It's difficult for me to say if my uncle was an introvert or an extrovert. Sadly, I can't ask him now. He did like to spend his time alone, would spend days at the lake, just drifting along in his boat. He loved living out in the country where he could be alone with the stars. But he also had many friends. Not just acquaintances, but people who were close to him. The sister of a friend of his came from 10-12 hours away, so she could help us out while he was in hospice, cooking us food, just being a shoulder to cry on. In those last years of his life, he had a hard time keeping up with all the people he wanted to talk to, between treatments and just being sick and tired, but he tried.
I am not my uncle, however. I sit solidly in the introvert camp. Being around groups of people drain me. Even being around just a few people can be draining after a while. As the Professor, Ginger, and I plan on moving in together before our first child comes, I know that I will have to lock myself away in my room from time to time, veg out for hours to recharge when I need to. I'm glad we found a place where I won't have to share my bedroom with anyone, even my child.
I have a few close friends. Two female friends who live in the metro, who I talk to more on facebook chat than anything else. Moneypenny lives four hours away, who I text with a few times a week (maybe) and try to see once a month. TyRoy spends his weeks 2 hours away and his weekends in the metro with his new wife, who I don't get to see very often because of our schedules and who I really should email more often. Occasionally, I'll talk or text with MP, more since I've been pregnant and he's concerned about how I'm doing. That's about it. Here and there, I will text with acquaintance-type people, but that's about it. It isn't a very large group.
I've tried branching out. Last fall, I tried to get out in the bdsm community as well as date through online sites. While I met many nice and fun people, nothing serious came of it. I stopped dating altogether just before I found out I was pregnant and then I stopped going to bdsm community events when my work hours changed and I started dealing with being pregnant. I was very overwhelmed and really retreated from more casual acquaintances, rather than have to expend more emotional energy on anything else.
In the last few months, once I started to get adapted to this new 2nd shift schedule, I tried once again to find people that I could connect with through online sources. I was really lonely when I got off work, since none of my current friends are usually awake when I get off work. I just wanted someone to talk to, like you would with any friend after a long, tiring day. But I wanted someone who I had things in common with, who it was easy for me to talk to, who I didn't feel like I was always justifying my life to. I wanted someone it was easy to chat with, just like how it feels when you strike up a friendship with someone in any other context. But just like when I was dating last fall, I don't really have the emotional energy or the time in my life to expend on people I don't feel are a good fit for what I'm looking for. I know that sounds incredibly dismissive of other people and maybe it is. On the other hand, during neither period of time did I think that the people I chose not to have relationships with were not worthy people, in and of themselves. Even the people I had the worst dates with or the worst correspondences with still have good qualities and should have friends and romantic/sexual partners who they connect with. Hell, if I had unlimited time, unlimited emotional energy, and wasn't an introvert, I may have had successful friendships or other relationships with them. But I don't and we didn't. And, as much as I don't want to rob others of their own ability to choose to be in my life, I do feel like it is better for them to spend time with and on people they have a chance of a friendship or relationship with, instead of someone who probably won't be able to give them what they are looking for, or at least not for very long before she had to disappear again.
The older I get, the more I see the prices you have to pay for things, the trade-offs that have to happen. One of the big things you learn in DBT is radical acceptance, which is acknowledging how things actually are in this moment, so you can stop struggling with how it shouldn't be like this and start dealing with how it actually is. That means realizing your limitations and the limitations of the situation you are in, so you can either work within that or change how you see the situation. It's where you start to make the trade offs that you have to make to be an effective, not crazy adult.
Sometimes, it means being selfish, knowing how much you have to give and only giving that to the most important people and things in your life, even when there are other people or things that are just as worthy or deserving. Sometimes, it means hurting other people's feelings, because they want to be someone you take a chance on, just like they are ready to take a chance on you. Sometimes, it means passing up a lot of opportunities, especially ones that you don't think are sure things, for ones you do feel more confident of, only to have those blow up in your face. Sometimes, it means being picky. Sometimes, it means being seen as a bitch or stuck up or difficult.
And sometimes it means realizing that you'd rather be lonely because the price you'd have to pay to not be lonely is higher than the price you pay being lonely.
There's one of those cliched self-help sayings that says that a person won't change until the pain they feel to stay the same is greater than the fear they have of the change they'd have to make, or the pain of making that change. For myself, this has definitely been true. I didn't put in the hardwork to change my life until the pain of that life was greater than my fear or change and the pain I worried I'd experience if I changed. Right now, I have to acknowledge that I'm not there in dealing with this loneliness. And I accept that I am actively making this choice. I'm not acting like there are no good people out there, for friendship or romance or sex. I'm not acting like there are not awesome people who would take a chance on me. I'm not saying that none of this makes me come off as a kinda shitty or difficult person, or even that I'm not those things. Just that I'm not willing to make this trade off. At least not right now.
I can't believe I'm going to use a song called "My Monkey" but damn does it stir up the feelings, so here goes. Please watch/listen to the video at the end. It's not country.
I just started in the DBT aftercare group last week. The regular DBT group is mostly educational, not process, and is much stricter about "therapy interfering behaviors," so no one else can intentionally or unintentionally sabotage other people in the group. Aftercare is more process and allows people who have been through the educational course several times to discuss how to further use the skills in specific ways in their lives. Of course, I can't divulge anything about what happens in group or even who is in it, but I found myself talking a bit about how I have dealt with anger differently in my relationship with the Professor than I did in previous relationships. In fact, every time I talk about getting angry or upset in this relationship with Moneypenny, he asks me why I couldn't have done that with him. The short answer would just be that I grew up. This post is the longer answer.
My monkey gets busy sometimes
My monkey's got a lot of stuff he's gotta think about
My monkey gets tired sometimes
My monkey wishes he was something you could live without
Cause every monkey needs alone time
To eat bananas in the sunshine
It's feast or famine it's a fine line
It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you
This in part Moneypenny actually taught me while we were dating. I can't say that he actually said these words, but the general picture was "You need to learn how to be on your own. I have friends of my own and things I like to do that don't interest you and I'm going to continue to do them just like I did before we got together and you have to learn to deal with that." Sometimes I think I might have learned that lesson a bit too well because I think it can hinder me in dating but that is a post for another day.
I like my alone time. At least 25% of my decision to stop dating for the time being is so that I can spend time by myself. I like being able to do whatever it is that I want, at my own pace, or nothing at all. I like being able to choose the show or movie I watch, the food I eat, the music I listen to, or to read a book, without ever having to think about what someone else will want to do or what they will think of me.
This makes it easier to give other people alone time when they need it. When I was with Moneypenny and we would fight, I couldn't do that. At all. When he'd say that he needed time, I'd give him an hour and I had a difficult time even doing that. I distinctly remember one fight where i kept texting and calling him after he said that he needed time and he told me that "time" at least 24 hours. Oh my gods, that was a fucking eternity at the time. I know that I probably still do not give people as much time as they might need or I have to say "Ok, just so you know, the ball is in your court here" before I wait, but I'm not like I was with Moneypenny.
But it isn't just during fights that I know people need time and try to give it to them. Yes, when I'm visiting the Professor and I want attention, especially sex, or when I'm texting him to try to find out what is going on, I do bug him when he'd probably rather me not. On the other hand, I could, and still do, leave him to do his own thing. During the first bout of him falling in the hole last fall, he would apologize for not doing more with me and I would shrug it off. Yeah, I'd have been more than happy if he was jumping my bones that whole time or even just talking to me, but I was usually able to keep myself busy. I was an only child after all. I also knew that it had nothing to do with me, which I think is the real key. I knew that there were and are plenty of times when I'm happy to be by myself, which has nothing to do with how much I love the people I don't want to be around, so the same thing is probably at least partially true for the people I love who need alone time.
