Bitter

The word of the day is bitter. 

I am bitter.  I am bitter about having to be the better person all the time.  I am bitter about having to be good with money because my husband isn't.  I am bitter that he holds double standards for everyone in his life.  I am bitter that people take each other for granted all the time.  I am bitter about things never going how I plan or want.  I am bitter that no matter what, these things will not change. 

For the first time in 2.5 years, my husband asked me to tell him about myself and then he actually listened.  I told him about life before my parents got divorced and before we moved here.  I tried to get as much in as I could before he lost interest.  It was nice to feel like that mattered to him.  He isn't so good at listening.  He does a lot of talking and when it's my turn usually falls asleep.  It kinda freaked me out.  I felt bitter thinking about it afterwards... why did it have to take so long for him to ask? When I've heard the same handful of stories over and over again from him?  Why is it ok for him to not know hardly anything about where I came from, but I have to know all kinds of things about his family and where they're coming from?  Double standards...

I am bitter when I think about this past year.  The good times are far outnumbered by the bad or the numb times.  So much has happened in the past year with his family. I do my best not to be bitter with them, to try and be the better person but everytime I turn around I am met with more disrespect and more hurt.  That is hard enough explaining to someone who doesn't want to see it when they're looking right at it.... but have you ever tried explaining it to someone who is halfway across the world?  Don't.  My advice to you, wait until the person is seeing if for themselves. 

I am bitter.  I am tired of being told to restrain myself, but no one else is.  I am tired of always thinking about others and putting them first.  I am tired of no one thinking about what I actually want.  Case in point this Christmas was the worst Christmas I've ever had.  It should've been great.  My parents drove to see me in a snowstorm, so I wouldn't have to be completely alone.  But then Chad's family opened the presents we gave them without me. They were supposed to wait for me to get off work but that was too much to ask.  So I show up and find them done... so I go home to my parents and try to fake a good mood for them... I hate pretending to my parents. Come to find out Chad's family bought me chocolate for Christmas.  I don't like chocolate. I never have liked chocolate.  If they had known anything about me, that would've been it.  But I'm the rude one.  No one asked me what I wanted.  They all assumed.  I asked them for ideas, then knocked it out of the ball park, only to be disrespected.  If they would've have asked me and listened to what I said, I would have at least gotten some Reese cups and ate them.  But no.  Asking people to know me and think about me is asking too much, or a losing battle. However you chose to look at it, I've given up. 

This is why I freak out when I think about Chad coming home.  Now that he's been gone a year, something tells me he has probably forgotten everything about me and replaced it with an ideal me, one that he wants me to be. So then we will be starting back at literal square 1 after already being married.  Talk about scary.  And then I will be bitter because I didn't forget anything about him.  He may have changed over the course of the last year, but I didn't forget anything. 

I am tired of feeling like parts of me are dying inside.  I am tired of being the one to give up all the time.  I am tired of trying to find a middle ground and being judged for keeping the peace.  I am tired of being told I am wrong all the time.  I am tired of being shown that my opinions on things, don't really matter.  I am tired of being mistreated by those who are supposed to be family.  Those that are quick to call me family when they need something.  When they want something. But I am a stranger otherwise.  These are things about myself that he will never understand.  As long as I can help it, he will never know what it's like to be used and thrown away.  He will never know what it's like to be told that he is only tolerated and will never be loved or accepted.

The only reason I wish he would stay in the Army is so we would be moved to another state.  Which would force him to spend time living without his family up his butt.   Always asking him to do something, always causing some sort of drama to take up his attention and energy.  I tell him this and he gets upset. Saying that over the course of the last several years he hasn't hardly lived here.  I call B.S. which makes him more angry. I tell him to live a year in a place where the only family he has uses him and the only family he has that actually loves him and builds him up is over 5 hours away from him, with his spouse in the most dangerous place on earth and his best friend in a country that has no mail system let alone reliable internet.  I have become callous and something tells me this will cause us big problems.

I am cold and bitter.  I have survived.  I hope he'll still want me.