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."
Small wet spots on the green linoleum and then I have to stop because I can't see anything anymore. I'd knelt down to clean the base of the tub and the toilet and somehow ended up crying there on the floor.
Playing the new Jason Aldean album while I cleaned the bathroom in anticipation of your first visit to my other home. As things in each song remind me of you, I'm hit by a wave of...i don't know. Sadness. Grief. Both and more, so much stuff that I can't separate it out. But that voice in my head is saying loudly and clearly "He gave me you. I never would have had you if I hadn't lost him."
For I can't remember how long, I've told people that I can't feel like I'd change things in my past because I wouldn't be in the moment I'm in, wouldn't have the good things that I did, if I hadn't had all those things in my past, the good and the bad. And except for sometimes wanting to take back the shitty things that I had done to others, I believed that. Mostly still do. But if I only have this because he's gone, and I could change that, would I? It's probably best that I can't answer that definitively.
It's a bitter pill knowing that I wouldn't have this work that I really do love, this path that I'm walking, these loves I can't imagine giving up, without his illness and death. And, if challenged to discuss it logically, I would tell you that I know this can't be true, that this isn't how the mechanics of life work, but maybe the only comfort I can get from it is that he gave me this because I wouldn't have him. He knew I needed work that would fufill me, give me meaning, and people to love me, finally loves who understood my brand of crazy and my brand of love and sex. He had to wait a bit to give it to me, because I couldn't have seen anything when he first left. But he gave me back my bestfriend, the link to my past, then the therapy to help me save myself, and then the work and then you. Of course, with you, more than the others, he had to walk me through it, sit with me through those sad confused drives away from the life I was standing on the edge of, holding my hand while I figured out how to take the jump I really wanted but had not come prepared for. There's no way I'll ever be able to thank him for all he gave me while he was alive, much less all he has given me since.
I have to hope that I gave him some measure while he was alive too though. I remember a conversation with drunk him where he said he confessed that his plan was to live in the suburbs of larger Midwestern city until my grandparents passed and then he'd do whatever he wanted, live wherever he wanted, but he had to be the one to stay there and take care of them. I was 18 and couldn't imagine not getting out for that reason. For days, all I could think of was the Tim McGraw song "Everywhere," about the man who sees the love who stayed behind in the small town they grew up instead of taking to the road with him everywhere they go. I'm glad he didn't do that. I know that life forced him out, but, if I mourn that he only got to live less than a decade out, I can't imagine knowing he never got to do that. I hope he knows how happy I was that he got out. At least I do know that he felt like I helped when he came out, even if I inadvertently pushed him out before he was ready to be out with my grandparents. (Not exactly my fault. Most of you know the story.)
I got the Jason Aldean from him too, and the permission to hang on to my crying songs. I feel him in me as I'm making the drive to see you or the drive from you to work, how my body feels in the seat, how my hand looks on the wheel as I smoothly navigate the big highway between the home circumstances won't allow me to give up yet and the one you provide. Listening to Aldean's "Talk," I'm reminded of our talks, our-singular-male in between play, the long nights of getting to know each other more, and our-singular-female in the never long enough mornings, where I'm torn between never wanting to stop you talking to me for fear you might not feel that open again and wanting to touch you, hold you, kiss you. Then, "Don't Give Up On Me" is how I pray you keep standing by me:
"You tie the knot when I'm at the end of my rope,
You never stop believing in me when I don't know,
Who I am or what I'm supposed to be,
I don't give you no good reasons,
But baby don't give up on me,"
But right now, I'm loving "When She Says Baby," though I wish I change it to "When They Say Baby:"
Some days it's tough just gettin' up
Throwin' on these boots and makin' that climb
Some days I'd rather be a no-show lay-low
Before I go outta my mind.
But when she says baby,
Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.
Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy
When she says baby.
Oh when she says baby.
Some nights I come home fightin' mad
Feel like runnin' my fist through the wall.
Is it even worth it what I'm fightin' for anymore feelin'
Torn all the hell with it all.
But when she's says baby,
Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.
Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy
When she says baby
Everything gonna be alright.
Just lay down by my side.
Let me love you through this life.
Yeah she's the perfect shot of faith.
When every bit of mine is gone.
Somethin' I can believe in a best friend
A heaven sent love to lean on.
But when she says baby,
Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.
Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy
When she says baby.
Oh when she says baby.
Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy."
But now I have to go to that work he gave me and the job that I keep because of the life I want to build with you. And i hope that I can make him proud, if nothing else, if I'll never be able to thank him properly.
You said that you thought I just did it to be nice, at least some of the time. All I could think was that you grossly misread my motivations.
Granted, sometimes I do it absentmindedly. When resting my hand on your arm or your knee, before I know it, I'll find myself petting you.
Like many things, sometimes I do it just because you tell me too. With a crook of your finger, I follow you to the bedroom. When you strip down and lay on your stomach on the bed, I do what is expected of me. Gladly. Sometimes it leads you to relax. Sometimes it leads to sex or some other play. But either way, I am not doing it because I'm nice.
At first, it was the one time we were just two people, when you were just my boyfriend not Master or Daddy or Sir. It disarms you. It's the one time I can feel somewhat in control, even if you initiate it. Very quickly, you can't think enough to give orders. I set my own pace, decide what to touch and when. When you haven't initiated it, I know that a minute of stroking your back through your shirt will lead to it coming off and a few passes of my fingers under the waistband of your boxer briefs will lead to them coming off as well. It shows me that I can do to you what I know you so easily do to me.