My monkey gets frazzled sometimes
My monkey has an ulcer and a stressful time at work
My monkey gets bitter sometimes
My monkey's not the only one who's acting like a jerk
And while he doesn't like to name names
And he's not trying to assign blame
It's hard to focus on his own game
It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you
From the first time I heard this song, it just stuck with me. This guy I went on a few dates told me to check out his nerdcore and nerd comedy spotify playlist and most of the music can help put me in a better mood at work, on days when my music is pissing my off for some reason. I kinda think that it could be from the Professor to Ginger and/or me, from Ginger to the Professor and/or to me, and from me to ...well, lots of people.
When I look back, I think that most of the moments in my life that really changed how I saw the world and how I thought involved it being pointed out how selfish I was being and had it demonstrated how different the other person in the situation experienced things. Couple this with my writer-ly desire to know what is going on in someone's head and I am often trying to see situations from the other viewpoint. It can get much harder when I am arguing with someone because my own anger can overpower my desire to give a shit about their view point or experience but sometimes I can still keep it in mind.
Two things that men have said stick out in my head. Now, I can't remember what exactly we were talking about, but I remember a conversation a few years ago where Moneypenny told me that he just lets go of about 90% of things in relationships that bother him because to him they aren't a big enough deal to bring up or to fight about. Of course, that means the things he does bring up are actually the most egregious 10% of the things that bother him, so it kinda sucks if the other person does nothing about them or won't budge on any of them. From being the one sitting on the other side and not budging on most of those things, I can say that when he brought up the 10%, I thought they were everything he had a problem with so I wasn't going to give in on everything. The bigger point though was that he didn't bring up every little thing that bothered him and he asserted that this is what most men do.
Recently, I was listening to the afternoon radio djs where I live, both married men, and they were discussing the recent study from Rutgers and University of Michigan that said that a husband's general happiness was directly related to how happy their wife was in the marriage. While researchers said this might be in part because a wife happy in the marriage might do more for a husband, the quoted researcher said "Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships and their level of marital unhappiness might not be translated to their wives." The older of the two djs definitely agreed with this, talking about how rarely he brought up things about the relationship that upset him, while his wife generally will and it feels like to him it is almost always what she thinks he is doing wrong. And here's what he said that stuck with me the most: "Who wants to hear nothing but what they are doing wrong all the time?" That was another one of those slap in the face moments for me. I'm pretty aware of a good deal of my shortcomings and I sure as hell don't want to hear it. That really got me thinking about how the things I say when bringing up problems either are what's wrong with the other person or could be perceived as such and how often that is the conversation instead of something positive about them.
When I was with Moneypenny, we had several arguments that lasted until dawn. I couldn't sleep on my anger. I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Hell, with him, I often still can't. Early on, probably from observation and trying to do things differently this time, and in large part just because Ginger allowed me to benefit from her years of experience, I learned that attacking the Professor head on just made him retreat. He wouldn't fight you back but he also wouldn't come back for quite awhile. Now, I won't even claim to fully understand why this is, though I can guess that some of it has to do with how he was raised, but I knew that what I had done before wouldn't work. At first, it was the roles that kept me in check. And sometimes the desire to be able to discuss things without being so angry I would cry, since somehow me crying means that people tend not to listen to my words. Through trial and error, I've learned that sometimes I need to do a "reasonable mind" activity, dishes worked well when I lived with the Professor, to bring me out of emotional mind, or to just sleep on it. What these things really give me is enough space to calm down, let my mind process everything and figure out what was justified, and then find a better time to bring things up. After all that, usually I can say it in a better way, hopefully one that is about the situation or about how I feel and not about him.
A few weeks ago, over text, the Professor and I got bitchy at each other about the weekend plans and how we were going to plan out things going forward. Finally, I said that I thought that at least one of us was cranky and needed a nap (he said probably both of us) so I was going to go and I would talk to him later. When we talked about it two or three days later, the discussion looked more like "I'm worried about how this is going to go. Knowing the things we know now, what can we do to make this work better for everyone going forward?"
My monkey gets angry sometimes
My monkey says a lot of things he doesn't really mean
My monkey gets lucky sometimes
My monkey thinks that you're the bestest girl he's ever seen
He says he'll stay with you for always
It doesn't matter what the job pays
Cause everybody has their bad days
It doesn't mean my monkey doesn't love you
One day I came home from a short morning shift and Ginger said, "You should be really glad you had to work this morning and you weren't home because I thought the Professor and I were going to have it out." Apparently, the Professor got up, all grumpy and cranky, like he is when he first wakes up. When he went into the kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee, she heard him yell, "Goddamn it, who the fuck left the bag of coffee open?" [There are a few things that drive the Professor crazy and Ginger doing forgetful things is one of them. Ginger thinks, and not wrongly IMO, that she ignores alot from him so he can just deal. I'm sure you can guess who left the coffee bag open when she kindly made me coffee before i left for work.] Ginger was cranky and tired after working all night and her, quite uncharacteristic, response was to yell back "It's just the coffee. If you're going to be a dick today, I'm just going in my room to read." When the Professor's unreasonable anger is met with anger, he tends to be taken aback and reevaluate the situation. This was no different. After her response, it was no longer such a big deal. Sometimes we say stupid shit in the heat of the moment, not always even big stupid shit, but just little stupid shit.
When sleeping on it doesn't work and I end up playing out all day in my head all the pieces of my mind I'm going to give the Professor when I see him next, I tend to have one final thing to help me not act like a complete bitch- seeing him. This probably sounds like sappy honeymoon phase shit, and maybe it is, but it still works. When I see him, it is much harder to be mad at him. Mostly because I'm trying to figure out how to maneuver things so that he'll be taking my clothes off and being a bitch can backfire spectacularly for getting me that goal. hehe. But seriously, it feels like the anger is a fog that is burned off by the appearance of the sun.
When they got together, the Professor needed a place to stay and Ginger made him promise to stick around for a year, though she was somehow surprised several months later when he called him her boyfriend. She told me that at first they'd have blow-outs every couple of months, but that those had gotten farther and farther apart, until it's more like once a year. It was a release valve on the relationship and in the end, they would both say that they cared more about the relationship than about not being vulnerable.
For both of them, being vulnerable is a much bigger deal that it is to me. Most days I still feel like I'm a walking open wound. Less than I used to, but more than most people, I think. While neither of them have said directly to me that our relationships, even the different ones we have now, are more important than being vulnerable, I think that they've shown it. Right about the time we started talking again, Ginger wrote a post on Fet about her shortcomings in relationships, that she wants a lot and thinks in the moment that it's possible but often has to retreat when it gets overwhelming, because she doesn't realize that things might not be working until it is already overwhelming. While she didn't write that post just for me, I know she laid bare things about herself that aren't pretty in a place where I would be sure to see, so that I might understand. She made herself vulnerable. Things with the Professor ended as a primary relationship when he flat out said "Yes, all the things you say you expect this to be are valid and justified and what I promised and what you deserve, but I can't give them to you." Just the fact that he said that outright was a big deal for him, given his history. That honestly could have been the end of it. But when I came to get my stuff, he cried with me, admitted that he didn't know what it would be possible for us to have but he didn't not want me in his life. Recently, as we tried to talk about what we wanted in this iteration of our relationship, we admitted that this 'breakup' was different because usually we kinda hate our partners by the time we decide to end it. Usually his relationships end with him being either mean or distant, "but I still have alot of love for you and I'm trying to do things differently this time." Once again, I can't judge things based on how vulnerable that would feel for me. Things work much better for me when I focus on what that feels like for them, where that comes from, how difficult that might be for them.
