a challenge

I gave her everything except a challenge, and that's probably why it went so badly. People said--she said--I let her walk all over me, and I never really understood. It wasn't like it was a sacrifice, or if it was, it was one I made willingly.

Maybe I didn't understand what she wanted. That's always possible. Maybe she was hoping for something more from me. Maybe she wanted me to do something besides shrug when she made another request and didn't offer anything in return. Maybe. Sometimes she'd try to argue with me, but I'd never put up a fight. It just wasn't worth it.

Normally I'd say something changed but that's not true. Eventually I could tell that she'd gotten exactly what she wanted from me and she wanted none of it. Or, worse, she just came to expect it. Like maybe she deserved it from me. And eventually I realized that she didn't care, or appreciate it. And normally when that happens I'd just sulk, but this time I snapped.

It was brief and nasty. It didn't take much for her to go from exploitative to contemptuous, and for my part the venom was easy enough to unleash. To say that the split was mutual is to miss how much acid there was to it. Two living humans could not have been more hateful to one another. I was happy to be rid of her.

But now it's Monday night and normally we'd be watching television shows I didn't really like right now, and you know what? I'm starting to miss that.