Wednesday, February 26, 2014

"That I know more of the stars and sea than I do of what's in your head"


It's Beginning to Get to Me- Snow Patrol
I want something
That's purer than the water
Like we were

It's not there now
Ineloquence and anger
Are all we have

Like Saturn's rings
An icy loop around me
Too hard to hold

Lash out first
At all the things we don't like
Or understand

And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed

Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about

The answer phone
The lonely sound of your voice
Frozen in time

I only need
The compass that you gave me
To guide me on

And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed

Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about

It's so thrilling but also wrong
Don't have to prove that you are so strong
'Cause I can carry you on my back
After our enemies attack

I tried to tell you before I left
But I was screaming under my breath
You are the only thing that makes sense
Just ignore all this present tense

We need to feel breathless with love
And not collapse under its weight
I'm gasping for the air to fill
My lungs with everything I've lost

We need to feel breathless with love
And not collapse under its weight
I'm gasping for the air to fill
My lungs with everything I've lost


I know it's the crazy and yet I often can't stop it. If you'll believe it, this is actually the best that I've ever been in a relationship. If you thought me walking out without saying anything last week was playing games then....you really wouldn't have been able to deal with me even a couple of years ago. Just ask Moneypenny. Of course, one of the most common complaints from people in relationships with borderlines- that we are manipulative, that we play games. But I don't mean to. I wasn't trying to play games. I just knew that if I said one single word I would start to cry and my experience is that that is also seen as being manipulative or playing games, or just completely ignored because I'm too emotional to even talk to at that point. You know, because dismissing me will make me less emotional. 

It's not like you are the only one who has mood swings. It's not like you are the only one who deals with things that I don't see. Except I might tell you those things. I have no idea what is going on with you. Just as you, you have to be strong, don't really have access to emotions in the same way that I might, or even that Ginger might. Then it gets piled on that you are a man, that you are Dom, that you are Daddy, and now that you are Master. All that pressure must be overwhelming. I would imagine it doesn't leave you much room to breath sometimes. Fuck, most of the time. As if your asthma wasn't enough, the literal manifestation of all the things that leave you gasping for air. 

It can feel that way for me sometimes too. Monday, on a day when I was already suicidal, I spent hours looking for houses or duplexes with enough bedrooms, with the features that we wanted, and in the price range. But I don't know this side of town and so most of the ones that were in our price range got shot down. I mean, of course they did. Our price range is not very big. While my work has been saying that I might get more hours on a client after a meeting with the family this weekend, it is just as likely that I'll lose that client altogether. I've been sending out applications for real full-time jobs but with little luck. I've spent the last two days freaking out over how I'm ever going to possibly pay my way. Then work this morning was frantic and crazy-making. 

So it should come as no surprise that when I teased you about not watching shows without me, that I wasn't going to give you the password unless you promised on pain of hairbrush, and you replied Just tell me or don't, that my response was....full of curse words? over the top? dismissive? passive aggressive? Hell, I think the only thing surprising should have been that it hasn't happened sooner. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Usually, I crumple. But today I couldn't. I still have another work shift. I still have more shit to do. And when I get home, I'll still have more shit to do. 

I'm thankful and grateful that you apologized. And, in a minute, I'm gonna apologize for blowing up. Text is just a shitty medium to convey tone in and I'm sure that you didn't get that I was trying to be playful. We've both been on the other end of this particular dust-up. And just like you've been before, I'm tired and spent but I still have to go on. Even when I don't want to. Even when I don't know how to. Sometimes that means that my mood swings wildly or I'm a complete bitch or that I'm completely fucking borderline batshit crazy. Or all three at the same time. Sometimes I can see the train barrelling towards me and I still can't stop it. Hell, sometimes I don't want to stop it. But at least I'm telling you this. I hope that someday you'll be able to tell me something as well. Even if it is at what you think is the exact worse time possible. 

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Free Man

Watching 12 Years a Slave with you was hard. I suspected it would be. As I held your hand in both of mine, the first time that Solomon is beaten and whipped, I was filled with relief that this wasn't a reality for you. I know there are other realities but this specific thing would not happen to you as it had to people who looked like you, relations generations back. I remember talking to you about how so many black Americans had Irish last names, that freed slaves who wanted to throw off the last names of those who enslaved them often took the last names of the soldiers who freed them, many of whom were Union soldiers of Irish orgin. I realized how much I took for granted your strength, strong will and pride. How much I still don't understand about how you came to be you even after all these years of knowing you, several of which I spent sharing your bed.

After we parted ways, as you drove to your empty bed and the posting in the small town which give you too much time to ruminate alone, I was struck by how much I missed you. Missed that rock you always were. Missed the easy way we had when hanging out. Missed that big bed of yours and what we did in it. How much I wish i could help you through your loneliness like I did when we first met, when I felt like I was there more because you needed someone there than that you needed me there, but I was so glad to be of some use to someone that I didn't care.

One of the great things about my current situation is that I don't have to feel bad telling you, or anyone else, that I still love you. Belonging to him,  or to them even, doesn't change that,  nor does it need to. And i just wanted you to know.

Monday, February 17, 2014

"And in my hard hard heart there are these waters"

I've probably posted this before but I'm gonna post it again, with what is going on. I am not sure if I ever heard a song that comes as close to describing how I feel about my absentee father and this whole situation. (And it's not even a country song!) But some days my heart is not as hard as other days.