Now, of course, all this about how well I deal with conflict with my partners is in comparison to a me that was 15-12 yrs younger, differently medicated, and much more still an impulsive teenager. This is also mostly a Moneypenny vs the Professor comparison as I am still rather clueless about handling conflict with Ginger and, oh man, don't even get me started on how poorly I handle conflict with TyRoy. I largely attempt to avoid conflict with both of them, though I think that method would still be preferable to Moneypenny. Sometimes, I think that I'm just too tired to fight anymore, at least like I did with Moneypenny. I have a long list of things I'm supposed to do, half of which I don't get to, and nowhere on it does it say "fight with the Professor." When I walk out of rooms instead of fight, it's not so someone will run after me, though I have to say checking on me after awhile is appreciated. No, it's because I don't want to have the fight right then and I need to get my shit together. It's about me acting right. Generally, I think the biggest difference in the fights are about me acting right, instead of just acting on how I feel at the moment.
So here's the full song for Jonathan Coulton's "My Monkey"
Ok, and now for the funny geeky shit- For PAX, Jonathan Coulton changed "My Monkey" to "Wil Wheaton." This video has shots of Wil Wheaton cracking up too.
So I'm trying not be so overly picky that I end up never dating ever. If you read regularly, you know that I don't necessarily feel like I'm ready to date and I have a set of guideline, but I'm also trying not to use either as an excuse to be closed off. This is especially true because I'm still seeing/fucking/playing with the Professor, but I'm trying to keep in mind that it is an on the side thing.
I have a profile up on a free dating site that says pretty much what my profile & writing on fet does. Last weekend I got a very thoughtful and honest response from a (cute but in my looks - range) man who wants an open relationship and is trying new things after just getting out of a sexually unadventurous marriage. He's from the same hometown I am, likes music I like too, blah blah blah. His message was so much different from what i usually get that I read it immediately to the Professor. Before we even looked at the profile, he said,"You have to message this guy."
We've had one date, gonna have another on Saturday. I had asked him at some poibt about his "sexual bucket list" and last night he shared stuff, though in a tit for tat way. Mostly it ended up being him saying that he'd like to do x and me saying that I had done it a bunch. I had mentioned the fetish list on fetlife. He's not on fet so last night i just copy & pasted my fetish and curious about lists to him. His response? "With the exclusion of polyamory, all the stuff that you're curious about I would say I'm not curious about at this point. And half the stuff you're into I'm only curious about. Things like whipping and impact play may be beyond me, but they don't color my opinion of you."
This is the danger in giving people chances. So far the guys who would be willing to have a LTRR either don't have much experience or think they're "not vanilla" because they like nipple clamps and want to try anal sex and the guys who seem like they just might know what they're doing and have a good deal of experience don't want LTRR or a kid. This is why i don't want to give people chances. By the time i realize how much they don't fit, i kinda like them. At least enough to not want to stomp on their hearts.
And it's strange They're all basically the same So I don't ask names anymore. -Death Cab for Cutie
When I took BT to my grandparents' house, my mother was dismissive of his presence. When my grandma was pointing out his flaws, my mom just waved her hand. "They never last long. I hardly ever meet any of them anyway. It doesn't matter. He'll be gone soon enough." My grandma disagreed, said that this one was going to stick around awhile. She was right. I married him within the week and, though he was deployed for much of that time and we never truly lived together, we were married for a year and a half.
Of course, my mom couldn't have known that known that this one would be different from the others. Once I finally came out of my shell after the end of my LTRR with Moneypenny, I really hit the ground running. I was dealing with the beginning of the illnesses in my family, which was stressing me out and provoking the crazy, which I hadn't really developed effective coping skills for. And Mon Parrain had opened my eyes to the fact that I could easily and openly fuck without having to have a LTRR with the person. So I was doing quite a bit of that. There were many people my mom never even knew I had seen. Of those she did, they weren't usually anything serious and they faded away within a few weeks.
I have found that it isn't uncommon for the rebound process to involve a brief but intensely slutty period. Even if you wanted to start a new LTRR, you still have too many feelings for your ex to turn it on to a new person, especially for monogamous people or people looking to find a new primary partner. On the other hand, you want to feel wanted by someone new. You want to feel like you are desirable to someone other than your ex, who obviously doesn't find you as attractive anymore. You want to meet new and different kinds of people. You probably feel like you've spent the last bit of your previous relationship pushing down or ignoring parts of yourself, so you want to let that out to run wild, whether that be eating at places your ex didn't like, working on hobbies you might have ignored, or fucking in ways that your ex didn't like. And hell, you're just lonely. You had this partner for quite awhile and you were used to having someone to do things with. Now you're alone. "There's an art to life's distractions. Somehow escapes the burning weight, the art of scraping through. Some like to imagine the dark caress of someone else I guess any thrill will do."
But there's something more. Maybe it's the crazy. Maybe it's the way I'm wired. Maybe I've just been lucky enough to have this many people be interested in me when maybe others don't. No matter what it is though, I can have a bit of a fickle heart. It's a small part of why I prefer open relationships. (Note I'm not saying polyamorous.) I know that most infatuations are just that and won't last very long, so most bits of strange are just that, a little bit of strange. "Don't take this the wrong way. You knew who I was every step that I ran to you. Only blue or black days, electing strange perfections in any stranger I choose." Sadly, when I'm looking for a relationship I only date other people who are looking for relationships and I have hurt people with that fickleness, despite my attempts to tell them who I am and keep a bit of a distance. I get all wrapped up in this new person and their new-ness and that they like me. It can come off as me liking them more than I end up liking them, because I truly do think I like them more in the beginning.
For the past month or two, I've dealt first with not having much of a sex drive at all (except for with The Professor because, well, what can I say? He does strange things to me) and then with my sex drive coming back but really only wanting to have sex or play with him. A big part of it has been the comfort and trust factors. With play, I obviously haven't developed that kind of relationship with anyone. With all of that in general, I just haven't had an interest in anyone long enough to get there. But I'm trying to stay open to new people. I do want a new primary, ideally one who will also be my new Dom/Master as well as primary boyfriend, or even husband, and baby daddy. I can't do that if I never give anyone a chance. I don't have the time or stamina to give everyone who crosses my path a go, but the right people, the people who interest me, the people who seem to be a good 80% of what I'm looking for, should be given a chance.
But as I start to talk to more people, have more dates, explore new relationships, I do worry about my fickle heart, especially since it is also rebounding. This song has been playing in my head for days now, makes me want to dance around, even if that does seem like too much of a celebration of what is really dickish behavior. Anyway, I thought I'd share.
Someone New- Hozier
Don't take this the wrong way
You knew who I was every step that I ran to you
Only blue or black day
Electing strange perfections in any stranger I choose
Would things be easier if there was a right way
Honey there is no right way
And so I fall in love just a little ol' little bit
Every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
There's an art to life's distractions
Somehow escapes the burning weight,
the art of scraping through
Some like to imagine
The dark caress of someone else
I guess any thrill will do
Would things be easier if there was a right way
Honey there is no right way
And so I fall in love just a little ol' little bit
Every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I wake at the first cringe of morning
And my heart's already sinned.
How pure, how sweet the love and you would pray for him
Cos God knows I fall in love just a little ol' little bit
Every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
Love with every stranger the stranger the better
I fall in love just a little ol' little bit every day with someone new
This is not a love story. At least not in the way that this term is taken today. At the end, the girl doesn't get the boy (or girl, in this modern age.) At this point, it is a little early to tell what the girl does get. (And she's not a girl either. She's a woman. She's over 30. Not only is she older than her mother was when she had her, but she's older than her mother was when she remarried and did her 'happily ever after,' even though we should all know by now that 'happily ever after' is only the start of all the real hard work. Though of course we always forget that.)
