Author and Columnist
I wrote some very pissy letters to Kate and I am sorry. I was not, or rather, am not in at all a good mood. And I took it out on her, which I know is wrong.
Your moods explain, but do not forgive, your reactions. You would do well to learn this now. You don't, but you would do well to nevertheless.
But you are a high school senior at this point in the story. What you do not understand about yourself will almost by definition so far outpace what you think you do know that it might give you an aneurysm. You couldn't internalize my chiding no matter how gently I couched it.
At least you tried for an apology. Not doing taking it out on Kate would have been a far better thing, understanding that how you feel is not who you are, but genuine contrition is something. Most people in your position might have doubled down and felt righteous, which was never how you worked.
My father started getting bitchy at me when I was in this mood, and I burst out in tears and ran into my room, where I bawled (As in moaning into my pillow, full body convulsions) for a while. Which is certainly not my normal behavior.
Oh, Younger Thomm, but it is. You have mental health issues, anxiety and depression on occasion. On paper, you are diagnosed with a mood imbalance. I am not certain your would have been labeled anything worse than moody at that point, but statements like this make me hope a mental health professional would have been a bit more intuitive.
It will be--and I am so sorry for this--almost twenty years before you get your mental health in check.
At this point, I'm sure it could be chalked up to raging hormones coupled with rampant insomnia brought about in part by the anxiety, but also because you treat the allergies you do not acknowledge that you have with caffeine and psuedoephedrine. Neither of those are conducive to sleep, both of which only make things worse during the day.
It will, no joke, be at least another ten years before you figure out that you can just not think for a little while. Just let your mind be empty, let your inner narrator take a break. You know what happens when you do this rather than perseverating over your tomorrows? You fall asleep and feel better.
Some of it does involve Kate. I am all screwed up about her. I don't know how to explain it. I think I pity that she has to endure all of this, too. Just, right now, I am ultra-sensitive about anything emotional. So, being as she evokes all manners of emotions within me, it is just too much to handle right now.
Yeah, more symptoms. But you are eighteen. You are supposed to be nothing but raw nerves.
But I do want her to know that she is the most important thing in my life, frankly the reason I exist as such, and I don't want to lose her. I don't ever want to be with anyone else, nor do I want her to be with anyone else.
Rarely should the women in your bed be the most important thing in your life. Often will you say they are. You have a difficult time asserting your own importance in personal relationships. You are too deferential because you fear them leaving if your stand up for yourself.
Kate eventually breaks up with you because she does want to be with other people. Not specific other people--she doesn't leave you to date someone else--but the general notion of other people. It is college and it is right to explore what you want. It is natural even to have drunken hookups with people you don't know well to be able to make an informed decision about doing that more. It is, dare I say, fun. I wish you could have done the same, but I know your psychological blocks against that idea are too extreme. How you got so borderline Puritanical about this is a wonder. You certainly did not spend your time around people who were dedicated virgins or monogamists.
None of this is to say that Kate then was not entirely deserving of your love, only that you were deserving of it too. Only one of you got it, and both of you experienced pain because you couldn't prioritize.
I just want to be alone to think out everything. But I can't not be with her.
You, at any point in your life, could have taken the time to be alone and think things through. Kate would not have waited for you and this would have been a small tragedy that would have been monumental to you in the moment. You will have some wonderful times with her before the end, though the specifics of this are in your immediate future and my distant past. (I have the benefit that I can read ahead if I want to be reminded. You, however, get to live these. You deserve my envy then.)
I want her to love me and endure me the best she can.
You do not to be endured. Stop thinking that. You had a hard time. Because you do not think to figure out why, you do not get the help you need for a long time. If only you could accept that you are a wonderful person and consider what makes you feel other than that, the answer would open your life up.
But you don't. You think this roiling pit of invasive thoughts and oversensitivity is your normal.
I do love her, despite my behavior. I love her more than I can endure myself. I wouldn't do this for anyone else.
You should do it for yourself. There is a term that I throw around on occasion: "enlightened self-interest." In doing things to take care of yourself and your environment, you take care of others. In loving yourself, you are better able to love other people.
You are not something that needs to be endured but instead embraced.