But ultimately, I do it simply because it turns me on. Because I feel the little, and not so little, noises you make touch something deep inside me. Because you can make my breath stop when your breath becomes shorter and faster as I get closer and closer to particularly sensitive spots. Because it makes me wet to feel you start to tremble when I stay in particular spots just a bit too long. Because I get to see how long I can go just touching you, when I know that just a few well placed kisses will get me a whole new set of things I yearn for. Believe me, I definitely do it for me.
But I don't do it because I'm nice. When it's just you and I, there are very few things I do because I'm nice. I would have thought you would have known that by now.
And don't even get me started on why I do it to her...
I think it was the first time I've ever heard her call me her girlfriend before. I'd said it several times in her presence, but I don't think I'd ever heard her use say it. We talked for hours, while I did that light touch thing on her back. I felt a little better. I felt like she had heard me and she could see where I was coming from, what some of my concerns were in going forward in what is, for her and I, unexplored territory. Is it a triad? Is it her and him, and then me? Of course, though she validated my concerns, she's fine with it developing organically. The crazy doesn't even know what that word means. But I felt better.
He was still asleep and I went to lay down with him for 15 minutes before I had to go to work. I already didn't want to leave. Half asleep still, he apologized for sleeping in so long, rolled over, pulling me to him to spoon him. And I started to cry all over again. I thought I had finished that in the shower earlier that morning, hours and hours ago by now. The only reason he didn't hear me was because he was having his own issues, breathing issues. I closed myself in 'my bedroom' long enough to get it together, then splash cold water on my face, before saying goodbye for the day. For the week actually. I hate leaving and can't wait until we actually have a place of our own.
But I'm scared and I am realizing that I have no good way of expressing how scared to anyone. When you are reading the literature about borderline personality disorder, they use words like "attention-seeking" and "manipulative." When looking at it from an outsider's perspective, I see how it is viewed that way. But from my perspective, I have always had a hard time feeling like people heard me or took me seriously, like people understood how important something was or how intensely I felt something. When I was 11 and 12, I went through an aggressive phase, especially at school, where I punched and hit things, thinking that the outward display would make people care about the inward problem, but it didn't. I retreated into myself. By the time I was 13, just about the time we moved 2 states away, the depression had settled in and I rarely tried to tell or show anyone how wrong things were. The times I got so angry or frustrated that I cried were just the times that I couldn't hold it in anymore, though I still wanted to. Though, to be honest, sometimes I wasn't even aware that things were wrong, just that they hurt, all the time. By then, of course, I thought that was normal. At least normal for me. I don't think it was really until after high school that I started freaking out on people so that they would understand how serious I was about how I felt. Just as quickly as I had learned as a preteen that no one thought anything was really wrong when I cried, I learned that, when it got too much, if I could make it big and over the top, the people who cared about me would pay attention. And yep, I see how that's attention-seeking and manipulative from the other side, but from my side, I was doing the only thing I knew how to do to get any kind of help or validation or love.
I'm doing so much better and being so much more effective. Gods bless Marsha Linahan and her dbt. But romantic relationships seem to really be the test of all that new-found effectiveness. I feel all these things and I feel them so intensely. They can change so fast and they are so confusing sometimes. Not to mention that I'm in a situation that doesn't have a guide book and I don't have many people who can show me the path they walked because we aren't even in the same forest. Everytime I get scared or freaked out or unsure, I feel like I'm hitting the same wall. I try to tell him, but I don't feel like he hears me. Then I do something stupid and make some bad decisions that actually are clearly against the rules. The times that this has happened, in the correction of the transgression, I've worked through the fear or the uncertainty. Driving to work after the incident today, I realized that I don't know how to feel like I'm getting people to hear me, to take me seriously, to understand how intense this is for me, without acting out. I don't even know what that looks like. But I'd rather not let the crazy out. So I try to deal with it myself, internally. Then, I panic a little, do some not very effective, but still minor things- like crying alot, smoking a bit more, drinking a bit more often or a bit more than I should. Usually, after a bit of this, I'll work up the nerve to express that I'm worried or scared or freaked out, which is usually met by "Don't be worried/scared/freaked out. It will be ok." This does not assuage the crazy. It makes her mad and defiant and we end up acting out. I don't want to do that, especially now that I'm fully grasping how far back this pattern goes, but I don't know how to feel like I'm heard without the acting out, especially since the acting out is just so fucking effective.
So, what's the problem, you ask?
First, let me say this. It's been a long time since I've had a relationship that felt like it was going someplace from an early stage. Within weeks, maybe even less, it felt like this was going to be something more. Not only that, but the other person wanted that too. (It took a little bit longer for her to get on board, but it wasn't that much longer.) It took much less time for the other person to want something more in this than it did with TyRoy or my ex-husband or Moneypenny. And it probably hasn't been since my ex-husband that I've had a relationship where we talked about living together and kids and living a life together, where the other person brought up how that looked to them, not just me bringing up how it looked to me. (Yes, TyRoy and I lived together and we did talk about those things, but I still always felt like there was an expiration date on our playing house, even when I did want more.) In addition to this not being a traditional situation, which can be scary, or the situation I envisioned, which is scary, but it's the first time in a long time that I've really been thinking about a long-term situation. So every step along the way, I freak out about something different. Yes, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't freaking out about something. I know.
