Build a Better Boat

This was the first song that I heard as I drove away after dropping the kids off today. It was actually the first time I'd ever heard the whole song, but every time I heard it, I heard enough to know what it was about, and that it made me cry. And today god radio decided to let me hear all of it.

Build a better boat, Kenny Chesney

"Got friends to call who let me talk about

What ain't working, what's still hurtin'
All the things I feel like cussing out
Now and then I let it go
Around the waves I can't control

I'm learning how to build a better boat "

I worry about talking about this because I worry it makes me look bad. I worry it makes you look like a bad parent or bad mom, which I feel like anyway, which I feel like everyone believes me to be anyway. But I need to say it somewhere so I guess I'm going to say it here.

Being a single parent is hard. Getting the hang of it is hard. And I know that I'm privileged to have my parents helping me and I am lucky to have a partner right now, who does help, even if that help gets limited by several factors, including that my daughter just wants to follow me around all the time. But it doesn't mean that it's still not hard.

Their dad does the full-time stay-at-home parent thing and I'm definitely not saying that's not hard either. I know how frustrating and tiring it can feel just after a couple days when one won't listen and the other is throwing fits and no one is happy. Even just a full weekend can completely wipe out everything I have. Even though it hadn't been my plan when I started school, I have started taking on more time with my daughter because of that. He expressed that he was tired and frustrated and needed help and that she needed her mom more. So now I have her all weekend on the weekends I am not in clinicals (unpaid nursing apprenticeship) which ends up being 5 days on those weeks, and then I have her Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday afternoon and evening on the weeks that I do have clinicals. I still take both kids every other Tuesday and some of those weekends I have both of the kids.

The adjustment has been difficult at times. This weekend I have a test on Monday and the only times I might have gotten to study are after they went to bed, but I'm too tired. I just dropped the kids off early, but that was so that I could go into work on Sunday evening for inventory. I have no idea when I will get done. Then I work tomorrow and go straight to class to take the test. Generally, the only non kid or non class nights I have are directly before clinicals. And even with having more time, I don't feel like I get quality time with either of the kids except on the weekends. The weekend that tire and frustrate me are the only times I actually get to spend quality time with them because every other night is really just driving, dinner, bath, stories, sleep. 

And I don't feel like I get any right to bitch or complain. Others have it harder. Others do more. It's harder being the stay-at-home parent. I should have been doing a schedule like this from the start but I spent a year wrapped up in myself and in getting better and now I'm finally being a proper parent.

There is another thing. I dropped the kids off today and  their dad came out to help get them out of the car and their other mom, my son's biological mom's, came out to greet the kids as well. The four od them looked like a family, especially with her as the quintessential Mama Bear,  that her Facebook shows as well. Always working and sacrificing and never thinking of herself. (Which isn't untrue.) They looked like a family. Their son who I feel like it was made clear isn't "really" my son when we broke up, who I don't know how to reach or control. My daughter who often still feels like this crazy beautiful ball of light and energy but not what I imagined my child would feel like, ya know? They looked like what a family is supposed to look like and I was just there on the outside. (Of course, I probably know better than most where all the cracks are, all the ways in which they aren't perfect, but my rational mind isn't really playing a part in this. )

I am getting the hang of it though. If alone, pick parks and playgrounds where the boy-child has less of a chance to get away. But take them to the park, or to play outside, as much as possible. He's a loner and you have to keep teaching her consent when playing with other kids, since she wants to kiss and hug all of them. Car rides ensure naps. Sometimes they won't eat and that's ok. Make sure she doesn't eat too much or you'll be up with a puking toddler all night. Find ways to let her help. I can only manage one child if I'm alone at water parks and movies, etc. Remember all the grocery stores with carts that accomodate two children  (like Aldi.) Give up on making them go to actual sleep or on putting them in separate beds until they're actually asleep. When having both children over the weekend, shower at night to sleep in the next morning. The boy-child will not let you sleep. 

Don't mistake me. I don't want to go back to my old relationship just so I am living with the people I coparent with. There were things that were easier but it isnt what I want for my life anymore. And I don't want to not parent either. I know there is a way to blend what I'm doing in the work on myself and raising these kids, or at least my daughter, if for no other reason than I don't have a choice. But goddamn is it hard. And lonely. And often it doesn't have any good or right answers. And I just need the void to hear me say that. 

Your Own Little Island

I had a conversation just fall flat when I started on about something I find super interesting, that makes my soul sing, earlier in the day, which is why it hurt me so much when I saw it happen from the other side. He messaged me from some foreign land, having some great experience with people he had just met but felt an instant affinity for, the kind of experience that is exactly what he travels for, a feeling I have rarely if ever felt, something I don't know how to respond to. 

I've wrestled recently inside myself with thoughts and ideas that I don't yet have words to describe and am not sure I know anyone who would understand. It took me six months to stop hurting. It has taken me over a year to want to be the person I was when I met them. A person who was at once both open to love and practical. A person who wanted the truth and could let the truth hurt her while also being devoted to it. But I now have to find a way to be that again, especially when that isn't who many people, especially my partner, know me as. I also have to find a way to integrate everything into one life, the ideals and the realities, that girl with the experiences she's had since then. 

I'm at a weird place in my kink. I'm not even sure if I can explain why or even how. Every time I begin to write it, I think, "wait, no, that isn't exactly true either bc of this other experience." I don't feel like my body can take the same level of pain but I do still want it and to experience other things. I still feel the need for those things, especially for those things to have meaning. I want that and I want to serve. At the same time, I also have less tolerance for bullshit and posing and people who don't deserve my respect. I am more likely now to call people Sir and Ma'am because of where they stand in the community but I also have even less respect when I feel they don't live up to that. I'm not sure where I fit in. As always, I know that my partner and I will ultimately decide what works best for us and what names we choose to assign to that. And I know the things that really work for me and that really work for us. But I feel a bit in a tail spin about the rest though. I love our sex life. I love being his. I love being available at any time for his use, especially since selfishly it scratches my itch as well. I like that I don't have to initiate though I am working more on doing that so he knows he is desired. I like it rough. I like being hurt, though the circumstances there are undefined. I love serving him. I like serving select others with his permission. I like feeling useful in our community though I am selective about who I do that for or with. There. That is all I know. I don't even KNOW know that I'm a submissive, as I've felt decidedly unsubmissive lately, or a slave, despite being his slave. Maybe it is the company I keep, but I've even thought I might not mind topping the right person. I don't know. It's all weird in there right now. 

I am at a weird place about relationships. When my last relationship ended, I was scared of "sharing" my partner. I could barely process my emotions around every day living without falling apart. I couldn't do the heavy emotional lifting and communication that comes with an open relationship. I'm getting better. Maybe I'm still not ready to though. I didn't then and still don't feel like my relationships ended because they were not monogamous. I believe someone can see poly as a route to more and deeper commitments instead of a way to stay free, though both are valid and justifiable. I believe someone can love me and someone else, can push me to go on dates and explore because they want me to have experiences, not because they don't care. I believe that it is possible for everyone to be made stronger by having someone they love in their corner who also calls them on their shit when they are having trouble with someone else they love, even if the person they are having trouble with is their wife and the person in their corner is their girlfriend. I also know it can go horribly wrong, but it could go horribly wrong with no one on their corner or their bestfriend in their corner. I know I don't have the time or emotional energy to give to two romantic sexual partners. I hope that someday I am but I hope that relationship finds me and my partner, develops in its own way and time and with lots of trust and comminication and friendship between them. Or the other way around. I have hopes that my partner and I share more awesome sexual romantic experiences. I hope we find ways to develop our own trust and comminication together so we can take advantages of solo experiences and have the discernment to turn down ones that would negatively impact ourselves or our family. I am still struggling with how to express the beauty and freedom of soul I find possible in the way poly theoretically handles relationships while also demonstrating that it can be just as committed as any monogamous relationship. That freedom to do negotiated things doesn't translate to me as freedom to just do whatever I want and it isn't for me freedom to not let my partner have a large say, even ultimate say, in what I do. I also don't know how to express that living more closely with theoretical poly ideals is about making my life and relationship work better,  not about ending my relationship. 

