the apology, and why it mattered

The last time we spoke I was having an awful week. Stress at work, accumulated with the fact that I'd decided I no longer needed my depression/anti-anxiety medication and hadn't taken it in over a week meant that I was feeling really weird, and unable to deal with it well.

I was very sad, despite the lack of any real trigger, I was super anxious about everything, and I had a bunch of homework I decided to get drunk and half do.

Last week I had a paper to write, which I did not write. It was the last assignment for a class that was only a month long, and because I didn't do it (and did really poorly on the two tests I took last Friday as well) I got a 76% in the class, which is just passing in the nursing program.

But I didn't care.

I still don't mostly because I know I can't change it, but the fact that I was insurmountably anxious and still had no real care about the paper (which only had to be two pages by the way, it would have probably taken me an hour) scared me.

One thing I may or may not have ever talked about is the amazing motivation my medicine gives me. Before I was taking it I was exhausted all the time from my year of insomnia, I was melancholy about everything, and I didn't really do anything because I just didn't care...

After a week of being off it I was almost back in the same mental state, and that scared me. Scares me. I don't want to be an unmotivated blob who cares so little about everything. I don't want to be sad all the time for no reason, and anxious just because I exist. I hated that. I still do, but after three horrible days in a row, Friday of last week being the final straw, I started taking my medicine again and within two hours I felt better.

I stopped because my doctor said I could if I was ready, she said that most patients take it for six to nine months, and since I was at the six month mark and felt like I could do without it, she said that was fine.

But it was not fine.

Obviously.

Which brings me to what Tom said, and why it hurt so much.

Tom has said this to me before, and every time it infuriates me to the point of almost writing him off as a waste of space, I'm not kidding. He says it at the worst possible times, and in doing so makes me feel like literal crap.

He says, "aww, are you going to cry now?"

It's mocking, it's condescending, and because he says it when I'm actually getting mad (or any other form of strong emotion) and am probably actually on the verge of tears, completely horrible in timing. I cry when I get angry, it sucks because people just think I'm hurt, but it's really just because I am so good at holding my feelings in (note: why I still need a therapist) that when something pushes me over the edge, my body takes full advantage of my lax guard and turns on the Bitch Tears. If I'm crying, 80% of the time it's because I'm really pissed off, and calling me out on it is usually enough to make it happen.

I hate crying, not because it makes me feel weak (it does, I can just accept that about myself) but because it gets in the way of getting my point across, it reminds everyone that I am a woman and sometimes unable to control my emotions, and those two things I do hate. When Tom mocks me by asking if I am about to cry, it's a direct hit to my mental stability.

I can take a lot of crap, it's something I know I shouldn't do but have always done, however, I cannot tolerate someone insulting my sanity.

So, I gave Tom a day, and I went over to his apartment under the pretense that he would apologise to me. And he did. And he knows that if it ever happens again I will leave him, because it's unacceptable. And he has been given reasons and chances and I am not going to tolerate that sort of treatment from someone who is planning on falling in love with me in the future.

Especially since I really like him, and his opinion means a whole freaking lot to me.

Thornton Wilder said that he who loves the least wins.

And I don't mind losing.

But I have lines, and if they are crossed I'm fully prepared to do what if right for me, even if it's walking away.