DLMD

Lately I've been battling a lot of fear and paranoia in my mind.  I feel like something out there is trying to bring me down because life has been going so well.  It's not that I don't think I deserve happiness.  Or maybe I do and choose to be in denial about it.

Having a 9-5 job is a huge change.  Well, in my case, a 12:30-9.  It's a tough shift to get used to.  I'm home when everyone's at work, and when everyone's at home, I'm working.  It's almost...lonely.  I wake up every morning at 8, do whatever needs to be done - if it's cleaning, laundry, yard work, going to the gym or running errands, I go to work, come home and go to bed or to my boyfriend's house.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  I have to keep reminding myself that it won't be permanent.  But I have now become just another American working for the weekend.  How do you all deal with it?  I miss the flexibility of my old job, damn near coming and going as I pleased.  But I don't miss all the stress and bullshit that went along with it, trust me.

Something else that has been weighing on my mind is my relationship with my boyfriend.  It's wonderful, no doubt.  He makes me incredibly happy and I know I make him happy but....do I?  I don't know if it's the fact that I'm about to get my period at any minute, but I have become super paranoid.  Let me preface these next thoughts with the fact that the last man I loved was a no-good turbo whore that fucked anything he could.  I could assume that at given moment, he was sticking it in some piece of trash with bad teeth and be right 99.9% of the time.  So to say that I'm scarred would be an understatement.
Now here I sit, in a relationship with a guy who is so good to me, and shows it.  He makes sure the coffee is stocked when I come over.  When my side view mirror broke, he had a new one ordered and the broken one replaced within 3 days.  He picked out a beautiful backyard statue for my mom for Mother's Day, gets along with my brother and adores my nephew.  He is aware of how close my family is and doesn't resent me for it.
So why do I worry?  Because I know all about his sexual appetite and wonder if I keep him satisfied?  Yesterday I told him I probably wouldn't be coming over after work because I was planning on going into  work today to rack up a couple of extra hours.  Then I changed my mind and said I'd come over.  The response I got was, "I'm gonna call it an early night, I'm so tired."  Okay, no big deal.  A little odd, considering that when I do ask if he wants me to come over he never fails to respond with "Of course!" tired or not.  What kicked my paranoia into overdrive was the abrupt stop to our conversation.  I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the second I told him I wouldn't be coming over last night, he made "other" plans.  I mean, it happened before, even though we weren't exclusive at the time, who's to say it won't happen again?  I'll just come out and say it - I can't possibly believe that he fell asleep within seconds of sending me a text message.  Maybe he was busy fucking someone else.
Part of me said, "Holy shit Dana, shift into a lower gear.  That's ludicrous."  The other part said, "You and he go at it like bunnies when you're together.  Tonight you're 20 miles away and would be none the wiser if he has someone else in his bed.  He's got free reign if he wants it, sweetheart."
I have no doubt my trust issues stem from past relationships.  But I'm not in his  face about it because he isn't the cause of them and I'm doing my damnedest to make sure he doesn't up on the receiving end of any backlash.  In fact, I haven't even brought it up because at first it wasn't an issue.  Yet my brain has decided to make it one and now I have to say something or I will lose my mind.
Now I know it's possible for this topic to be gender neutral.  Both men and women are affected by past relationships and how they've been treated by the opposite sex.  It's all in how we go about dealing with it.  Sure, I could have blown up his phone last night when an hour passed and I still hadn't gotten a response to a question I asked him.  But I didn't.  I did my best to calm my nerves and went to bed.
I don't know.  I don't know why I'm freaking out over this.  More than likely he did fall asleep.  But the little demon is telling me otherwise because that little shit is trying to convince me that I don't deserve someone capable of being loyal to me.
So sometime in the near future I will be addressing this problem with him.  When we first made it official he had no qualms about expressing his fear of getting hurt and at the time, I didn't feel any need to express mine.  But I think that time has come.