"All of my change I spent on you"

What bugs me
Is that you believe what you're saying
What bothers me
Is that you don't know how you feel
What scares me
Is that while you're telling me stories
You actually
Believe that they are real - "As Is" Ani DiFranco

Sometimes i think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom and we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that i have figured what it's worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse.

But if i move my place in line i'll lose.
And i have waited, the anticipation's got me glued.

I am waiting for something to go wrong.
I am waiting for familiar resolve.

Sometimes it seems that i don't have the skills to recollect
The twists and turns of plots that turned us from lovers to friends
I'm thinking i should take that volume back up off the shelf
And crack it's weary spine and read to help remind myself

But if i move my place in line i'll lose.
And I have waited, the anticipation's got me glued.

I am waiting for something to wrong
I am waiting for familiar resolve
I am waiting for another repeat
Another diet fed by crippling defeat
And i am waiting for that sense of relief
I am waiting for you to flee the scene
As if you held in your hand the smoking gun
And on the floor lay the one you said you loved.

And it's strange
They are basically the same
So i don't ask names anymore.

Sometimes i think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom and we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that i have figured what it's worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse.

The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse - "Expo '86" Death Cab for Cutie

So I know that a lot of people are not going to get why I'm so mad. The Professor even gave voice to this earlier this week: "It's not like he cheated on you." Well, no it's not. You cheated on a (very very nice and amazing and lovely) woman you'd known for a year who you were already feeling like it was over with because you couldn't fall in love with her. But you broke a promise to and lied to your best friend, who's been in your life for 13 years and who's lived through you doing this multiple times, with you promising that you've changed after each time. The person who let you work your way back from all of those trust deficits only to have you do this same thing. Though at least you had the good sense not to involve me in the cheating part this time, even if that would have been pretty hard since I set up several safe guards against that. The other difference is that she, amazingly, seems to be willing to try to work through this with you and forgive you and help you change, whereas I'm not sure I am this time.

I hear the tiniest sparks in the tenderest sound. 
Diving music, drowning the sound. 
waltzing with the hairs upon my arms. 
And your final flight alarm, and you tremble, and you stumble, and you scrape up your palms. 
I can't stay here to hold your hand. 
I've been away for so long. 
I've lost my taste for home, and that's a dirty fallow feeling.
To be the dangling ceiling. 
From the roof came crashing down. 
Peeling in the heat.
Vanish in the rain.
The next time you say forever, I'll punch you in your face. 
Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean I didn't mean it.
You never know when I'll show you the never.
You never know when I'll show you the never.-"The Next Time You Say Forever" Neko Case

Last time this happened, I felt like we worked through a bunch of shit, both with each other and that you were able to see things that you might not have liked but that you needed to see, that maybe you needed someone else to see with you so that you couldn't just ignore it anymore. Even though I wasn't sure that enough had been done, I thought that maybe at least you wouldn't repeat the same things in the same way as before. And I would have warned off this girlfriend if I had thought that you would do the same thing over again. But all that work seems to have been for nothing. Now you feel like you are really actually ready to make changes because this time the hurt in other people was enough to push you to really change, to really grow up and be a man. But it's the same old story I've heard again and again. Last time, I told you that if you just owned this as who you are, I could probably just accept that. I could put that label under your name along with all the other things I know about you, good and bad, and act and expect accordingly. But you didn't. You refused to believe that that was who you are. And now I'm not sure I'm willing to or will even be able to work back from the trust deficit this time or to accept that I just can't trust to tell the truth in matters such as these, ever. The Therapist pointed out that it appears that I had moved from criticism to contempt, criticism being "I don't hate this thing you do" and contempt being "I hate this thing you are." or "I hate you for being this thing that you are." Yep, that about sums it up.

I'm at a payphone trying to call home
All of my change I spent on you
Where have the times gone? Baby, it's all wrong
Where are the plans we made for two?

