Queen's Short Stories

The Path of Tolerance

     Ashley had been struggling a lot lately, especially financially, after her parents had kicked her out of her old home due to them finding out she had been paying rent, and after her father had slapped her across the face. This resulted in the police being called and she was kicked out that night by her parents, it had been a few months now, and once more tragedy struck- her "adoptive" grandmother, her dog Ruger, and her great grandmother had all passed in the span of a single week, this resulted in her getting more stressed then anything, and pleading that her workplace would let her work in the back away from customers because she knew she would snap soon, especially with college finals coming up. They refused to listen. despite her pleading for them to, and she did end up snapping, sounding a little rude to customers because her voice was stressed and angry that everything was happening at once. She knew she could not ask for a week or so off because she needed the money, due to the fact she was living paycheck to paycheck. 

     During this time a lot of drama between her boyfriend and her ensued, though she had tried to talk to him about such things that were bothering her, for instance, he was not spending any time with her really because he was too busy gaming with his friends, now he did not have a job either nor did he attend college, so he got to stay home all the time and play video games. She had very few days off of work, and when she would ask if he would like to call for a bit the day before, he would always forget and choose to make plans with friends, these talks she tried to have with him only turned into arguments because he would basically belittle how she was feeling by telling her it was always her being mad all the time instead of happy, but he would never listen to her as she begged and pleaded to call with him for at least an hour. That is when she started to stop asking, and started to text him less and less, since he would not reply for hours and she was the one having to keep the relationship afloat, because he was too focused on gaming or occasionally purposefully making her jealous. The thing was when she did not give him a good morning text or whatnot he would get upset at her, as that apparently was all he required to feel like his partner cared about him- but it was always Ashley keeping up the conversations, trying to appease to his likes and whatnot, even buying him food and overly expensive games, despite living paycheck to paycheck, she even had begun giving him nudes, just for a speck of any kind of attention or affection. 

      It just was not fair to her that it felt like she always had to be giving him something so he would show even a shred of affection to her, it felt like she was constantly begging him for attention, especially during stressful times. He would always say something like he was under a lot of stress, but from what, he would never tell her, hell his friends did not even know he had  girlfriend until after a year of dating and one time he even told someone he did not have a girlfriend before turning around and telling them he did when he thought it was suspicious that someone had added him by searching his username. He even basically ditched Ashely on Valentine's day to hang out and get matching hoodies with his friends, despite her asking if he would want to hang out on Valentine's day, not even two days before. It was always a mystery and he would only ever tell her anything if they argued enough, and they both were reaching breaking points. The amount of times Ashley's mind suggested breaking up with Michael was immeasurable, it really seemed like Michael was not even trying, and would rather Ashley do the bulk of the heavy lifting. 

     Ashley started to get really strung out after the course of 3 months, the relationship had started off great but then slowly transformed into how her previous relationship had been. She looked past everything though and always forgave him, for pretty much everything, even if he did not deserve to be forgiven. Though, it was starting to break her down mentally it was all too much, with work, the relationship, the deaths of her family, she really did feel like there was no end to the negative things. Then, to top it off, one of her only other friends turned out to be really toxic, she was leading on three guys, and then was basically cheating on her boyfriend, who all happened to be Ashley's friends. She got drawn into that drama, which continued breaking her barrier, and even to this day, nothing has let up, especially the boyfriend situation, yeah people tell her she needs to leave him, but she loves him and does not want to let go. I supposed she will continue suffering until some new guy comes along and befriends her, before she leaves him.