I am also in an odd place with my interests. Well, no, I guess I've been here before but maybe I just feel more lonely in it than usual. At my current job, I listen to podcasts all day while I work. I particularly like ones about movies and Hollywood history. They drive me to want to watch more movies and to look at them with a new eye, both at the physical composition and the cultural, historical, and academic aspects. Almost 2 years ago, I watched this movie Martyrs after listening to my academic horror movie podcast, Faculty of Horror. It blew my mind. It was amazing. Then just last week, it was featured on another movie podcast The Canon, about films that should be in the canon of important films. Their conversation brought something new into it that the other podcast hadn't. Not only did I immediately want to watch it again but I wanted to talk about this really interesting idea they had brought up. But there is no one in my life who would be interested in it. For as much as several people in my life decry the fragmentation of society because we can all find people who share our very small and specific interest, there is something to being able to find those 5 people who all share your interest and can discuss something with you, even if they are all on different continents. It doesn't mean I haven't come to like the large, "everyone is welcome" weekly social for kinksters of all varieties. I just wish I could have these conversations with someone and it makes me really lonely when I realize I can't. 

There's a quote from Gone Girl that has always stuck with me just as much as the Cool Girl rant: "Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that's how the hating first began." Having the people you most love and like not like the real you is horrible. Having none of them get you might be the runner up to it though. You're still a part of the state but you're also alone on this weird island with all the weird beautiful things you love and people only make day trips before they get weirded out and go home. 

It's 1am. Far away from me, my partner and Master has gone to bed, where I can not care for him or serve him. I'm going to climb into a bed alone where I will not get enough sleep before the miniture humans wake me up. I feel like I've put some of my feelings into words but not all of them. Not even half. But it is something. 

Never gonna be easy

I heard this song for the first time tonight as I pulled into the grocery store. I had the thought "I wish someone felt that way about me" and I almost cried. I mean, i know the Emperor has told me before that I make his life easier, better. But there's another side where I know I don't. And I know well enough that that side is really large.

Sitting here tonight in my little cubby, in Ava's grotto, after a stupid fight, because I honestly could give a fuck about... well at this point sadly at all about the sexual harassment stuff that is coming out. At this point it feels like so many people have been accused and so many people habe said they've experienced it that I'd like to burn the whole damn world down because we're all fucking assholes and we've all been fucked over, but I digress. None of this shit pays my bills, does my homework, get my daughter any closer to being potty trained, so I don't fucking care right now. But we still argued about it. I thought it was just a discussion until suddenly it wasn't and it was just another way I'm not right. When he asked why I do this, I didn't have an answer. Because I just do. But that doesn't mean I want to change it. Even if it means I end up in arguments.  Ever wonder why I don't discuss things? Why i just slide through the world as often as I can anymore?

Look I realize I am hard to love, harder still to like. Why do you think I am ok being by myself? But sitting here I realized that I do all these other things because I know I'm hard to love and like so I go out of my way in whatever way I can so the people I love or like will continue to love or like me. Why did i do all those things in the last relationship? Why do I serve? Why do I take on so much? Why do I try to go the extra mile? Because it is what I can do to make up for the fact that I'm hard to love and like.

What it looks like vs what it feels like

The Emperor and I spent last night forging new friendships. As these are not people that were already his friends, not people that I am I trying to be my best me around, I could just be me. In fact that was a big part of last night, All of us being open and honest, so we could really see if we actually clicked. One of the members of the group is a therapist and called into question my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. She said that I exhibited a self-awareness and a level of empathy that most borderlines do not. It was a great compliment from a woman I m coming to like and respect. But, as I pointed out to the Emperor on the drive home, she has only seen who I am when I am out there. Not who I m on my worst days. 

A few months ago, the Emperor and I started watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on Netflix. The show centers on Rebecca, a Harvard and Yale educated New York lawyer who moves to e small town outside of LA to be near a guy she dated as a teenager at summer camp, with musical numbers in each episode revealing characters inner lives. Over the course of the first two seasons, she engages in all sorts of shenanigans (stalker behavior played for laughs) to get closer to this guy, even managing to date and become engaged to this guy, only for him to not show up for their wedding. This last Friday, we tapped into CW online to binge watch this season so far. After being left at the altar, Rebecca starts to spiral out of control and alienate her friends, her wacky hi-jinks becoming scary movie stalker behavior. She flees back to her mother's house in New York and her breakdown climaxes in a suicide attempt, hospitalization, and diagnosis as....yep, borderline. In the episode with the diagnosis, her therapist tells her that she must exhibit five of the ten symptoms that she lists. I ticked off what I feel I exhibit on my hand as the show flashbacked to our protagonist's behavior in previous episodes, as she her exhibits many of them. I got to 7. She got to 9. 

When we started watching the show, it was a bit of a lighthearted joke. "This is what it's like in your head all the time, huh?" the Emperor asked as the songs in Rebecca's head revealed her "sexy" getting ready time, which is not so sexy, and her hope that the sexy stranger she brings home won't be a murderer, and we see this very smart woman act in ways that don't always make sense and are often self-sabatoging. Obviously, he and I suspected that her crazy might also be my crazy. I still think that they managed to create a very flawed but still sympathetic character, especially for the viewer who has dealt with mental illness. But as this current season started to unfold, we were both faced with how dark life can get when dealing with this mental illness, especially given the parallels to my suicide attempt last spring. 

But I was impressed with how they handled it and felt good about how much better I was doing then last spring, or even a few months ago, when my depression reared its ugly head with the longer days and the time change. Then, our friend said what she said. I was feeling pretty good about where I am. 

Then today hit. Last night, I had several drinks and stayed up way too late, resulting in too little sleep before a very busy Monday at work. While I was at work, I mostly felt good. At least I didn't feel sleepy, but that is what happens when you are running around the whole time. I did have several periods through the day where I felt a little lost. Sometimes the amount of work around you, the sheer feeling that it is never ending, can be very daunting, can leave me feeling unsure about what to do next. But it was still mostly fine. Then came the text conversation about dinner. 

I am usually late from work on Mondays and the Emperor was supposed to have a work function keeping him out later than usual, probably later even than I would be. We don't currently have many things that would be easy for me to make that we haven't eaten a million times so this moring I suggested we scavenge - leftovers or cereal or soup, each person eating whatever they wanted. But over lunch I checked my calorie counter app and I had the calories in there to have fried chicken, which I had been craving. I decided to bring the idea up to the Emperor over text. Of course, I waiting until later in the day, as my day got to to it's busiest time, when I was already frazzled and wouldn't have as much time to answer back. I am going to write what the actual texts were, along with what went on in my head. Even as it was happening, a little part of me, a part of me that had a little more distance on the situation, could tell it was a perfect example of how I am not as ok as I seem. 

