Boredom is Unhealthy

Boredom is unhealthy, fact. I’m actually finding remembering my relationship with Lara and significant events and dates so difficult because if I’m completely honest these were some of the most boring years of my life. Now it’s unfair to put all the blame on Lara, although she was averse to the kind of fun that I enjoyed much of the time. Some of the happiest times we had together were holidays, theme parks and spending time with friends. It was rare for us to have fun by spending time together as just the two of us.

Nope, it wasn’t just my relationship that was boring me. It was everything, living in the same small town, the same dull job, the same routine day-in and day-out. It was all wearing me down. When it all got too much I just couldn’t escape this overwhelming feeling of being such a failure. I was intelligent, I got great grades in school, academic stuff was just easy for me. I had so much potential and I’d wasted it, I’d pissed about at University until eventually I quit and now I felt like I was stuck in a dead end job far below my ability and completely undervalued.

Not to mention my complete lack of control on my finances during this time, I was still paying a huge car loan, I couldn’t afford to have my own home and that played a huge part in keeping mine and Lara’s relationship rather stagnant. We couldn’t plan for a future we could never seem to afford.

I had gone through a fair bit of trauma in the workplace. It was really hard to come back from sometimes, it felt like I was continually being knocked down. The unfairness stung the most, and the ridiculous thing was that I was great at my job and I cared about doing it well. For some reason my team leader never saw things that way, we had several run-ins which resulted one day in an absolute farce of a disciplinary hearing, in which she attempted to get me fired. She didn’t succeed and a few months later left the company and I breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately the damage was already done and the way she had portrayed me to many other managers would take a very long time to undo, I can be a patient person but after a while it got to me and I couldn’t take any more.

My work life went in a pattern of ‘I’ll show ’em, they’ll see I’m the most amazing thing since sliced bread’ then to ‘Why am I bending over backwards for nothing?’ and finally ‘Screw them and their job, I’m going to do as little as I can get away with!’ and it was a vicious cycle.

Often for me this pattern would exactly correlate to how I was feeling in my personal life with Lara. Things had never really gotten back on track since our second biggest argument after Majorca. I went through times when just being together was enough for me, I didn’t need the passionate ‘honeymoon’ sex or the ‘I love you more’ games from our early days. Most of the time actually I was content enough just knowing that we were solid, we were best friends.

Then of course the routine would get to me. I can only live like a nun for so long before I want to tear my hair out. At times I even genuinely thought I’d be having more sex if I was single. To say it was frustrating is an understatement. When I was feeling like that I would literally torture myself, staying up late thinking about how we ended up like that. It was the boredom and the monotony of the situation that drove me to these thoughts. It was my own paranoia, insecurities and in all honesty baggage which would inevitably lead me to make a scene every few months.

The one thing I could rely on Lara for was to be completely non-confrontational. If she ever thought there were any problems between us she was never going to clue me in. So it was always down to me, I was always the bad guy. I’m certain that there are times throughout the near three years we’d spent together by this time that she wasn’t happy, it made me sad that she never confided in me or wanted us to make things better. I always had the feeling that slowly, day-by-day she was giving up on us.

By the end of 2009 I was probably the biggest I’ve ever been. I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’d probably managed to put on about 6st in weight since Lara and I had started dating. I’d never been thin, I have always been a curvy girl but I worried that Lara was no longer attracted to me. I even brought that can of worms up more than once, just to be assured that she’d love me regardless of my size. However I never felt like she was attracted to me, a part of me was even scared to lose weight, what if she did then suddenly get her ‘mojo’ back, that would have proved me right all along? That would hurt.

I’m a woman capable of being completely emotional and irrational, I wanted to make sense of this tired rut that we were in and I was both scared that it would all be due to something beyond my control, yet even more petrified of the idea that it might be all under my control and I’d have to step up and make some scary big changes.

I had Michael to confide in when things got tough, and since the fast and close friendship that had sprung up between Heidi and I she too was someone I often turned to for advice and support. It’s what friends do, I even encouraged Lara to talk out her feelings with friends too, half the time I thought she was keeping 99% of what she was feeling under the surface and it was healthy for her or us, I need people in my life that know how to express their feelings. I’m not psychic after all.

Michael has always been great, listening to me when ever I wanted to have a moan, even better still at keeping my spirits up and taking my mind off my problems. Although the advice is usually in short supply I’d rather be making memories that will always make me smile and laugh than raking over problems that simply won’t go away. Since we worked together we’d distract each other with office banter. We didn’t see each other so much in our free time anymore though.

Heidi on the other hand was also a great listener, she had personal experience that she could draw from to offer me a different perspective on what I was going through with Lara. It was odd how quickly I had forgotten that Lara and Heidi had dated years before, even more strange that it didn’t seem to matter to me. I’d convinced myself that Lara had much stronger feelings for me than she ever had for Heidi and that she would never treat me the way she had treated her. After all, I had already heard the confessions from Lara about how badly she admitted to using Heidi. Although this pigheadedness made me impermeable to Heidi’s advice, when really I should have paid attention to what she said.

I was feeling at a general low point through my boredom with life. I wasn’t happy with how the dynamic of our relationship was at the time, work was really busting my balls, and of course my weight and finances were also an issue. Mostly I felt like a wasted failure and that I had nothing and no one to blame but myself. My parents would often comment about my weight and eating habits, I know they only meant well and to encourage me to do something about it, still hurt though. I was ridiculously harsh on myself, I’m my biggest critic and to hear people you love mirror your thoughts is hard to cope with when you’ve got everything else going on too.

Even with all this going on in a vicious cycle it would be about another year before I’d do anything to shake things up. For the time being I was happy to go through the motions, keep the routine going. As bad as things could be at times there were still people and things in my life I couldn’t afford to lose and I didn’t want to disturb the hornets nest. So what next? Well it was another year just like the one before, the same job, the same girlfriend, the same home, holidays with friends, celebrating birthdays, my Nan’s 80th, my Dad’s 50th, and eventually even celebrating my brother and his girlfriends engagement. 2010 was going to be a big year.