Honey, I’m Going To Kill You

The number one question I’ve been asked lately is, “How are you liking your new place?” or some variant of it. Really, what I am being asked is, “Are you ready to kill your boyfriend yet?” since I just moved in with him at the beginning of last month.

That question is understandable, since if you’ve spent any length of time with us, we might have slipped up and said to one another, “I am going to kill you,” while in your presence. If that is the case, let me explain.

I don’t know who started it, but it’s really an endearing expression of affection between us. If we start to drive each other nuts we say, “I’m going to kill you. No really. I. Am. Going to kill you.” Sometimes we accompany that with graphic details about how, when, and with what. Other times this will be punctuated with noises like “AAHHHRRGG!!”.

I’m sure that’s this is inappropriate. A couples counselor, if we saw one, would shake their head and put little notes in their pad. They may tisk and ask us, “How do you feel when she says she’s going to kill you?”

“With a super sheep,” I add helpfully.

“With a super sheep-”

“-from the game Worms,” I add to make sure she has the proper context.

“From the game Worms-”

“You know, that will probably just end up killing both of us, and maybe even the cat,” I muse out loud.

“…”

“I feel… frustrated,” admits the boyfriend, “It’s so easy to blow up yourself in Worms. The more fun the weapons, the easier it is to destroy yourself. It’s confusing. I don’t know if the point of the game is to actually win or just blow everything up. You know, either way I also feel like it’s kind of fun. So to answer your question, it feels frustrating, and confusing, but also fun.”

I squeeze his hand because I know exactly what he means, “We can play a different game if that makes you feel better, sweetie. We don’t have to play Worms.”

Our couples counselor, who we don’t actually have, scribbles down some more notes. I imagine it would have in all capital letters, with a lot of punctuation, a circle, and a underline. It is probably the word worms. I’m going to assume that is because she hasn’t played the game and is going to download it when she gets home, but I might be wrong.

On the bright side, neither of us ever make good on our threat. I feel like it makes me feel better to say it, and it makes me feel better to laugh in his face when he says it.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Hee hee hee.”

“No really.”

“Aw, you’re so cute when you’re homicidal. Let me pinch your cheek!”

But really though, if he doesn’t clean whatever crap he spilled all over our stove I’m going to kill him. I don’t even know what it is. It’s yellow. What could he possibly been cooking that is yellow. It’s kind of gelatinous in some spots and crispy in others. So I asked him what in the name of names he spilled all over our stove that was freaking me out so much,

“Yeah. I don’t know what that is.”

“There’s a lot of it.”

“Yeah, hun. I don’t know.”

“You must have done it last night. But what is it?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like anything I cooked. I don’t remember spilling anything.”

When I lived by myself I was annoyed enough about cleaning up after a cat. Now I have a big hamster with opposable thumbs to look after too. No, he doesn’t chew the sides of his house or anything like that. I don’t know why I’m calling him a hamster exactly. I just wanted to call him a pet of some kind. Otherwise I’d have to call him a child, and I don’t need a child that’s almost thirty. Then again, I don’t need a really tall hamster either.

He’d say something like, well at least this hamster can cook (if he’d ever play along and call himself a hamster).

And well, I like his cooking. However, cooking is fun. Scraping a yellow entity off of our stove isn’t. If I cooked, this inter dimensional being now attached to our stove would never have been called into existence. I am very good at both cooking and not summoning disgusting other-worldly beings that adhere to kitchen appliances. I’m convinced that when the boyfriend cooks, he opens a series of portals, and instead of being useful portals that allow him to reach across the kitchen while still standing at the stove, they are portals to other planes of existence which allow things like whirlwinds from the Elemental Planes of Air to come swirling into the kitchen and take everything out of all the cabinets and scatter them all over the counters. Air Elementals are notoriously messy eaters and will also taste everything and leave tiny bits of it all over the floor, counters, and stove.

I don’t think the yellow thing on our stove was from the Elemental Planes. I think we need to look in H. P. Lovecraft books for this one folks. This worries me because I have enough to deal with without Cthulhu running around our apartment fighting with the already present Air Elementals.