But maybe it is a love story. Because the girl, wait, scratch that, woman has found love. Lots of love. Love she didn't think she'd find again. She found two people to love at the same time. On the same date that was supposed to just be for a side fling D/s relationship. (She was supposed to marry a lawyer and start having kids, but that didn't exactly work out like the fairy tale it was on paper.) So she did find love and people who wanted to commit to her and start a family, though not the traditional kind of family but a family nonetheless. She moved in and they started making plans for getting a bigger place, one to fit the three of them, allowing them each space and privacy and give the visiting child a place of his own too.
But this is not a love story because it doesn't end there. Love stories always end there, at the happily ever after. The woman has two major shortcomings. One is that she doesn't work a job that allows for her to work enough hours to pay (what she feels is) her fair share, at least not without working so much that she has a nervous breakdown. Which leads us to her second and larger shortcoming- she's crazy. I'm trying not to put this in a derogatory way, but just the facts. She is bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. To say the least, she has a low tolerance for distress and doesn't have as good of an ability to bounce back as the average person. She's doing better than she has in the past and she tries to work on being better but things are as they are right now and she will probably always be this person to some extent.
This is also not a love story because her lovers also have shortcomings. Not cute ones that resolve themselves by the time they decide to be together or ones that the lover is miraculously able to change by the time they coming running through the airport to stop their lover from leaving. Nope. These people are who they are as well. She knows this and loves them because they are who they are, though, like everyone, sometimes she'd like them to do something(s) differently. She tries for unconditional but she's not perfect. Mostly she just tries to not be one of those types who wants to change a person. But as things got closer to moving day, everyone was stressed and had turned inward and away from each other. "This is just how they are," she told herself. "It will cycle back and everything will be fine after the move."
This is not a love story because they didn't move. The apartment complex was gonna screw them and they decided not to sign the lease. They were a week away from moving, half packed. While they felt triumphant in not getting screwed and working as a family, they were now further away from their goal of living together in a larger place. And the woman was still just as worried as she had been before about being able to afford her share of any place they got that was big enough. Hell, if anything she was more worried. The place that they thought they could afford was only that way because they screw people out of money. Everyone else was still stressed and turned inward. She was so lonely. Every night she went to bed alone. There was very little physical or sexual contact in the household, which was what she craved to keep her head straight, to feel loved and wanted. It's not that they didn't show her or tell her that they loved or wanted her, just that it wasn't in a way that she could take in. That first week after she had a heavier schedule because she had told her work she needed more hours to afford the new apartment. She caved under all the pressure. By Friday, she missed a shift, no call no show. Only a compassionate coworker who's son has bipolar saved her job, or so she is hoping. She started to spiral into that suicidal depression she had struggled with all her life, blocking everyone out herself.
This is not a love story because the woman is leaving. It's not unreasonable for her to ask for the things she asks for. (At least for the most part.) And it's not unreasonable for them to say that they can't give her those things, at least not right now, at least not at the level she needs them. But that leaves her feeling lonely and unloved by people who are just in the next room. Which will leave her resentful and angry before too long. The woman has a friend who has space to rent out in her house for pretty cheap and, though it is her friend, if she can't pull her weight there, it will only be her who eats ramen noodles every night and her credit that gets fucked up. (Update: the woman's friend's therapist doesn't think it's good for two crazy chicks to live together so she's not really sure what she's going to do. )
This is not a love story because the woman knows that leaving could mean the end to their story. Though they cry together and reassure each other that they are still together and it will actually be more special when she comes to visit because they won't have seen each other for awhile and they'll be all over each other as soon as she walks through the door and they are making plans for how to actually shore up their relationship, she knows this could be the beginning of the end, the slow death of what they had but could not sustain. The woman has seen lots of movies and love stories don't end with the heroine alone with her two cats in a two room mother-in-law apartment on the other side of town. But the woman knows she'll kill herself if she stays, that she is killing herself with each night that she masturbates and then cries herself to sleep when the people she want to have sex with are just twenty feet away. The woman knows that it is killing them too. That there isn't enough for them to care for her hurt in the ways they do and care for themselves and/or each other too.
It's Beginning to Get to Me- Snow Patrol I want something That's purer than the water Like we were
It's not there now
Ineloquence and anger
Are all we have
Like Saturn's rings
An icy loop around me
Too hard to hold
Lash out first
At all the things we don't like
Or understand
And it's beginning to get to me That I know more of the stars and sea Than I do of what's in your head Barely touching in our cold bed
Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about
The answer phone
The lonely sound of your voice
Frozen in time
I only need
The compass that you gave me
To guide me on
And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed
Are you beginning to get get my point
That all this fighting with aching joints
It's doing nothing but tire us out
No one knows what this fight's about
It's so thrilling but also wrong Don't have to prove that you are so strong 'Cause I can carry you on my back After our enemies attack
I tried to tell you before I left
But I was screaming under my breath
You are the only thing that makes sense
Just ignore all this present tense
We need to feel breathless with love And not collapse under its weight I'm gasping for the air to fill My lungs with everything I've lost
We need to feel breathless with love
And not collapse under its weight
I'm gasping for the air to fill
My lungs with everything I've lost
I know it's the crazy and yet I often can't stop it. If you'll believe it, this is actually the best that I've ever been in a relationship. If you thought me walking out without saying anything last week was playing games then....you really wouldn't have been able to deal with me even a couple of years ago. Just ask Moneypenny. Of course, one of the most common complaints from people in relationships with borderlines- that we are manipulative, that we play games. But I don't mean to. I wasn't trying to play games. I just knew that if I said one single word I would start to cry and my experience is that that is also seen as being manipulative or playing games, or just completely ignored because I'm too emotional to even talk to at that point. You know, because dismissing me will make me less emotional. It's not like you are the only one who has mood swings. It's not like you are the only one who deals with things that I don't see. Except I might tell you those things. I have no idea what is going on with you. Just as you, you have to be strong, don't really have access to emotions in the same way that I might, or even that Ginger might. Then it gets piled on that you are a man, that you are Dom, that you are Daddy, and now that you are Master. All that pressure must be overwhelming. I would imagine it doesn't leave you much room to breath sometimes. Fuck, most of the time. As if your asthma wasn't enough, the literal manifestation of all the things that leave you gasping for air. It can feel that way for me sometimes too. Monday, on a day when I was already suicidal, I spent hours looking for houses or duplexes with enough bedrooms, with the features that we wanted, and in the price range. But I don't know this side of town and so most of the ones that were in our price range got shot down. I mean, of course they did. Our price range is not very big. While my work has been saying that I might get more hours on a client after a meeting with the family this weekend, it is just as likely that I'll lose that client altogether. I've been sending out applications for real full-time jobs but with little luck. I've spent the last two days freaking out over how I'm ever going to possibly pay my way. Then work this morning was frantic and crazy-making. So it should come as no surprise that when I teased you about not watching shows without me, that I wasn't going to give you the password unless you promised on pain of hairbrush, and you replied Just tell me or don't, that my response was....full of curse words? over the top? dismissive? passive aggressive? Hell, I think the only thing surprising should have been that it hasn't happened sooner. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Usually, I crumple. But today I couldn't. I still have another work shift. I still have more shit to do. And when I get home, I'll still have more shit to do. I'm thankful and grateful that you apologized. And, in a minute, I'm gonna apologize for blowing up. Text is just a shitty medium to convey tone in and I'm sure that you didn't get that I was trying to be playful. We've both been on the other end of this particular dust-up. And just like you've been before, I'm tired and spent but I still have to go on. Even when I don't want to. Even when I don't know how to. Sometimes that means that my mood swings wildly or I'm a complete bitch or that I'm completely fucking borderline batshit crazy. Or all three at the same time. Sometimes I can see the train barrelling towards me and I still can't stop it. Hell, sometimes I don't want to stop it. But at least I'm telling you this. I hope that someday you'll be able to tell me something as well. Even if it is at what you think is the exact worse time possible.