They just came back from a four day trip to bumfuck Midwest tiny town for her friend's wedding. Before they left, we had a practical talk about moving in together, like it can't be until March when their lease is up but we want a three bedroom place, we want to save for movers, if I bring my cats he has to have at least one room where no cats are allowed, and we want a king-size bed for puppy-piles. My unfounded and unrealized anxiety about their trip away was that they would change their mind about me and the whole situation while they were away. Of course, what actually happened was that they missed me terribly and came up with more ideas for how we could spend time together, the three of us. But they were wiped out. Her sleep schedule is completely messed up and I barely saw her in the past three days because she was either sleeping or at work. He needed time to do his own thing since he hadn't gotten much alone time in the past three weeks, so he was geeking out on his game. His allergies and asthma were also bothering him. My reasonable mind understood this. Part of this being home, not sexy-visit-sex-play, is that we aren't always on, aren't always having sexy visit sex play time. There are going to be times when, though I am there, I want to be left alone, to read, to talk to someone else on the phone, to do whatever it is I want to do. But it felt like they were in their own worlds and I still felt shut out, which is something that has been bothering me more and more lately. When I came into this situation, I had it in my head that they were a them and I was just something on the outside. It made it much easier to respect the boundaries made and their relationship in general. But as we three have started to become the we, or at least as he's expressed that that is what the two of them want, I'm trying to adjust my framework and I keep seeing the ways that it's not the three of us, but them and me. The past few days, I've felt that acutely, but didn't have a way to say it. So I smoked and I drank and I shoved it down. And when an interesting guy sent me an interesting message on a dating site, I talked to him. And when he said that he wanted to take me out on a date, I said ok, after getting permission, of course. What can I say, it stroked my ego. But as the anxiety of the idea of a date sank in, so did the reality that I didn't really want to go on a date with anyone else. They want me to, so my world doesn't shrink to just them. But what I really wanted to to feel more connected to them, to feel more like an us, and I realized that going on a date with someone else probably wasn't going to make me feel that way. When I finally got the courage to say that to him, I feel like he waved it away. Sometimes I think he forgets that I'm not her, that we don't have their four years of hard won trust and decade of friendship. I think he forgets that I don't have that kind of trust with anyone, where they can just say that it will be ok and I will believe them. When he got up after tucking me in, I cried until I fell asleep. And I cried when I woke up all by myself. Because when I don't feel like I'm taken seriously, there is only about 2 minutes of negative self talk before I get to a place where I feel like this person doesn't care about me, because I'm not the kind of person that people care for and no one is ever going to care for me and I'm always going to be on the outside, a sock without a mate in a world where no one has three feet. And in that place is where the dragons live, folks. Sigh. I've been seeing alot of the dragons lately. I can't seem to destroy that old tape.
And I'm writing this now because I can't not express it, but I don't know how else to say all this. I just want to have a way to tell people, not just him, not just them, but anyone, that something is bothering me, really bothering me, and have them really take me seriously, have them see how intensely I am feeling this, without going out and doing something stupid. I can only hope that this is heard.
Try to steel my courage.
So important to get this right. To do right by my friend, by our friendship. Hell, just do right by my own self.
A country song on the car stereo talks about a man's eyes being blue just like the ocean and I realize I don't know what color Professor's eyes are. We spend too much time in the dark or with my eyes rolled in the back of my head when we're close and face to face. But I think of what he whispered in the dark to me about my eyes, about why they drew him to me and my breath catches in my throat just like it does every time I remember flash back to it. After so long feeling like I could not live up to the goodness of my partner, I feel like I finally found a home with people who are dark and twisted but still manage to .... not overcome, but live with it and make a beautiful life where they love and take care of each other. They show me that I don't have to be that impossible version of "good" that I have in my head to love and take care of my family. Remind me all the time that I am good and I do take care of my family. Make me want to work harder to create more of a family and more for it.
And I know what color her eyes are. That green-hazel is seared into my mind. As is how her togetherness is what I thought was impossible for me to be, but her path has been harder and she does it.
And I touch the pentacle with the stag hanging on my neck, given to me by the friend I am striving so hard to prove myself to. Remember my uncle's admiration of it. Think of all the things on my body that are talismans of the people I love, drawing strength from them. After all I've done for people I love, this should be a cake walk.
Just erase the old tapes. Record new ones.
"We took down all the pictures and then we took down all the walls packed up our expectations piled them in the hall yeah we bagged our future kicked it to the curb and then we stood there unencumbered and we stood there undeterred cause we were done clinging to the things we were afraid to lose and the only thing left was a breathtaking view you looked at me and I looked at you and we said, "How about now, "what you wanna do?"
now there's something in the way In the way of my love for you now there's something in the way in the way of my love for you i got to get it out the way the way of my love for you i got to get it out the way the way of my love for you" -Ani DiFranco "Out the way"
[While editing, I realize how the chorus might seem. To see what is in the way, see the verse above. It's not in reference to other people, but ideas. Just to be clear.]
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
It's weird the things that make you feel grown up. Well, it's weird to start with that I'm 30, 31 in 3 days and don't feel like a grown up. But I live in my parents' basement and don't have a full-time job so that contributes quite a bit. Also, felt much more grown up when I was married, even though same living situation, but I was so-and-so's wife. I digress
It's weird the things that make you feel grown up. Leaving someone else's house in the morning makes me feel really grown up. When I was younger, I thought I'd have a slightly different slutty phase than the one I ended up having. One like in the movies or on tv, where you drink a little too much and go home with someone you picked up that night at a bar. Now, to my recollection, I have never done this. What they never tell you is that picking up people in bars is hard unless you have really good game, which I don't. The internet has been the savior of my sex life. Without it, I would be able to count the people I've fucked on my fingers, which, to me, would be very sad. But hooking up with people on the internet is different and happens at all kinds of times that aren't last call. Also, let's be honest, if those people were in a position to attract a potential mate, if they had things like a job or a place of their own, or they were unattached, they probably wouldn't be trolling Craigslist for ass in the first place.
