this is stupid

all my posts are about him.

But that's because most of my thoughts are about him. If I could draw you a diagram of my brain, 95 percent would be taken up with his name, and the remaining five percent would consist of missing my mom, figuring out how to pay off my bills and random sci-fi stuff. And I'm pretty sure that's not healthy.

See, the trouble is, all my emotional barriers are gone. I only have the mental ones left - the ones that when the emotions kick in say "no! Don't feel this! Too strong! Bad idea!" but can't actually successfully build the emotional walls back up.

I haven't felt this strongly about anyone, ever before, which is why it's scaring the crap out of me. The level of emotions that I feel are levels that I feel could push someone away. It makes me feel clingy. So to try to counteract that, I try to go as many days as I can without asking to hang out. In the past, it seems like it takes about a week of not seeing me for him to request that we hang out just for the sake of hanging out...not for us to team up for work. And anyway, if I'm always coming to see him, there's no need for him to initiate it.

I tried. I tried really hard. It's on my mind so much that I made a little list in my phone, to keep track of how often we see each other and whose idea it was. I try not to have the amount of days I request to hang out surpass the number of days he does...to date, we're even. I just don't want to be so available that I lose all appeal. Or that I appear too easy. Or that I seem slutty in his mom's eyes. Like, oh, why is this girl always over here?

Am I overthinking it too much?

I don't think so. I mustn't be dependent or clingy. I mustn't annoy people. Or make them tired of my company.

If I were to get married...wouldn't my husband see me every day? Lord. How would I deal with that? I think that everything I'm going through mentally now is the same way it would be with anyone. Me being afraid to be clingy. Me worrying that I don't have what it takes to keep someone interested.

Do you hear how pathetic I sound? Stupid little insecure girl with no real relationship experience who wants so desperately to be loved because she sees what everyone else has. I never wanted to be this way. But I guess it's a product of my personality (aquarius, INTP female) and upbringing (sheltered, Christian, isolated). You have someone who values independence and logical, unbiased and unemotional thinking above all else, who was taught that boyfriends are bad and relationships should only exist within marriage (like seriously, if someone doesn't propose to you by the second date, all they want is to use you and therefore you're not a christian anymore). Raised as an only child. Practically never allowed to go out and play with other kids in the neighborhood, because they were "bad influences."  And then anyone I've ever shown interest in or who's ever shown interest in me has been shot down verbally...I've been told to hold out for some imaginary person in another country. Maybe they do exist. I have no proof that they don't.

All I've done is talk myself in a circle. I have tears of frustration in my eyes now.

What do I believe? I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I'm drastically different. On the inside. Everything I thought I knew or was sure of has been ripped apart. It's like I'm trying to put myself back together, these puzzle pieces, but I've lost the box..the blueprint for what I'm supposed to look like.

Everything I do, I feel guilty about it. If I stay out late, I feel as if I'm doing something wrong. Even planning to go to Spain with Nia feels somehow wrong. As if I shouldn't be allowed to do that. As if I'm not old enough...as if I need my father's approval for everything. I even feel like, if I were to make enough to move out...to get my own apartment, if I didn't have to worry about him wanting to buy a house and worry about him being lonely without me or what to do about the cats...I'd still feel like I was doing something wrong by moving out. How does that make sense? It doesn't. But it's still how I feel. See why I hate emotions?

It's probably a very bad thing that I'm still living at home. For my emotional state. In a lot of ways, it's like I live alone, because I hardly ever see my dad. Our schedules are opposite. He leaves very early in the morning, before the sun comes up, and when he comes home in the afternoons are the times I'm leaving for tutoring...and then I usually will go and do uber afterwards or hang out with Cal until the wee hours of the morning.

I just went and looked at the NYC affordable housing website. Why does it feel like I can't do it? I think too much and act too little. I did the math...figured out how much I would need to make in a month...per week...to afford the rent...and then pictured myself moving out of here and leaving my dad and thought of how he would feel and...came back to this tab to continue writing.

If I leave my dad and focus on myself, only on myself, then will his life have amounted to nothing? He doesn't have a house yet...my mother didn't help him to buy one. I think he's counting on me. But I don't want to be thirty and still living under his roof. I need to know how to take care of myself. By myself. This all feels so hopeless. I've always felt such a sense of duty to my parents. Not because they've said I should...but because I've seen how much they've struggled, so how could I not give back? When I was working at the school and getting a decent paycheck, I took it upon myself to buy groceries for the home, because why should I be living there and not contributing at all? I know some of my friends who when they got a job, they would only buy things that they wanted and put in the fridge, and then get annoyed when someone else would eat it. That doesn't sit right with me.

But I wonder if I'm taking it too far...this sense of duty. Would I be selfish if I decided I want to live on my own? Before my father has managed to buy a house? But I can see this being a never-ending story. Because when he does, I can totally see myself not wanting him to be all alone in a big house...lonely...when he finally accomplishes it. And then I'd feel like, well, I have a house to live in, so why should I go anywhere else? And I'd be stuck forever.

I want to run away. Not in the childish sense, no. I just feel like hopping on a train and going to the city and sitting in Central Park and being by myself...not here! Not where I am now! I want someplace different.

I also need to do laundry. I'm running out of clean clothes.

Sigh.