There's no reason to love me. And no sane man would trust me. Who wants to have and to hold what's been bought, what's been sold, just to love me? There's no reason to know me. And what good man would need me? Who wan'ts to peer through the dust and forget all the lust, just to love me?
What does a girl like you expect would happen? The things you want, the things you like, putting it all out there like you do, do you really think any man is going to treat you with respect or kindness? I mean, how could he? You were lucky that this one talked to you like you were a real human being.
what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more.
And why are you put there slutting it up anyway? Don't you have a lovely boyfriend and girlfriend at home who love you? And doesn't he give you sex how you want it but still manage to love you and care for you and be tender with you? A girl like you couldn't expect to get that anywhere and you've found a home where you do, so why are you going outside of it? Oh, because everyone is feeling off right now and no one is up for fucking? It hasn't even been a week, wasn't even half a week before you started seeking out ways to slut it up. You can't wait that out? What is wrong with you?
Because I revenge myself all over myself. There's nothing you can do to me.
For as much as I like to think I act with purpose and guide my own life, I often find that my feelings about something have changed while I wasn't looking. In my life in the last few years, I've had to do a great deal of moving on and letting go. While I often think I'm doing this consciously and with purpose, I often find that the biggest changes are those I don't realize while they are happening, but only see in retrospect, when comparing "how I felt then" to "how I feel now."
I had another one of those moments tonight. So there's this band that Moneypenny and I have seen an embarassing amount of times. He saw them when they first started out, before we ever met. I had heard their national singles on the radio and liked them, but hadn't had any of their music. After we started dating, we went to most of those shows together. In the last few years they've been playing again locally and we've gone to most of those shows. When we first started dating, when we were both very much working on ourselves and that was a path we were sharing, he played this song for me, because it really summed up how he felt then.
Closer-The Urge
Not too much I have to steal
Bringing my best with me
Nothing to conceal
Thought of the renovation
Made sure that I'm showing my appreciation
The future's wide open
Wide open
Wide open
Not much left to be revealed
She made this poor man rich
the freshness that she gives
This is something new
Does she feel the same way too
Future's wide open
Wide open
Wide open
She brings me
A little bit closer
A little bit closer to heaven
She brings me
A little bit closer
A little bit closer to heaven
So for over a decade, every time we've heard that song at a show, it's reminded me of that time. I couldn't imagine hearing it and not thinking about him. I couldn't imagine a time when that song wasn't special and about us. Or at least about those people we were then.
Moneypenny finally has a girlfriend who is cool with me. She's gone out of her way to be gracious and accomodating. She's bent over backwards to be friendly and to meet me and get to know me. And she's really nice and sweet, but in a way that doesn't make you want to gag. The last time I was in town visiting, I came to go to the Urge show with Moneypenny. While most of our previous Urge outings had been just us, I said that he should see if she wanted to go with us. Though they weren't really her kind of band, she'd never been and wanted to get to share this thing he was into as well as hang out with me. I knew that the time had come, the time when he'd have someone that those songs would now be about that wasn't me. I knew that it would probably be a little difficult for me, but I also felt like it was something I had to confront head on.
Of course, it didn't go exactly how I had thought it would. It was a little difficult for me but while I was lost in my own thoughts that night, while I was thinking about how this song was now about their relationship and about how excited they were to be exploring changes in their lives that they wanted to make together, it hit me what those changes where and the beliefs behind those changes and how just the sheer fact that I could never be the kind of person that he wants to be with in that sense. When we were first dating and this song was about us, we thought that the changes we wanted to make would bring us closer to the kinds of people that anyone would want to be with, not just that the other person would want to be with. But I know, hell I knew then, that he wouldn't have dated me if I wasn't on that path of self-betterment. He would have been my friend, but he wouldn't have been my boyfriend. And so I ended up twisting my path to better fit what I thought he wanted, which meant denying so much of who I really am. I feel like I'm still walking that path of self-betterment, if at a slower pace than I wanted to back then, but it will never make me the kind of person that he would want to be in a long-term romantic relationship with, even if it makes me better and a better person, because it will never magically make me a person that is better suited to him when I wasn't already. I remember thinking that night that if it wasn't for our shared history, I'm not sure we'd even be friends, our beliefs are so different. But from what I know of her, she does seem very well-suited to him. At the time, it was very bittersweet, but it helped knowing that I could never be what he was looking for, and also knowing that the reverse was true, that he could never be what I was looking for. I had just started getting serious with The Professor and Ginger and I knew that the things I had finally found in them I would never find in him. But I was ok with that and I knew it was a big step in the right direction, if one a long time coming.
Tonight, several months after those thoughts, Moneypenny, his wonderful girlfriend, and I went to another Urge show. When they played this song, I had a different reaction. Tonight, the song became about someone else for me. Or rather someones. This week has been incredibly difficult for me, much of it revolving around the pressure of this trip and bringing my cats to live with Moneypenny. (Short of it is that I'd like to stay as much as possible with Ginger and the Professor, both just to get to be with them and as a trial run for moving in together but The Professor is allergic to cats and I can't bring them with me while we're in the same smaller space.) Ginger, the Professor and I have all been having issues with our crazy, which makes it harder for any of us to know how to or be able to help either of the others. So this week when my stress level shot up largely as a result of something I was trying to do to be with them more during a time when I had a hard time seeing that they wanted me to be there, it made things even more difficult. But when I heard this song, I felt my attitude do a 180. I know that they've already proven time and again that they accept who I am, that I don't have to conceal anything or be other than who I am. I just need to find a way to run with that instead of letting my insecurities and my past experiences run the show. I've already had so many experiences that I had just straight up given up on and I know that when they are doing better they are completely invested in helping me explore the things that I want to do, try, experience, just as I am for them. Even when they aren't doing so great, they are still as supportive as they have it in them to be, which is still pretty amazing. But I need to keep turning my mind to how the future is wide open for me, not the ways in which it might be closed off, whether those are permanent or temporary, which is often something I don't know. I have to be reasonable with my goals, know that I can't make everything happen tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. And maybe with one fewer person in the hole, things will be easier and it will be easier for them to get out of their own holes.
Writing about this now, it doesn't seem to be such a big deal, but it made me so happy to know that this one song, a song I love and have loved for over a decade, has gone from an almost bitter reminder of unrealized hopes to a call to me to pull myself up, to make those changes to make my life better both for myself and those I loved, which is something that I never could have forced to happen.
I was never as quick as others with a comeback. I've spent my whole lifetime in my head re-doing conversations with what I should have said. So of course it should come as no surprise that I would be no match for a lawyer. But that lawyer was a friend, so I didn't expect the "bitching about my home life" that I was doing, that I do with most of my friends, to turn into Matlock unraveling the alibi witness on the stand. And I'm stupid enough to have let it happen twice. After both conversations, I went over and over what I wish I had said, but I was afraid it would all just sound like me trying to justify myself after the fact. So I've spent three weeks having this conversation in my head. I finally figured that I needed to get it out, no matter how it sounds to anyone. I don't need to defend my life, but I do need to stand up for the people that I love, which I failed at doing at the time.
