger - that you’ll try to find a way to relax and destress, yet all you’ve done is displaced your foul moods on me.  And I sit here and try to adapt, to be more patient, to avoid the things that trigger your moods, yet it all goes unappreciated.  I try to keep quiet while you sleep into the afternoon; I try not to point out the way you’re taking advantage of me; I try to remember exactly where you’ve put every little thing - like your keys, cap, and beanie; I try to compromise until you‘re satisfied.  This, however, doesn’t seem to be enough.

I love you, but I can only bend so much before I break.  And I can slowly but surely hear myself cracking, snapping, tearing apart.  I don’t think I can stay together much longer, and when that time comes, all you’ll see is me walking away, my footsteps echoing in the silence.