If "Happy Ever After" did exist,
I would still be holding you like this
All those fairy tales are full of shit
One more fucking love song, I'll be sick.-"Payphone" Maroon 5


There's another thing that's been bugging me though and it might sound petty. One of the times that we overhauled our past romantic relationship and talked about why we didn't work, you said that you couldn't be with someone that you didn't trust to make, if not the same decision that you would make, to consistently make a decision that you would be ok with. Back in December, by which time you'd already cheated on her, I remember expressing my frustration to TyRoy about the fact that I felt like you might have actually found someone who was that kind of a person, someone who could make all the practical household things work, even if she wasn't as deep and philosophical as you might have hoped your long-term partner to me. When I told him about that whole "decision" thing, the divorced man scoffed, "No one is ever going to be able to do that. Everyone is going to make decisions you don't agree with or like." Ginger's response when I had told her about your statement was about how I feel, especially after having been in this relationship, "The best you can hope for is that they make decisions you can live with and, when really back, can come back from." But this belief of yours, that I can't be trusted to consistently make good decisions, has seeped into my beliefs about myself. Looking back, I can remember that each time I've met someone knew after you, I took pains to express how much this was true, how I wasn't actually a very good person or even a very moral person. That was because I knew you and you believed you to be this paragon of virtue. A 'virgin' who didn't drink and had never even wanted to try drugs, who'd been a 'good kid' and never stolen or cheated or lied. (Well, except when you did, which I always seemed to conveniently forget about.) Next to you, my wanton hedonism and habit of doing the exactly what I knew those I loved would disapprove of most demonstrated my complete immorality. And obviously that my decision-making was not to be trusted.

But you are the one who blew up your relationship, who hurt a good woman who you've been using these past 4 months or so to prop up you and your ego while you went through your seasonal depression, even though you felt like there was no future and you had promised her that you'd let her go if/when you felt like that. It is you who lies. It is you who can't be trusted to make the right decisions. I took pains to set up almost all of our interactions so that nothing inappropriate would happen, hanging out so much with your girlfriend present, that you stayed at my house with my people and not with us alone at my parents' house like we usually would, not laying with my head on your shoulder when being comforted because our faces are too close and I know what generally happens when that happens, setting up extreme punishments for myself from Professor if I did anything inappropriate with or to you. I feel like I took more careful considerations and pains with your relationship and monogamous fidelity than you could be bothered to. In my own relationship, with the exceptions of one thing I didn't remember us talking about and a minor freak out early on which pushed me to intentionally and flagrantly break the rules, I've not stepped outside of the boundaries of it. Those times that I have, I was quick to confess, be punished, and mercifully receive a clean slate. Though I tried to be as honest as possible about how shit of a person and a partner I could be, I have consistently been met with the same response in this relationship, "Though we appreciate your attempts to warn us, you really aren't as bad as you make yourself out to be." What makes me angry, what makes me furious, is that my relationship with you has led me to believe that I am way worse of a person than I probably am, especially because I have this false image of you and how good of a person you are. When you are not that good of a person.

I'm supposed to talk to you tonight and I want to say that I'm done. All of these things above lead me to say that I'm done.

But, after my significant others, you were the first person I wanted to tell about my interview on Monday. The person I want to share good news with first and the person I want to cry about bad news with first.

Fuck.

Yeah, I, I know it's hard to remember
The people we used to be...
It's even harder to picture,
That you're not here next to me.

You say it's too late to make it,
But is it too late to try?
And in our time that you wasted
All of our bridges burned down- "Payphone" Maroon 5

Do You Even Want To Move? With Me?

Want to cry. Want to spend all afternoon crying until there are no more tears or until I fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.

But There are things to be done. It feels much like high school finals times. I guess not as bad or as pressing but the same sort of feeling. I want to cry. I want to just wallow in my sadness until I figure it out "I know how to nurse a bad heartache and i can make it worse when I wanna feel the pain." But I can't because there are thsse these things to be done. All the Decembers when I had to wrap up the semester, papers and finals, as well as wrap presents, and budget for and buy them. Not to mention cleaning the house for company or pack for trips out of town. Never enough time or energy or room to breath when I really just wanted to be sad because I felt so alone at the time of year when people are supposed to feel so connected.

We're searching for places to move to, a place that is all of ours and not just theirs, and I can feel myself start to unravel. I am super worried about money, contemplating desperate measures to ensure that I can contribute as much as I need to, as much as I'd like to. I am searching for a new job, with no luck and alot of worry that it will make me less happy than this one does but I will be stuck because I need the money so badly. We aren't have very much luck even finding places we'd like to look at, since it's hard to find a 3 or 4 bedroom place with a dishwasher and washer & dryer hookup that is within our limited budget. I found zero that the Professor didn't say were in bad neighborhoods. Except for the one that was a scam.