Or maybe they've been more attractive to me because they didn't have the potential for me to be in a long-term relationship with them. Now that I'm looking for something long-term, and I'm ruling out people who can't host, I'm having a different experience. I didn't do it right with Troy. I didn't really plan ahead. I had to go to work the next morning but I didn't bring my get-ready bag or a change of clothes in my car. I also drank way too much and left my own car at the bar. Of course, it still worked out just fine. After a night of too little sleep, I grabbed a quick shower at his place and he drove me back to my car. I even had enough time to change at my own house before I went to work. Still not optimal however.
Neyo lyrics If she leave the club with me Then her maturity Gonna make sure she follow me in her car She's so responsible, she gone make sure She leave in time to get home, get ready for work
I did it better last night. To be fair, this night was slightly more planned. With Troy, I had myself convinced it wasn't going to happen that first night. With (doesn't have a name yet), we had arranged that I would stay the night because that was the only way we'd have time together, with my work schedule. I had a small (for me) duffle bag with what I thought I might need. I had even planned out where I would stop to get a quick sandwich and my morning energy drink on my way to work. And now I'm sitting in a parking lot close to work typing this on my phone, as I have to twenty minutes before my shift starts. And I feel great.
fourteenth street and the garbage swirls like a cyclone three o'clock in the afternoon and I am going home F train is full of high school students so much shouting so much laughter last night's underwear in my back pocket sure sign of the morning after ... maybe I'll live my whole life just getting by maybe I'll be discovered maybe I'll be colonized you could try to train me like a pet you could try to teach me to behave But I'll tell you, if I haven't learned it yet you know, I ain't gonna sit, I ain't gonna stay
Yeah, I don't think I need to add anything else....
Crash My Party - Luke Bryan
It don’t matter what plans I got, I can break ‘em.
Yeah, I can turn this thing around at the next red light
And I don’t mind telling all the guys I can’t meet ‘em.
Hell, we can all go raise some hell on any other night
Girl, I don’t care. Oh I just gotta see what you’re wearing.
Your hair, is it pulled up or falling down?
Oh I just have to see it now.
[Chorus:]
If you wanna call me, call me, call me.
You don’t have to worry ‘bout it baby.
You can wake me up in the dead of the night;
Wreck my plans, baby that’s alright.
This is a drop everything kind of thing.
Swing on by I'll pour you a drink.
The door’s unlocked. I’ll leave on the lights
Baby you can crash my party anytime.
Ain’t a spot downtown that’s rockin’ the way that you rock me. Ain’t a bar that can make me buzz the way that you do.
I could be on the front row of the best show.
And look down and see your face on my phone.
And I’m gone so long, hang on. I’ll meet you in a minute or two.
[Chorus]
If it’s 2 in the morning And you’re feeling lonely And wondering what I’m doing...
[Chorus:] Go ahead and call me, call me, call me You don’t have to worry ‘bout it baby. You can wake me up in the dead of the night; Wreck my plans, baby that’s alright. This is a drop everything kind of thing. Swing on by I'll pour you a drink. The door’s unlocked. I’ll leave on the lights Baby you can crash my party anytime.
People love that cliche, time heals all wounds. But live long enough and you'll realize that most cliches are true. It's amazing what even the smallest passage of time can accomplish, the cuts it can close, the imperfections it can smooth over. But in the end, it comes down to the size of the wound, doesn't it? If the wound is deep enough , there might be no way to keep it from festering, even if you have all the time in the world. -Being Human, US The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. -A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Several times, he's said that he's broken. On good days, he says he feels like he may be healing, or that he may only be bent, not broken. When I ask him how or why he thinks this, what it is that he finds wrong with himself now, I never really know what to do with his answers. What he describes sounds rather normal for the people I've known in my life, nothing too extreme, especially considering what he's been through in the last year or so. Some of the things, like not really being able to tell when someone is being genuine or when they are actually trying to get something out of you, are how I feel all the time. Hell, they're how I feel about him sometimes. This is not to say that I don't support him being whoever or however he wants to be. I wholeheartedly do. It's just very far from my lived reality and that of most people I know. It also makes me wonder if we would be suited to each other, long-term, if what he thinks of as broken is what I consider normal.
And while I understand how it might feel like being broken for someone in his position, with his life experience, that terminology really gets under my skin. Just like "broken home" or "broken family." While talking to my therapist a few weeks ago, I put the word in air quotes and she insisted "But we are from broken homes." (She's a child of divorce too.) I didn't have words to express how and why I thought she was wrong, why calling my family broken made me angry, but I did and still do.
So I've been thinking quite a bit about being broken the last few days. As is usually the case, I couldn't think of a good response in the moment, but I am trying to develop one now. Maybe he is right that those things he describes are broken-ness and that my therapist is right about me being from a broken home. For the sake of the rest of this post, let's just assume that they are. It's not the kind of broken that occurs when a plate slips through your fingers and shatters on the floor, where no amount of gluing will restore it to it's previous usefulness again. It feels more like a broken bone, where your body can heal it naturally, with time and proper care, though how close it functions to it's previous state will also depend on how well it is re-set.
I looked up bone fractures on Wikipedia. If I'm reading it right, first, you get a blood clot between the fragments, then new blood vessels grow around the clot. The blood vessels bring the collagen which stiffens and becomes the bone matrix. Then a process called remodeling replaces the initial bone matrix with more mature bone. It usually takes about 18 months but is 80% of normal within 3 months in most adults. I can almost picture the blood then collagen then bone filling up the small space of the fracture, making what was a gap now whole again.
