Monday, February 20, 2017

Update On a Naked Neck

It's not really naked today.  I'm wearing my own pearls, not the pearls of my old day collar.

I would very much like to just curl up in front of never ending bad tv but I can't. I have children and obligations and I can't get lost in my own sorrow.

I'm sad and I'm scared. But most of the time I don't feel like it's as bad as I did feel like it was.

Friday night he and I talked. We still have so much love for each other but know that nothing is working like this. His biggest push was just that I can't live with them anymore. We need to work out child custody and the wheres of living arrangements the three of us, with flexibility for our lives, but I will always be welcome in their home to be with the kids, presumably even if it's not my night, as long as we make the arrangements. He and i have hopes to go back to the secondary relationship that we think was working pretty well for us before I became pregnant.

I'm trying very hard not to give in to despair. It would be easy to do. It would be what I usually do. But everyone still needs me. Even if the ultimate goal is us living apart and having some sort of shared custody that works well for us, that doesn't mean that we don't still need each other in the arrangement we have right now, and won't need each other in the arrangement to come. And we're paving a new way here. Or at least we hope so.

One of his big points is that he wants us to do this before we hate each other. While we can still amicably work this out and be around each other. It will be a different sort of getting over him that happens if then with other couples who just break up. And it is something that I had to do with her as well when it came down that we were never going to be romantic partners. It is messier and weirder. It especially will be for him and I if we keep some of the sex and play but not the expectations of a primary relationship. But if we are actually invested in creating a larger extended family that can still be around each other and workout then it's what needs to happen.

Because child Arrangements have to be worked out with the three of us, those ideas are a little less defined in my mind. But I do have hopes for my own romantic life going forward, that I will one day find a primary who fits the things that I want and need and I fit the things that he wants and needs. A part of what I will be looking for is him fitting in with my family. Since I came along, he has talked about the fact that we need to add a husband to the family next. In his mind this person might not even  be sexually or romantically involved in our family, but is someone who wants to add their family to ours. Of course in my mind, this person would be a husband of mine who is sexually and romantically involved with me but who is invested as much as we are in having this larger extended non-traditional poly family.

Of course I know that this is going to be very very hard to find. Any of that will come secondary to taking care of the kids and sometimes to taking care of the larger family, since I don't think that we not living with them or having him as my primary means that I do not have any obligation to them, it just means that we have different obligations to each other. I also know that it is going to be hard to find all of the things that I want in a single person. Obviously there will be things I have to compromise on. And I know that it's a little intimidating to have someone like me in general but someone who's looking for the things I am, someone who wants so much.

I don't really know how to end this. Just that things are taking a shape. I'm mostly ok, though sad & scared. I'm hopeful that it will better though.

Friday, February 17, 2017

No collar

I feel naked without the collar. It's going to take some time to get used to. I have felt its weight for the better part of year, no I guess a little over a year now, and I hadn't expected it to come off so soon. And I still feel like if i could have it back, i would, though with the expectations that it entails to both sides.

It's hard to write because I don't want to say something that will sound bad against anyone. I still have so much love for everyone, especially him. On the other hand I have to write. That's who I am. I feel like I have lost so much of who I am in these last years, given it away to make room so that I could earn my place, that I have to keep some of it.

Really hard when in your heart you feel like you would have done anything for some one and still feel like you would do anything for them, but you also feel like the both of you are left with no real choice. At least without completely breaking everything you are and believe in. I have to keep reminding myself that they feel just as strongly as i do about these things on their side as I do. It's hard when both sides feel like they've given so much only to have what they gave be seen as unimportant to the other person and, in the end, not save it.

She seems happy though. Happy to be rid of me. He doesn't seem happy yet but he will be. I'll be just another crazy ex-girlfriend, but one who left him with an obligation, one he still has to deal with. I hope maybe some day he can be happy to be my friend and I his, maybe be able to have the great sex without things getting too muddled. He can be in the floozy box he should have been in all along. I hope that they can get back what they once had, long before me, long before a lot if things. Maybe she can be with one with two livein loves now and it can be even better.

I want so badly to be wanted and have someone else that worries about me. Not in a Negative way, but someone who cares enough to wonder about what I'm doing or to worry if I'm not somewhere on time. but I'm feeling like right now I'm someone that everyone wants to just get rid of. I know that seems backwards because i brought up leaving first. But that's what i always do when it feels like someone wants me out or it's at that impasse.  Because it's too hard for others to sat it, so I'll say it & do it. I don't know how this works for regular people .In the end, I know I need to make myself someone that I worry about. Maybe that I'll find someone who worries about me, who I won't feel that way about.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

I Feel Something So Wrong By Doing the Right Thing

I switched jobs. It was supposed to be the right choice but it hasn't turned out that way so far.