And I'm not the only one stressed about it. Though he had hid it well enough from me, Ginger noticed that the Professor was stressed, biting his nails and chewing on his lip. He moved often as a child and moving stresses him out, though rationally he knows we need a bigger space and that after the move itself things feel fresh and new and full of possibilities. 

We went and looked at the only possibly acceptable place that Ginger had found (the others had been struck down.) They thought it was ok but wanted to look at more places. I felt like the Professor was too dismissive, especially when he had not tried to make any appointments with or add to our viewings places he said only today he wanted to look at. I know that unlike their previous moves, as a couple and individually, we do not need to find a place right fucking now because we aren't moving right now. Since we want to give 30 days notice, we wouldn't even be leaving until the end of April, though we can go for quite awhile month to month with just a little extra fee. But I want a space that is mine,  where all my stuff lives, not just this little bit, with 80% still at my parents' house.

But with all this stress there's a quiet tension oozing through our lives, threatening to bubble up and catch on fire at any moment. (Or maybe that's just me. Gods know it's usually me holding the fire.) I feel like every time I get excited about something or think we should have something, it feels like they are dismissive. Every time we actually attempt to do something concrete,  like lookong online at apartments together or looking at the place today, it feels tense and uncomfortable and I end up with my feelings hurt. (Oh hey, well, there are those tears. I had been planning on writing that I wasn't sure that they would even come out right now, but there they are.) Moving into a place that is ours, the three of uses, with all our names on the lease, is this big symbol of the relationship.  Several weeks ago, Ginger told me that to her, as well as in reality, it is just saying that we'll be together a year, this year that we have signed the lease for. Of course to me, it's much bigger. Right now, I can leave or they can kick me out at any time.  We are committed to each other but there are no tangible, legal or contractual ties holding me to them or them to me. This will be the first thing like that. But our difficulty in working on this together, especially without one or all of us wanting to kill one or both of the other people, doesn't exact bode well for us creating a family together. Well, then again, it kinda seems like most large scale things my family did, so maybe it's not so un-family-like. But it doesn't make me feel very secure about continuing,  about our ability to make this work, about if we should be working to make this family at all. Sometimes I just want to say "fuck it, you two got along fine without me, just stay where you are and I'll go..." well, ok so other than back to my parents' basement, I'm not sure where I'll go and I do love them and want what we've talked about but I just don't know how or when to know if that is enough when the things we have to do as a unit to move forward make us all crazy or homicidal.

I feel like I should ask my mom if this is how she felt every move with my dad. I was on the outside of the decision-making. They would ask me what I thought, what I liked or didn't, but I know that the real decision making was dobe between the two of them, behind closed doors. I was just tagging along. But I know the bickering and squabbles got worse the closer we got to the actual moving day. The day itself was always hell. Nothing we ever did was done right for my dad. Most of the time I hoped they'd just leave me and my stuff wherever we were. (If I can't make it through the hours after feeling slighted about looking at the apartment without crying, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to make it through moving day without having a nervous breakdown. Maybe I should schedule a "mental health vacation" in the nearest psych ward the couple days after moving day.) If we can't even get an apartment,  if I can't even make it through the apartment hunting process with them, does that mean I'm not supposed to be with them?

They are asleep now. The Professor adjusted his sleep schedule so he could be up when we went to look at the townhome, staying up all last night, so he and Ginger went to bed about 2:30. I have a list longer than my arm of stuff I should do and I can sit here on the couch with the laptop, watch hulu, and do them. Should do them. Should have done some of them last night. Or I could finish this romance novel I borrowed from Ginger and then move on to other books I want  to read. After a long spell of not really reading that much, I finished two books in the last seven days with the kindle app on my phone. It feels good to read books again. But I really want to sleep until I stop feeling shitty or until this process magically becomes easier. Or at the very least, until I start to feel like it sucks now but it is just temporary suck, not a sign that this isn't to be, not a sign that I can't handle doing the things grownups do together in a relationship. 