One of the assertions was that I deserve better than The Professor. But if I deserve better than so does he. When he is in "the hole," I see my own depression, the months I've spent on the couch just staring at the tv, the endless hours of Law & Order and House episodes, with no sleep schedule to speak of, being both bored but too disinterested to actually get up to do anything. I know what it is like to be the ghost that others live with. I know what it is like to let everything happen around me, even if that means that it falls apart, because I'm too depressed to do anything about it and not yet ready to get help. And I know how hard it can be to take the leap of getting any help or making any changes because you are so used to life the way it is and there is no guarantee that changing or getting help will make things better. So when it's asserted that I deserve better than him, it's like saying that I deserve better than...myself? But questions of what we deserve often come up short because we can all be shitty, deserving nothing, and we can all be amazing, deserving better than whatever we could possibly find. We don't deserve to be treated poorly on purpose, but no one will always be able to treat us like the royalty we are at our best.
In the same vein, my lawyer made the claim that if he was working and his partner was not, he would expect that the house be spotless all the time, meals be cooked, and sex be on demand. In the weeks since, I've often thought to myself that sounds more like he would expect a maid/cook/hooker combo. It's true that I don't have that, but, as Ginger says when people she knows try to argue the same point, no one knows what he does for me. The thing is, I can make my own money and clean my own house. Though I can't make any gourmet meal, I can cook my own food. I also don't think I could be Dommed by a man who gave me sex when I demanded it. What he does for me isn't something I can do for myself, or that I've been able to find anyone to do for me, for that matter. He can make me feel safe and loved even when doing things that would make most people run away screaming. He knows the exact right time to switch it up, before it goes farther than I can handle. He makes me feel loved not in spite of all the awful stuff in my head and in my heart, but because of it. He has never doubted that my place with him and Ginger, or if did, he never let it show. But it's not all serious Dom and relationship stuff. We can sit around watching Babylon 5 and bullshitting for hours. And even though he is on a different sleep schedule, he comes into my room just before my alarm goes off, to cuddle with me, to make my day happier when I wake up. He makes me breakfast because he wants to make sure that I have at least one decent meal during the day. He worried about me, but never tells me not to do things. All the rules I have were developed together, to help me. On my roughest week of class, he took the time out to say how proud he was of me. Ok, look, this isn't an all inclusive list here because I don't have the greatest memory and could never remember the cool little things he does for me that make me so happy. He's far from perfect but I never wanted that. He's screwed up in just the right way for me and we both think we're lucky to have found each other. I suspect that to the lawyer, this sounds like too little too late, but at least maybe I'll stop having this conversation in my head and I hope that the Professor reads this and knows that I know how hard he does try and how happy he makes me. I hope this makes up for the lag time I've demonstrated all around.
(Yes, I know that I've said nothing about Ginger and all the awesome things that she does. But that wasn't the point of contention in the conversation. I'm sure I'll write posts about her too.)
Until March/April when the Professor and Ginger's lease is up and we can move into a bigger place with enough room to accommodate the Professor's allergies and my two extra cats, I'm splitting my time between my parents house where my cats live and the apartment where my significant others live. Now my certification class is over and I am hoping to be working more hours and/or a different job which will mean enough money to pay my own way. I also just found out that my cats could find a new temporary or permanent home with Moneypenny, so there is another roadblock taken care of on the road to living together full-time.
I should feel happy and lighter, but, judging by the tightness in my chest and the knot in my stomach, what I'm actually feeling is fear. We've touched on issues, had bad nights, been sick a little in front of each other, but I feel like I've seen the home side of them but they haven't seen the home side of me. They haven't seen me like I am now in mismatching sweat pants and t-shirt. I'm always wearing cute pajamas or pretty nightgowns. They haven't seen my huge piles of unfiled and/or undealt with mail, unread magazines, and unopened mail. They haven't seen my dvr full of unwatched tv shows that I feel weird about leaving behind or just erasing. They haven't seen me eat cottage cheese straight from the carton standing at the refrigerator. (Sorry Ginger, I know you think cottage cheese is gross.) While they're aware of it, they haven't seen me fall asleep on the couch in front of the tv and stay there all night because I'm too lazy to get up and walk to bed. I don't feel like we've really fought yet, like they've seen me be crazy at them about something they did. Hell, I don't think they've even heard me fart. How can I give up my cats and my little bubble of privacy when they've never even seen me with stubble on my legs? How can I be sure they'll really want to keep me when they see real life me, not just fun sexy-time me?
But even though I just spent over the last two days straight with them at our home and I'm sure that we all need our alone time, I can't think about anything but how much I want to be with them.
I'm not sure I'll be able to get this down right and its difficult doing it on my phone but I don't want to get up and lose this moment. It's probably that this is a new relationship driving this feeling but I'm still at that "I want to tell you everything because it feels like I finally have someone who will understand it or at least appreciate it being shared. "
Sitting here with an odd sense of deja vu. Raining outside. I opened the big Window in my bedroom to hear better. From where I sit in bed, all I can see are trees and rain. I had a big window like this in the apartment in University Park, when I was 12. I'd open the window to listen to the rain at night, sad adult contemporary disks playing on my stereo, softly so they wouldn't wake my parents on the other side of the bedroom wall. Crying myself to sleep. That was probably when it should have been evident that I had a problem. 12 year olds don't cry themselves to sleep every night. Or listen to adult contemporary music, for that matter.
The rain made me want to listen to Mary Chapin - Carpenter's "Rhythm of the Blues," then the whole Come On Come On album. Remembered snatches of a summer spent at The Nightmare on Spruce Street, watching the rain through the big picture window, cranking up my uncle's cds as loud as I could, singing at the top of my lungs. Probably crying to. I've always had a weakness for the sad songs. The therapist tells me I shouldn't indulge it but some habits are impossible to break.
"it's a need you never get used to- soft, fierce, and so confused. It's a loss you never get over to the first time you lose."
In those early teenage years, I longed for. .. well, hell, I'm not sure I knew what I was longing for. Love, sex, companionship. I know I thought of it in very simplistic terms. Find the right guy, as it was still a guy though I knew I liked girls too, and it all gets better, sorta itself out. That summer I was 14, my uncle was marrying his college sweetheart and they seemed perfect for each other. Just hold out long enough to find it and you're set.
Almost two decades on, with my uncle having come out, divorced and been just as poly as I am working on being now, I can't help but laugh at how naive that sounds.
Right now, one of you is at work and the other is sleeping so soundly that my trying to cuddle with him didn't stir him at all. It's beautiful and complicated and yet sometimes much more simple than you'd think it could be, definitely more simple than my mind wants to make it. Last night, all of us in different tired and kinda grumpy mindsets, hung out together in the living room, me doing homework, her reading, him playing video games. No weird sex stuff. No drama. Just three people living in the same space.
Once again, I get to the end of what I had to say without any point emerging. Maybe it's that I feel very ambivalent right now. Memories of the girl I was flooding back, trying to evaluate if she got what she ultimately wanted, and how I feel about it not looking the way she'd envisioned it, and how it all doesn't feel the way she thought it would when she got it. "Some people remember the first time, some can't forget the last. Some just select what they want to from the past."
The first time Moneypenny visited me in Small Midwestern City, after our great visit in Mid-size Midwestern City and a month of talking on the phone whenever we could, he brought a mix cd with him, the most romantic of gestures when you're broke, in college and have fast and unlimited access to file sharing sites. It started out with songs of motivation and taking control of one's life in general and then at track 6 transitioned to songs that described how he felt about our burgeoning romantic relationship. Track 7 is Oleander's I Walk Alone.
I can't take this anymore
And I'm almost pretty sure
I've been here before
I can't take this any longer
I won't heal until I'm stronger
Strong enough to not be afraid
Of what anybody thinks
Of what anybody says
About the way
About the way I am
So I'll wait until the day
When those feelings fade away
Then I'll make my break
I remember being so touched by the song and what it said about how he felt about himself in the relationship. But later lyrics made it hard for me to see myself in the song. (Which now, actually looking at what the internets say the lyrics are, I realize is a mis-hearing of the lyrics. Well, damn. Ok, I'm gonna write the lyrics as I heard them.)
