Holes in the sky...

I'm six different kinds of exhausted right now.

Yeah, you heard me: six.

Yesterday was... a little hectic. Actually, that's not true. Yesterday would have been normal if I had been running on anything resembling a full tank of gas. However, pushing myself up a hill solely on fumes is not exactly pleasant.

That was a run-on metaphor, not an actual reference to me running on fumes in my car and having to push it up a hill FYI.

So, we do the birthday thing. As of yesterday, I'm begining the downward descent off of the peak that is my midtwenties.

Positives: ?
Negatives: ?

Did dinner with my parents, nothing else I would rather have done. My mother is my life, when it comes down to it. No one else I would rather spend my birthday with.

We went to the Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney.

You see, for some reason I had determined that all my stress, all my frustration, all my depression, would be relieved once I was able to buy this particular statue.

I had to be on Disneyland property because I had to buy this statue.

So I did.

And while my stress and frustration did not entirely abate, I did feel better. I even got the matching Sally counterpart.

... ... ...I just can't catch a break. Mid-typing this I get a phone call that my cousin just died.

Goddamn.

Total for this year: 4.

1. Wolfboy's lover's boyfriend who blew his brains out in front of said lover + her mother.
2. Ex-boyfriend's little brother who I really, really liked, who blew his brains out at his station in Iraq.
3. Aunt, father's sister, blew her brains out in her garage
4. Cousin... normal death due to health complications

I think someone else died, but I really can't remember who.

So that means my cousin died on my birthday. Fucking lovely.

Anyway, had a long conversation with GV8, so much information flooding my sleep-deprived brain that I am still not done processing it.

He's starting to resent that I'm so busy all the time, so tired all the time. Last weekend he pulled two all-nighters so he could be with me, and I was so busy being out and social the night before that I showed up totally exhausted and he had a general, understandable, "WTF?" reaction.

He says he's not used to being treated like this, me always being so aloof, him not being the center of my thoughts, of my life, school and work aside.

He says he doesn't like that I go out with other men, that it sends a bad impression to him that I'm not really interested in him... even though we did have that conversation where I explained what I was doing and why and he agreed with it, apparently he reconsidered his position since then.

He says I don't have the time for him, and he doesn't see that changing anytime soon, and he doesn't want to put effort and growth into something that isn't going to work purely on a logistical level, so we should go into a sort of holding pattern until I do have the time, seeing each other every week or two.

And that, when I'm with him, I need to be with him, attention-wise, and I need to not be running off so much, basically jamming him into my schedule.

Because I do do that.

I have breakfast with someone, lunch/afternoon hang-out with him, dinner with someone else.

He doesn't like that I'm always leaving him to be with someone else, in whatever capacity I'm being with them.

And, truly, right now, it's hard to have the time for him. Especially this month. Especially with holidays coming up.

Maybe I should give up on him. Maybe I should look at my schedule and admit to myself that I cannot do this. That I cannot maintain my full-time work schedule, the two hour commute to classes, the homework, the social life, the couch-surfing that dictates my (lack of) sleep, and give him the attention he needs and deserves.

He needs attention.

And that's understandable. That's expected.

But... right now... what he wants. He wants to go into a holding pattern until this semester is over. He wants me to be myself with him, wants me to go with my gut on how I treat him, no games, no withdrawing via other men. Calling when I want, scheduling when I can, being open and honest and seeing if things work.

It's funny.

He said to me that I should be myself. And I blanked.

I realized that I do not know how to be myself when in these situations.

I wrap myself up in analyzing and attempting to understand my partner, to conform to their desires, to find their boundaries.

I have absolutely no idea how to function with someone while not doing this.

It sounds so stupid, doesn't it? All I want to do is please, but that isn't because I'm a pleaser (though I am), but because I want to be good. I want to be desirable. I want to make my partner comfortable, want to not chase them off by being my usual, overly affectionate self.

I do not know how to be myself in a situation like this. Where we are not necessarily aiming for more, but not aiming for less, and just kinda bumbling along with the potential growing realization that I may not have the time for someone who wants my devotion.

To shift gears again, to shift them in such a different way, to be calling him more than once a week, texting him more than twice a week, to be giving him the space for his work schedule, for not demanding his time, for not getting in the way and being clingy, to potentially doing those things... I'm lost. For once, I'm entirely lost when it comes to dealing with a man.

I think he wants me to let go, to trust him, to stop analyzing everything, to truly relax and come into my own.

But I don't let go.

So I do not know what will happen, who I will be, what I will do.

I am in a constant state of control.

I wonder if I even know how to let go.

It sounds like it should be easy, but it's anything but that for me.

Failure in this way frightens me. He is nearly everything I could ask for, a combination of qualities that I've never found in a man, qualities I've sought for so long. Terror that I will be myself and he'll reject me anyway.

Fear that I will not have the time and will have to admit to it. That my schedule is eating me alive.

Part of me wants to say that I've done everything wrong with him.

But he's still around.

So I either did something right, or he recognized the base within me, the base for more, for the things he also desires, and is waiting for that to surface.

...how do I let go?