Robotic Being

    When what you do for someone never gets noticed. When your achievements, your care your love and efforts to please someone are never acknowledged.

You then start questioning if there was maybe something wrong with you and start letting your self worth slowly slide down the drain. This happened over many years and you don’t recognize the person you now see in the mirror anymore.

You lost yourself, because you were so obsessed with pleasing a robotic being that you now realise is incapable of empathy.

You were never his main focus anyway. You realise how pathetic you feel now from slowly corroding your own soul because you were always made to think you were never good enough.

You never looked good enough to make him give you a simple compliment, your birthday never mattered. Your needs never mattered.

When he did not acknowledge your birthday, he reminded you that birthdays are for children.

You then felt rejected, but then asked yourself why such a little thing as a birthday seemed so important to you in the first place. You wondered whether you were being immature and juvenile, as he suggested.

Although deep inside you knew it never was about your birthday. You just wanted a day where he could have looked at you in the eye and made it about you. It could have been any day of the year. Maybe he could have scribbled something on a piece of paper. A smiley face or even something silly to make you laugh and then spent the day with you, but instead you were let down and you felt silly to bring it up, because in an indirect way he made you feel immature for thinking  that you deserved something nice.

You also realized how much effort you put into making him feel special on his and realized he never cared in the first place so then you started caring less and less and started to learn to coexist.

But then you decided to celebrate your birthday yourself, under your own terms. You then bought a cake, bought yourself flowers and even went to dinner that evening.  However when you made your plans known, he complied to a minimum degree, he lacked participation. He said nothing interesting and you just watched him there, eating dinner like a soulless robot not speaking a word.

Then there was that day when you found yourself in the hospital. You were scared, terrified of the future, of the present…and hoped maybe he would have been there for you because that time it was more serious than a juvenile wish to have your birthday remembered.

However a monotonous being lingered in your room and seemed more annoyed he had to take care of you than concerned about your wellbeing.

You were now home, your surgery was successful but you were forced to still get up and clean and cook because he was too busy watching TV in the next room and play his favorite video games… and the best part, he saw nothing wrong with it all!

You were crying and hoping none of the stitches would break loose from moving around  trying to clean the mess in the house that was accumulated over several weeks. Despite your doctor prescribing bed rest for a week. After a few days you had to hire a nurse and every time you saw her it reminded you of his neglect.

But the physical pain was nothing in comparison to what you felt inside you emotionally.

One day you had enough and reminded him of all the cases (and there was many of them) when he was being inconsiderate and surprisingly he seemed so apologetic and mortified. He started crying and told you he never wanted to hurt you. He told you, you are the most important person in his life. You thought, how could he be evil, he seemed so sad that he caused you that much pain. But when asked why he did them he never had an answer himself either. He also would never question any robotic tasks you would ask him to do, he always made you breakfast, he always ran errands… It made no sense.

And intimacy… You didn’t even know how that felt anymore. You had this notion that intimacy was based on shared vulnerability,  full trust to share anything that is inside your mind and your bodies. To be there completely uncovered and not worry about your imperfections. And you wanted him to do the same with you.

However one day you fully realized that even that part was suffering… badly!

Out of the blue, in one of your most vulnerable moments while you were about to have sex with him, he had an ED encounter. You then, concerned about him, asked “what’s wrong?”. He responded immediately in a very angry tone “All the talk about your scars in your private parts”. You were shocked but didn’t understand. What? Wait you weren’t even talking about any surgery scars at that moment. That topic was mentioned briefly hours ago because they still caused you pain but you never dwelled on it.

Your brain could not understand what was happening but your confidence and womanhood were now destroyed. You felt so ugly you wanted to disappear and never be seen by another human being again.

You then try to keep it all together again. You remind yourself you are strong and you can get out of this but you still don’t understand how you got there to begin with.

This was not the stable, geeky, shy nerdy human being, you once fell in love with. He used to be so careful around you and you felt like you were his delicate flower.

You loved his lack of beliefs in traditional dating roles and he never seemed like the type that would play head games. And he never was. He ran every errand to help you with your job as well and never complained about doing them.

You were impressed by his high intellect and his ability to solve complex issues. But you now realised that none of those issued ever needed emotion as a skill.

You now understood that he only could operate in monotonous patterns and if anything broke any of the patterns he would explode… AT YOU!

He wasn’t trying to play head games with you, he just was incapable of understanding basic human emotions and empathy, and at the same time was oblivious that you had emotional needs beside just running errands for you. He was so into his own world he never saw all the sacrifices you made to please him. And you starved yourself emotionally to give it all to him.

Despite now knowing this, a part of you wants to scream as LOUD as you can at him so he can see your pain. But he’s a robot. He acts indifferent and cold. It doesn’t matter how upset you get, he withdraws, so you don’t even bother screaming in the first place.

You have lost a partner, lost a marriage. You never wanted to take it to the legal step because divorce terrified you but in every other sense it was, he even was bold enough to propose. You lost your dreams, your hopes. You lost your fundamental sense of who you were.

You now feel ashamed, hurt, alone and very stupid for sacrificing so much for someone that did so little for you emotionally. You have trouble concentrating, you can’t eat, you can’t work and you can’t be fun anymore because you feel dead inside.

Then the guilt of not being there for the people that mattered to you all along, your community, eats you up and it makes you slide deeper into depression. You stay in bed all day and you feel powerless and useless. You know the people you have shared so much passion and a part of your soul with, still care about you and they want to see you, but your emotions tell you what a piece of shit you are and your anxiety and guilt further perpetuate this stupid loop, that your brain knows it’s pointless. But you still can’t snap out of it, even if the thing you want the most right now is to feel some hope and life inside of you and function.

You feel like your are mourning. You really want to heal. And you want to re-create yourself, but you don’t know how anymore.