Me (3:46pm): I have room in my calories for fried chicken tonight. Would you like me to pick up some? Or do you have a better idea for dinner? 

Him (4:01pm): What happened to scavenging?

OMG it's not like that is always better calorie wise either. I'm kinda tired of cereal and there really isn't enough spaghetti for both of us. And I know that i'm supposed to be helping out with dinner ideas too but there just isn't much that I can make right now, even less that I feel like he would like. Maybe I could text the Professor and ask him how to make fajitas? How did he not make the meat all tough when he cooked it? If I got out early enough I could hit the grocery store. Ugh. But I'm gonna be tired and I don't want to do that. It's not like he's offering up any ideas or thinking he's going to not be too tired to cook. Fuck. I thought I was doing ok at helping out with the cooking. And I know that going out to eat all the time was a problem with his ex but I don't feel like we do it all the time and I'm going to be buying this anyway. Fine. Fuck it. I'm just not going to eat. If we're scavenging, he can scavenge his own and I'm just not going to eat. Maybe he's right. Maybe I don't need fried chicken. [Note to the reader: he never actually said that at all.] But he'll get mad if I don't eat anything because it will be seen as being all passive aggressive. And it is. And I shouldn't do that. Fuck. Ok, so what does he want me to make?

Me (5:01pm): Just been craving. Fits in my calories. If I get more than we need for tonight we can scavenge it later. It's no biggie though. We can scavenge what we have. 

Me (5:01pm): Just an idea. You didn't seem to like scavenge idea this morning.

Him (5:20pm): You can get chicken. 

How did he mean that? Was it like you say smiling to your kid that they can have ice cream after they make a good case for it? Or begrudging like you say "fine you can have ice cream" to your kid? Is he gonna be upset with me when I get home that I made a shitty food choice and a shitty financial choice for going to get chicken? Fine, fuck it. I won't get chicken. We'll just scavenge. But if I go back on it after he already said ok, maybe I'm going to have a fight about it, either now over text when he's about to go do work stuff at 6, or when he gets home because he got his mouth all set for chicken and I didn't get chicken. Fuck this is so stupid. I have no idea how he means any of this just by these texts. This is such a perfect example of a time when a normal, not mentally ill person would just be having a regular conversation and I'm making it into this whole argument in my head when we aren't even having an argument and I'm getting mad over things he hasn't said at all. And I'm probably only doing this because I drank last night and didn't get enough sleep. There is absolutely nothing here except for what I'm making it out to be. 

Me (5:53pm): Thank you Sir. Have fun at the work thing. I'm about to leave work now. 

You know what happened when I got home? We kissed, we talked, we sat down and ate our chicken while we watched an episode of our current Netflix show. That's it. He's not upset. I'm not upset. We're both kinda tired and will probably be going to bed soon. That's it. But for the better part of two hours as my body was doing work, my mind was convinced of a million things that we're true, which worked me up and made me frustrated, angry, sad, and feel like I was a shitty partner and girlfriend. For absolutely no goddamn reason. But that is what the crazy is. It's the ineffective but seemingly inescapable tape that plays in our head about how fucked up we are, how fucked up others are, and how fucked up our lives are until we believe things that aren't true or aren't true in the extreme way we now believe they are and then we act on false belief. The more desperate and/or helpless that tape leaves us feeling, the more desperate and extreme our actions become. No, I have never moved across the country for an old flame like Rebecca or done most of the crazy stalker-y behavior that she does in the show, but I have acted impulsively, extremely, ineffectively, and on ideas I was sure were true that weren't. I do better now. Most of the time. On most days. But I'm still not "normal" and I'm pretty sure I never will be. Not even in the ways that I wish I was or try really hard to be. But I still have to try. 

I think for me one of the most true things in the show was when Rebecca tells one of a friend who was very scared for her after the suicide attempt that she can't promise her that it won't happen again, even though she wishes she could. I often tell people that I can't tell them that either, and that I know for sure that I will probably be hospitalized more times in my life, though I do hope that it is because I chose to go into a hospital for a med change rather than after a suicide attempt. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do with ourselves is not set ourselves up to fail, to let "failure" be a part of the plan all along, to accept that we will fall off the wagon but what matters more is that we get back on it. 

"And you hold me down"

I strive to see both sides of a thing, to see as many sides as I can, to understand and give credit for all the underlying things that may contribute to someone doing the things they do. A common saying in the communities I travel in is to assume good intentions. The best I can do is to read complicated motivations into everything. Of course, the actors usually write things off as completely uncomplicated and unmotivated and my audience gets tired of me saying "to be fair..." to introduce why I'm going to write off someone else's bad behavior. Lately, I've stopped questioning people directly about their motivation and stopped defending them to others. 

Today I ended up in a situation I used to be all to familiar with. Wanted so badly to ask why. Had I done something? Or was it just all the things I'd done? But several things hit all at once and I hit my "fuck you" moment. A combination of things- how little changed, the ridiculous repeat of the same shitty behavior, how blind others can be or were, how I felt my compassion and guilt run out.  

And I'm alive
And I don't need a witness
To know that I survived
I'm not looking for forgiveness
I just need light
I need light in the dark as I search for the resolution

Difficulty Sharing

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles
In laughter, in strife

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life

How about love?

When i had dinner with TyRoy and his wife recently, his wife said that she thought a people should be together through all four seasons before they get married, especially getting to experience all the holidays together, seeing how each person and their family handles them, as she talked about her daighter making wedding plans with a newish boyfriend. Despite how much I like rushing into marriage, I don't disagree.

I don't feel like my family has a ton of set in stone traditions. Those are mostly trying not to fight and having way WAY more to do than I actually have time to do so I'm super stressed out. Oh, and a ton of crying. The last two years, we had the new holiday tradition of me forcing a tight schedule so we can visit everyone's family while my then partners were annoyed and frustrated with me for it. This year Im starting a new tradition where I try really hard to be happy for my exes and my kids to do holiday stuff without me while attempting not to die inside or start fights with my exes or my current partner about the exes, whether accidentally or on purpose. Pretty proud of myself for doing well on that so far. But none of those are really traditions a new partner wants to hear or fold into their own. 

I actually feel like any "traditions" I have are just the things I like to do or have. Just a tiny bit of snow on the ground, please please please? Eggnog. The Muppets and John Denver Christmas album. Alt rock and weird Christmas music, especially "the heartache can wait," "merry christmas from the family," "winter song," "good day for a new year," "I'll be hating you for christmas." Saturday Night Live Christmas episode. The Grinch. Movies that happen at Christmas but aren't about Christmas like Die Hard, Gremlins, Rare Exports, Black Christmas. 

Rent is one of those movies / CDs as well. I came to it very late. It had played at the theater for travelling Broadway shows that I'd worked at but it hadn't really gotten to me. Then, a chick I was on a date with played the album for me and from the beginning harmonies of Seasons of Love I was hooked. The date was in the fall so listening to it going into the holiday season that year just felt right. I had a copy of the first disk in my cd alarm clock and I woke up to Seasons of Love everyday. It was great. Then the movie came out just a few years before I started losing members of my family. If I remember correctly, I went to see it with my mom, my uncle, and his boyfriend, maybe my ex (or was he still my bf then?) Moneypenny and maybe my uncle's ex-wife, over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It was awesome. I Ioved it. I cried so much but it has a heartwarming, if stupid, ending so it is mostly all good in the end. 