So, yes, I've been broken in many places, many times. I will be again. But when my family "broke" under the strain of a cheating and abusive spouse, my grandparents, my uncle, and, a little while later, my step-dad wove the broken places back together. I would not trade the closeness we shared as an extended family for a unbroken nuclear family. The rest of the broken-ness, well, sometimes you don't expect anything to every bridge that gap, to ever bind the pieces back together. Sometimes it doesn't for years and years. And then one day you realize that you can use that arm or leg again, just like a normal person, That years after a traumatizing robbery, you can walk alone to your car or down the street, without your heart racing. That after months of forcing yourself to hang out with friends, you find that you like doing it, that you miss seeing those people when you don't get the chance to for awhile. (Ok, so that comes and goes. The remodeling may have made the bone as strong, but the bone was never really a people person.) That two years after your last big loss, you can sometimes talk about it without even tearing up. Maybe you also find that the bones didn't heal exactly how they used to be, but that you are alright with that. Maybe you even like it better that way, because it reminds you that you'll never be the person you started out as, for better and for worse, though hopefully more for the better than for the worse.
Then again, I've also done some breaking on purpose. Tattoos, piercings, and scars are not how our bodies were originally, but I'm happy with them. In fact, I want more. I don't date how people are supposed to and I disclose too much too soon to everyone. There are a bunch of other things that society at large says that a healthy person doesn't do, but that I do openly and gladly. So I guess I also accepted a long time ago that I am broken, at least by most standards out there. Many times, I heal. I can bring those broken pieces back together and I find the remodeling to be sorta amazing. The rest of the times, I just develop new strategies for dealing with things while broken. Even if that means I'm too broken for most people, once they aren't broken anymore.
Gary Allan- Pieces
I've been broken, torn and scattered
I've loved holy, I've loved sin
I was rolling on the wind
It didn't matter
I was so sure of who I didn't want to be
Every smile and every fear
Every laugh and every tear
It was all mine, it was all me
Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces
We've all been lied to We've all been liars Nothing's perfect in this world Everybody's been burned by the fire Guess I'm learning That what breaks you, makes you grow But I'm not hiding where I've been Gonna let the light shine in What I don't need Gonna let that, let that, let that go
Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces
Pieces, the good and the bad
Pieces, the happy and sad
Pieces, the wrong and the right
Pieces, that's my, that's my, that's my life
Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces
Ok, so things have turned around with the guy I was seeing. The "things in common" part was already there, in spades. But I was worried about the physical, sexual part. I needn't have worried. Though it took longer than I'm used to, once we finally got an open-ended bit of time with privacy, things fell into place. And now he even has his own pseudonym - "Sweetie." It's a Doctor Who joke. He likes it.
No, now the problem is back to being what is usually is - me. All this dating stuff is making me feel crazier than usual. BPD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation, leading to, among other things, unstable interpersonal relationships. I've been doing pretty good, with the therapy and everything. Work is going well. My family relationships are going well. My friendships are mostly going well. But I haven't really had to deal with a 'real' romantic relationship, which are what have given me the biggest opportunity to create a hot mess. So what are some of my biggest problem areas and how am I already creating a hot mess of things?
Disclosure - I think it probably going without saying that I don't really know how to keep anything to myself. I mean, come on, just read this blog. I'm also not so good knowing when is the right time to tell somebody something. Being culturally trained by romantic comedies, I believe that our relationships would all work, or at least get started, if we'd be uber-honest. So I go out on that limb, in case the other person is holding back. Of course, most of the time I end up with my ass flapping in the wind up there all by myself, with the other person thinking that I came on too strong or am going too fast or just generally freaked the fuck out.
Yep, already did this one. Though I was fine with leaving things non-exclusive, non-facebook'd til he was ready the first night we were together, particularly because I was planning on taking advantage of the non-exclusive while I still could. But after therapy and a weird meditation, I felt I shouldn't be taking advantage of the non-exclusivity (more on that later) and, even further, that I wanted to at least "have the talk." And after several drinks, I told him so. Obviously, that didn't go so great. He's still around, but he's not my boyfriend.
Cheating - So all my faithful readers know that I've been less than faithful in past relationships, which is why I started pursuing open relationships. Of course, prefer their LTRRs to be monogamous, so eventually I'm going to run into that problem again. Part of what complicates it even more is that most of my friends are exes and, with some of them at least, being physical in some way, whether that's cuddling while watching tv or sleeping together, is the biggest way I know how to show and receive their caring.
This has already come up as well. After Sweetie said he didn't feel being intimate meant we needed to "have the talk," I brought up my problems with fidelity and that I have bigger problems when it comes to exes. And that Moneypenny is coming into town next weekend and staying with me. Also, that there was a slim possibility TyRoy might need a break from his girlfriend and be coming over this weekend. He seemed fine with it, but he's pretty affable all around. Of course, my therapist had a different take on it and now I feel completely confused about the whole thing. I don't believe that "doing something romantic/sexual with someone else" equals "hurting the primary partner." Of course, a big part of that depends on if you actually hurt your partner. Except he hasn't actually tried to lay claim to that, kinda turned away the offer, and I can't for the life of me get him to answer whether or not it would hurt him if I was with someone else. Maybe he doesn't even know himself, but either way, I can't get him to really say anything. And, despite what my therapist (and everyone else) thinks, I don't really see a good reason to not be romantic or sexual with someone else if it's not hurting anyone.
Taking things slow - I honestly don't even know what this means. Whenever anyone says this, I just think one or both of those people must not like each other very much or very strongly, because if you like each other and strongly, then you'd be spending a bunch of time together and you'd be together. "Taking things slow" just feels like people think there should be arbitrary limits placed on the relationship, no matter what the people in the relationship feel like doing. Also, i always thought that it was sorta assumed that people disappeared for awhile when they got into a relationship. Yes, I do feel like I probably got a bit too lost in the beginning of previous relationships, but I feel like some level of disappearing into the other person is bound to happen.
