India? Really? in All Good Things

I go to India tomorrow, to New Delhi. Don't even ask me how that happened. I never dreamed it would actually come about, but my flight is booked, I'm all checked in online and, apparently, 24 hours from now I will be taking off for a brand new part off the world...

It's for a job. Not quite the job I quit, but related to it, and it seems I haven't been able to escape that career after all, which is really fucking depressing.

But what else can I do? I've run out of money, and all other jobs will require me to work a lot longer hours for a lot less money, with no freedom to go gallivanting whenever I want - and I can't really cope with that. I can't be trapped in the same environment every day, doing the same thing with the same people. I've been employed exactly one in my life, for 13 months in Australia, and even though I worked at three different television studios, a variety of shifts and with constantly changing people, it drove me mad.

I have no idea if my body will be able to take a return to my career, though. During the past nine months of not working, I've come to realise how pleasant life is when you're not in constant screaming physical agony, not having to psych yourself up every morning to inflict intense torture upon your body. It's amazing. And I've been so happy.

But money is required to live. Especially to live the kind of life I live.

I've spent months wrestling with this, trying to decide what to do, and then, when I eventually said yes to the many offices around the world who want my services, my diary filled up instantly to the brim with work offers. Despite the fact it's the fucking summer holidays! I'm booked up nearly solidly from now until I leave for Singapore with Annette in nine weeks' time, and I had to turn down loads of jobs as well. I picked the Middle East over the Far East, seeing as I prefer the desert over the jungle, dry heat to humidity, any day, since the desert dryness lessens my pain to a large degree and humidity makes it so much worse. It probably would have made more sense to say yes to the Far East, seeing as that's where I'm going anyway, but I miss the desert. The seven weeks since we left Israel seem like forever....

I don't know how I feel about any of this. It's annihilated the delicate new life I was building. I can't do my old career and also commit to things in London. Well, I could if I was willing to only work in London - but unfortunately London's the one place I can't bear to work. I tried one day of it after Israel and had to leave at lunchtime because I was having such bad panic attacks.

Oh God. For weeks now I've had all these options and possibilities screaming through my brain. People keep pressing me for decisions - and I DON'T KNOW!!!!! I simply don't know. But I have to make decisions anyway, and one of the biggest of all I have to decide today, before flying to India: whether or not to renew my lease.

Will and I are still living together. We're no longer a couple, and have started taking turns sleeping on the sofa in the livingroom since there's only one bedroom (the other is his art studio). He wants to keep living together. I know why. It's because I'm the only person in the world who puts up with him and doesn't get on his case about all his antisocial behaviour. But that doesn't mean it isn't driving me absolutely insane, especially since I pay three-quarters of rent and expenses to live here and don't have a single spot of my own in this house. It's all decorated by him (ghastly African masks all over the walls), he does no cleaning or maintenance of the house whatsoever, and makes an enormous mess constantly to the point where I can no longer bear to set foot in the kitchen and I'm sick to death of spending hours scrubbing everything only to have him fuck it all up again within 24 hours.

I'm actually really angry and upset and I can't cope with any of this - but nor can I bear to tell him to get out. It infuriates me so much that I can't make myself hurt him that way - when he doesn't give a shit about hurting me. He completely ignores me, takes advantage of me.....and I keep letting him because I don't want to hurt him by kicking him out.

I can't believe I used to love him so much. What was I thinking?

He's done nothing but hurt me, through our entire relationship.

For the past two years I've just travelled more and more, mostly to get away from him. That's the main reason I let him do what he wanted with the house, reasoning that since I wasn't here for half the time anyway, it would be unfair to insist on decorating it how I wanted it instead, or on having my own space. But I'm tired of being the only one to make sacrifices and to take the other person into account. I can't fucking breathe because he scatters his fucking tobacco everywhere, which I'm allergic to. We're constantly fighting about having the windows open, since he's always cold (side effect of starving himself), and I need fresh air even when it's snowing outside. He gets drunk and spills his drinks all over the floor that I have to scrub, despite it leaving my injured shoulder aching and on fire for days afterwards. He smears tinned tuna everywhere (about the only thing he eats), despite KNOWING that it's the one single food that I absolutely cannot cope with the smell of - I have a total phobia about it, feeling about it the same way I do about spiders and cockroaches....

Okay. I'm going to stop writing now. This has turned into a ridiculous rant and it doesn't help matters because all it does is tell me that I HAVE TO live separately from him....which I already knew....but it's still no help at all in how to tell him. How to reject him. How to kick him out of my life.

And I hate this. I promised not to. I promised to always love him, to always be there for him. And even though I now detest him - I still care about him. Worry about him. And I hate that I do.

I just want him gone. No longer in existence.