Oh, by the way, I liked the townhome we looked at quite well, though it isn't exactly the one we would get if we got one. The one we looked at has a main level, 3 bedrooms and 1 & 3/4 bathrooms upstairs with a completely unfinished basement. The one we'd want is all the same except half of the basement is finished, with a bathroom,  and we'd use that as another bedroom. The Professor keeps saying that he doesn't want a bedroom but an office with a bed in it. That seems like a distinction without a difference to me, except that it would have a ton more computer stuff in it than one might think of a bedroom as having.  But everyone could have their own room, whatever they called it, and no one would be forced to sleep with anyone else if they didn't want to, and everyone could escape when and if they needed it. You can walk around it and there are a ton of bus stops, so the Professor could get around without us. And there are some places that aren't too too far of a walk, though no grocery stores or convenience stores that I saw. It might not be a big step up in neighborhood,  it isn't bad. I could definitely live there. Though we may have a fight over who gets the master bedroom.

"All the things I wish I'd asked"

Well I finally read through them. It only took me 3 years to the day after your death, several months of them in my possession,  sitting accusingly on my dresser or in the bottom of a bag.

I read them laying in my bed in my new home, still naked with dripping hair after a late afternoon bath, since I was too depressed this morning to get up with enough time for a shower. I laughed and cried to myself, alone as I always seem to end up on these difficult days. I know its not planned but he always seems to be asleep or not feeling well or both on these days that are so super hard for me amd I end up crying alone. 

I am not sure what I was expecting when I read them. Maybe I thought they'd be full of the minutiae of every day life, and there is a little of that. Maybe I thought there'd be poetry, and there is quite a bit of that too. I think I was selfishly hoping for more about myself,  though what there is touched my heart and made me laugh. Well, one thing made me say "fuck you" but you were probably right. I think what I didn't expect was to read about the darkness. I wish now more than ever that I had talked more to you about my own struggles with depression.  I guess in my alternate history you would have confided in ne about your own and we both would have recognized that maybe it was as much a problem in our head as with our brains, another little fluke of genetic inheritance.  I knew you'd had some issues, seen therapists and been on a med here or there, but nothing serious. And I guess when you view our medical (psychiatric) and employment histories side by side, yeah, whatever issues you might have faced seem much less severe than mine. But when I read your words, the darkness & depression,  occasional mentions of suicide, and your up & down moods, energy levels, and spending habits... wow, brother.

But our journals are where we are free to say anything, our worst and deepest and darkest. Hell, for those who think I overshare here, you'd really be shocked at what's in my journals. Realistic me suspects that you never would have told me a quarter of how similar our struggles were, even if I'd told you everything.

But I'm thankful to have these and I will honestly fight tooth and nail to keep them, not give them to any other family members,  if that's what I have to do, even if those people are mentioned more often. Fuck them. These are mine.  They both confirm things I already knew and have opened up to me parts of you I never would have seen before. I really enjoyed getting to see you come out, even as I wept with how painful it was. It gave me a new appreciation for your two longterm partners and the relationships you shared with each of them. It makes me feel kess alone in how scared I am about doing this whole grown up thing, feel solidarity in our struggles over housework with our partners, and shows me that some battles with ourselves, with drinking & smoking & weight, over purpose & identity & belonging, we will fight our whole lives.

I wish there was more.  Both that you had written more then and that you were still writing now. I miss you so much.

"That I know more of the stars and sea than I do of what's in your head"

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. 

Free Man

Watching 12 Years a Slave with you was hard. I suspected it would be. As I held your hand in both of mine, the first time that Solomon is beaten and whipped, I was filled with relief that this wasn't a reality for you. I know there are other realities but this specific thing would not happen to you as it had to people who looked like you, relations generations back. I remember talking to you about how so many black Americans had Irish last names, that freed slaves who wanted to throw off the last names of those who enslaved them often took the last names of the soldiers who freed them, many of whom were Union soldiers of Irish orgin. I realized how much I took for granted your strength, strong will and pride. How much I still don't understand about how you came to be you even after all these years of knowing you, several of which I spent sharing your bed.

After we parted ways, as you drove to your empty bed and the posting in the small town which give you too much time to ruminate alone, I was struck by how much I missed you. Missed that rock you always were. Missed the easy way we had when hanging out. Missed that big bed of yours and what we did in it. How much I wish i could help you through your loneliness like I did when we first met, when I felt like I was there more because you needed someone there than that you needed me there, but I was so glad to be of some use to someone that I didn't care.

One of the great things about my current situation is that I don't have to feel bad telling you, or anyone else, that I still love you. Belonging to him,  or to them even, doesn't change that,  nor does it need to. And i just wanted you to know.

