sexy ghosts

a couple months ago while I was putting away clean laundry, I pulled his underwear drawer too far out and the whole thing upended itself on the floor. while I was putting things back I noticed a pair of red plaid underwear I hadn't seen him wear before. turns out they weren't boxers, or even men's clothing. it was a very short sexy schoolgirl skirt. ot mine, obviously.

at that moment, and even still, I'm not quite sure how I feel about them. or how I'm supposed to feel about them even. I struggle to come up with an analogy. I think like if he had found a pegging set of "mine." that's not a good comparison. not that an analogy even matters. I know he likes short skirts. and I had assumed he had previously played that out with others. still it's different to see the actual sex prop he's used with someone else, you know?

I guess what I'm struggling a bit with is why does he still have it? or why does he have it at all? shouldn't it be in her pocession? that he has it suggests that it means something special to him. and I would assume not the skirt itself, but who wore that skirt or a specific memory tied to the skirt (and therefore the girl). so what then? I probably wouldn't be unreasonable to ask him to get rid of it. yet, I don't feel comfortable with that. I mean, it means something to him and i want to be respectful of that. we each have past relationships and I think it's good to acknowledge and even celebrate that some. each person we've chosen to be with before has shaped us and made us into whom the other one now loves. it's crazy to pretend you're the first or best or most. you have them now and you should be satisfied with that.

still, it does make me a little uncomfortable and certainly self conscious. especially since I know he knows he still has it. I still put away his clean laundry every few weeks and I've seen it get moved from the side (where I left it) to the bottom.

I assume he'll see this post in a few weeks and we'll have a discussion about it then but for now I'm hoping to independently come to some conclusion about it. I've just been mentally writing this post since the night I found it so thought I'd finally get it out "on paper."

fleas!!!

wow, i haven't updated in a long time! most important update is that, well, yeah. we moved in together and are now fully moved in and have settled into our new lives and apartment. that's not to say it was easy tho!

i knew we had fleas. i wasn't sure from where but i knew the apartment had them. it wasn't a big deal tho since i was only coming up with a bite or two every couple days. until one day when j woke up and there were hundreds suddenly all over the fucking apartment! thankfully my parents had just left town so we moved into their house for a week. the exterminator came and pretty much got rid of the problem except that we both kind of have ptsd.

one nice thing that came out of this was getting to know one of our downstairs neighbors, a. they were also infested. but they're on the ground floor with a small yard and two dogs whereas we're upstairs with no yard or carpet or even rugs (exlucing two small bath mats)!

weeks later and my legs are so ugly still and we're still constantly checking ourselves for fleas. :( oh, lastly, in talking to a I found out that our landlord is looking to sell the place! oof, we have no idea when but apparently he's been trying for a little while already. annoying because no one told us and while neither of us forever loves this place moving is FUCKING TERRIBLE.

anyway, the rest of it has also been difficult. the first month or was really hard. not gonna lie, I cried a couple times with him in the other room. July has been better. we finally got an AC unit, we've adapted to sleeping by together in a full sized bed together, settled into the apartment and each other. will August be even better? lol, no, probably not but whatever since we're going to Mexico City for a week!

moving [descriptive]

we did it! we moved in together! and what a fucking process it was, sheesh. i don't ever want to move again. you look around and think "i don't have that much stuff" and multiple people tell you the same thing. then you start packing it and realize you need way more boxes than you originally thought. then you have to walk it to the car, drive it across town, and carry it up a flight of stairs, and have to repeat that a few times until you get to the heavy or bulky stuff like mattresses and chairs and bikes and desks and think "i have too much fucking stuff!" then realize you have to help your boyfriend move HIS stuff and for a split second you consider texting him and say that you've changed your mind and that you no longer want to move in together but since my stuff is already here and some of yours also so I'll pay you for your stuff even though i don't want it unless you wanna come get it yourself cause there's no way in bloody hell I'm moving your stuff for you because that was the problem to begin with! of course you do no such thing, and you just help him cause he helped you and you're not a selfish bitch. but you still wonder every 20 minutes or so if he would even notice if you "lost" a box of his until you realize that you'd have to trash it in your work dumpster since both your and his trash cans are full of discarded stuff, which requires you to drive to work which is across town and pick up the box and raise it over your shoulders to tip into the dumpster and you think again about that original scenario but again you don't because you're no bitch. 

