Monday, June 26, 2017

Exes

They say that the best revenge is a life well-lived

Last week Wednesday, we had a hard day. We are still learning each other. Some play got away from us just before work and that, combined with my crazy brain's need to verify that what people say or promise is true, oh and the lack of sleep and hunger, meant I kind of lost my shit. We spent much of the morning dealing with it via text and email while at work. Including him telling me that he would drop everything to come get me if I needed it. That if I was in crisis, he would come for me.

We were supposed to go out that night. His ex had just gotten back in town and was going to be having her birthday shindig at the weekly community event that he always went to on Wednesday nights. She had asked him not to bring me with him if he came, period, not just if he came for her birthday party, which he wasn't planning on doing, but if he just went to that bar. I'm sure you can guess his response. I had wanted to go, though mostly for selfish fucked-up reason. He was going to go even though my reasons were selfish and fucked up. But between what we had gone through earlier in the day and how draining that was, as well as the fact that his day doing his actual job was long and fairly training, he did not want to go out.

Earlier in the day one of his friends had said that he should not go to the bar, but that he should stay home and fuck his new girl. Of course later on having forgotten that she told him that, she was mad that he did not show up. Another friend even went so far as to call him a pussy for not showing up at the first day that his ex was back in town at the bar they all went to. Honestly the only part of whether she was going to going to be there that was ultimately taken into account in our decision that night was that we shouldn't take into account that she was going to be there, but that we should decide what we wanted to do with our night based on how we felt and how we wanted to spend time with each other.

In our community, things get sticky with your ex's. I am still friends with my exes on here, even have them on my page. Most anything you write can be seen by anyone. On this social media and on the more mainstream social media, I wrestle often with what to say or do because I am in full view of my ex's on here and of my ex's and their families on the other site. I'm happy, ecstatic about my new relationship, but I also don't want to hurt my ex's, or even upset their relatives, since we are all co-parent children together.

But it begs the question, who do I write for- the new person in my life who I know will be reading this or the person who is much more tangential in my life now, who only wrote what I had written when I begged? 

"Tell me what I said I'd never do. Tell me what I said I'd never say. Read me off a list of things I used to not like but now I think are ok" - Ben Folds Five

I also constantly wrestle with the division of my time. As this new relationship continues to grow and become more important in my life, and as my desire to spend time and energy on relationships that had ended but that I had been holding on to life a life preserver have diminished, I now wrestle with what is spending the proper amount of time and energy on my children and helping my co-parents and what is spending too much time and energy on my exes. So much of my life right now is flooded with guilt because I am getting that wrong, piled on top of the guilt that I am not able to do the things I had planned on doing when I assumed I'd be single forever, smothered in the secret guilty sauce of doing things while caught up in the NRE that I was so upset about someone else doing a little over a year ago. I've written and rewritten this part of this post several times, with more and less detail about the situation. As vague as all this is, I think maybe it best to keep it that way, to protect the innocent, as the old tv show used to say. Or maybe to cover my own ass. Who can tell at this point. More importantly, when did the place I used to come to spill my feelings, the feelings of my loved ones be damned, become just another place where I tied myself in the knots of the things I can't or won't say? 

This week, we aren't going to that event either. The group I like to go to is having it's monthly meeting. He wants to go with me, and it isn't like many of his friends have not said they were going to it as well. I am overjoyed to be able to go with my partner, my Master, when I had for so long assumed I would always be going alone and would never get to share this. I do worry that it looks like avoidance of his ex to the people he knows in the community, even though that didn't enter into the equation of what we would be doing. But how much can we live our lives thinking of our exes? Particularly if they were the ones who ended the relationship, what do you really owe them? What is just living your life as you wish and what are things you should avoid because it may hurt them, even when not meant maliciously?  

Thursday, June 08, 2017

Glass Slipper

"Your love was handmade for somebody like me"

So many things others didn't appreciate but I love. Hardest part maybe finding the balance between my desire to serve and your desire to care for. At least now that we've done orientation I know where things are, know about possible projects that I may assist him with. Is it weird that I'm excited about a sweaty day of reorganizing that garage so it is functional for the things he would like to use it for? Ok, ok, I'm weird. It's ok. 

Late a few nights ago, he had me pull things from his play bag. See what was there. See if anything interested me. Let him find something fun for the rest of the night. 

There was a soft cloth drawstring bag with something round inside it. He got a little smile and encouraged me to see what was inside. Inside, all shiny, was a stainless steel ring collar, with an O ring on the front. 

It looked much to small for me, but i brought it back with me to the bed anyway. After he popped out the pin, i moved my braids so that he could put it around my neck. And it fit. I still have no idea how. It had looked so much smaller that the neck of an adult woman. But it had. And it fit just right. 

I know it was bought for someone else. I know that should bother me. But it was bought for someone it didn't fit, like so much of him, so much of what he does. In that moment, it felt like my glass slipper. Just one I didn't even know I'd lost.