I've already explained some of the problems I've run into with this. I was frustrated that the physical/sexual part of the relationship took longer than I was used to getting started. I'm now feeling more in the place to "have the talk" because ....well, I feel like I know enough to be in something more settled with him, not what "non-exclusive, non-facebook'd" means to me, while still getting to know him more. I'm also wrestling with trying not to spend too much time together, but we have very little time where we are both free and can hang out together so I naturally want to spend as much of that time as possible having sex with him, er, I mean, hanging out with him and getting to know him. I just feel like I got this shiny new toy and I want to play with him as much as possible when I have the opportunity. I mean, he doesn't even require batteries. But us BPD people tend to get more lost in relationships than most, to the extent of losing ourselves completely, and then when shit gets real we suddenly switch over from thinking the person is amaz-balls to thinking they are the worst person in the history of bad people. I would also be really easy to let everything else I've worked for fall by the wayside to spend more time with someone I really like, but I don't want to lose that progress.
So right now I'm just massively conflicted and most of what I do or want to do is making me feel more crazy and more dysregulated than usual. A part of me misses fucking when I wasn't going to have a LTRR with that person.
In DBT, one of the first concepts you learn about is reasonable, emotional, and wise mind, in the form of this great Venn diagram.
Here is one which explains each state of mind and how they work together. In group, we usually start by talking about what ideas, emotions, and actions we associate with each, the ways that reasonable and emotional mind can be helpful, as ways to demonstrate what is in the diagram below.
Most of us in DBT suffer from being too much in emotional mind. Many of the skills we learn in DBT try to add more reasonable mind skills to the mix, to get us to wise mind. Note that reasonable mind is not the goal. If you ask anybody on the street what state of mind you should be in, almost all of them would tell you "reasonable." Society by and large does not look favorably on the emotional state of mind or those living in it. But being too much in reasonable mind is not good either. It just doesn't cause the same amount of trouble in one's life that being too much in emotional mind does. There are times when you need emotional mind. Like for sex, romance, and falling in love.
So I haven't really done well in the romance department for quite awhile. I guess we could say ever, but let's just go back the last couple of years. While my uncle was sick, TyRoy was my unboyfriend. We did lots of the stuff you do with a significant other whenever I wasn't at my uncle's, but he knew that my family came first and I knew he was leaving soon. After my uncle passed, well, I was a wreck. Therapy helped. I feel like I've really gotten my life back, and back on a track. I feel like I'm doing better with my relationships in general. but the only real romances I've had were ones that were established before the therapy. Basically, it's easy to have romance with exes.
All attempts with new people have not gone great. Knowing that sexual compatibility is really important to me, I searched for that first, hoping the rest would follow, like it did with TyRoy. (Well...That was my thought at least. Now that I think about it, how things started weren't nearly that simple with TyRoy. But I digress.) I didn't really feel much of a spark with any of them though and usually they weren't someone I would want to hang out with either. I had a few dates, but I was so sexually charged that I would rush in to get my rocks off only to realize as soon as I came that I really didn't like them. I've never really dated, don't know how to do that like people do on tv or in Cosmo. I don't have rules about holding back the sexual part of the relationship, but I know that I would like a long-term primary romantic relationship. I miss that. I love getting to have a faux version of that with TyRoy or Moneypenny when I get the chance to visit with them, but they aren't my man and I'm not their woman. I want that and I thought I was ready to test out my wings, my new skills from dbt for a new romantic relationship.
I thought I was ready. Now I'm not so sure.
There aren't many people in any of my circles of acquaintanceship that I find attractive. I wasn't really thinking about finding someone to date within those circles. But recent events had me interacting more with one guy, who I'd known for several months and that I did find attractive. For most of the time I'd known him, he'd had a girlfriend, but I picked up in conversation that they were no longer together. I found out more and more things that we had in common. Because of weather, we haven't had a 'real' date yet, but we have hung out twice in the afternoons. It's been great. I like him. We have a great deal in common that I didn't have with previous people I've dated- weird movies, politics, life experiences. Though we don't have the same or complimentary kinks, we are both open to the other's kinks and sexuality in general. Everything seems great. But very little has happened physically and all of it has been at my initiation, which does the opposite of turn me on. I'm disappointed and worried.
I'm starting to think that maybe you have to be a little crazy to have romance or to fall in love. All I've been trying to do for so long is to steer myself away from the emotional mind, towards the reasonable mind, hoping that I'd land in the center, in wise mind. I can make all the lists of qualities I'd like and turn down the people who are completely out of bounds. I can use reason to decide whether or not someone I'm dating is someone I might want to have a deeper commitment with. But you can't have romance and sex without heart and genitals. And I'm not sure how to get mine back without being like I was. What if I can't?
Or what if my pussy doesn't respond to what my brain does?
That people will have a "slutty" period in their lives, especially when they are experiencing a new-found freedom and just getting their footing, like when moving out of their family home to go to college or when they are just out of a long relationship.
The idea that even good girls (and guys, but mostly girls) will end up doing something (or someone) sexually that they did at the time because they thought that the person involved cared for them, but regret later when they find out that the person was just using them sexually.
To this, let's add something that I've posted here before, several years ago, during my own slutty period:
I've always been one of those people who, theoretically, wanted to experience everything. Growing up surrounded by mostly conservative and reasonable people, I mostly got incredulous, despairing, or at best slightly weird looks from my friends and significant others when I talked about any of the wild things that I wanted to do. The current truth of the matter is that I haven't done half of those things, partly because reason prevailed and partly for want of a partner to do them with.