at night, even though you're exhausted and unsatisfied from dinner of your 3rd straight day of the pizza from days ago, you can't sleep because you're stressing about the stuff you still haven't moved yet and now you're RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

and so it goes. physically tiring days and mentally tiring nights, until you're FINALLY done moving in! but your, OUR, apartment is a fucking mess and you feel a bit resentful of each other for all the stuff they made you move or throw away and wonder why you ever thought this was a good idea, moving in together.

then you immediately leave to China for a week and a half and are actually a little relieved you can finally decompress and don't have to deal with the settling in. until he tells you he bought a shelf and a clothes rack and you get a little worried he's bought something ugly but it'll be too late to say no to when you're finally home again, but also very guilty you left him to clean and settle in so of course he's entitled to buy things you hate and you wonder how long you have to fake being accommodating and grateful before you can be your petty self and belatedly veto that table or chair or whatever.

shacking up

when I found out my landlord was selling our apartment, I thought "I guess the universe really wants me to move in with j." lol, it's funny cause we had been talking about it anyway, but not really seriously, more of a "if somewhere nice opens up..." he'd been wanting to move out of his place anyway. and I really love my place, even with k as a roommate. then I got the news of the intended sale.

it's funny cause many many months ago i'd actually told him that us moving in together wouldn't be me suddenly wanting to. there would have to be another impetus. my apartment becoming unlivable, him finding us somewhere really awesome, I dunno what, but it wouldn't be me. lol, the universe intervenes in some pretty weird ways sometimes.

battle of the tp

living with people is interesting. it gives you good insight into, well, how people live! I share a bathroom with k, who is a student and a house cleaner. before I moved in I was warned that she may not be the cleanest. people don't like to go home to do more of what they do for work, you know? and yet I never would have thought it could be this bad.

- she regularly leaves stuff all over our bathroom floor, for days, maybe weeks: shoes, clothes, razors, hair products, scissors, etc. our counter has her stuff all over it, including her leaking toothpaste tubes. 

- she orders a lot of food thru uber eats and will once every couple months clean out her room. she'll have big trash bags full of takeout boxes, and leave a dozen plates and forks in our sink. trash bags will sit in the hallway, silverware in the sink, for a few days until she takes care of it. you can imagine what her shelf of the fridge looks like.

- she'll have people over and not clean up after them for weeks. half-filled cups, pillows on the ground, open wine bottles strewn around our living room.

there's more, but the "best" stories are about toilet paper, of course, lol.

I sleep at the apartment about 4 nights a week. she's there pretty much fulltime. last summer, we ran out of tp. I got back after the weekend, saw we had no tp (and was annoyed). thankfully I have tissue in my room (which I pettily did not share in the bathroom). before work I left a note on the counter saying i'd buy tp after work. I didn't go home that night. the next day I got back to the apartment and saw that she had left some fast food paper napkins on the counter. ...I refilled the tp.

she NEVER puts the tp back on the roller thing. I now tell people I think she has a phobia about it. i'm not going to ask because i'm almost positive it's just that she's too lazy and my story is just so much more entertaining. before I left for spain, a friend suggested I put the tp roller half in half out so that it would fall out when someone used tp. I did. I came back a week and a half later and the empty tp roller was on the ground with a half roll of tp on the counter. 

last saturday night I came home to an empty roll. I was annoyed since I was in spain for about 10 days before. also, we ran out on a weekend. I usually leave for work Friday morning and get back to the apartment Monday night so I wasn't even "supposed" to be there. anyway. I actually have like 2 dozen rolls in my closet but I can't fit more than 4 rolls under the sink (she has too much stuff in there). I was in the process of refilling it when I changed my mind. I mean, I wasn't supposed to be there, at least the last 4 rolls were "my" paper, and wtf was she planning to do in the meantime before I "got back" on Monday night? so I used Kleenex Saturday night, peed at work Sunday, and left without a note that night. I got back Monday late night and saw that she had taken paper towels from our kitchen (which she didn't buy; A buys those) to use as tp. ...this fucking girl is SO LAZY and WEIRD.

