Blog Post 20; January 12, 2020

It’s been hard to write. Hard to post. Everything I have to say feels too personal.

But it’s been over two months, and I have to say something.

In this time, we’ve celebrated holidays and hoped for better. We’ve watched as the world teetered on the brink of war. If you’re in Canada, you woke up this morning to an emergency alert telling you there was an incident at the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant and might’ve regretted not playing more Fallout 4 to prepare you for this particular apocalypse scenario.

Apparently that was sent in error, but hey, they downplayed Chernobyl too. Who even knows.

All this to say, a lot has been going on in a few short months, and all I can think about is the decline of my ten year relationship.

My primary partner and I have been together since our teens. There’s a lot of stigma around relationships like that, and no one ever expects them to last. Our parents didn’t; they were up in arms the first time we suggested getting married. My mother wrote me the angriest email I’ve ever received when we told her we were thinking about having a child. Every milestone we’ve hit together was met in the face of doubt and discouragement, and that devastated me, because I knew we were solid. So much stronger together.

That’s why when people warned me that the first few years of a baby’s life would try our relationship, I didn’t take it very seriously. I had the utmost confidence in us.

But I guess I was wrong.

My partner’s brought up leaving me a few times, now. We haven’t been fighting, and when she talks about it, she frames it as being a decision made in my best interests. Needless to say, I haven’t been thrilled about it. I’ve been in a state of near-constant panic for months now, trying to plan my future alone, trying to decide how custody should work, wondering how things got to this point.

My financial situation has plummeted to new lows. My mental health hasn’t been this bad since I last tried to commit suicide, at age 18. I’m more lost now than I think I ever have been, because now that I have a child, I don’t have an out. Death always struck me as my reward for a life full of floundering, but so long as I’m a parent, I can’t even want that reprieve. If I see a bus barrelling towards me, I have to leap out of the way, because somebody needs me on the other side of the street.

There’s no inspirational message at the end of this post. I’m not writing to say that there’s any light at the end of this tunnel, or that I’ve scraped some meaning out of my situation. I’m just telling you – whoever you are, if you’re even there – where I’m at, in the vaguest way.

I hope there’s more to this year for you, anonymous reader.