My favorite song might be "I'll Cover You," both versions of it. I listened to the duet version on the way to work this morning. I was a fan of Jesse L Martin from his days on Law and Order before I realized he was Tom Collins in Rent or the Negro League's baseball player on The X-Files who can't play in the Majors or someone might realize he's really an alien. The love story between Tom and Angel is the sweetest love story in the show, and the one least complicated by the characters being selfish assholes. The duet of the song is fun and sweet, making Tom's version at her funeral all the more gut-wrenching. 

Live in my house
I'll be your shelter
Just pay me back
With one thousand kisses
Be my lover
And I'll cover you

Not to embarass him, but for all the romantic gestures he's awesome at, the Emperor is not one to be able to remember lyrics or connect songs to just the right moments, so my dreams of doing that duet with the genders reversed are out the window (which is ok because he is amazing at so much other stuff he doesn't need any more) but I was thinking about singing it to him. 

Open your door
I'll be your tenant
Don't got much baggage
To lay at your feet
But sweet kisses I've got to spare
I'll be there
And I'll cover you

Which made me think about sharing it with him. I know Rent is one of the few musicals he hasn't seen, though I'm not sure why.  (Maybe I should ask why before I try to make him watch it.) While I love it, I also know that it is maybe not as awesome as those who love it feel it is and it is kinda a downer, which I'm already accused of liking too many dark and/or downer things, so maybe just make him listen to the good, upbeat songs? I don't know. 

This is the hard part about sharing so many of the things I love. So many are dark and/or difficult that if the person doesn't already love it, it can be very difficult to talk someone into checking it out with you. Also, I'm usually trying to watch things on multiple levels and it's hard to find people who watch it like that. Or I'm a bit intimidated by the people who do becasue I'm an amateur at many of these things, with a horrible memory, and the only people who look at things on those levels are more at the professional level, with good memories, so I'm just a poser compared to them and I worry they aren't interested in talking to me anyway. It didn't used to be as much of a problem though because it just meant that my "me time" was spent exploring these interests and sometimes it would open up interesting conversations to have with my partners later. But now I feel like I should be sharing these things, like he'd like to be let into my world more, and I just don't know how to do that. 

I think they meant it
When they said you can't buy love
Now I know you can rent it
A new lease you are my love
On life
All my life
I've longed to discover
Something as true as this is

My Silence

I just couldn't sit there anymore. It was worse than being new. Being new and speaking means just overcoming shyness after you've taken the temperature of the room and the conversation. No this was that I couldn't find a single helpful thing to say - not helpful for them and not leading to a helpful thing for myself. And I couldn't even share my eperience. Then, I got called out on my silence. Fuck. I'm sure it did stand out, in a group that is used to me offering my opinions and experience more than most. No, I just couldn't be there anymore. I used the first excuse I could and I left the room. We had talked about leaving early to swing by our usual Wednesday night haunt anyway. I didn't want to make a scene, interrupt or even to be seen as eavesdropping, so I walked by, knowing that he'd come to find me when I didn't come back through and then we could leave. Thankfully, I was right and we did.  But I cried and had a hard time explaining why. 

So I'm not great at adulting. I can manage most things ok right now but... this new world of couple-dom often throws me for a loop. One would think it would be easy. Most of our media portrays straight couples, people in serial monogamous relationships. That is what we are surrounded by. But I was raised differently and have lived differently. The fictional portrayals of the most comedic and dramatic moments of often seriously flawed characters who rarely get anything right hasn't really helped me much lately. I have spent the last decade in open relationships where I largely lived a life of separate friends and relatives. I never shared a larger group of friends, much less a larger community with my romantic partners. And actually my parents also didn't have a larger group of friends or a larger community like that. I rarely had to worry about how what I might do or say, particularly what I might say about my partner, would reflect back on them or us as a couple. Yes, of course, I have become increasingly aware over my relationships that what I vent about during a fight or during a difficult time to a friend or relative might be damage their view of my partner in ways that I later need to repair to ensure that everyone continues to get along, but I also know that my friends and relatives have always been good about treating my partners well while I was with them and not bad-mouthing them to me based on things I had vented about in anger. What I haven't had to worry about was shared friends or the larger community that we belonged to. I never even dated people in my own high school when I was in high school. And I've never dealt with that while within a Master/slave relationship. 

Now, The Emperor is from a different generation, grew up in slightly more polite and refined society and family, and has spent his whole life in couples and couple-oriented social groups. Even if they weren't always monogamous, the rules were not those of the poly world or the more casual dating world. They were still very much those of the coupled world, including that what you did very much affected and reflected on your (primary) partner. He often assumes that because I am smart and can be very intuitive, I should be able to easily figure this out. But often I can't even start because I have very little idea that a thing could be a problem. And of course all this is magnified by the M/s dynamic. If my poor behavior would reflect badly on him normally then it is doubly so when he is my Master and should be in charge of me. 

But...we are also just people and we are still new to this. We are still new to each other. We are still new to having an M/s dynamic together. I am still often having mental health issues. We are also very passionate people and... well, we've never really been able to use the 24 hour rule or calmly bringing up that there is an issue and we should have time outside of our dynamic to discuss a matter as equals because it usually comes to a head before that. Maybe I'm not as good at being a slave as I should be. While I want our dynamic to be 24/7, I'm probably not as good at sticking to that as I should be, as respectful as I should be. And he's never going to be one of those super serious Masters who demands I always be super serious and respectful. He likes to joke and laugh and have witty banter. All these things taken together means that the topic "how do you deal with something being wrong in the relationship? How do you discuss that with the other side of the slash?" used to jump start the break out session might have been really useful for me. But all I could think about was how this might make him look bad. Not only were there people in the room who we are acquainted with socially, but also a friend and former play partner of his, a very nice quirky woman who, strange to me but completely normal for the community, is now dating someone I went on a few dates with. Previously, when I'd gone to the local group for submissives, we met in the leader's garage and no one knew my partners then, or even knew people who knew my partners. I felt safe discussing my issues in the relationship and in balancing the D/s then M/s and the poly with the rest of our lives. I did try to balance out what I was saying with positives in the relationship and in my partners, but I still didn't worry the way I do now. 

I often fall victim to black and white thinking. If a thing is wrong in this situation, then it is wrong in all situations. Or I at least can't differentiate between when it is wrong and when it is ok. It feels very confusing for me. The Emperor tends to refer to this as "fly in amber moments." Sometimes, if something I've done has gone wrong or caused problems but I didn't fully understand why, I would just prefer to not do that at all than risk repeating those results. I don't really understand where the line is and I don't trust that something I might say wouldn't hurt his or our reputations or get back to him in some way and hurt him. So I felt like I couldn't say anything. Which was horribly uncomfortable and sad for me. So I left. 

I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't really know how to do this. Sometimes I don't feel like there are any right answers. 

Take my leaving slow

I leave as slow as I possibly can. Hoping my phone chimes. Clean the cat litter so they've done even if I'm not there. I figured you taking the two hours wash your shirts a little too much. I keep waiting for one of us to change our minds. I think that Ani DiFranco song that is he hopes it maybe someone kicking someone else and as well because it it's everything out of the way other people's love for each other. I make multiple trips when I could make one. Check text message in the car. But in the end I drive away. I posted somewhere so you can know it was hard to leave. But after so many times and being told I finally listened. I hope I'm hosting this privately enough that you won't feel shamed or called out but publicly enough that you can see it if you ever want to.