But the summer that everyone started to get sick, though maybe out of the desperation felt from my family situation, I did as many wild things as I could make myself do, though mostly in the sexual realm. I had spent the year before that summer timidly exploring my bdsm sexual interests which I had tried to turn off for the five years previously, when I was in a relationship with someone who made it clear that there must be something wrong with me for wanting to do anything of the kind. While I also hooked-up a few times with a secretive douche of a "nice guy," I was still in "sex is for relationships only" mode and not very confident about my sexuality or my body. But I'd lost quite a bit of weight over that year and, with some help, emerged from my cocoon that summer. It probably also helped my confidence that my orgasm switch got flicked early that summer.
I decided to use the above flowchart to guide my choices. Honestly, I don't really regret anything I did and I don't think that the choices I made or the things I did were all that bad, with maybe one exception, though it certainly wasn't any of the hook-ups with strangers. (Yes, if you're reading this and wondering if I mean you, I probably do.) But I did do plenty of things that weren't really all that fun for me. Though most men that I hooked up with were pretty vanilla, I did tons of stuff that wasn't really my cup of tea, for the orgasms that would come with the sex I was hoping would happen eventually and the sense of adventure that I felt. (Yeah, I know, bdsm stuff doesn't squee me out but someone who wants to make out in their car and have me flash a little boob seems really weird.) But I did it, right? That's what you do, isn't it? Despite feeling good enough about my body to show it to strangers, I still felt that, if someone is willing to ignore your weight and imperfections and that you live at home and don't have a job, then you do lots of weird things that they want you to do. What, you mean that's not how it is supposed to work?
So, why am I telling you this?
Though it's taken me almost a full month to write about it, this recent episode of Girls really struck a chord with me. It aired on February 10th and was called One Man's Trash. Now, I know there are many detractors of this show, and I acknowledge many of the points made. In fact, I didn't watch the first season of the show when it aired, despite all of the critical acclaim, because of the criticisms. But when I watched it, I could relate. In the February 8, 2013, Entertainment Weekly article about Lena Dunham, the creator of Girls, who also stars as the main character Hannah, Melissa Maerz wrote, "People watched Carrie Bradshaw and thought, 'I want to be her!' People watch Hannah and think, 'Oh my God. I used to be her.' Or worse: 'Oh my God, I am her.'" When I watch Girls, I think, "Yeah, I am working really hard on not being her, but sometimes I still am."
Anyway, in this episode, a handsome neighbor to the coffeeshop where Hannah works comes in to complain about the coffeeshop putting their trash in his cans. Though the manager denies it and has an argument with the man, later Hannah follows him to admit that she did it and explain why. In what one recap writer calls a "classic bold-absurd Hannah move," she kisses him and they quickly start to have sex. Played by Patrick Wilson, he is a 42 year old doctor, named Joshua (don't call him Josh), who renovated this beautiful brownstone and is in the process of divorcing his wife who left him because she doesn't like the city. (As opposed to Hannah's 24 year old who has been cut off by her parents, thinks she might be the voice of her generation, and wants to be a writer, but isn't, as of the start of this episode, doing much about it.) When she goes to leave that night because, according to her, that's when you give people their space, he asks her to stay. He takes off work the next day to spend with her. They are shot in soft light and Hannah lounges around either naked or in clothes of his that, like his house, are neutral shades of gray and brown and white. I think this is the most mainstream-tv attractive Hannah has looked in the whole show, both in terms of her presentation and how it is shot. Dr. Joshua even has a little terrace where they both sit and languidly read the paper. It seems so idyllic and the music reinforces that feeling. But after Dr Joshua saves Hannah after she faints from the steam in his huge shower, she starts crying and goes into confession mode (emphasis and transcribing is mine):
"You said nothing. Honestly you didn't say anything or do anything besides just be so great and perfect and ...Please don't tell anyone this, but I want to be happy. [Joshua: Of course you do. Everyone does.] Yeah, but I didn't think that I did. I made a promise such a long time ago that I was going to take in experiences, all of them, so that I could tell other people about them, and maybe save them, but it gets so tiring- trying to take in all the experiences for everyone, letting everyone say anything to me. And then I came here and I see you. And you've got the fruit in the bowl and the fridge and the stuff and I realize that I'm not different. I want what everyone wants. I want what they all want. I want all the things. I just want to be happy. [Hannah sobs.]
And there's all these experiences that I just feel like I've asked for. Things like who in their right mind would want that. You know, like one time I asked someone to punch me in the chest and then come on that spot. Like that was my idea, that came from my brain. And it's like, what makes me think that I deserve that? [...] I think what I didn't realize before I met you was that I was, like, lonely in such a deep, deep way. And, you know, I was reaching for all this stuff when all I needed was to look at someone and go, That person wants to be there after I'm dead, you know?
You think I'm a crazy girl? [Joshua: No, no, I wasn't thinking that.] I mean, if anything, I think I'm just too smart and too sensitive and too not crazy, so that I'm feeling all these big feelings and containing all these feelings for everybody else ....And I just want to feel everything. I just want to feel it all."
And the idyll is broke. He has to go to bed because he has to get up in the morning. She's brought all her trash to his house and he doesn't want it, though he's too nice to really say so or to just kick her out that night.
Man, oh, man, have I ever been there. The moment that you hook up with an older person, who has all their shit together and you realize that you want something like this, but you can't have it because you are still too fucked up to be really be a grown up. And, unlike all the non-grown-ups you've been with, they're too nice to kick you out or throw that back in your face. Of course, Hannah's fantasy lasted three days before she saw it for what it was and left. Mine lasted three years and I never really did leave.
