I met her through the most wonderful of circumstances, some could call it to a degree, fate. we were balls deep into the second month of Lockdown, I was out walking the dog when along came this sexy little Italian girl with a Jack Russell, we immediately hit it off and began spending a lot of time together, it was perfect because we lived around the corner from one and other, a COVID friendly relationship. After Summer opened up a bit and Autumn rolled around, along came another round of Lockdowns. We spent long weeks together, day and night with one day breaks in between. We fought a lot but mostly chalked it up to the stresses of the situation and ignored the fundamental differences between us. As we spent most nights sleeping between two places and because we wanted to take this relationship to another level, we agreed to move in together. Since then it’s been endless fights, endless circles and patterns of behaviour from each of us that is completely unattractive to the other. But we fought on, fate is worth the fight and the times are heavy right now, in some ways it really shouldn’t work, but it does. In amongst our thousands of bickers and fights, there have been some quality ones, we both know how to hurt the other deeply and we both use it.

But this one takes the cake, and as I sit here, writing this, I find myself asking myself, is it really the end? or is it just another one of her Borderline cycles. I would like to take this time to write about a sequence of events that have happened over the past few days, I feel I need to do this in a bid to hold on to the true series of events and not allow myself to be gaslight by her again.

A few days before starting this piece, she and I spoke in the kitchen about travelling to Italy together around the first week of May. I remember this conversation taking place as we discussed spending our Anniversary in Venice together (May 1st), a beautifully romantic place, irrespective of the Lockdown. The day after she approached me and said we should book for the 18th April, I tried to explain to her that the day before we had agreed on the first week of May, she didn’t allow me to finish my sentence and immediately began calling me a Liar.
I snapped, I hate being called a liar and one of the things I find most disturbing about her is her memory, she an awful short term memory, to the point where it even causes fights, she often dissociates and I don’t even know if half the time she is even present. Naturally, after being labelled a liar, I began shouting and slamming doors, i got incredibly Angry. My reaction was not justified at all.
We had yet another shouting match, she threatened to kick me out (again), after promising she wouldn’t ever do that, she threatened to stab and poison my dog, so I replied by telling her I should have stayed with my ex and that I was happy with her. I told her I wanted to fuck other people. I was desperate to say something to hurt her after she again used my experience with my ex as a weapon against me, after promising she wouldn’t.

The shouting continued and then eventually stopped and of course she began crying again, which led to silence for almost two days. I ignored her mostly, she kept trying to engage me and I kept asking her to leave me alone, yet she persisted, always. She is the type of girl that can’t ever respect another persons need for space, it’s been that way since I have known her, she even acknowledged it at a point yet she continues. I noticed over time that she lacks values, she always speaks of values, yet when it comes to demonstrating them, it’s just wind. Of course, her constant persistence did nothing but make my mood worse and i kept asking her to leave me alone. Eventually, she got the message, or tired of speaking to a ghost and she finally left me alone and I spent 7 hours sat in the kitchen.

That afternoon, after being left alone, things began to calm down, we began engaging in conversation a little more lightly. I decided to take a lay down in bed and she jumped on me, my mood had changed by then so I was more open to it and receptive. We laughed together and we finally had a decent conversation, a normal conversation. It was nice and we went to sleep in a good mood. She had occasionally made comments that evening about what I had said regarding Marion but I brushed them off for the most part. We fell asleep neutral.

When I woke up this morning, I promised myself that I wanted to do things differently and try and help her wake up a bit happier. I was attentive, I didn’t get out of bed and stay in the kitchen until she woke up, I pee’d and came straight back to bed. I tried to fuck her, I tried to help her wake up with a smile on her face, a peace offering but she began crying when I touched her, making comments again about my comments regarding my ex.

She started shouting and I lost control immediately, I had a mental break down and snapped. Over the past few days, hearing her say the same things that my ex would say about my dog, reminding me of the abuse that girl put that dog through, also coupled with the fact she was once again bringing up a fight that not only she had been the cause of, but had also failed to apologise for her own shortcomings. My girlfriend believes she is a princess, she lives in the past constantly and bases her identity around an unstable self image of 10 years ago when she had minor success as an actress, because of this constant state of being, she thinks incredibly highly of herself, a false sense of grandeur. This goes as far as her thinking or at least failing to acknowledge any wrong doing on her part. I think in the entire year I have know her, she has apologised three times, considering we fight so much, that makes me an incredibly terrible person. After this moment, I flipped. I screamed, I cried, I broke down, I slammed doors, I smashed my guitar up. I lost my mind in a fit of rage, in a fit of frustration, I am constantly asking myself, how a person can be like this mentally and what kind of person it takes to have patience with this. Yet, I can never find the answers.

