needle in the hay

Dear K-

What's wrong with me? I try to make things work that I need to abandon as broken. How much longer am I going to keep saying to myself "maybe this time it'll be different"? I'm not happy in my current relationship. I haven't been happy for a while. I've been trying to fix things: make myself less judgmental, more friendly, more positive. I read somewhere that sometimes just making the effort every morning to tell you significant other "I love you" that it can be psychologically beneficial for each of you. I tried it. But it just feels empty. It feels forced. I hate myself when I say it, because I think he knows I feel guilty. I do feel guilty. I feel guilty that I can't just quip it out without even a doubt, give him a peck on the cheek, then go off to work, dreaming of the moment I get to come back home to his arms. My life doesn't have that sparkle. I don't expect things to be perfect, but I want at least something positive. Something worth staying for.

Instead, I find us getting into arguments over the tiniest things. I have even been making a conscious effort to stop starting fights over things I know are not big deals. But he finds the ways to aggravate and annoy me to the point where I just fall silent because I can't think of anything nice to say. You know the old phrase. But then he gets upset at me for "not being fun" or he takes my silence as disapproval. He's not entirely far from the mark.

The other day we went out to lunch. In the middle of our meal, which was being eaten in silence while he browsed his phone and I got lost in my own thoughts, a young man sat down a few seats away from us at the bar. I overheard him politely place his order, which was exactly the same as mine except a different beverage. He then proceeded to pull out a small notebook, full of scribbled writing, and started to make an entry while he waited for his food. He was painfully attractive. I found myself staring. I found myself thinking "if I was single, I would try to engage him in conversation in a heartbeat." But instead I glanced over at my boyfriend, looking dissheveled and unshowered, and felt my heart sink like a brick into a lake. Where did I go wrong?

Am I always going to feel discontent? Am I seeking something that isn't attainable? Why do I try so hard to achieve what should come more naturally? Who am I fooling anymore?

And yet I am too cowardly to abandon and hurt the one connection I still have to the social world.

I heard a song one time that mentioned that if you didn't like what you were catching, maybe it was time to change the bait.

Perhaps I am the problem.

Happy new year,
-k