Did I just hear the yellow thing on the stove mutter Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn? I swear I did.

I mean, if someone said, “Hey, I’ll do all the cleaning if you do the cooking,” I’d say yes too. That sounds amazing. I’d be the next Master Chef. I’d cook even when I didn’t want anything.

On a serious note, I’m not saying that the boyfriend is a slob who sits around who does nothing. He does a lot. I know not everything is going to be a 50/50 split. It’s impossible, and we shouldn’t be keeping score anyways. But if I clean everything else, I do want to be able to say, “Hey, I did everything else in the apartment- can you clean the kitchen floor please?” and have him say, “Of course! After you slayed that ochre jelly monster (turns out it was a Dungeons and Dragons monster, not Lovecraft) and saved me, I am eternally in your debt. It is the least I can do. Let me also make you a mojito.”

He does make me mojitos, but so far the asking for help has been met with mixed results. I understand that Skyrim has been enslaving a lot of the geek race recently. However, what about my video game needs? If I’m spending all this time slaying real life ochre jellies who want to be the next Master Chef, when do I get time to decompress and play the new officially released Minecraft?

I’m also not asking for the privilege of redoing tasks later. “You want your floor clean? Here. I dumped some water on it. The cat even helped me. You know how he loves to knock over his water bowl. Problem solved!”

Maybe my cat isn’t being a jerk. Maybe he is trying to help me clean the floor. He has no thumbs. That’s so sad. I just realized this whole time I’ve been yelling at my poor cat who has a no thumb disability but still insists on trying to help me with chores. I’m a terrible person. My cat is the Tiny Tim of cats.

I also don’t want to hear, “I got the worst of it” meaning that all the dirt was swept under the rugs. We don’t have rugs, but I’m just thinking of those cartoons where people sweep all the dirt under the rug. Don’t they realize that they’re putting as much effort into carefully sweeping under a rug as they would to sweep it into a dustpan and empty it into the trash? This is doubly bad since we don’t own rugs. Imaginary rugs don’t conceal dirt at all.

I’m not asking for perfection. Depending on who you ask, I am either a neat freak or a slob, so taking an average, I think I’m moderately reasonable about how I want the living space. The boyfriend, however, has a sight disorder when it comes to whether something is clean or not. He doesn’t notice. He cares and knows how to clean. He just doesn’t know how to tell when it’s time to clean. I can help here. Honey, it’s dirty. YOUR WELCOME. And if you don’t help me, I’m going to kill you.

Think to Hope

I’d tried to bring it up before, but the conversation was again derailed- subject changed, glossed over, left for another day. I didn’t push. I was careful not to push.

Why did I think I had to last night?

It was late and we both needed to work in the morning, but it has been on my mind. I was afraid of the answer and the changes it could bring to this undefined, open-ended us I’ve grown fond of. Things between us have been light, fun, and tender. To lose what I’ve gained in the name of searching for something more, that might not even exist, seemed illogical.

And yet, it had been on my mind.

I dared hope things were going in a particular direction: upwards and closer. I’m a patient person. I thought it was only a matter of time. The hope was starting to approach expect, and I felt like I needed to bring it up or reign in my own thoughts.

I knew I might be the only one of two that thought this was going somewhere.

I was restless. He could see there was something on my mind. I don’t know how to hide things and lie, and I don’t want to.

So I ask if he thinks we’ll ever date exclusively, if he thinks this is going somewhere.

After a brief dance around the subject he comes clean. At some point there was the possibility, but at some point recently he also realized it was likely never going to happen for us.

So maybe at the exact moment where my mind dared hope, where romantic notions took root, he was having a revelation that we would reach a place, or have reached a place, an plateau out. It’s not a bad place to be, but it’s not going higher. We’re special, but not special enough, close, and yet still a million miles apart.

I’m reminding myself that not everyone I date is going to even approach the possibility of being someone I will be with for a long time. Not every person I feel for will settle in a deep place and stay.

