The December’s Urge to Self-Destruction
I barely recovered from my sickness on both physical and mental levels only to realize that I had to finish my quarterly goals at work by the end of the year. And I had already fallen behind by a full week because I was sick. Seemingly, the bad luck curse persisted, leaving me with virtually no opportunities to enjoy my new relationship. Around the beginning of December, my team was finalizing the Christmas holiday and its opposite, the on-call1 coverage schedule. I deliberately didn’t ask for a single day off for the entire month and offered to take the whole one-week-long on-call shift from the 24th to the 31st. Everyone in my team greatly appreciated my volunteering, and so did I, because it gave me motivation not to think about the bullshit holiday called Christmas. Such shifts generally restrict our free time and freedom even outside business hours, so one can mostly sit at their laptop for a full seven days. I felt a strong need to punish myself for being late with my goals but at the same time grant myself more working time, thus a small chance to catch up. So in my case, this meant I wouldn’t be able to visit my boy until 2025.
The situation at home was, let’s say, quite emotional, because at the same time I definitely called off joining my ex-partner’s family for the Christmas Eve dinner. At least I offered to bring the Christmas mood to the house to compensate. Together, we bought a Christmas tree, carried it home by foot, and decorated it. I had noticed that paranoia was slowly building up in me, as I simply couldn’t imagine telling my ex-partner about my new relationship. He hadn’t known yet. I realized I didn’t feel safe during my gaming sessions when I was exposed to an unwanted chat in the living room anymore. So I stopped playing Elden Ring entirely. That paranoia of mine had secretly built a new prison of fear and started drowning my mind in it again. My physical comfort zone shrank to the walls of my room at home. I rarely took my eyes off the screen of my laptop, as I became totally agnostic to any Christmas mood that was otherwise radiating everywhere outside. I simply focused on working my ass off.
Regrettably, I recall a major dispute that happened at the home battlefield with my ex-partner. During it, I became so drunk out of despair because otherwise I would have been entirely unable to resist the bursts of strong feelings. And it isn’t easy to write about it. Simply said, the cause was forgotten, but the emotions were tense, and neither my will nor alcohol could hold my nerves any longer. In a single moment of panic, I screamed, equated my ex-partner to his father, whom he hates, and hurled a plastic bag filled with shisha tobacco at him. In return, I got punched with a clenched fist into my face, getting a slight blackout. When I regained my senses after a few seconds, I rushed towards him to snatch a big kitchen knife out of his hands. The blade was sawing into his wrist skin while he was anxiously crying about what just happened. There was blood, but the wound was luckily not deep at all. I fainted shortly after. When I woke up in the morning, he was already awake, sitting next to me. Then, seemingly devoid of emotion, he informed me that he had been seriously considering jumping off the balcony and committing suicide after the incident, but that he had made up his mind. I lost all words… I just couldn’t say anything sensible at that moment. I felt so vulnerable and trapped. My only thought resulting from the attempt to guess his intentions was, “FYI! I just wanted you to know what you had caused.” No matter what I did or wanted to do, trying to snatch out of it would only cause harm. There was simply no escape, or at least none that my mind could perceive. I began to truly believe it. From now on, I mustn’t do anything to upset him. Conflicts at home always escalate to the point when a call to the emergency services or the police is nearly the only way out. Nothing has changed since January…
I was able to spend a weekend with my partner two weeks prior to the holidays without experiencing any traumatizing incidents upon my return home. And eventually, the holiday period happened. Apart from me, of course, but not fully. My ex-partner left to see his friends and family for the holidays. And despite that he denied Jackal visiting our apartment, I secretly invited him. I didn’t know until a few days before whether I would decide to break the law, but I eventually did. Finally, after more than a year. He’s at my house! We indeed maximized the time we could enjoy together, just leaving enough safe headroom time to avoid all chances of my ex-partner meeting him, as that wouldn’t have ended up good. I spent some Christmas Eve time working, but I was more than willing to sacrifice the remainder to enjoy my partner properly, and it was really quiet at work on that day anyway. In the afternoon my sister joined us. We managed to have a traditional dinner, which was prepared by Jackal’s parents, as well as alcohol for the toast and more of it later. Then we watched an 80’s Canadian cartoon movie, Heavy Metal, full of naked women, especially emphasizing the tits. I remembered the cartoon from my childhood when I was watching it over and over again on a VHS player. This time, I was curious to see it again with my adult eyes. Well, my feelings were quite mixed, but overall we enjoyed the Christmas evening and night full of other crazy movies in the queue, such as Death Race. I know, what a weird pick for Christmas evening, but hey, all of us are heavily into cartoons and cars!
