It’s a challenging thing to do to be in a relationship when you’re so sick. When you just want to go hide in a hole so much of the time and close the world out. When you feel like you just can’t stand a cheerful face in the morning and wish to hell that you could just be alone and never see anyone ever again. But that’s not how it is when you’re in a relationship with someone. You have to learn to cope differently.
I’m a lucky guy. I have a man who loves me to death and would do most anything for me, and has. He’s really a great guy and I love him immensely and hope to be with him for the rest of my life. This is a different thing than I’ve known for most of my life. I’ve been in several relationships but none that were this intense or had the potential to last as long and be as much as this one. We might even get married but I’d lose my benefits so I can’t. But that’s how we feel about each other.
What I want to write about is the way that I try to cope with living with a basically healthy, cheerful, stable person when I’m so often none of those things. He greats me each morning with “Yay, Steve is awake and up and about again! Hoorah!” Sounds goofy doesn’t it? And it is. It’s also so sweet it makes my heart clench when I feel so rotten and like I’m the last person in the world who should have someone say something nice about me. Why should I be showered with loving attention?
But I accept it because not to would just be churlish and tho I can be that way I’m choosing not to do that these days. I’ve grown up a lot in the last 5 years we’ve been together, first as friends and lovers and then as partners. We’ve come thru a lot in that time, more than many people might have done. We’ve traveled across the country a couple of times and down to CA twice. That’s a lot of one on one time and if you can travel well together you know you’ve at least got a chance. And we do travel well together.
And we went thru the death and loss of my only brother to AIDS during the time we’ve been together and he helped me thru that difficult time like we’d been best friends forever. He was totally there for me and didn’t ever complain about the difficulties, which there were, and all the problems we had to face with his passing. He earned my trust then and has kept it ever since thru many issues.
I have a hard time not resenting him sometimes tho and I really hate myself for that. It’s unwarranted and unkind, but perhaps understandable in the circumstances. He’s so healthy and really doesn’t understand what I live with tho he does try as hard as he can and he does a good job. But it’s impossible for someone to really understand someone who’s got as many health problems as I do and is in so much pain and distress when you’re Not. It’s OK, it’s just at odds with one another.
This is where communication comes in. Without it we’d be dead in the water. We talk. Not obsessively like I could do, but he’s not that way and so I’ve toned it down a bit and realized that maybe I talk too much sometimes about my problems. It’s good to give them a rest sometimes. But I do talk with him and just let myself be who I am, whatever that is, and he accepts me for that and doesn’t hassle me. Even when I just discovered that I’m totally impotent he just said “well you’ve had a good run and we still have a good sex life so don’t worry. I still love you.” I had a hard time with that one, but he’s right and I know it. He’s stable that way and I’m not so much so. So I adapt and change and grow.
And he’s changed a lot since we’ve been together too. He listens to me better than he used to and he’s more patient. He’s seen enough times of my losing it and at the end of my rope to really get it by now. He listens to me tell him when I feel like I want to just die and he reminds me of all I have that’s worth living for. He keeps me here as do some of my friends, and for that I am so grateful. He may use humor when I feel like crap but I’ve learned that underneath it is a deep caring for me and so I may not laugh at his stupid jokes but I appreciate where they’re coming from and it helps me. And he gives me hugs too. I like the hugs a lot…
Many times I’ve come to him in tears when things didn’t go my way or I hurt too much or I still feel like the world is crashing in on me and he’ll listen and offer some obvious statement about how things might be and it changes me. It forces me to live up to all my ideals about how I know I can be in the world with other people. I have to change my attitudes and expectations and not just to please him. I don’t mean that at all. I do it because he gives me another way to see things that is so different than mine that it helps me. And I need all the help I can get, believe me.
So tho it’s a hard way to live sometimes and I really hate it on certain days I let myself get up and face the day with him every day, open and alive to the myriad possibilities. It’s a great life and I wish everyone who wanted a partner could have one like I do and experience the joy I’ve found and the stability. I’ve been more stable since we’ve been together than I have been ever maybe. I dunno, it’s hard to tell. I’ve been such a mess so much of my life. And I still am sometimes.
But not nearly as often and I know this relationship has done this for me. That, and a hell of a lot of hard work on my part too. It’s work to be in relationship with someone as close as this. But it’s worth it every minute, even when we argue and disagree we’ll talk about the problem because we want to work things out and deal with our differences in good ways that are clean and honest. Honesty is paramount for me. I need to know I’m being dealt with fairly and I do the same for others. And I get that with him, even when it’s hard for us both.
I’m not saying we’re a perfect union. I don’t believe there are perfect unions I guess. But what we have is so amazing to me that it’s worth all the work I have to put into it all the time. I have to swallow my bile and get over myself and just let things be. And he has to do the same. It’s a mutual affair and we’re doing well at it despite our problems. So for me being in a relationship and being sick isn’t insurmountable, in fact it’s a good thing for me and I thrive in it. I wish the same for others.
Peace,
Steve
Naked Nerves 