and while I'm definitely annoyed, my major emotion is amusement. seriously. what 30 year old can't remember to buy tp for days? who has to depend on their roommate who only lives there part-time? who can't be bothered, not once, to put the tp back on the roller? lol, omg, she's so strange! she complains all the time about how she's single. well, no wonder! what guy would stay with you after he's seen your room? I mean. sure, I live like this too since we share a bathroom. but my room is clean. I wash my dishes and throw out my trash within a reasonable amount of time. I have no food containers with mold in them. I clean up after guests and drain my glasses. sure, I can stand to live in unsanitary conditions but that obviously isn't my personal normal state. that being said, I do wonder what j thinks. what he thinks of me that I can live like this. I mean, it must say something about me that her laziness doesn't bother me so much that I feel like I have do something about it. when I first moved in, yeah, I cleaned our bathroom, emptied the trashcan, windexed the mirrors, ajaxed the sink, but now... I don't do any of that. I'll throw our bathmats and hand towel into the wash, and use draino every few months since she often doesn't use the hair catch, but I pretty much just let it be. what's the point? she doesn't keep our bathroom even baseline clean. I don't know. you do you; i'll do me. turns out i'm pretty serious about that. to a point that even surprises (and slightly disgusts) me.

spain

they say you never really know someone until you live with them. or travel with them. which, if the trip is long enough, can be akin to living with them.

anyway, j and i went to spain for his spring break. fully 6 months ago we looked for cheap flights, with no specific destination in mind, and barcelona came up for his free week. which happened to also be our one year (the day we flew out) and my birthday (our first full day in spain). i was very nervous booking the flight. we were only 6 months in, making plans for 6 months later. crazy! but i figured that even if we split up, i'd go to spain anyway. i also forecasted that if we broke up, it wouldn't be an angry someone fucked up thing. it would be a sad we just couldn't make it work thing. so we'd still be friends. and anyway, i'm used to traveling alone. (tho it would've been a hell of a lot harder since i don't speak any useful spanish, save el baño and uno cervesa por favor tho i don't even like beer, lol)

so what do i know now? i learned that we stress about different things, which is good. i stress about timing, he about food and crowds. and we don't rile each other up, which is important. overall, we're both chill, which is really good. we compliment each other. i planned our itinerary, but he was the one who pushed to book hotels and get tickets. i got maps, locations, opening times, and he got a phone card and currency. we both brought plenty of snacks and to-be-thrown-away travel clothes.

in some ways i knew we would be fine. we haven't fought our whole time together. and i've tried hard to apply what i've learned, not only from my previous relationships, but from those of my friends and parents, even.

what else did i learn from this trip? to not depend too much on others. i don't mean that in the way it sounds. but once we were in spain i took a step back from everything. he did all the ordering, talking to strangers, figuring stuff out, etc. yes, he speaks spanish but i could've done more. halfway thru our trip i happened to see him google something like "why is my relationship so ___." i didn't catch the last word but i immediately started freaking out (to myself). you don't google good things, you know? but he knows me well enough to recognize that i was freaking and called me out on it and told me what he was thinking about. (turns out i had read the search wrong) but he was stressed. from school, work, his accident a week prior that he was still injured from. we talked a bit and he said he felt much better. not knowing how to actually help I tried to be more helpful on the trip. i screenshot maps when i had wifi and just tried to pull a bit more weight. i dunno if it did anything, maybe i was relieving some of his stress? he said after our talk he finally got into the vacation mind frame. so maybe i did nothing. either way, I shouldn't have burdened him with all the work.

next time we should go somewhere neither of us knows the language. where we're on a more level playing ground. that being said, I've definitely taken a back seat in this relationship. more than I have with anyone in any relationship, I think. i'm not necessarily aggressive, but I do have ideas on what I want. this time I feel like i'm very content to let him lead us. he seems so capable in his own life, I guess I feel more secure? whatever. all I know is that i'm happy. and that we're still together. and that after a full 9 days together we saw each other again Monday night, and it didn't feel like too much.