When I read some of the online recaps about the episode, most people talked about how unrealistic the whole thing was, a hot guy who has it all together fucking this weird, ugly, fat chick that he just met and then letting her hang out at his house for days and days. Well, I'm here to tell you, it happens. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Though I wasn't a complete stranger off of the street when he first had me over at his house, I feel like things went similarly. He was going through a divorce, (I think) lonely and sad, and living all alone in a big house that he had thought he would get to share with someone. He lived much more comfortably than I ever had while living on my own. He had had a stable career path and job since he was 18. He wasn't demanding. He was so much more accepting than anyone that I had ever met, though sometimes, when I was revealing my crazy and my damage, I did feel like I was getting that same "I don't want to react badly but I have no idea how to process this information or how to help this chick" blank look that Joshua has during Hannah's confession. And when I met him, I feel like I was in much the same area of my life as Hannah is.
But being with him changed me. One of the big changes post-him for me is that now I look for someone who is stable, mostly in their personality, but also in their lifestyle, and preferably both. I never thought I would want that. Another big change has been a focus on getting my own life stable. I know I haven't done the best job of that, but it is something that I'm working on. The next time I meet a real grown up that I click with, where we both would like to have a relationship with each other, I would like to be able to bring something to the table that isn't just my sex drive and superior pop culture knowledge.
I know that not everyone goes through this, these growing pains that Hannah goes through on the show and that I see myself in, which is probably why some people love the show and others think that she's a self-centered, clueless narcissist. But I know what it's like to be floundering, to be struggling to find where you belong, to feel like your place is to experience everything only to have that turn out to be not very uplifting things and then have a sexual relationship with a real grown up show you what you're missing but aren't yet ready to have. I also know that I have been just as stupid and self-centered and ignorant to my own privilege as she often is.
Another thing that this guy showed me was that close romantic relationships didn't have to be all those things I didn't like and that I could be satisfied in one. When I was doing my recent thinking about monogamy and had a great first date with a guy who only wanted monogamous LTRRs, when wondering if I could be monogamous, MP asked me if I thought I could have been satisfied and happy in a monogamous relationship with this previous man I'd been involved with. I'd never asked myself that question, because that was never a parameter of our relationship, but I think the answer is yes. And since then I've looked forward to being happy in a LTRR built on honest and keeping each other sexually satisfied, though it is yet to be seen if that involves being monogamous, open, or poly.
Two Fridays ago, I posted an ad on CL to get laid. I had an unexpected day off work, with no plans. I hadn't had sexual contact in months and I'd recently passed the 'year and a month without intercourse' mark. I was also just really horny that day. I fucked one guy that day. Meh. It was ok, but, after the horny was sated, I wasn't interested in him at all. I talked to two other guys over the weekend and into the next week, both of whom wanted friends with benefits, but who I had intensely mixed feelings about, though I ended up meeting one of them in person last Friday and giving it a shot. Ugh. Knowing more about the guy meant I had more to not like. I wouldn't really want to be this guy's friend and the benefits were not good. I'm starting to think that I need to focus on finding another grown up, one who also wants a grown up relationship, now that the horny isn't intruding on everything I do. I just need to find another grown up who's not a racist, homophobic bigot, who can host and doesn't mind that I can't, who's dominant in bed but not in the relationship, who likes at least some of the shows that I do... . Yep, no problem.
(Sorry if I posted this recently to the blog, but it seems kinda appropriate.)
Faith- George Michael
Well I guess it would be nice
If I could touch your body
I know not everybody
Has got a body like you
But I've got to think twice Before I give my heart away And I know all the games you play Because I play them too
Oh but I
Need some time off from that emotion
Time to pick my heart up off the floor
And when that love comes down Without devotion Well it takes a strong man baby But I'm showing you the door
'Cause I gotta have faith...
Baby
I know you're asking me to stay
Say please, please, please, don't go away
You say I'm giving you the blues
Maybe
You mean every word you say
Can't help but think of yesterday
And another who tied me down to lover boy rules
Before this river
Becomes an ocean
Before you throw my heart back on the floor Oh baby I reconsider My foolish notion Well I need someone to hold me But I'll wait for something more
you'd think you'd remember the exact time, remember what you were wearing, remember how things smelled
but you don't
or at least i don't
i know that two years ago today he started having trouble breathing and everyone came to his bedside at the hospice
i know that he couldn't really see very clearly and he said that someone must have on perfume, they smelled too strongly. he said it was me and told me to go back to the shower to wash it off.
i know that someone, don't remember who, came to the large bathroom with the shower that was for family members and told me to come back quick.
i know i don't feel like i got to say good-bye, though i was there all the time those last months
i know that how he died sounded just like how my grandfather, his father, died. i know that his death didn't take as long as my grandfather's, though it some ways i guess it took almost four years
i don't know what time it was but i know it was over before this time two years ago
i know at the time it felt like it took forever but looking back it feels like it took no time at all
it's two years on and sometimes i don't know how we're all still standing. at first i thought i'd never stop crying then i thought i'd never be able to talk about him without crying now sometimes i don't even cry when i feel like i should. i'm sure there will be a time when i don't remember this anniversary and i'm sure that he'll be just fine with that, even if i'm not.
i feel like i've changed so much in the time since then, though it might not be easy to tell from the outside. i wish i could tell him how much this has changed me, i think for the better, given me the job i do now, pushed me to really work on myself and stick with the dbt, though if there's something after this, i'm sure he already knows. i with i could tell him that i'd give it all back to have him back, not that it's a choice we get to make though.
i wish i wish i wish i wish so many things
but what i know right now is that i have to wrap this up and stop crying so i can go to work and that after work i'm going to break into that 6 pack i bought and drink to him