I immediately put my things into my bag, my money, passport, phone etc etc and left. I don’t know man, I don’t know where I was going, I just walked, I walked to a bus stop and sat, to escape the rain, I sat and I cried, I cried like a baby and a man laughed at me as he walked by and saw me.
I smoked a cigarette and walked back home, calmer. I decided that I needed to move out, this relationship had become toxic, I can’t be with a person like her, that fails to address her self properly, that fails to make something of herself, that is always so extreme, with everything, how can I be patient enough? It was time for me to leave. I came home and she tried to hug me, I asked her not to touch me and to leave me alone but she tried again so I pushed past her.

I immediately sat down in the kitchen, put my headphones in and began searching for a new place. She kept coming over and taking my headphone out of my ear, I kept asking her to stop and to leave me alone to calm down. She persisted. She went away, came back 30 seconds later, pulled a stool up next to me and once again pulled my headphones out of my ear. I again asked her to stop and to leave me alone, yet she persisted. I put my headphone back in and she sat there, for at least 5 minutes, speaking at me, I have no clue what she was saying, all i could hear was the sweet ambience of Jon Hopkins. I stood up, took the dog out for a walk, came back and again, sat in the kitchen and began looking for places to live.

She came back once again, ripping my headphone out my ear, I told her in a fit of anger that I didn’t want her anymore, just so that she would go away and leave me alone, anything to just be left alone.
She walked away shouting, slamming doors and being aggressive. I took my headphone out for a second and could hear her in the other room still shouting to herself. She came back in the room, grabbed my headphone from my ear, so hard it launched my phone across the room and pulled on my neck and as she did, I swung my arm back, I caught her in the mouth accidentally.

She didn’t react on impact, she reacted about 30 seconds later when she noticed her lip was bleeding. She smeared blood around her lips, picked up the scissors, backed away into a corner and started screaming, that I had hit her, that I had put my hands on her. Screaming, pointing the scissors at me telling me she would stab me, she knew I hadn’t hit her, but this was now a perfect opportunity for her to once again, play the ultimate victim.

Then it began, she started swinging at me, punched me in the face, cut my lip and at that point, I grabbed her by the hair and pushed her against a wall. She kept screaming, she picked up a knife, told me she was going to kill me. Really, she was like a headless chicken running away from a farmer because she wanted to pretend the farmer wanted to kill her, or steal her eggs, whatever, completely irrational behaviour.

Immediately after, I went calm. I began clearing up the broken glass in the kitchen and clearing up the mess we made. She kept on shouting and screaming, telling me I had to leave now, right now, today, right right now or she was going to call the police, this coming from the girl that showed up at my apartment when we weren’t living together, screaming and shouting all of the secrets I had told her, her aim, to get me thrown out of my home, did she succeed? no, she threatened to call the police and ended up running away. It seems this notion of the police is a constant weapon of hers, play victim, threaten police, continue irrational behaviour and repeat.

I literally only agreed to move in with this girl because she promised me that when we fight, she wouldn’t kick me and the dog out on the street in the middle of a pandemic. Yet here I am, after giving up my fucking apartment to move in with her, being told that the dog and I need to leave.

And this is not the first time, she has broken up with me more times than I have had women (and that’s a fair few) she has told me a thousand times, every single time we fight that I need to leave. This is a constant pattern of behaviour with her, she goes straight to the extreme. She makes threats and becomes an insufferable person. This time when she told me I had to leave, I refused. I won’t keep playing into her circle of drama, I won’t keep pandering to her irrational behaviour. She promised me she wouldn’t do this, therefore, I go nowhere. Middle of a pandemic, on lockdown, being told to leave, sure, that’s rational, sure. No thanks.

Her and I are forever going around in circles, we fight, we make up, it’s a cycle that is usually driven by her behaviour or her inability to properly regulate her emotions. I, I’m reactive, that’s my problem, I react to provocation in a way that for me, as a teenager and into my formative years, became a normal sense of behaviour. I admit that my reactionary behaviour towards her provocation is wrong, I should be able to hold the calm a lot easier, however, I can’t, I react and it puts me into a position of regret. I am regretful of my actions over the past few days, violence and hostility is never the way.

This situation has forced me once again into a position where my behaviour has been exposed. I am exposed. It’s a wake up moment.

There is only so much weight we can place on the Lockdown, on Covid, on those excuses for failings in a relationship. Ok, sure, these are all added pressures, and when you remove external input from society in a relationship and force two people to live with each other 24/7, work together, eat together, shit together for 5 months consistently is going to add strains to any relationship, even the most seasoned. But sometimes, there are differences so fundamental that it will forever shape the outcome of a relationship, these differences run so deep that even if all the restaurants, clubs and life in general goes back to normality, you have to ask yourself the question, is societal and cultural input enough to overcome or overlook those fundamental character flaws?

I no longer know if I have the patience to find out.