It's late and I've been thinking...I want to have a baby. Not right now. I want to go to grad school next year and don't want to have to deal with breastfeeding and childcare, but I do want a family. I want to get married. I want to be healthy. I want to travel. I want to leave Washington. HAM does not want children, he refuses to get married, has already told me that he will not leave Washington when I go to grad school, and he said he wants to drink and will not stop, but he'll stop in front of me. I realized that stopping in my presence is not enough. Not getting married is not enough. Not having children is not enough. Not moving to be with me is not enough. He loves me, but not the way I need to be loved. I tried to break up with him because of alcohol, and he made me feel guilty about it, like I was totally out of line for wanting to be with a sober person. So then I tried to break up with him because he doesn't believe in marriage, and he made me feel guilty for that because "you'd rather just find someone who will marry you than be with a really good guy". God, he has this way of making everything that he says sound so reasonable and everything that I say sound irrational. But I know in reality that I deserve the things I want. I'm not asking for the moon, a million dollars, or to be the next Brady Bunch. I just want to leave Washington, get married, have a family, and be with someone who is passionately in love with me. Why the fuck should I feel guilty about that? How the fuck is that irrational or unreasonable or shameful in any way? It's not much. It's just a few things that I know I want for my life. Instead of just accepting that we are different and want different things, he wants to keep me as his girlfriend, keep drinking, never get married, never have kids, and never leave Seattle. It's not the goddamn life I want! I finally just conceded and said, "Okay, let's stay together. I surrender. I'll drink with you and I won't care about marriage, it doesn't matter. Everythings' fine." So I drink with him. I don't even want to, but fuck, if I don't drink with him, I hate him. I am seething with anger when he drinks around me and the only way to cure my disdain is to join him. I'm so fucking mad. I don't want this and he won't let me go. They never let me go. They always want to control me. He acts like he's so much better than all my other boyfriends, and yeah, in a lot of ways he is, but at the same time, he's set it up so it's cool for him to have female friends but unacceptable for me to have male friends. He's unwilling to read my writing or be supportive of what I'm working on. He refuses to acknowledge my past. If you deny my past, then you deny me. And by denying my writing, he's also denying one of the most important parts of me. It hurts. I'm tired of being judged and controlled and treated like a silly girl. He calls me "pet". That's his nicknmame for me. I'm not a goddamn pet. I'm a woman. I'm older than him. I know more by default. I know what I fucking want out of life and this isn't it. I want my needs and desires to be respected as valuable pieces of information about who I am. I want to go to grad school, live outside of Washington State, get married, and have children. I need a relationship that supports that, or I need my freedom. I'm tired of sacrifcing who I am and made to feel guilty about what I want. I love HAM. I'm mad at him, but I truly love him. I wish he wanted the same things as me, or that he was at least willing to meet me half way, but he's not. It's what he wants or nothing at all. I can't last in something so one-sided. I deserve to be happy, too. The things I want matter. Maybe not to him, but they matter and they're valid and I won't stop wanting them no matter what he says.