brave new bitch

he turns it around and turns it around and turns it around so that the issue is not that at hand, but something underlying, something about me.
something i need to change.
so that i'm the one saying sorry.
i'm the one feeling badly.
feeling all too familiar.
this is why i don't communicate. because i can't stand the trampling response. because no one ever likes for me to tell them how i really feel.
and this is why i only communicate in extremes. the email was a happy medium. and, really, could have been a whole lot worse. he doesn't want to admit it was self-serving. i didn't suggest the vacuum. he adopted it. he doesn't want to admit his percentage, however slight.
i cannot candycoat. i cannot censor my emotions. i cannot skirt the issue so that nothing is ever hurtful, so that things never sting. i cannot band-aid my every phrase. i cannot avoid things that might pierce, singe. sometimes it helps to hear hurtful things. sometimes there are things, raw and uncensored, which are necessary to swallow.
he suggested i statements, which seems not just kitschy, but very second grade to me. maybe it's more productive, as he implied. maybe it never gets you anywhere. maybe you run in circles with feelings that never intersect, with lurking accusations, itching to be made. maybe you never confront anything directly. it's all such a dance.
his method is strict strategy.
mine is upfront, flagrant, uncalculated. but real.
he said he didn't grow up in my family and is therefore not used to our method of communication. as if it makes us freakish to call each other on our shit. the screaming and yelling could go, but i think it's important to call a spade a spade. what if i told him he was being manipulative? how does that differ from his assertion that i'm insecure? he's not making i statements. i don't feel like i should be held to a different standard, just because he wouldn't say the things i say to my siblings to his own.
this is why we should not marry. because i would call people on their shit. and i would be widely disliked, a noble savage in a peaceful, sedate, soma-induced world of indirect emotion.
he said we're a good pair.
right now, i'm not sure where.
we need to find a new way to flow. not my parents. but not his, either. something our own.