This is Not Love

I'm sorry I'm such a burden.

He was always relaxed. Whether it was because of his method of self-medication or because he was just naturally a calm person, I have no clue, but he was never stressed. He was my total opposite, and it got on his nerves a lot. I had severe anxiety, manifesting itself in sporadic body spasms at that point in time, and I had a really hard time doing anything I was unfamiliar with. Simple things like bowling at his work or trying sushi for the first time required a lot of effort, and he would have to walk me through all of it.

At first, he thought it was cute and endearing, like I was a child that needed to be taught, but as my freak-outs became more frequent from progressively smaller things, he grew agitated. It started as little side comments like, "Hey, you need to relax," and "Baby, calm down, everything's fine," but that soon turned into "Would you cut that out?" and "I'm not dealing with this right now, go bother someone else." While I waited in his room upstairs, I would hear him rant to his sister about how he couldn't even breathe around me without "setting [me] off" and he would constantly complain to all his friends about how "annoying" my anxiety was.

The worst part about it all was that he knew what I was going through. He knew what it was like to have divorcing parents. He knew what it was like to lose a family member. He knew how little control you have when it comes to mental illness. His reasoning for being so intolerant was that he had already suffered through it all and didn't want to repeat it with his girlfriend. He was finally happy with his life, and I was "bumming him out" with all my issues. I heard this through our mutual friend who felt it was her duty to fix our communication issues. I confronted him about it, per her instruction, and apologized for being such a "burden" to him. If he didn't want to deal with my problems, he didn't have to stick around. He was more careful about who he complained to after that day.