Meaningless

Watching a video on how to replace the headlight bulb on the car while being suicidal. I mean, who the fuck cares, right? Who cares if that damn lightbulb gets changed? I don't even care if i see tomorrow. Who cares about a lightbulb?

Of Shields and Extremes

The last 24 hours or so have been very intense and complicated. I feel compelled to write but I don't know how or what to say. I worry that whatever I write will be taken wrong, taken as a slight or a judgment, or that I want something to change. I don't want any of that. I just want to be honest about my truth and have people read it. This may be a bit jumbled and is a bit long, so please bear with me. 

Last night was the monthly meeting of the M/s group, a thing that is my thing, that caters to how I best like to interact in larger groups and that I've been so happy to have The Emperor [yes, that is the pseudonym I've landed on] come with me to, so proud to be able to show off my Master and companion to the closest thing I have to my own group of people in the bdsm community. When we came home, we had amazing, painful, kinky, sub-space inducing, tear-inducing sex and bedded down to finish the first tv show we had started together, Sense8, while touching and kissing and talking. He said I was perfect for him, among a host of other complimentary things. I think between those three things, going to the meeting together, the sex, and the talking, the boundaries I usually have were completely down. We've had this happen before. One night, at the end of a particularly difficult week, once we got a night together, with time to play, we ended up doing less impact play than had been planned and more up close and personal pressure points work along with some breath play while sitting on the loveseat, our bodies pressed against each other. Soon, all the walls were down, the walls that I had that were not only keeping out the rest of the world and all my pain and grief and sadness but were also keeping him out. 

I spend so much time behind those walls. As I thought about them today, I couldn't help but think of the way shields are talked about in the Anita Blake books. For those who don't read them, it's a series of contemporary supernatural fiction, if vampires and shapeshifters and all kinds of other paranormal and psychic creatures/people lived semi-openly in this society, set mostly in my birth city, with a badass zombie-raising, rogue-vampire-executing curly-haired woman who over the series becomes part of triumvirates of power with other shapeshifters and vampires and feeds off sex as the main character. She uses psychic shields to protect herself from being overwhelmed by other people's powers or emotions. In the middle books of the series, while she is still trying to adjust to the first triumvirate, which is with two men she very much loves but who she struggles to choose between, she shields herself from them, which protects her emotions as she adjusts, but also makes them weaker as a force. Without access to the books, I was trying to look online to find the exact quotes, but I couldn't find any that exactly encompassed what I was looking for. I did find it telling that in one book when trying to describe shields she says that they can be made of any substance in your mind, fire, water, metal, stone, as long as it surrounds you in your mind and makes sense, so that no two will actually be alike. In the books, she envisions hers as a stone wall or a tower. I think that is very telling. Unlike water, which would let more things past but could also envelop things you didn't want in droplets of water, or fire, that would burn up anything that got past it, she envisions a stone wall or tower, like a medieval castle. 

The Emperor and I are just starting to read a book about how to deal with someone you love having borderline personality disorder. Something that I read yesterday has got me thinking. The author writes about how many borderlines by their 20s or 30s start to under-feel more often than over-feel, because what they've learned is that their emotions get them into trouble, are bad or wrong, are not what people around them want, so they find ways to not feel them, which can even be disassociating, though often all that emotion will come back with a vengeance when they can't push it away or disassociate from it. A cause of some friction in the relationship has been that I tend to withdraw from him when I start to get overwhelmed by emotion. I felt like this was a coping mechanism that I have been using for awhile to get some distance from my emotions, since I am usually aware that they aren't justified and I don't want to act on the emotion without thinking, to have things come out of my mouth that aren't true or fair. But now I wonder how much of that is disassociating from all emotion, how much that makes it all the more overwhelming when I have emotions that I can't withdraw from because everything has built up, and how much this is me putting up completely impenetrable shields. 

There is an exchange from the television show Bones that has stuck with me for years though I've only now been able to find the exact quote. The main characters are talking about getting together as a romantic couple sometime in the future. Bones, ever the scientist, says,"You know the difference between strength and imperviousness, right?... Well, a substance that is impervious to damage doesn't need to be strong. ... When you and I met. I was an impervious substance. Now I'm a strong substance.... A time could come when you aren't angry any more and I'm strong enough to risk losing the last of my imperviosness. Maybe then we could try to be together." I have always liked that idea, the strength it takes to allow yourself to be open. But I feel like all these years have taught me that I don't have the strength for that, that I only have the strength to hold my shields, not the strength to allow some things in but keep others out. I am always all or nothing. Open or closed. But being open to let others in is also open to letting me out and I feel like no one wants me to be let out and I'm not always sure that I've very smart about who I let in, or able to deal with the inevitable hurt that comes with that, even unintentional hurt. 

Letting those shields down with him is amazing. I can feel how perfectly we do fit. I can feel how safe I am with him, safe to express my deepest and darkest sexual and kink fantasies without fear of reproach, safe to enact those fantasies that are possible. I can fully feel how we can be the blank canvas that we each paint our desires on. I can feel vulnerable and small and cared for, as well as hurt and desired and pushed. 

But I don't know how to get them back up and being that open and vulnerable out in the world where I still walk so much of it alone is excruciating and tiring. It is probably more difficult to get those shields back down again, because I don't yet have a grasp on exactly how to get them down. They are so automatic that I don't feel them being there. I only feel when they are gone. But I don't know how to get them back up. And I don't know how to make them something that doesn't cut me off from everything, from my emotions and from my closeness to my love, while they protect me from the outside world and from the emotions overwhelming me. 

I'm also fighting with how extreme my desires can be. Even though they scare me, even when I feel like they are wrong or crazy or don't make sense, I am all or nothing, jump a cannonball into the pool instead of sticking a toe in, black or white, push it to the limit kind of a girl. No, I may not be as much of a masochist as others, may not be able to stand as much as others, but when I like something, I will want to push it to its extreme. When you're talking about the kink or the roleplaying or violence, that can be fucking scary sometimes. The things I want in my head can scare me sometimes. Not "oh, I'm embarrassed to tell someone this" kind of scared either. But the "this can get out of hand really quickly and borders on so much abusive and terrible territory, but it is such a turn on and makes me feel wanted and desired in a way that less than this doesn't" way. I don't write this because I want my sex or kink life to change, but in way of explanation, both in what I want and why I want it as well as in why it is scary and why I can feel so overwhelmed by it at times, that sometimes the carefully interwoven fantasy of fear and desire can be so easily unraveled, can so easily unravel me, when the enacting of it pulls just a little at the delicate fabric. This isn't to say stop, but to explain why sometimes suddenly can't breath and am about to cry or want to curl up in a ball or have to take a few steps back to walk it off when you thought you gave me what I wanted, when you just said a few words. Because anything you find worth doing, you find to be worth overdoing. Because you finally trust that you can tell someone your deepest and darkest, or close to, and she'll treasure you all the more for it. Because I want to take what you want to give, what you've wanted for so long to give, but where afraid would scare a girl off. But it isn't you that I fear. It is me. It is that I am not afraid that scares me. It is my own desires that scare me. But please, don't stop.

I'm taking the wrong streets home because you told me to get food on my way home. I don't want to eat. But I figured it would look worse, look more petulance, look brattier, if I didn't eat anything then if I choke down a crappy fast food sandwich. But it would be choking it down.

