Trapped

It would have been no better if he had knocked on her door tomorrow. She preferred crying in her own bed than in illuminating daylight.

Luckily, he made the bad decision to disrupt her tonight.

“Come in.”

He tried to retract when he saw her laying down already.

“It can wait until tomorrow.”

Her anxiety would not allow for that so she insisted he tell her now. He relented easily.

“I feel trapped in this relationship.”

Fucking shit.

“You’re not interested in me. I’ve thrown away my hobbies for you because you won’t do them with me.”

I never asked you to do that.

Now she was the one trapped in this goddamn rant.

He kept going: she complains too much about her own feelings of stress that she forgets about his own, she leaves tasks half-accomplished, she doesn’t enjoy sitting with him. She doesn’t enjoy sleeping in his bed because his body needs to stretch and cannot account for her. She stays quiet when he’s trying to teach and coach her through what she did wrong. She wants active interactions when he wants passive even though she knows he’s too tired to do anything. She forgets to check if he’s ready to hear about her day before she starts to. She asks too much. She doesn’t do enough.

When he was done, he saw she hadn’t moved but was already crying. He tried to comfort her by laying on her because he knew she liked the weight.

She simply said: “Get off me.”

Get the fuck off me.

This was not worth showing emotion in her voice.

“Close the door, please.”

He left.

Not for the first time, she wished there was a lock on her bedroom door, a wedge, a stick to prevent any other entrance.

She did not want to rage. She just didn’t want him around. She already worked so hard, so often, to not rage. She does not scream when he ignores her, blames her, when he calls her defensive, when he doesn’t apologize because he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, when he asks her to apologize when she thinks she’s done nothing wrong.

She tries not to be a burden to him. She tries not to curse.

Yet.

The scream almost came off of her desperate tongue but she choked it down and stuffed it back into her empty lungs. But she couldn’t stop the shaking. Nor the salt water in her mouth from her tired eyes. Tired everything, actually.

She was tired of being wrong. Of sitting in the dark. Of having one more person to care for when she got home from work. Tired of feeling her energy automatically drain when he wakes up because she knows he’ll just have a list of shit for her to do. Of being his helper and not his partner.

The hurt in their relationship has been a thought stuck in the back of her head, clawing to get out. Screeching, yelling, but it’s so far back that it only sounds like a faint whisper. And she works on pushing the thought further back so she hears it less and less, but it only struggles harder, gets louder, tries to rip her throat up.

She is in an impossible battle. The thought either has to win or they will die together.

She will die knowing that she is not where SHE is happy and safe. She will die knowing that she gave up her own emotional safety for the sake of someone else who demanded it and is ungrateful when it’s not enough to make up for all they didn’t receive even before he knew her.

He’s always asking her to grow, to do better. So when does he accept her? When will she have done enough?

She’s choking on it. Can’t hold it in anymore. She gets up to shove a chair under the doorknob before she lets the screams have their way.

Her body almost tore itself in half with the one that pierced the air.

She lets the sobs go. She melted into a pile of screams, curses, and the dual desire to be heard and ignored. She howled and it ripped her soul out. She did not care if she disturbed others.

The neighbors will think I'm insane.

She’s having a fucking tantrum. A childish, brutal fucking tantrum. But aren’t tantrums for when you aren’t being listened to? Aren’t tantrums for yelling and wailing and getting the anger out somewhere?

He started knocking again.

All this shrieking and she never wanted him to enter her room again. She loved hearing her voice. This explosion was her honey - the more she yelled and screamed and howled, the smoother it became. And the quieter the cacophony at the back of her head - thoughts love being listened to.

He was POUNDING, desperately.

She always joked about being unapologetically insane. So let me fully embrace it. She loved him, cared for him, but she couldn’t love and care for herself while she was with him. He demanded it all. There was none left over for her.

She didn’t want to put herself away anymore.

She would not let anyone make her cry more.

His hands continued their tirade at her door. Maybe they would break.

She loved him. Had thought she didn’t want to be with anyone else. But she cannot spend her life being an inconvenience to someone else.

Thank god he didn’t wait until tomorrow. She will tear out the door tonight.