Keepsake - The Gaslight Anthem
It's been thirty-one years
Since she's been in your arms
But don't worry about Mama
Mama's got a good heart

And I'm not looking for your love
I'm only sniffing out blood
Just a little taste of where I came from

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Until I'm free

And it's been all my life
I've been wondering on the inside
What we could've had
If you'd had a part in my life

And there were children involved
And they were brothers to me
Even if we never got to meet

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Until I'm

Free at last from this shadow that hangs
Surely you wonder sometimes
And I'm sure you all sympathize
Just what a man's to become, just like his daddy's done
I just want to love someone
Who has the same blood

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Keepsake
Until I'm free

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Replaceable (updated)

I was gonna stay in there until the water turned cold but the hot water heater is either better or bigger than I had imagined. Or the water pressure worse. I was still sitting in the tub 40 minutes after I had gotten in the shower, the water from the shower head still trying to rinse out all the red hair dye. Fucking red dye.

The only thing he has said to me all day was good-bye when they left and I think Ginger probably reminded him of that. Over the course of the morning, I had asked him a couple of questions, if he was feeling better today than when he went to bed last night, if he wanted some scrambled eggs, but I got no response. He responded to Ginger's questions and not even in a horribly grumpy way.

I'm not sure if it's really my intuition or if the BPD is blowing everything out of proportion and I'm just seeing things in completely black and white terms, or a combination of the two as well as something else that happened recently, but, sitting there at the bottom of the tub, I feel how utterly replaceable I am, and that I soon may be. While it may be difficult to find someone who gets along as well with Ginger as I do, I know that it would take very little effort for him to find some other submissive woman to come over and play with him, have sex with him, serve him, even if Ginger doesn't like her and doesn't want the other woman around while she's home and awake. It would probably be better since he could just kick that woman out when he was done with her, only call her over when he wanted her. He wouldn't have to deal with her whining about wanting sex when he didn't or nagging him about all the things that she wanted him to do, like taking better care of himself or signing up for health insurance. He wouldn't have to battle with himself when he wanted to do better for her, because he cared about her and realized that things he did or didn't do effected her negatively, but being too depressed or ambivalent to do or not do those things. (Though I'm not actually sure that he feels that last one.) He wouldn't have to confront his ambivalence about having a child just because she wanted one and was getting older. He has a partner in Ginger. Why should he have the pains in the ass that come with another woman if he can just call one in for the fun stuff whenever he pleases?

It isn't that he's said any of this to me. Like I said, I can't tell if it's intuition or crazy. Given my past experience, though, sometimes the crazy is it's own intuition. Maybe it's just wishful thinking because it feels like it would be easier if he discarded me than for me to have to tell him that I don't know how to be with him if he continues to refuse to help himself, especially with the signing of a lease coming ever closer.

The crazy is being exacerbated by something else though. I found my biological father on Facebook last Thursday. It was quite by accident. Some fake person had sent me a friend request which lead me to delete the other friend requests that I had denied. Most of them were people that I knew but didn't want to friend, to share things with. But there was one that I didn't know at all. She lived in the same town as I had last known my bio father to live in. So I went to her page and then her friends page. There he was. When I went to his page, in his "about" section, he listed her as his stepdaughter. He claims someone else's child but not his own. And I'm guessing that if he abuses her mom like he abused mine, she probably wouldn't list him as a friend. Those of you who have been reading the blog for a couple years know that when his current wife tried to friend me, with no personal message or anything, I told her that her and her husband could fuck off, so I do get why he might not be trying to contact me right now. On the other hand, I'd like to think that if it was my child, I would have tried a little harder and on my own. I think the worst part is that I look in his face and I can see my own, but I would not know him if I passed him on the street.

I didn't tell anyone but Moneypenny until today when I told Ginger. Her and the Professor have both been feeling shitty, physically and mentally, for a couple of weeks. I was really looking forward to having people for Valentine's Day and getting to do things, even though I tried to keep it low-key and inexpensive, but I really wanted it to be good. So I tried really hard to put it to the back of my mind and work on giving us all a good time for the holiday. I might not have even told her today but she mentioned having seen an old friend/ sex partner on FB, that he lives in this metro area now, and that she had sent him a message asking him if he and his wife might like to go out to dinner with her and her people.

I think part of the reason that this notion is stuck in my head is that if I'm so replaceable to my own father, how can I not be completely replaceable to any and every one else? I grew up feeling like there must be something defective about me, if my own father didn't want anything to do with me. Not something that I had consciously done wrong, because I was too young when he stopped being a part of my life for me to have consciously done something. But something inherent in me. I had the balls to tell him and his wife to fuck off because I had had the epiphany several months before her friend request that he had only tried to get custody of me and not return me from visitation once to fuck with my mom, not because he wanted me or a daughter or even a child at all. Hell, he wasn't even fucking with my mom because he wanted her but just so he could have someone to fuck with, someone to have power over, someone who's life he could make miserable. And I don't honestly think I want him in my life. As petty as it may be, I want him to want to be in my life and it is infuriating that he raised some other girl but couldn't take any time to be a part of my life for the last 25 years. It sends my crazy brain back to that idea that maybe he saw something wrong with me back then, something he didn't want anything to do with, even if it was his child.

So, when I do know that it would be easy for the Professor to have someone else on standby, when I feel so unable to bridge the distance that is caused by I'm not really sure what, when I feel like he doesn't care enough about me or about the three of us together to help himself, how am I supposed to not feel like I am replaceable, like I could be dismissed at any moment?

**Update**
(Original post was around 1:30pm, updated at 7:15pm)
Maybe it was just the crazy talking. The Professor is all sweetness and attentiveness now and we've been playing catch-up on tv shows ever since I got home around 4pm. It doesn't change how strongly I felt this at the time, but that is part of the bpd that I am still having a hard time managing. And it doesn't change the stuff with my bio father or how all that makes me feel.

I am done with my graceless heart. Tonight I'm going to cut it out and then restart. ...And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't, so here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road. And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope. It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat. 'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me. -Florence + the Machine