So early to already be here. Holding you hostage. Making you walk on eggshells. Both of us crashing into those things that angered us so much about previous partners or our parents. So frustrating and hurtful. I would cry if i didn't feel so fucking empty and lost and yet trapped. 

You must feel the same. You took your ball and went home when you could. Maybe it's time for me to do the same. I really hate being just like all the rest. I know i stay too long. Has it already been too long? 

What does it mean when you can find your own way there and own way home but you don't want to anymore? Not like how it did when i decided to look for someone but to really know what it's like to have someone to zip your dresses and put on your necklace, or better yet your collar, on every morning and do the reverse at night? 

Or maybe I'm not supposed to be with someone. The crazy is all the companionship i can take. Much more than any other person should be asked to shoulder. Your partner is yoked to you and shares your load but it shouldn't be that heavy all the time. 

But it would be so hard not to crawl back, over and over. I'm not that strong. The sex, the companionship. I'd have to blot out the memory of the address. Lock up my keys after 10pm. Lol. Yeah, that's it. 

Better go get that stupid sandwich. 

We Used To Be Friends

I went to the ER Sunday after a weekend spent in pain. I was supposed to have Mini-Me for that whole weekend. I only got to see her for a few hours during her brother's birthday party. At least my parents were able to help you get a break on Saturday. I think that you didn't believe I was sick until you saw me on Sunday. Or you didn't care. Help was offered as I left the party to drive myself to the ER, since my new partner, who has yet to get a spiffy pseudonym, was out of town, but I felt the politeness of it. Today when I went to pick up Mini-Me after my follow-up doctor's appointment, you didn't ask how I was feeling or what had been wrong with me. 

We used to be friends. I thought we still might be. I'm sure if I asked you, you'd say that is how it goes when you aren't living together anymore and that I'm not around anymore. To other people, I'm sure it has much to do with me dropping the ball with the parenting in the past few months, as we truly cut the romantic ties and moved into separate spaces. When things became more difficult on me, I broke and wasn't able to step up to the plate like I had planned. I have a feeling you feel like I chose a new partner over my kid(s), over the family we had. I know that I fucked up several times by not being where I was supposed to when I was supposed to. I know that for you and yours the why of that doesn't really matter, just that I didn't. 

But weirdly I hadn't thought it would make us not be friends, make us not care about the other. None of those things that we had in common went away. But you barely answer my texts. I don't hear about the kids, much less your life, not even when I ask. I guess that is what I deserve. My abdication made being a parent a bigger part of your identity than it now is of mine. It also burnt up any shred of care you still had for me. I tend to do that. Burn up that caring with need, even if it is a need I have created by my absence. 

Maybe we were never friends. Maybe we were lovers and then parents and we created what looked like friendship to fill the spaces. I had thought she was my friend too. Until I burned up her care and we realized how little we truly had in common. The more time spent apart though, the more I am unsure why I want to be friends except that ...well, I do that with exes. I feel this need to try to salvage the friendship we had, or that I thought we had, because I make my partner my bestfriend, in a world where I have very few friends to start with, so I don't want to lose that. But maybe your partner never really was your friend. Maybe when you operate the way I do, they are a different third category, the lover-friend? Lend? Frover? Maybe once one is gone, the other goes with it.

Honestly, I don't even know why i want you to care. Because that's really it. I want you to care. Just like I wanted you to care then. Like I wanted her to care. Care in a way that made sense in my head at least, which I've learned is the real trick. If you didn't then, why would you now? Why do I want you to? Why do I still care at all? 

And yet I go to bed tonight wishing I could have that easy conversation with you, sharing about parts of our lives or our minds or the world. Not because I want that romance back or the sex back. But just to have an exchange of a few messages with someone who is like-minded on the topic, or at least knows it. At this point in things, isn't that what friendship is? Or a significant portion of it for us? But that seems gone and I don't even know how to ask about getting it back. I think the answer is either that we were never friends or to go back in time and be someone else then and someone else now. 

Time

The time alone. More properly, what your mind will do in that time alone. That is not a part of the sales pitch for the poly or open lifestyle. When it is brought up, that time alone is framed as a good thing. Time for you to hang out with friends. Time for you to do things you want to do that your partner doesn't. 

I'm supposed to be at my parents' house, exhausted after a long day that had an early start and a nice playful evening with my daughter. I was supposed to get to enjoy being with my daughter all weekend and that would distract me from this time alone. Of the seven nights we were apart, i would be spending five of them with my daughter. The other two I would spend doing things in his house, our house, cleaning and unpacking. 

We aren't poly but not quite monogamous either. I had offered a hallpass while apart, especially as things this week went worse and worse. Except now there is a new complication so that hallpass comes with strict limits. This week hasn't turned out at all like it was supposed to. At all. It was supposed to be one of the most productive weeks in recent memory. Instead I have gotten almost nothing done. Hell, i didn't even empty the dishwasher. (Sorry Sir.) I am sick and in the worst pain I think I've ever been in, which I can only control if i lay down and don't move around very much, in our bed, alone, realizing in the past few days that I don't have anyone to take care of me. I'm trying to focus on my book, but all I can really think about is the seconds ticking away, between when i hear from him, between when i know what has happened and during which anything could be happening. 

Nope, this isn't in the sales packet. I always tended to keep myself busy during these times so I didn't have to think about it. Because I am me, this time is only twice as nerve-wracking as other time without him, as that time can still be nerve-wracking. (I am oddly comforted by the fact that he deals with the same feelimgs when I am away from him.) I just hadn't anticipated that I'd be alone, in pain, and laid up with plenty of time to wonder about exactly what is happening. 

But I didn't take back my limited hallpass. In the time I've been writing this, he's texted and the companion for his fun has gone home. I don't begrudge him whatever has happened between them, just as i didn't last night. This was not a trap or a trick. I wanted him to have an outlet and I am glad for whatever he was able to have. I much prefer that I gave it, even if that time of uncertainty stretched in my head into some of the longest hours of my life. I don't believe that it changes anything about our relationship. I don't believe we hold less faith with each other. 

But they really should put what that time does to your head in the packet. If only in tiny tiny print, read really fast, like they do on ads for medication. Maycauseanintolerablelengtheningoftimeduringwhichyouimagineeverythingyourlovercouldbedoingwithsomeoneelsebothawesomeandterrible.takeasleepingpillandwatchahappyshowonnetflixtilyoupassoutiffeelingscontinueformorethenfourhours.

The Night Is Dark And Full of Terrors

I love a dark house after everyone has gone to sleep. 

Maybe it is just a love based on familiarity. For most of my life, I have been an insomniac or a night owl, almost always up later than my family. Wandering a house after dark, the ways to guide yourself through a space with only the light from the windows and that one kitchen light that's always left on are well known art forms for me. In long term relationships, when staying in their home or after moving in, there have always been nights like this. Bittersweet nights spent wandering someone else's space, just me and my ghosts and theirs.

Tonight is such a night, though not in the usual vein. Older now, with less insomnia and more things that make what sleep o can catch precious, i haven't done this thing in some time. But tonight i am in pain, sick in so many ways, and cannot abide the bed, or even sitting for very long. He would be with me if I asked. But he needs sleep too. There is also very little he can do for most of the pain. So i have left him to his sleep, however fitful it may seem. 