Had to learn it from the one who let me go
Now I walk alone...
[Because she] had to step away
To make me want to be
A bigger man, a bigger man than that
At the time, it was only my interactions with Moneypenny that made me want to be a better person. My previous relationships hadn't really made me want to be a better person, just reinforced how bad of a person I already felt I was. If I was going to learn anything from the "one who let me go," that person was going to have to be Moneypenny, and him letting me go was not something I really wanted to think about then.
Today I heard a little bit of it and decided to listen to the whole song. Within six lines, I was crying and it just kept hitting me as the song went along. So many of the things that I'm trying to do now in my relationships, whether it be with the Professor and/or Ginger, or even with Troy, were seeded in my relationship with Moneypenny. I was a hot jealous, possessive mess when I was with him. I could not have imagined that in the course of a decade, I'd be able to have what I'm trying to have with the Prof and Ginger, where the biggest jealousy I've felt so far was situational and easily worked through. Or a whatever-we-have (-had?) with Troy, where I enjoy talking with him about the other women in his life, discussing the pitfalls of each potential situation, even while we're lying in bed about to have sex. (Hell, sometimes during sex.) Of course, the ability to do this, the trial and error, were things I lived through with BT and TyRoy, but it isn't the ones who let me go that are reaping the benefits of what I learned with them. It's these new people and these new relationships.
I need you by my side
As I take it all in stride
I put away, I put away my pride
Oh I leave it up to you
Yeah I leave it in your hands
Respect your wishes and your demands
But if it was up to me
Honey we'd already be back at home
And living out
Something I'm struggling with more in this relationship with P&G is taking things at their pace. I believe I am doing well at respecting what they have in their relationship and in their household. It's the feelings part that is more difficult right now. I know that I feel much more strongly at this point than they do. I'd like to think that if I could I wouldn't feel this way yet or I'd slow down the development of my feelings, but, honestly, knowing me, I probably wouldn't have it any differently. Once I went all in, I was all in. As they are different people, coming at this from a different perspective and different experience, their feelings aren't anywhere near to mine. I do know this and I don't want to rush anyone, but the other side of that is that it can get pretty chilly so far out on this limb all by myself. It is difficult to just let it be, to not worry that because they don't feel that way now they never will, to not think that I'm making a gigantic ass out of myself, to not shut off my feelings because they aren't exactly reciprocated.
Strong enough to not be afraid
Of what anybody thinks
Of what anybody says
About the way
About the way I am
I'm also struggling with this. To say that I don't care about what anyone thinks of me would be a lie. The bigger truth is that I often do what feels better for me with some measure of spite for what other people think. The big things in my life I don't do just because people might not like it, but it certainly helps when they don't, which is why I am often so vocal about doing or feeling those things that others might make others feel ashamed. Of course now I'm in a situation where that spite could actually have real world consequences and I feel like a giant hypocrite for not completely owning who I am, for being ashamed of who I am.
There are actually two issues here. The first is something I talked about in therapy a few days ago. Now that I'm in a bdsm relationship, I'm getting to explore parts of myself that I'd let lay dormant for a very long time. I think I'd honestly thought I'd never find anyone to explore them with, at least not anything past some rough sex and light bondage and tamer fantasies, so I'd shut it down. Now that I can, with each new thing that comes up, I'm having to struggle against my own definition of what a good or decent person is. A big part of my struggle with mental illness has been getting over feeling like I'm a bad person. I've not necessarily gotten to a place where I feel like I'm a good person, but I was at a place where I felt like I at least acted like a good person should. But the combination of the things I'm exploring in my head and the reality that, the more I'm submissive in one section of my life, the more assertive, aggressive and even downright mean I am in other parts make it difficult to hold that belief. There's also the added struggle that has come with playing with people who are much more in touch with their desires, desires more extreme than my own. Like the quote the Girls quote I used in this blog post, I am "letting everyone say anything to me." And the struggle comes from knowing that I don't think these are bad people. In fact, these are people I love and care about, who I trust. Hell, these are people I have let or will let do many of those things to me. But there's still this little disgusted voice that questions how I could be around them, much less feel this way, what kind of person am I that I still feel this way about them, that it often in fact deepens how I feel about them to know these things.
Then there is the poly aspect of the relationship. I came out as bisexual when I was 17 because I couldn't stand to not be honest about who I was anymore and because I knew there would come a day when the person I loved was of my same gender and I felt I would be betraying that love if I was ashamed of it. Now, fourteen years later, I feel like I'm in the closet again. In my job, I work with the elderly, most of whom do not appear to be accepting of anything other than 'traditional' relationship arrangements. I feel like it's scandalous to them that I sleep over at my boyfriend's house. And I feel close to these people. I know that I am only the hired help and if they decided they didn't like me, for whatever reason, or for no reason at all, I'd be gone, but it is difficult not to form some attachment, especially when you know about each other's lives, when they ask with genuine curiosity about your life. But I don't feel comfortable being out as bi with my bosses at this job, much less out as bi and (trying to be) in a poly relationship with my bosses or my clients. When speaking to them, Ginger is my boyfriend's roommate or my friend. While both of those things are true, they are not the whole truth. I feel like a fraud saying them, but I am afraid that I might lose my job, or at least any standing I have with my current clients, if I told the whole truth.
Aannnddddd I really don't know where I'm going with this. This would make a very poor high school essay. I just wanted to share the song and get down how I was feeling, how it parallelled things both positive and negative that I'm going through right now. When things grab me that hard, I feel like I have to get it out or I'll drown in it, so there it is.
It's Wednesday morning, quickly slipping into afternoon, and I figure I should start the dishes. We're supposed to go to the store later, but the Professor woke up with a bad backache and Ginger is currently giving him a very rough-looking massage. A part of me wants to stay right where I am and watch. I like learning from their interactions. But it also feels intimate, like I'm spying, like I should leave them along for a bit. I'm sure they'll come get me when they are ready to go and I don't feel it's my place to rush them.
But as I'm doing the dishes, things start to feel familiar. It sounds like Prof and Ginger have moved on from the back rub to playful couple 'fighting.' But they are happy. That much is evident. And I'm happy, in a warm, contented way.
Having a house full of people just living, interacting, both working and playing, separate yet also together, reminds me of happier times with my family. Being at Gram's for the weekend with people doing stuff, some work, some visiting, some playing, some relaxing, wondering in and out of rooms occupied by others, but knowing we'd all come together again for dinner. That 'out of the corner of your eye' awareness of what someone else was doing without getting wrapped up in it. Knowing it was all ok and all going to be ok.
Last weekend, when I was about to start the dishes, there was a short summer rainstorm. I went outside and stood on the back porch, just breathing it in. It reminded me of standing on the cobblestone road in the middle of the night in the cool rain, taking a break from painting my uncle's new 'fixer-upper in exchange for no security deposit' apartment in his college town. I was dirty and hot and covered in paint, bone tired, and we stood out there, barefoot on the road, the only ones up at that hour. I remember eleven-year-old me being so envious that adults got to do this anytime they wanted to, sure that this freedom was what it meant to be an adult. It was then and still is now, another life and then some ago, one of my favorite memories. Standing on that back porch last weekend, I cried alittle, but I felt like, as he so often has this last month or so, that my uncle was trying to reassure me. That this might not have been the situation I had asked for, but it is a good situation and he is supporting me.
(Yeah, maybe a month from now or a year from now, if/when this all blows up in my face, I'll feel differently, feel like I was completely delusional, but I need all the support I can get right now so I'll take it. Even if it's all in my head, I have to hope that it is that part of me that comes from him.)
