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we've been having an ongoing conflict about cleaning the apartment for the past few months. we moved in together in late december and through mid march i kept the apartment virtually spotless. then my brother blew up on me about how i should never clean up after him no matter what. so i stopped cleaning up after him and...... it just felt so depressing and frustrating. the apartment was never anywhere near as clean as i wanted it to be. he would leave food out all the time. he would scatter crumbs all over the place. he made food stains on the kitchen table and i had to get a tablecloth (i didn't tell him why i got the tablecloth because i didn't want to make him upset). i felt so disempowered, like i had gone from having a meaningful job of taking care of our apartment to being a pariah in HIS apartment. it contributed to feelings of depression i've been having lately, and combined with my all or nothing perfectionist tendencies i sort of gave up on cleaning up much of anything. this only made him more upset because for about a month he had to start cleaning up after me. he finally got fed up last week and stopped talking to me (well first he yelled at me until i started crying, and then he yelled at me some more. but then it was the silent treatment for the rest of the week. any time i tried talking to him he wouldn't say a word in response). then today we had another argument where i criticized him for getting to dictate everything while i'm expected to go along with all of his ideas no matter what. so he asked me if i had any ideas of my own. i did. i just want to be able to take care of the apartment. but i didn't say that, because i was afraid of how he might interpret it.

my brother is kind of effeminate but he's still very much a conventional male. i'm not, and i know that that can sometimes make people uncomfortable. sometimes i even weird myself out. (cont)