I like change. I grow restless without it. I will find something new to learn or try or to get trained in when i start to feel restless. But i also can get overwhelmed, perhaps more easily than others. New job, new relationship, moving, new childcare arrangement. All so quickly after a crisis. I am overwhelmed. I cannot cry properly, cathartically, when i need, from pains internal or external. Maybe after a life of solitary tears, i have just run out. 

I wish it was raining tonight as the poetess' words run through my head

but the rain 

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 

Upon the glass and listen for reply, 

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain...

And yet, i am still soothed. Hydration and meds and movement finally seeming to have settled the worst of it. I am glad for this bonding time with this new dark house, where I am less lonely than i have ever been on my moonlit wanderings.  

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?  

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. 

Pulling back

You show someone how to live without you. How to get by on less and less until leaving is more a matter if disrupting the status quo. 

You'll think i pulled back because of him. She fell for a new guy so she is putting all her energy into him. No, i had already had my hand slapped away enough that i still could have put the same small amount of effort into you that i had before. 

But i saw how scared he was of going overboard for me and realized that someone had made him feel like a pest, like an annoyance, like just accepting his attention and love was work. And i realized that was how you felt about me.

So as much as i could, i stopped. Stopped the one or two nice check in texts I'd do during the day. Stopped offering nice things. Stopped offering physical affection.  

You Ruin Everything

I don't really trust my own judgment anymore. There's always someone to say that my decision isn't right. I feel like both sides are right, leaving me doubly wrong but having no clue what to do about it. I just want things to not tense or an argument and for no one to be upset with me about anything. And I am kinda ok doing whatever I need to do to make that happen until I can be in my own space, shut the door, and feel however the fuck I want to feel. Because I can't feel anything right now. Feeling anything is too dangerous. Wanting or not wanting anything is too dangerous. Showing weakness or instability of any kind is too dangerous. Because I did this thing and they can point to that at any time and take away my kids. I'm not even sure how I feel about anything anymore because there are so few acceptable ways to feel. Even then I'm shit at keeping it up constantly. Sometimes the mask slips. It's inevitable really. I feel like I have rarely been trying to make things worse anyway, but now it's a state of constantly policing myself. I write this knowing maybe I can't post it anywhere. There's a decision to be made. I brought up the negatives. Maybe it doesn't help that I'm upset because of other stuff, because of the stuff above. A few hours later, I tried to tell her that I'd go with whatever they decided, and she was clearly upset with me for putting pressure on her. Fuck fuck fuck, you did it again, was all I could think. "You ruin everything." I will hear his voice saying that until the day I die. I didn't try to. I'm trying not to now. But I can't seem to help it. No matter what it is you think I should be doing, I'm not doing it. And I'm so tired right now. 

Are you still a slave if you have no master?

Wore a swishy 1950s-inspired skirt, added my petticoat underneath after I got off work, and spruced up my makeup to go to a meeting of Masters and slaves together tonight. Even though the topic hit home in an uncomfortable way and I felt a bit bad leaving home when others had a ...well, hard doesn't begin to describe it, I am so glad I went. While I've probably only gone to a handful of meetings and I haven't been to one since my maternity leave, it has always been the one I felt most at home in, probably because of it's discussion format. 

But tonight reminded me of all the reasons I liked service and being a slave, not just a submissive. It's different to be around people who are living their power exchanges right there in front of you. Refreshing to see the different ways that plays out, that no one dynamic is the same. It always melts a little part of me when I hear someone on the M/D/T side of the slash talk about their own obligations, duties, and love for the person on the other side of their slash. 

When I got home, I didn't change out of my skirt and petticoat before doing the dishes and picking up the toys. I could tell everyone was wrecked. It gives me an extra bit of pride to do housework looking nice. I used to do it for him. Even though it was also for me even then. Now i do it for me. If he likes it, that's an added bonus. But I'm not serving him. 

Sometimes I get to do little things for him. He asks me kindly to refill his coffee cup or bring him something. As much as it would thrill me more for him to be a little less nice, I know he doesn't want me to get the wrong idea. But in the end now I do these things for me, and for the master that is yet to come, because I don't want to let me skills get rusty, because being in that mind quiets things and makes me happy. Even if we enacted a strict protocol from now on, I know he can't be my Master and doesn't really want to be a Master in the way I want/ need one. At most, he is just gently holding the lead until someone who truly does want that and can step up to it comes along.

The question that has plagued me since I left the meeting is "is a little slave girl still a little slave girl if she is not so little and not anyone's slave?" Many people mark slave as their role in their profiles. I never changed mine. I think I didn't want people,  particularly D-type people, getting the wrong idea, that I was everyone's slave. I still chose submissive as my role, though even then I am not submissive to anyone except the people I have that negotiated with. Maybe if we're talking or dating you can push that a little, but I'm not going to say Sir or Ma'am to every single D-type or look down or whatever other protocols i might do for my D-type. And I'm still not sure I'm a slave at heart versus a submissive. For me, they go hand in hand for how I want to be with my primary partner. I want the power exchange we have during sex and play to spill out into our everyday lives too in ways that are beyond sexual but entail my service to him or her and his/her care and discipline of me. I like having the trust in a partner that allows me to give up my "no." But I'm still not sure that means I'm a slave, especially if I won't engage in service outside of a relationship and I don't have one. 

I need to go to sleep. Or back to sleep. Woke up to pet him and then babies woke up as I wrote this. Just wanted to muse. 

No One Is Thinking About Dating Me

Recently a newer friend of mine has me convinced that if i just keep putting out there what i want and keep working for the things i want and being more positive and looking for happiness and contentment in the little things all the while, that I'll get those things, especially when looking for a new partner.

Feeling sort of rejected tonight and not having anything recently pan out, I'm feeling a bit sad sack about things, realizing he and i never talked about how you feel like you deserve those things. No, not deserve.... more like you're too fucked for someone to want those things with you and not in ways you can really easily change.

First of all, i require an intense amount of attraction and high desire for play and sex to be felt on both sides. That's super rare and something that can't be forced on either side.

I'm not young enough or in good enough shape to be widely desired. The former will just kkeep getting worse and the latter I'm not doing a good job of changing right now.

I'm too crazy for any remotely healthy person to want to be with. And i can manage really well for shorter period of time but i freak out easily over minor-ish things, even if i now have most of those freak outs shortened and will handle things after the freak out. But i know that it is stressful for those around me.

I push back too much for someone who isn't really a brat. Especially at first. But also when I'm angry or frustrated or bored or i want you to play rough with me so i try to make you angry to get it. Wow that sounds pretty bratty. I think it drives off people. Now maybe those people wouldn't want to or be able to handle me long-term of this drices them off, but it kinda sucks. It feels like i act too bratty for many Doms to still be interested.

I'm not disciplined enough or subservient enough or proper enough to ne a good slave to most Masters. Nor do i desire micromanaging.

I regularly wear 1950s style clothing. (In fact, bank of america might buy me some pedal pushers and a cardigan soon.) But I'm not traditionally feminine enough, nor a good enough cook and seamstress and iron-er to be a good 1950s housewife type.

I'm not free enough to be good at poly but I'm not monogamous enough to be monogamous.

I don't have enough free time to really feel like I'm doing things justice.

I forsee lots of tearful lonely nights and a long time of masturbation, hopefully with some sublimation going on.