"And in my hard hard heart there are these waters"

I've probably posted this before but I'm gonna post it again, with what is going on. I am not sure if I ever heard a song that comes as close to describing how I feel about my absentee father and this whole situation. (And it's not even a country song!) But some days my heart is not as hard as other days.


Keepsake - The Gaslight Anthem
It's been thirty-one years
Since she's been in your arms
But don't worry about Mama
Mama's got a good heart

And I'm not looking for your love
I'm only sniffing out blood
Just a little taste of where I came from

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Until I'm free

And it's been all my life
I've been wondering on the inside
What we could've had
If you'd had a part in my life

And there were children involved
And they were brothers to me
Even if we never got to meet

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Until I'm

Free at last from this shadow that hangs
Surely you wonder sometimes
And I'm sure you all sympathize
Just what a man's to become, just like his daddy's done
I just want to love someone
Who has the same blood

And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my hard hard heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Keepsake
Until I'm free

Replaceable (updated)

I was gonna stay in there until the water turned cold but the hot water heater is either better or bigger than I had imagined. Or the water pressure worse. I was still sitting in the tub 40 minutes after I had gotten in the shower, the water from the shower head still trying to rinse out all the red hair dye. Fucking red dye.

The only thing he has said to me all day was good-bye when they left and I think Ginger probably reminded him of that. Over the course of the morning, I had asked him a couple of questions, if he was feeling better today than when he went to bed last night, if he wanted some scrambled eggs, but I got no response. He responded to Ginger's questions and not even in a horribly grumpy way.

I'm not sure if it's really my intuition or if the BPD is blowing everything out of proportion and I'm just seeing things in completely black and white terms, or a combination of the two as well as something else that happened recently, but, sitting there at the bottom of the tub, I feel how utterly replaceable I am, and that I soon may be. While it may be difficult to find someone who gets along as well with Ginger as I do, I know that it would take very little effort for him to find some other submissive woman to come over and play with him, have sex with him, serve him, even if Ginger doesn't like her and doesn't want the other woman around while she's home and awake. It would probably be better since he could just kick that woman out when he was done with her, only call her over when he wanted her. He wouldn't have to deal with her whining about wanting sex when he didn't or nagging him about all the things that she wanted him to do, like taking better care of himself or signing up for health insurance. He wouldn't have to battle with himself when he wanted to do better for her, because he cared about her and realized that things he did or didn't do effected her negatively, but being too depressed or ambivalent to do or not do those things. (Though I'm not actually sure that he feels that last one.) He wouldn't have to confront his ambivalence about having a child just because she wanted one and was getting older. He has a partner in Ginger. Why should he have the pains in the ass that come with another woman if he can just call one in for the fun stuff whenever he pleases?

It isn't that he's said any of this to me. Like I said, I can't tell if it's intuition or crazy. Given my past experience, though, sometimes the crazy is it's own intuition. Maybe it's just wishful thinking because it feels like it would be easier if he discarded me than for me to have to tell him that I don't know how to be with him if he continues to refuse to help himself, especially with the signing of a lease coming ever closer.

The crazy is being exacerbated by something else though. I found my biological father on Facebook last Thursday. It was quite by accident. Some fake person had sent me a friend request which lead me to delete the other friend requests that I had denied. Most of them were people that I knew but didn't want to friend, to share things with. But there was one that I didn't know at all. She lived in the same town as I had last known my bio father to live in. So I went to her page and then her friends page. There he was. When I went to his page, in his "about" section, he listed her as his stepdaughter. He claims someone else's child but not his own. And I'm guessing that if he abuses her mom like he abused mine, she probably wouldn't list him as a friend. Those of you who have been reading the blog for a couple years know that when his current wife tried to friend me, with no personal message or anything, I told her that her and her husband could fuck off, so I do get why he might not be trying to contact me right now. On the other hand, I'd like to think that if it was my child, I would have tried a little harder and on my own. I think the worst part is that I look in his face and I can see my own, but I would not know him if I passed him on the street.

I didn't tell anyone but Moneypenny until today when I told Ginger. Her and the Professor have both been feeling shitty, physically and mentally, for a couple of weeks. I was really looking forward to having people for Valentine's Day and getting to do things, even though I tried to keep it low-key and inexpensive, but I really wanted it to be good. So I tried really hard to put it to the back of my mind and work on giving us all a good time for the holiday. I might not have even told her today but she mentioned having seen an old friend/ sex partner on FB, that he lives in this metro area now, and that she had sent him a message asking him if he and his wife might like to go out to dinner with her and her people.