I was working 50-58 hour weeks, only one day off half the time. I was exhausted. I was a complete bitch. When I did get to hang out with the kids in the morning before work, I was falling asleep. He said I needed to find a new job months ago.

I found one. I didn't think I'd like it but it would get me experience closer to what I'd like in a different job. It was day-ish hours. It was only 40 hours a week. It paid less money. A lot less money. But I used to be able to get by on that kind of money. I had done some quick math that said I could get by on it. I asked them for their opinions. They were supportive of whatever I did and I should do what would make me the happiest.

I agonized for a really long time, going back and forth, especially since there was another position at the employer I was at that I had applied for which at the time said it would be less hours, though still 2nd shift hours, and more money. (Turned out that the hours probably weren't going to be any less so I didn't get the job when they finally did hire people, since I made clear that I didn't want to work 10 hour days.) What I really wanted was someone to have a real opinion as if it was there life too, as if it was also their happiness and financial well being that was attached to what job I took. You know, because to them it was OURS, not just mine. I wish someone had expressed their own opinions on how they thought they would feel when the childcare burden shifted or when I was home at a different time. I tried to ask and I felt blown off every time. It only mattered what would make me happy. But when you have kids and a family, it isn't always about that. Sometimes it's about setting yourself up best for the future. Sometimes it's about just sticking out shitty situations. It's about so many other things than that. And having a partner or partners were we could be completely transparent and honest about things from exact finances to how we felt about household burdens and everything else is what I want and what I don't know how to have.

And as things sit right now, I made the wrong choice. I don't like the job and very shortly I won't be able to completely make my bills. I'll be a little short every month, if I'm ONLY paying my bills. That doesn't count extravagances like flat tires and doctor's visits. I'm going to go back to looking for jobs, though I'm not sure how it will look that I'm looking again when I've only been with this company for a month. I've been lazy as well. I was going to use the time I now have after the kids go to bed to work on a novel or two. I have ideas for cheesy erotic bdsm novels that I could self-publish on amazon but I'm often really tired after cuddling mini-me to sleep and I often just want to hang out in the same room as the Professor and watch tv or read the internet. It's also been difficult to get down to writing. I can't find the headspace at work because they listen to crappy pop music all day long and I can't listen to my headphones and listen to podcasts or other audiobooks or my own music to let my ideas percolate through all that new knowledge and experience.

But I haven't even been blogging. I know it was a choice that I made but .... well, everything I wanted to say felt like airing dirty laundry. Some of it was stuff that I hadn't said to either partner yet, sometimes things I felt like I couldn't tell them. While it was my own decision though, it has made me feel so small and boxed in. I used to write often speciifically so others could read it, because I felt like I could explain things on the page much better than I could vocally. But the Professor stopped really reading what I wrote long ago. I was too wordy and he just wished I would get to the point. If he ever reads this, that's what he'll say too. There stopped being any point to writing for him to understand me better or better understand how I was feeling or how I thought about things. So then writing about us just became airing our dirty laundry. When you're in a relationship that you know others already criticize or in a group where people are going to blame anything that goes wrong on that ("well, of course it's not going right. you're poly/kinky/etc"), you can start to feel like you can't show the weaknesses there because it will get blamed on that. Or at least I do. I don't want to show my partners as bad people just vent about how things are, that things aren't perfect, figure out how I might fix them, just like anyone would in any relationship, gay or straight, kinky or vanilla, poly or mono. I've let the criticisms from both sides get in my head so much that I just shut down, pulled myself inwards.

But I'm done with that now. While I'll still try not to hurt people, I'll write what I want and when I want. When I know someone could do something to help a situation, I will tell them, even if I know they won't do it because I am just enough of a bitch that I want them to have to say that they don't want to help me or themselves enough to do that simple thing. I will take responsibility for when I'm acting like a bitch or when I start a fight or when I had a bit of an attitude, but I won't let other people blame me for every fight, for their attitude, for their bitchiness. I tried not saying things, sparing other people's feelings and make excuses whenever I could, but I'm done now. Especially because I'm done with others sparing my feelings. That always gets thrown back in my face, like I asked to be spared. I didn't. Others just didn't want to deal with me being emotional or upset, even if maybe I wouldn't have been or maybe that was what I needed because I didn't know I was doing that thing that upset/angered you. Maybe I should give you the same chance that I want. Though these seem to be my famous last words, I'm not sure it could feel any worse that what I"m already doing.