It's Not Fair

Of course, I was just telling Jessica that not much in life is fair. It seems life is usually either unfairly against us, or even though we often don't acknowledge it, unfairly in our favor. Tonight though, I cannot sleep down here at her parents' house - the last night we have it to ourselves before her parents return. I woke up and tried to go back to sleep, but wouldn't you know it, those jealous and curious feelings were aroused for who knows why. So, I got up and looked.....

......For that journal of hers that we found while moving her stuff out of her EX-BOYFRIEND'S AND HER APARTMENT WHERE THEY LIVED TOGETHER. That spiral-bound notebook that I found in one of her boxes while moving her crap and that she got all riled up over the fact I wanted to read what she had written in it. That one. That same notebook with journal entries from her past before I knew her that might possibly be a key to knowing who she was and perhaps some of the answers to questions in my mind. That one. Oh, she told me shortly after telling me that I could look through it, that she had misplaced it on accident and couldn't find it. Yeah, it's not that I didn't necessarily believe her or that I don't believe her now. And by the way, I went rummaging through that mess of a room of hers where it's a combination of random clothes and laundry, noise-making bags, and other miscellaneous junk, and guess what I once again did not find? That spiral-bound notebook that she said she would let me read. Yeah, that.

So, how does this incident relate to unfairness? Well, mind you, it's not on the earth-shattering side of the Unfairness-In-The-World Spectrum, but it still tweaks, yea, even hurts me. Ever since we started dating seriously and opening up about our past and past relationships, there has been a highly unfair lack of balance in shared information. You see, from my point-of-view, I've been forthright with her about my past relationships, whether, exes women I've been interested in, women I've just known, etc. I've answered her questions openly even when it was uncomfortable. I think I've made it known abundantly clear to her through these months of dating that there is nothing she could ask me that I wouldn't try to give her a transparent answer about. When the situation is reversed however......

......well, that's a different story. From the beginning, it's been a tug-of-war to get answers from her. Whether she was/is aware of it or not, she stonewalled me at the beginning. I'd ask a question and she'd dance around it. If I asked her what her and so-and-so did while dating, she'd tell me what they did not do. Or she'd answer a less threatening question that I hadn't actually asked. Or she'd just plain forget details. In her self-revelations, there were oh-so-painfully long periods of silence. The only thing I can figure is she was trying to be extremely careful with her words and what she did or did not tell me. Finally......

.....she did start making a concerted effort to share with me some of the more sordid details of her relationships. But this was after she had already given me some vague and rather incorrect notions at times of the nature and details of those relationships. This left me even more dazed and confused, because what was I supposed to believe? The original stories or the amended stories??? And now that I'm thinking about it, another tactic of hers whether unbeknownst to her or not I do not know - it was a tactic nonetheless - when I'd ask questions that threatened her, she'd get hostile with me and turn the tables around. Many, many times a conversation that had started out about her exes and her degenerated into a conversation about my exes and sordid past, or accusations that I was taking digs at her or basically calling her a slut or whore. But that was more in the beginning and not so much in the latter half of our dating relationship. So, it's in the past and is in her words, "old S--t". Maybe for her, but since a lot of these things still remain to be resolved in my mind, it's present and festering current "s--t". So........

.......we're left with the present situation. A few months ago, we sort of made an agreement to drop the discussion about exes and past relationship junk until we got a place of our own with some privacy where we could share, listen, fight, and hurt without our families being privy to all our baggage issues. Well, for the most part I've stuck with that. As for her, not so much. Every now and then, one of my exes will pop up on the radar via text, email, IM, etc. And then we must have what is usually a somewhat painful conversation for the both of us. At DRC, I'm working right now with a woman I tried to date and messed around with sexually. This is a slap in the face to Jessica and truly I don't think I'd handle it as calmly as she has - at least she is usually calm on the outside about it. But all these things considered, I often feel like my stuff comes up in conversation while the issues that bug me about her past remain undiscussed. I guess there's unfairness on both sides at the moment. Some things are popping up in the present that she must deal with and discussion about her past remains unresolved in my mind. But......

.....that doesn't make me feel like life is any less unfair in this regard. Two unfairnesses don't make things all even, at least not in this scenario. Even when we do, if ever revisit her past, she can continue throwing out the "I don't remember" card. Since we've dated, emails between her and Jay mysteriously disappeared the day I was looking at her email, before I had a chance to view them. Photos of her and her exes mysteriously have vanished. That journal went MIA. Actually more like missing-in-inaction. Whatever. She will do more word-picking with long excruciating periods of silence. She'll do more answering of questions in the negative. Instead of telling me the answers, she'll tell me what are not the answers and leave for me to fill in the blank spaces. Probably if she goes through with counseling, her counselor will tell her to let the past stay in the past and that I need to learn to accept her as she is without trying to pry up old buried bones. Maybe. Maybe I'll be surprised. But regardless, I seriously doubt I'll ever get the answers I'd like to have, even if they hurt. Take for instance.....

.....my suspicions of her relationship with Shayne. Although I've tried to find out what the nature of that relationship was, she'll never tell me. I'll tell her my conclusions I've drawn, and she will merely not deny them. She'll never open up about it. She just leaves me hanging indefinitely. "So, from what you've told me it seems like your relationship with him was pretty much just about the sex. Anytime you'd get together with him, you two would f--k." Silence. . . . . . Followed by some cryptic statement such as, "We didn't have much in common. I didn't like myself back then." Oh, thanks, that's really helpful. I will copy that quote down for my files. I can really take a lot from that one. Yeah, right. So it's not fair.

It's not fair that I have to live in this perpetual - what is that place between heaven and hell - oh, purgatory. With regards to her past, I feel like I'm in a hellish purgatory. It stinks. It sucks. And the longer this goes on, the more I fight sentiments of resentment towards her for putting me off. There's always some excuse for not addressing my questions and curiosity and jealousy. Sometimes, I find on the drive home to her parents' house, if there is long silence, my mind wanders onto her exes. What pain! And then she will start cracking jokes because she sees the serious, morose look on my face. Or she will not say anything at all. Maybe it truly is that she is tired. If so, I apologize. I may be wrong. I often am. Wrong or not though, it doesn't change that ill feelings are building up in my day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month. With each passing month.....

......I wonder if I'm growing more distant with her for this, and perhaps a few other reasons. That can't be good for the health of our relationship. Not at all.

And by the way, I think it's a crock of s--t that a stupid spiral-bound notebook should and could just go completely missing in a bedroom that one is living in. I can't compete with the vagaries of her mind and the sub-conscious forgetfulness on her part. It's just not fair that she can conveniently forget such things. What am I going to say?? That she's lying?? Well, maybe her sub-conscious is lying. But sometimes the sub-conscious is so convincing that our conscious selves begin to believe it. So, I can't win. She will always be able to hid things from me and then fall back on her bad memory for unpleasant things she'd rather forget. And the spiral-bound notebook will just continue to stay missing, as will transparent answers to my questions. It's not fair.