I think part of the reason that this notion is stuck in my head is that if I'm so replaceable to my own father, how can I not be completely replaceable to any and every one else? I grew up feeling like there must be something defective about me, if my own father didn't want anything to do with me. Not something that I had consciously done wrong, because I was too young when he stopped being a part of my life for me to have consciously done something. But something inherent in me. I had the balls to tell him and his wife to fuck off because I had had the epiphany several months before her friend request that he had only tried to get custody of me and not return me from visitation once to fuck with my mom, not because he wanted me or a daughter or even a child at all. Hell, he wasn't even fucking with my mom because he wanted her but just so he could have someone to fuck with, someone to have power over, someone who's life he could make miserable. And I don't honestly think I want him in my life. As petty as it may be, I want him to want to be in my life and it is infuriating that he raised some other girl but couldn't take any time to be a part of my life for the last 25 years. It sends my crazy brain back to that idea that maybe he saw something wrong with me back then, something he didn't want anything to do with, even if it was his child.

So, when I do know that it would be easy for the Professor to have someone else on standby, when I feel so unable to bridge the distance that is caused by I'm not really sure what, when I feel like he doesn't care enough about me or about the three of us together to help himself, how am I supposed to not feel like I am replaceable, like I could be dismissed at any moment?

**Update**
(Original post was around 1:30pm, updated at 7:15pm)
Maybe it was just the crazy talking. The Professor is all sweetness and attentiveness now and we've been playing catch-up on tv shows ever since I got home around 4pm. It doesn't change how strongly I felt this at the time, but that is part of the bpd that I am still having a hard time managing. And it doesn't change the stuff with my bio father or how all that makes me feel.

I am done with my graceless heart. Tonight I'm going to cut it out and then restart. ...And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't, so here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road. And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope. It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat. 'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Looking for heaven, found the devil in me. Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me. -Florence + the Machine

Making it up as you go along

So I've been doing this DBT thing for well over two years now. For the past six months, I haven't been going to the weekly (more educational then process) group, mostly because of a lack of time, though my therapist was fine with it because I had been through the whole course several times. The skills that are taught in the group are to help guide you when your own coping skills and 'common sense' lead you astray. (I mean, you wouldn't be there if both of those things hadn't lead you significantly astray for a significant part of your life.) Just like anything, when you consciously use it enough, some of it will start to become second nature. 

I knew this week would be tough. When I moved in before Ginger, The Professor, and I had a new, bigger place that could accomodate the three of us and Ginger's son, I knew that it would be tough to stay at my parents' house again for a full week, especially during the holidays, which are already tough. It seems that when things are tough for me, I feel like they pile on and the list just gets longer and longer. Reasonable mind know that this is more how I see things than how things really are. As The Professor paraphrased yesterday, "Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike," and everyone has several shitty things going on in their life at any given time, just as they have several great things going in their life at any given time. But the point of dbt is to teach you skills you can draw from to get through those shitty things. 

 So this weekend I used some "pleasant experiences" to get me through this week. I have felt very distant from the Professor lately. He has been dealing with illness, the holidays, and just generally being "in the hole." It hasn't just been him, though. I also have had little energy or time for anything that wasn't necessary, usually plopping down in front of the tv when done. Having the weekend and the apartment all to ourselves, with the exception of some time Saturday when I had to work, we spent the whole weekend in rather intense play. I was happy to have the time to work on our Master/slave dynamic, which also helped to shore up our relationship all around. I believe that it helps everyone to feel like they belong and to have reasonable responsibilities appropriate to their abilities and place, whether that be in your employment or in your home. It might not be something we think about very often, but it is important all the same. I think these roles help give us both those things and this weekend reminded us of them. We also talked a little bit about how it would be more helpful for me to have a strong hand this week, for him to push me to be productive, rather than provide a sympathetic ear or leniency. I always do better when not home if I feel like I have to keep my shit together to help them out, like I try to do when they have a play weekend planned, when I want them to just enjoy themselves rather than have to worry about me. 

