Bad Broke Girlfriend, or The Times When I Sortof Wish I Were Single

It may sound backwards, but there are times like right now when I wish I were single--not because my boyfriend isn't super amazing, but in part, precisely because he is. It's me that's the problem, the weakest link in this relationship, and I hate that. I hate feeling like I'm failing to live up to my end of the bargain (which I clearly am this week), and much as it sucks to be totally broke when you're single, emotionally it feels worse now because I'm not just letting myself down, I'm letting someone else down. Maybe I hate it so much because it forces me to say it out loud, to admit how much of a failure I am this week, which makes it more real. It's not that I think I'm a bad girlfriend in general, and if I truly were this broke all the time I wouldn't have moved here, because I would never want to put that burden onto someone else. It's a temporary situation, but every day of waiting and checking the mail for that elusive, hopefully-to-arrive check, means one more day that I am not doing my share. There are things I plan to change in the long-term, but right now there is little I can do. It reminds me of being stuck in Austin during Sandy, and I'm not trying to compare my situation to people who lost their homes or worse, but I felt like a supreme idiot for having taken a work trip/vacation and then not having the means to sustain myself for the entire elongated time period. Having to borrow money then made me feel so low, so dumb, so weak, all things that are right up there in the Things I Hate To Be List.

No, I couldn't have predicted a natural disaster, but as an adult in her mid-thirties, I should have had the resources on hand to handle it, or I shouldn't have gone. I'm used to scraping by between freelance checks, but I'm not used to having to admit to what a mess I am to someone who shares my home. Not sure that will ever get any easier, and in a sense I feel like I deserve someone to be angry at me, to berate me, by my boyfriend isn't like that. He's too nice, which is part of why I love him and am living here, but it's also a shock to my system because it's not what I expect. It never is. I guess in the meantime, I just have to find other ways of being a good girlfriend, making amends, humbling myself by asking for help, and trying to make sure I'm smart enough not to fall for the "check is in the mail" line, and also not be reliant on that. Part of why I moved here is to become more of an adult, rather than a bratty, stupid childlike person floating through life. That's too easy, and that is not how to want to live. Yet the old ways catch up with you, and I'm seeing that now, and will see it next week when I go back to Brooklyn with contractor bags in hand to finish decluttering. For an impatient person like me, realizing that just because you want to be different, it doesn't make you different, is, well, frustrating. To realize you are exactly the same flawed, fucked up, hot mess, and therefore sometimes a bad girlfriend, just in a new town and a new state, is a little depressing. But I have faith that I can change and do better, and that, perhaps, now I have more of a reason to.