He feels guilty for not telling me when he realized. He knew that I was headed in the opposite direction as him- where I started to hope, he started to realize. I feel a little betrayed. Why do I have to be the honest, courageous one and bring up the difficult topics?

It’s not a big betrayal, and he was honest when I asked him point blank, but it still hurts. And he disappointed himself and me and he knows it. It’s the first sad moment since we’ve been dating. I remember every reason I felt great to be free of this exercise in attempting this level human connection. If the results always equal less than, why do I keep trying the same equation? I think I’ll get bigger numbers to add up to something substantial.

I asked him why he dates people. He never gave me a real answer, instead he asked me. I told him I didn’t know. Then I told him I was looking for a real fucking connection: with understanding, yet learning and wonder, and once that connection was there, caring, and with that, ultimately, a companion. I’m not so naive that I don’t know most, if not all of these connections will be temporary, but I still sometimes want to settle for a little while in that comfortable place where there is someone.

He admitted he didn’t want to exclusively date anyone anytime soon.

I asked him why and he said he needed to improve himself first- to get to a place where he was settled and happy with who he was. I laughed and told him I hoped he never was, because it would a sad day that he thought he was beyond improvement. We’re young and unsure in life right now and he thinks there is a magic switch somewhere that is going to turn on adulthood and allow him to settle into someone and something closer to perfection.

I tried to get every ounce of hurt out of my system. I tried to let it move through me and out of me and not burrow its way into a hole where it could stay and fester. After it settled I tried to answer the question of ‘What now?’.

I knew he was looking at me waiting for that answer. He told me his sister went through something similar recently- wanted more from a guy and he didn’t have more to give. She broke up with the guy. It seemed like he was trying to give me an easy, natural progression to end it if wanted to.

He thought it was over for a moment, that he’d messed up. I looked at him and couldn’t be angry; he’s under my skin still. If things can’t move to a new height, I’m still not ready to come down quite yet. I’m glad to know where I stand, at least I have that. I let him know that at some point, I wouldn’t be able to wait. At some point I’d have to finish moving on, as we’re not going anywhere.

But in this moment, for right now, we’re going to keep having fun. I warned him though, we need to stay honest or we’re going to ruin trust between us and both be hurt. Honesty isn’t just about lying, it’s about disclosing expectations and revelations. You can’t knowingly let the other person living in a place of false hope or ideas.

He knew I thought this was going further and he knew it wasn’t. Even if it was a recent revelation, he should have told me. He didn’t know how to bring it up. He didn’t want to hurt or ruin what we had. He was scared.

Did he know how scared as I was, trusting and knowing this might happen? You lend a part of yourself when you trust and it’s up to that person to take care with that. I’ve always been good at doing that for other people, but I have never picked the right person to give my own. And now that he has it, I plead with him to not approach this place again. I need to be able to expect the truth.

I’m going to try not to make more of it than it is. I’m fast to forgive and I hope faith isn’t misplaced.

I feel like I have shut him out a small bit for my own sanity, while also feeling him thrust closer. I’m throwing up an arm to his throat and not letting him pass my guard. A comparison to jiu-jitsu is appropriate as we participate in this dangerous sport, both looking to improve, to find a better position, and having a ton of fun doing it.

There’s also a hint of desperation, like we know our days together are numbered and some day, maybe sooner than one or both of us would like, this will dissolve. And what will be left then? Will we speak with each other? Look each other in the eye?

Usually when these things are done, they’re done with only memories remaining and an unlucky bit of bitterness. Maybe this time, I hope this time, we can skip the chapter of hurt, betrayal, and unnecessary drama and have a fine farewell at the end. Dare I hope for a lasting, meaningful friendship?

In the meantime, we still have this. Togther we will train jiu-jitsu, eat sushi, cook, dine, party, visit the aquarium and tour the chocolate factory, talk about inane topics and subtle psychology, exchange strategies for our careers, share insights and passions, play and banter, geek out, and make as many fond memories as we’re able.

I’m a bit sad, but I’m also relieved at a bit of added definition. These thoughts have been aired out so I can move past them. I don’t know where I’m going, but now I do know that in the end he’s ultimately not coming with me.