As I do the dishes, I think of all the times hanging out with him and his (now ex-)wife. In some ways, as a kid who could only see the world in terms of couple, of pairs, I felt like a third-wheel. But they never made me feel like that, even when they probably should have kicked me out so that they could enjoy more intimate times. Actually, it seems like growing up an only child with my mom and step-dad as well as the time I spent with my aunt and uncle, and hell, to a lesser extent, the time I spent with my grandparents as an only grandchild, has prepared me for how to blend myself into a couple, perhaps create a triad, now. How to not feel competitive. How to not feel excluded when they focus on each other. (Though I have to admit that in this romantic and sexual context I'm still getting over my embarassment when one of them is focused on me while we are around the other. As well as when both of them are focused on me actually.) But it feels nice for everyone to already be comfortable enough that they can do their own thing and I can do mine, that I can feel connected to them as we do and enjoy the snippets of eavesdropped conversation and play. I miss the feeling of that larger, connected but still doing our own thing family. Of course,sadly, I rarely appreciated it in the moment as much as I do this now.
Later, in the car, as we run our errands, I ride in the back and listen with bemusement as they banter and bicker, the way that long established couples do. It reminds me of so many car rides with my parents or my uncle and aunt, that familiar feeling of being part of a family while also having my separate space, enjoying the eavesdropping as they talk to each other as if they've forgotten that I'm there. I know it sounds weird, but this is what home feels like to me. This is feeling like the home I've so missed since my larger family started passing away. This is starting to feel like home.
It's her day off so she's there when I have to leave for work. Even after last night, I'm still too shy to kiss her. But if she is not mine, at least I know that I am hers. And his. And that is enough for now. I sneak into the bedroom to kiss him goodbye and then hug her as long as I can before I must leave their happy little home.
With nothing good on the car stereo, I go for the mp3 player, deciding to play an artist I haven't listened to in a while and a song that reminds me exactly of how I feel when I am driving to the place I am leaving, rushing to see her before she goes to bed in the afternoon or leaves for work at night: Maybe some other time I can't slow down Right across that state line Right about now Her hair's still wet from her bath She's sittin' on the front porch With a glass of iced tea In my sweat shirt and her bare feet This I gotta see If I hurry I can catch The colors on her skin from that sunset And her face and that love waitin' on me This I gotta see, this I gotta see (Jason Aldean, This I Gotta See)
For the past several weeks, my uncle has been riding shotgun when I leave, helping me through my freak-outs about how much I care about the people in this situation I did not plan for. But today I don't need him there. Her sunny face and honest words are enough to soothe my troubled soul. As I turn onto the main road though I kiss the Celtic cross ring that reminds me of my uncle's tattoo, until I can adorn my body similarly. Overhead I see the Daytime Moon, my grandpa watching over me as I drive in my grandma's car. Smiling, I feel bursting with love. I don't know how I could have panicked last night, feeling like no one could possibly love me, a tape left over from a previous life, and am glad I self-soothed until sleep, before bringing my unjustified fears to them and ruining the beauty that was shared.
*****
After work, the car radio blesses me with a favorite song that I haven't heard in a long time, which also fits how I feel right now.
This is the first day of my life I swear I was born right in the doorway I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed They're spreading blankets on the beach Yours is the first face that I saw I think I was blind before I met you Now I don’t know where I am I don’t know where I’ve been But I know where I want to go And so I thought I’d let you know That these things take forever I especially am slow But I realize that I need you And I wondered if I could come home Remember the time you drove all night Just to meet me in the morning And I thought it was strange you said everything changed You felt as if you'd just woke up And you said “this is the first day of my life I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you And I’d probably be happy” So if you want to be with me With these things there’s no telling We just have to wait and see But I’d rather be working for a paycheck Than waiting to win the lottery Besides maybe this time is different I mean I really think you like me
A few Saturdays ago, when I wrote this, I have to admit that there was also something else that happened on my way to work. My uncle was in the car with me, riding in the passenger seat with me on my way from my night of sex and play to work. Yes, I know how this sounds. And I'm not necessarily saying that it was his ghost or that I actually saw him. Maybe it was just the part of me that came from him that manifested itself in my passenger seat that morning. At the time, I felt like he was there because he didn't want me to feel any emotional dissonance over the really amazing night and how strongly I was feeling for this guy, even though it wasn't the way I had thought things were going to go. I became less sure of that when I found out some news about people in his circle and it stirred up a bunch of feelings about his loss. Now I'm sure it was the former because he showed up again in my car this morning, as I left the same apartment and that same person, after an even longer and more intense time period. When all I wanted to do was to run away, my uncle was sitting there telling me not to run.
In this dating thing, I had some specific ideas about what I wanted and, by gods, I was not going to settle for less. I wanted a primary romantic long-term relationship partner, who was also more dominant in bed, and hopefully who was also into the idea of a monogam-ish relationship. And, somehow, he managed to find me. Just at that wrong time. Someone else also found me, a real Dom in a long-term polyamorous relationship, who seemed more than happy to just play with a fairly inexperienced submissive while she found her white picket fence. Of course, that isn't what happened either. We got along well over lunch and I melted the first time he touched me. Not only has he been a good Dom to me so far, but we get along like gangbusters outside of the sex and the play. And I really like his girlfriend. After my last experience with a couple, I wasn't at all interested in having a triad, or larger poly, relationship. When the option came up with someone else that I really liked, because it would have started different, I thought I might as well at least talk with the other person in the proposed relationship. But I wasn't interested in coming into an established couple. Then I met his girlfriend.
I have only two emotions
Careful fear and dead devotion
I can't get the balance right
Throw my marbles into the fight
Each time I am there, I stay a little longer and things become more intense. I start to have deeper feelings for both of them, though obviously more for him because we are together longer and share a physical relationship. I love being there. I love being with them. How I feel about them, but especially about him, seems completely out of proportion to the short amount of time we've spent together. But they want me back.I text What do you want with me? When I want to own you comes back as a response, I stop breathing. In the dark, he whispers to me that, if things were all the way he wanted, I wouldn't leave there. How can that not be appealing after all the men in my life who tell me how great I am but that they don't want to be with me. Especially when I think he and her are so great.
And this freaks me the fuck out. When I really like someone and they like me back, I rush in head first. Then, the push-pull, fight or flight, only made worse by the borderline, kicks in and I feel the need to poke it with a stick to see if they overcome my push, thereby proving that they really want me.
The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again
So there was my uncle, sitting there, telling me not to run, to see this through, despite the situation not being the one that I had originally envisioned, reminding me of all the love he had in his life by accepting what came into it.
There are some things that seem to come completely naturally to some people, but that I can't seem to wrap my head around.
When you're with someone, especially in a new romantic situation, and they seem to be saying the exact right thing, how do you not question if they have just read you well enough to know what will stroke your ego and make you pliable to their will, even though they are secretly laughing at you in their head or behind your back?
Anticipate- Ani DiFranco you are subtle as a window pane standing in my view but I will wait for it to rain so that I can see you you call me up at night when there's no light passing through and you think that I don't understand but I do we don't say everything that we could so that we can say later oh, you misunderstood I hold my cards up close to my chest I say what I have to and I hold back the rest 'cause someone you don't know is someone you don't know get a firm grip, girl before you let go for every hand extended another lies in wait keep your eye on that one anticipate dress down get out there pick a fight with the police we will get it all on film for the new release seems like everyone's an actor or they're an actor's best friend I wonder what was wrong to begin with that they should all have to pretend we lost sight of everything when we have to keep checking our backs I think we should all just smile come clean and relax if there's anything I've learned all these years on my own it's how to find my own way there and how to find my own way back home