But this morning it just wasn't enough. I couldn't stop crying, could barely drag myself out of bed to go to the funeral, couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror while brushing my teeth before my shower. My therapist likes to promote the IMPROVE skill for distress tolerance- Imagery, (find) Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing at a time, Vacation, Encouragement. In the book, they talk about Imagery as being daydreams or remembering nice places, those kinds of things. But I had developed something else that I use as Imagery, though it might sound weird. I would imagine another me. She was the embodiment of all my reasonableness, calmness, and ability to comfort. She would talk down my panic and distress and anxiety. She would even stroke my face and my hair. When no one else knew the right thing to say, she did, because she was me and deep down I knew what I wanted to hear. 

But sometimes it needs to be someone else that helps you. Or that part of someone else that lives inside you. Like when I needed the part of my uncle that lives inside me to tell me that I needed to get over the fears about being with Ginger and the Professor because they were causing me to suffer when deep down I had already made the decision to be with them. 

Today it was the part of the Professor, the part of my Master, that lives in me that I needed. I'd spent so much of this weekend with his words in my ear that conjuring up his voice wasn't difficult. He wrapped a hand around my wrist and held it to my heart. He told me that being a good girl was more than just what I did at home but it was doing what I needed to do out there in the world, but that he knew I was a good girl and he wouldn't ask me to do something that he didn't think I could do, so I needed to get cleaned up and go. I could cry as much as I needed to while there, because that was ok, but I needed to go. That is when my tears stopped. No not for the day, but until I got to the funeral, when I got to have a good and proper cry, because I was good and properly sad, over the loss of my client and all the losses it reminded me of. 

But, as I told the Professor later, it reminds me that I need to keep in mind that being a submissive, being a slave, doesn't mean I am not strong. It is a controlled (by me) giving up of control, not a giving up of strength and I am stronger because of it, that sometimes I must be stronger just to do it. As much as anything else, the roles that he and I have developed and are developing are coping mechanisms that I do truly believe help me (and I hope help him) to deal better with our lives, our sexualities, our demons, and our love. But just as the dbt skills work to point me in a better direction than I had before, there is trial and error, adaptions for each situation and individual, and no one right answer. 

I did go to the funeral. I cried shamelessly. I saw the casket to the gravesite. I ate lunch and reminisced and laughed with the family. The struggle never ends. The important part is that you are still struggling. 

"Don't for a minute change the place you're in"

[Started but not finished last night]

Stop This Train - John Mayer

No I'm not color blind

I know the world is black and white

Try to keep an open mind but...

I just can't sleep on this tonight

Stop this train I want to get off and go home again

I can't take the speed it's moving in

I know I can't

But honestly won't someone stop this train

Don't know how else to say it, don't want to see my parents go

One generation's length away

From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train

I want to get off and go home again

I can't take the speed it's moving in

I know I can't but honestly won't someone stop this train

So scared of getting older

I'm only good at being young

So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun

Had a talk with my old man

Said help me understand

He said turn 60 and you'll renegotiate

Don't stop this train

Don't for a minute change the place you're in

Don't think I couldn't ever understand

I tried my hand

John, honestly we'll never stop this train

See once in a while when it's good

It'll feel like it should

And they're all still around

And you're still safe and sound

And you don't miss a thing

'til you cry when you're driving away in the dark.

Singing stop this train I want to get off and go home again

I can't take this speed it's moving in

I know I can't

Cause now I see I'll never stop this train

I'm sure I've posted this before, but I'm really feeling it tonight. 

This is the dreaded week. While I moved in with Ginger and the Professor around Thanksgiving, I have to spend overnights this week at my parents' house while Ginger's son is visiting, as the room I currently stay in is actually his room. Since I have been with them, I have not handled nights spent without them very well. This has only intensified as I've spent more of my nights at their home, our home. Now I have a week adrift, not just alone but also lonely. I spent this weekend with The Professor in intense... well, we'd call it 'play' but it wasn't really playing. It helped me feel more grounded in my relationship with him, which I've felt rather distant from as of late. And even though I think that Ginger and I need the same kind of intense romantic weekend, we had an amazing conversation today after she got back, which gave me new insights. Until you cry when you're driving away in the dark... I am really hoping to use this week to get things done, to use this time well, to show to myself and my people that I can get through this time away from home just fine and they don't have to worry about me. 

