I have a lot of homework that is going to go unfinished. I don't even care.

I get affection from cats, mainly. I don't have friends because they are all too busy hanging out with their other friends. All three of the cats in my life are feral rescues, so affection is given on their own rules. My bf has shut down to such an extent that it feels awkward to try to be affectionate to him. Two months is a long time to want someone to touch you. We have made love twice this year.

And I wonder why I no longer feel beautiful. Why I can't sleep without being loaded. Why I can't focus. Why I feel beyond stressed. Why I feel ill when I do eat. I am sitting here with him, and he is oblivious. I tell him over and over how much i need affection in our relationship. He says he is too busy and doesn't feel like making love in any manner. For months upon months...and then he will eventually claim that I never told him, even though I tell him every couple of months how much his withdrawing affects me.

My heart is painful. It is grieving. It is grieving because it holds onto hope that he may start to care, and not make excuses. It grieves because it wants something it has always wanted since i was a little girl someone who will stay in my life, and share in loving and being loved. And all he does is pull away emotionally even more, and look at me and tell me in reply that he loves me. And all I can do is wish I could pull out my heart to stop feeling everything I feel when he acts like I don't exist from two feet away.

I even read an article about birth control, and thought to myself maybe I should try again, even at risk of severe allergic reaction, because it stated that some birth control reduces desire. I need to kill that in myself to be with him. I need to kill my desire to be happy without affection.

I am not sure why he is this way now. It is like I don't really exist as a full human being to him. And I can't help but note that it kills me a little every day that he really doesn't desire me, being with me, touching my skin, holding me, sharing something so sacred together. I desire all of that with him, every day.

I get images and memories from when we first met, when we first kissed and it was beautiful and intense and I knew that this was special. The first time we saw each other naked, new, and vulnerable. We were both scared, but it felt right to trust again. It was mutual and understood to respect that. And he slowly made a place for me in his life...and over three years later it is being revealed, that the place he made for me is just a resting place to let everything we have together die.

And I never know what to say when I tell him I want to have sex, and ask why he doesn't...and he looks at me and says "you must not like who I am"...

How do you respond to something like that? It leaves me too unbelievably confused to try to figure out a response.

And all the beauty of spring isn't making this any easier...

~e