Don’t Be A Relationship Martyr
You didn’t feel worthy of the love she was giving you. At times you did and you appreciating calling her your girl, your lady, your girlfriend, but the doubt you had about yourself became overwhelming. You began to plant ideas in your mind that you weren’t good enough. You started thinking and over thinking about yourself, your lack of confidence, your future and how you were going to get there and what was going to happen. You were selfish and it affected your relationship. But it wasn’t just her you were neglecting; it was your entire family and your friends. You just weren’t emotionally involved in anything or anyone. Just drowning in simmering thoughts about how little you thought of yourself.
“What is wrong with you?” you would ask.
You lost all confidence in your ability to do anything. It showed in your writing; the thing you loved to do. It showed in your relationship with the girl you loved. You didn’t want to be social because you felt like you didn’t have anything to offer. When people talked about interesting stories at their jobs, you felt ashamed because you are just a waiter. There is nothing wrong with being a waiter, but you envisioned such greatest for yourself. You put expectations on yourself that you believe others also put on you. Your mother tells you that your job doesn’t define you, but you want to join conversations and tell your girlfriends family about the crazy ideas that got bounced around at the office while in a brainstorm session, not that your co worker dropped a tray of food on a table. You want to feel proud. This doubt, this fear and these false expectations leave you unhappy and unmotivated, so you sit and sulk and feel unworthy to the world.
You aspire to be a writer and she supported you all the way, saying she would be by your side through the struggle that comes along with wanting to be a published story teller. You had fears. You feared you wouldn’t be able to provide for her the way she deserved. You would have to continue as a waiter until things in the writing aspect picked up pace. How long would that take? Would she really be by your side for that long? You questioned these things that you never did before and that frightened you in to letting her go.
The future became impossible to envision. Anything about it. You couldn’t plan for things days in advance because you didn’t know how you would feel. You couldn’t see where you would end up, and if she would be there. This led you to question if she was the one for you because you couldn’t see the future. Once again, doubt and fear led you to question things that you were so sure of just a few months prior. You had it fixed in your mind that you needed to give her the best life possible and who wouldn’t want that for the woman they loved, but you knew being a writer wasn’t an easy road and you didn’t want to drag her along. She is going to be a nurse and tells you that she will make enough money for the both of you to live okay until you get on your feet. Thoughts of what her family might whisper begin to surface, “He is just a bum living off her hard earned money.” Thoughts that you planted in your head about what her family might think.
She put up with your weirdness, your unusual hobbies and guilty pleasures. She would even watch anime with you. You love that she was just as lazy as you and could sit on the couch and binge watch The Office for days. You loved how cheerful she was all the time and had the biggest heart of anyone you had ever met. She was social and engaging even when you weren’t. That scared you at times, but when you joined her in a social situation it was never as bad as it seemed. She made you better, but slowly, over time, your own twisted selfishness made you forget. You let doubt kill the dreams you once had with her.
You felt like she needed better than an unconfident, unmotivated, self hating twenty-four year old. So you let her go. Even though she said she would be by your side through anything, you felt like you needed to go through the struggle alone. You felt it necessary to save her from the disaster that was you. Instead of talking to her and opening up, you shut yourself off and made an irrational decision based off of your confused logic. You felt the need to be a martyr.