The rest of the days of 2024 are somewhat shrouded to me. Jackal had to leave, and so did my holiday mood. I certainly dedicated the entire weekend to working for a minimum of 12 hours each day, and I was largely uninterested in anything else. My ex-partner invited a few of his friends for a small New Year’s party, and my sister arrived too because her plans were entirely blown up one day before. We decided to join the group. In my thoughts, all I could think about was Jackal because I wanted to be with him again, especially on this particular day. But overall, the party went really well. We had fun playing the Shit Happens card game as well as Texas Hold’em Poker for the remainder of the evening. By the way, my sister has pulled the most amusing and unexpected card:
And The New Year Without Any Resolution
Since time is linear and does not take into account years, I didn’t care either. January 1st was just another working day as usual. I had three days worth of national holidays in my account, which I used for work, so I was immediately granted the time off in lieu2. The following day, I packed my belongings and drove to see Jackal. I missed my love so much! Later, I received a notification from the city office to pick up my new car license plates on January 14th, which I gifted to myself as a Christmas present for “only” €400. Although the cost of a pair of aluminum plates and eight letters on them was substantial, it filled me with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Especially when combined with the stickers on the car trunk door. I had been desiring to get a custom plate for more than six years and finally got one!
But before I was able to pick up my new plates, I naturally had to return home first. There I was immediately confronted by my ex-partner with some shocking information and questions regarding it to answer for him. That information contained some of my personal details, which was suspiciously similar to the details I had told to two common relatives of mine and my ex-partner back in December when I couldn’t bury my despair deep in me anymore. For obvious reasons at that time, I couldn’t share the most with Jackal, because what I described to them were my bitter feelings about being sexually assaulted at home multiple times and my confession that I fell in love with him but was unable to tell my ex-partner. While I confided in each of the relatives a different slice of my entire thought spectrum, my ex-partner threw a suspiciously complete combination of everything back at me. It was evident that at least one of them exposed my confidential and intimate details to him. I was left in a state of complete shock. I felt betrayed, cornered, humiliated, and miserable. All my faith in common friends or friends in general was undermined. Under the influence of psychological pressure, it was effortless to convince myself that I couldn’t trust anyone because my ex-partner had managed to control everything and everyone around me fully. I still have my partner and my family, but otherwise he has effectively turned every single person against me… please tell me this is only a nightmare! My strong persuasion was empowered by a random memory of hearing one of his visiting friends speaking phrases in singular nouns at him, such as “You live really nicely” or “Your apartment is beautiful,” loudly in front of me. No, my dear, this isn’t his apartment but my apartment, and mostly my life I’ve built!
I can’t find the right words to describe the rest of January. At the very end of it, I managed to visit my partner, and I had planned to return to see him the following weekend, which was the first weekend of February. However, there was a problem, a whale-sized one! My ex-partner suffered a loss in his family on the last Sunday of January. I rushed home as early as possible to take care of him. I sincerely meant it, as I still felt some emotional connection to his family. I was determined to do everything to ease his pain, bring him some relief, and allow him to relax. But at that time, he didn’t know about my plans. You can guess that such emotional tension undoubtedly led to escalation. When I bucked up to let him know I wouldn’t be staying at home for that weekend, I was told many rude words on my partner’s account. I held myself tight and zigzagged through the situation quite peacefully. However, as I was sent to hell by him, I decided to allow him some space to let him calm down. Tuesday, in the middle of the night, he forcibly woke me up and demanded that I provide an explanation for the reasons I kept myself apart, why I showed no care, and why I did not come to sleep with him in one bed. I can’t remember how I answered, as I was very sleepy. I can’t remember how I answered, as I was very sleepy. The conversation probably lasted more than an hour and stressed me in a way that I barely managed to get any sleep afterward. I do remember that out of pure despair built on top of sleep deprivation, I admitted I had been officially dating my jackal friend, even though I only wanted to say, “Let me sleep, please.” This piece of information, which I had been unable to tell him any time earlier because I was so frightened of his reaction and never found a suitable opportunity to do so, suddenly slipped out of my mouth. I failed successfully once again.
Please note: The following page contains targeted compromising information about someone in particular. While I can’t be objective by nature, I’ve put tremendous effort into sticking to the facts. You don’t have to read it! If you don’t feel comfortable opening it, it is okay. In such a case, consider this the end of this post:
After that night, my domestic stress dropped rapidly, and a truce was made. I can finally focus on my new life priorities. I am also more confident that the situation will be slowly improving and finally going in the direction I’ve wanted for such a long time. I believe in a bright future. With the most awesome person standing at my side, we will definitely pursue it together ^^
On-call refers to a 24/7 emergency shift at work that lasts for a full week. During the entire period, I have to answer all automated or manual phone calls or notifications ASAP, day or night, and handle all the assigned incidents that are possibly affecting my company’s customers. I always have to stay close to my laptop with the VPN access.
In my team, this week is known as the week with zero personal life, and we simply refer to it as shitweek. ↩︎
In lieu is a French expression meaning “instead of”. It refers to the paid time-off work employees receive “instead of” getting paid for additional hours worked above their normal contracted working week. In this way, it can be seen as an added vacation on top of the vacation days included in an employee’s contract. ↩︎
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