The Master in my Head

Sometimes I can feel you with me. You're always right behind me. Slightly taller than me. Larger. Stronger. A solid presence that I can lean back against when I feel I'm too tired or sad or lonely to do this anymore. Nameless and faceless for now, yet still reminding me that there is someone I am to belong to but I have to take care of myself until then. I imagine the words of love and validation you will whisper into my ear, your breath on my neck quickening my heartbeat. "A heart I swear I'd recognize is made out of my own devices."

I am probably not as well behaved as I hope to be when we are together. But until then your presence that is sometimes so real I can almost feel your chest against my back and almost hear your words reminds me to be a good girl. Go to work. Pay my bills. Spoil myself a little but not too much. Work hard but also cut myself some slack. Take a deep breath before reacting to anything because those people are going through things as well, things I don't know about and might not understand. Try to treat others with the compassion that I will want to show you, that you will sometimes need as you will be human too and fuck up just like I will. To push myself to still believe that we may meet and to put myself in places and situations where that is more likely, like community munches and socials. To take advantage of some fun and sex and play but to not settle for a relationship that isn't you. "Ready and waiting for a heart worth the breaking." 

Even now, you're here with me. But you're urging me to do some real work instead of daydreaming so I should get to it. 

I'll be waiting but please don't take too long.

Often is the Question Asked "Am I a Bitch?"

I know that I may never find a primary partner, another Dom or Master, much less someone who would marry me. It will be difficult to find someone who meets the things that I am looking for, who is willing to put up with the life that I have, and who I have amazing physical chemistry with. Knowing this, I also know that I may be the one taking care of myself mostly by myself for a very long time, if not forever. I feel like often that means I come off like a bitch in pursuit of taking care of myself. 

It sucks that every time I want to pat myself on the back for doing what is right for me, I end up wondering if I'm coming off like a bitch. Maybe that's the nature of the beast. Maybe a man in my shoes worries that he ends up coming off like a dick or an asshole when he does the same thing. I also know that it doesn't come off as very submissive or like someone who would be a good servant, which probably also doesn't serve me well in finding a Dominant partner. 

But no I will not call you Sir, or some variation of Sir, unless you are MY Sir, we are playing and that is agreed upon, or you can make me. Or it's a part of the name you go by. But I'm not going to call every Dominant I meet Sir (or Ma'am) just because of the side of the fence they play from. 

No I will not send you pictures just because. If we are talking to date or we are dating, sure, but even then, no I will not send you pictures that are any dirtier than are already on my profile. 

No I will not date you just to give you or a relationship with you a chance. It doesn't matter if I think you are a nice person or would in general be a good partner. If I don't think we are going to be a good fit for each other or I don't have that chemistry with you, I'm not going to make myself go further into a relationship that I already feel isn't going to work. I'm not going to make myself have sex with someone just because they are a nice person if I don't want to have sex with them. 

No I will not play with you so you can gain experience. Maybe it is unfair to rule someone out because they don't have experience, because how are you supposed to get experience if no one will play with a newb Dom. But my higher priority has to be my safety, my physical, mental, and emotional safety. I don't want to be your experiment, the car you wreck because you didn't take driver's ed. I also don't want to top from the bottom or be your teacher. I think that all long-term couples grow and learn together, but you can't be starting from 0. 

No I do not have endless amounts of time to chat or go on dates. Even after I catch NRE, if I do catch NRE, I am still bound by the life I already have and I would also like to keep some of my alone time. I have to schedule dates and overnight sexytimes in advance. 

Yeah, I probably just need to invest in more and better sex toys. It's gonna be awhile.  

My Proxy Is Mine

My new skirt, blouses, and dresses from the vintage store finally came in. Because I've lost some weight, the dress I bought in the bigger size is too big and I'm going to have to take it back. I'm trying not to gain the weight back, which will be hard in a job where I sit on my ass all day. But I haven't had a soda or candy bar all this week, walked to and from work one of the days. I'm back to wearing a bare minimum of makeup most days. If it wasn't "that" week, I'd be wearing matching bra and panties most days. I did something different to my hair today and it's freshly dyed. I swished into the last day of the first week of my new job in a new skirt, feeling like a million bucks, super hopeful about all the things coming up in my life. 

But I still want ...a Daddy or a Master or something. I miss that validation. I miss that praise. I miss that discipline. I miss feeling like there is someone there to rein me in if I were to need it. Not that any of that happened as often as I may have wanted it to or as most men who claim to be Daddies or Masters or whatever claim that they do it. But I still miss it and I still want it. 

I thought that I could date. I think that I was wrong. Or maybe it's just going to have to happen like it has always happened. Lots of things that went nowhere until finally there's that person who I want to fuck and marry and stay up talking to every night all in the same person. Not that that has really ended up all that well for me up until now but that is the only way I'm going to get over this whole "the thought of a stranger touching me makes me want to curl up in a ball and not let anyone touch me ever." In between those people, I used to be able to do some rando sport fucking but I think that might be a thing of the past. Or a thing where I at least have to want to fuck them in a bad way, bad enough that my pussy talking overpowers my brain talking. I have had that work out ok. But I can't just go out on a date with someone I thought was ok from online exchanges with the plans of fucking them after a cordial meal and not get squee'd out when it comes time to do it. I also can't go out on a few dates with a guy who is nice enough, great on paper, wants the same things I do, but who I don't want to jump right then because it will also end badly. I used to be able to give it the old college try, fuck them a few times, but then I'd have to admit that I really wasn't feeling them and break things off. I'm also too squee'd out about those people touching me for me to go through with it. He fucking ruined me. 

I just worry that I'm going to miss one of the few people who fit what I am looking for and are looking for someone like me and a situation like I want. And I don't want to get so complacent with whatever secondary relationship I have that I just decide I'll never have a primary relationship and give up looking or being open to it. In the past, it has been way too easy for me to get bogged down in that "I'll always be alone" mindset and just stop looking, or let it make me feel desperate when I did attempt to date, which is never a good look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's too early to date. Take time to be by yourself. Get over you last relationship. Except I am going to be taking time for myself, ya know when I'm not watching a kid or kids or working or whatever, and my "last relationship" will just be changing, not be over. I feel like my life is always changing. At what point has it stopped changing enough for me to date? After I've moved and settled in to my own apartment? After we've developed a new routine with the kids? After we've developed a new new routine because they've gotten a house? After we've developed a new new new routine because I bought a house near to wherever they end up? After I've finished my book? After I've finished several books and can quit my job and live off that money? After I've started hanging out with my old friends more? After I've decided I don't really like those people anymore and am back to mostly just being around me? After I've started going to some bdsm community events and started trying to make friends there? After I've gotten really involved there in what little free time I do have and have no time for dating? Please tell me, when is the appropriate time to date, especially in a poly context where I have other non-primary relationships going on and maybe the person I'm looking for does too? 

When I swished in to work today, I wasn't wearing a collar. My collar. How I miss it. I wasn't even wearing a necklace though when I have, it's been my own pearl necklace, given as a gift from my grandma to my mom and then to me. "My proxy is mine. You'll deal with me directly." (Neko Case) Who knows? Maybe he's wondering the same thing and we'll meet when we've forced ourselves to go to a bdsm event or when we've put up an ad, knowing that we'll have to deal with turning down the princes/princesses who aren't for us but knowing we won't find someone unless we're willing to do that. Maybe my person isn't a man at all or isn't on the gender binary. If I ever find it, it will be worth the wait. Even with how it has ended up being, he was. My next love will be too.