Reflections

My New Year's Eve wasn't that fun.  Walrus got pretty sloshed and I was upset.  It was just the two of us at my house.  He made a lovely dinner for me.  I thought we would, you know, mess around a bit, but we just watched stupid TV and he made not-that-witty comments.  We didn't even play board games.  He got pretty silly and I, who never drink, hate seeing people lose control of themselves like that.  Also, he's supposed to have a two drink limit on account of all the medication he takes.
I should say that I had two drinks myself and at one point in the evening, before I realized how much vodka he'd had, we were laughing quite a lot and having a pretty good time.

I think part of me thought we were going to have a talk about what we wanted for the New Year.  I am still waiting for our long deep talk about anything.  It feels like we can't talk about the past, nor the future.  We're just endlessly stuck in the present.  First I have to make sure he's slept, showered, eaten, taken pills, etc, then maybe we can talk to each other, person to person.  (and not person to patient.)  Yes, I know sometimes I'm his nurse.  I don't think I realized how much I would assume that role when I first started dating him.  I knew it wasn't going to be easy, that's for sure.

I've been philosophizing about this whole experience lately, and I don't know if I can get all my thoughts together, but here's some of my musings.

I worry a lot that I'm just 'taking what I can get', that I never would have gone for someone with a stroke if it wasn't somehow 'safer' for me as a first relationship...I don't fear rejection, I can go slow with him...
I wonder what it would be like to have a 'normal' relationship.  It would be nice to have a boyfriend who could drive, or lift heavy objects... Quite often I wish I could change things about him, things that aren't stroke-related.
I don't talk much about the positive aspects of us being together.  I can't really represent him very well in these short posts.  I usually complain about him.  He is supportive, and thoughtful and affectionate.  He is quirky and intelligent and talented.  He's just got a lot of hurt to get through.  He's grieving who he used to be, before the stroke took so much from him.
I wonder if I'm so loved because I'm there, not because of who I am but because he can feel desirable to somebody again.

 Having someone to care about gives some kind of purpose to my life.  There's a song in the musical Oliver! where Nancy sings about her abusive, criminal boyfriend Bill Sykes "if someone needs you, you love them so."  That's cheesy, but I kinda feel in some way I've just accepted my role as caregiver and I'm busy doing it because it's what needs to be done.  I can help him.  I am useful and important and needed and loved.  This doesn't explain it very well.  I think we're both getting something out of being together.

I don't know if I'm in love.  I guess not.  I'm not sure how much I believe in romantic love.  If I could fall in love with anyone, shouldn't they be the most wonderful person in the world?  There are very few people in the world who are truly good and lovely and everything charming, and everybody would be in love with them.  If I think about love that way, why would anybody pick me and why would I pick anybody I know?  Everyone has their flaws.  If I think about love as two people agreeing to partner to face life together, to help each other, to live with each other's weaknesses....then it makes more sense.  It's still kind of crazy.  Of all the people in the world, what are the chances two people pick each other?  And the other weird thing is how quickly they enter into this partnership, and share each other's lives.  I mean, I wouldn't go find a new friend on the internet and make them my exclusive best friend after four outings together.  When you make friends with someone, it takes time to build trust and connection, but in a relationship the whole process gets fast-tracked.

I've been alone for so long that this partnership thing is really going to be foreign...Well, can I really say alone?  I've lived with my family, and now just my mother all my life.  I'm still part teenager in how I depend on her...
Sometimes I look at Walrus and I'm surprised that he looks like a man.  A grown man, who's traveled and worked and had relationships and has a hairy chest.  I think I felt like a teenager myself, in the romance department, and part of me expected someone equally youthful...  That's quite silly, but I don't feel thirty and sometimes it hits me what I've missed out on.

I do think a little bit about why it took me so long to get to this point.  Was there something wrong with me that made me unattractive, is there still?  What have I missed, what mistakes should I have already made?  Sometimes I think about it, but I'm actually quite busy being caught up in the new experience...I spend time thinking about what I should be doing, but not a lot about the past (or lack of a past!)

And the future....Do I stay with him for the long term?  Is that really my story?  Thirty-year old virgin meets stroke victim, helps him on his road to recovery and they stay together happily ever after?  No Hollywood script could be cheesier.
I don't think much about the future either.  My imagination seems to run out if I try to look further ahead than next April.  It's all foggy up ahead.  Just gotta get through internship, fix this health problem, support Walrus through therapy and a move to a new group home, get myself a job, move out....all in the next six months.  That's plenty to worry about.

Walrus and I recently saw 'Carnage', the new Polanski film.  It's about two couples fighting, sometimes couple against couple, sometimes husband against wife, sometimes men against women...It made me realize how hard it is to live with someone for a lifetime.  Marriage seems an impossible thing to ask of two people! I'm a bit sour on the whole institution.  (Walrus, I suspect, is the monogamous type and really wants to be married to someone.)  If you see the film, we're very much like Penelope and Michael.  (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly.)  Walrus told me he identified with the Michael character, and I thought the same thing throughout the movie.  And I'm quite righteous and a bit neurotic like Penelope, although I hope not quite that anal-retentive.  (Note: Michael has an venomous anti-marriage speech that Walrus's head might agree with, but not his heart.)

A few days later we watched 'Barney's Version' and I cried and cried when Barney and his third wife split up.  He really loved her, but that wasn't enough to fix things.  It's possible to really screw things up so that they can't be fixed.  Barney drank a bit too....I think I saw the end of our relationship in that scene-  Walrus would love me truly, but it's all the little things that would add up...He would be thoughtless, impulsive and have no idea how he'd hurt me, just like a little kid, just like Barney.  (In the movie, Barney is shown drinking at a pub with friends while his wife is making her debut as a radio announcer.)

Maybe it won't be like that.  Maybe I'll be the one to stray, or to be dumped.  But I've been bold enough to make the prediction that I will be the one to very sadly say love isn't good enough.

Poor Walrus.  He had no idea why the movie made me cry so much.