But in addition to the usual crazy that I have to deal with, I am managing other things. I am trying to navigate those things that are supposed to be usual adult things but don't seem to be running very smoothly for me. My job is all over the place. My hours are all over the place, with last minute additional shifts and yet still never enough hours. I know that I need to look for another job, but I'm rather demoralized about those prospects and I really love the actual work I do, if not the unreliable nature of the hours. My car needs quite a bit of work so I was going to get a new (to me) car, but I've already been turned down for a loan at my credit union and I'm worried that there is no way I'll be able to get approved for financing for anything better than what I already have. I feel like there are all these things that I need to be able to do to live on my own, to live with my people, to have a kid, but I feel paralyzed by how hard it is. 

Of course, those aren't the worst thing though. I lost a client on Christmas Day. She had went down hill really fast, in less than a month total. For the past year, I've just provided companionship, but I've seen her two days, eight hours total, a week with her, more than most clients. While I have had clients I have worked with pass, they were not ones that I was currently working with and not ones that I was this close to. Tomorrow is the funeral and I'm terrified of going alone, terrified of coming back to my parents' house to nothing and no one. I know I won't be able to keep my shit together either, which will be embarassing. I don't want to do this but I also know that it is something I must do. It is also part of the job and I have to be able to deal with it to continue to do this job. 

 [This is where I fell asleep last night while writing this.]

Vicious Voice in my Head: Bad Date Edition

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.

Acclimating

Getting what you want is never how you think it will be. Even if your brain isn't in the clouds, your heart still is. Or at least my heart is. Fucking hearts. You can't tell those assholes anything.

I'm as moved in to the apartment with Ginger and the Professor as I'm going to get right now. Moneypenny took my cats, though they might not last with him because of his allergies. They will have a new home one way or another though. (Different story for a different time.) I have all my daily stuff there now. Ginger's son comes to visit over his winter break so the room will revert back to his ownership. I haven't put anything up on the walls so it will still make him feel like it is his room. I'll probably move all my stuff off the dress and night stand when he comes too. Of course after he leaves, until we get a new place, I'll make it more mine. 

But now I'm there 6 nights a week. They'd be fine with me being there every night but I like spending one night seeing my parents, doing laundry, and having a slightly shorter drive for work. Also, I choose to do it on the night Ginger always has off every week so they have time alone together. It's not guaranteed that they'll use it for play or sex and it's not like they can't do that with me there, as I'd be asleep most of that time anyway, but Ginger is still shy and I like knowing that I'm not standing in the way of anything. 

But even though I was spending 3-5 nights a week there before this, the adjustment has been more difficult than I expected. Even though my brain knew things would get more everyday, more subdued, even though I'd written about that knowledge, even though the Professor had tried to reinforce that before I moved in by making it more everyday and less "everytime that Ava is here is special," my heart (or maybe some other part of me) still thought "Yay! I'll be there all the time! Ginger and I can cuddle and kiss all the time. The Professor and I will play and fuck all the time and then he'll catch me up on the tv shows he likes in between. And it will be magical and sexual. And we won't feel like we have to schedule any of it anymore because I'll always be there. Yay!"

Yeah... life doesn't work like that. I have to work and my work schedule changes weekly. We still have to schedule everything. We just got to see Hunger Games: Catching Fire yesterday because that was the first non-football day we all had time off at that same time to go see it. And the Professor and I aren't always fucking or playing because we know that I'll be there tomorrow night and the night after so we don't have to push ourselves if we aren't feeling like it. (And, to be fair, the Professor really hasn't been feeling well lately, first a cold and being out of his medication, and now we're all just eating horribly and smoking too much because of the cold weather.) Ginger and I seem to be getting less time together and I'm not sure we are really getting more intimate. 

I also just spend more time working on the everyday working of the house. When I was just visiting, I would help out with stuff around the house but it was over and above. Now this is where I live and there are things that bother me more than, or earlier than, it bothers them. It seems unfair to come into their house and start telling them to do things differently. So I often take care of the things that are bothering me. I'm not complaining about doing those things, just that I spend more time and energy than I used to with these concerns. But so much time is spent on the day to day that I don't feel up to doing my own personal shit that I mostly just want to either have sex or veg out in front of the tv.

Yesterday was particularly tough. The Professor had gone to bed late the night before (and, as he told me later, has only been able to get 2-3 hours of sleep at a time before waking up) so it was difficult to get him up in the morning to go to the movie. But it was something we'd been planning on doing as a family for weeks, so he dragged himself out of bed and wasn't even too grumpy, all things considered. I had hoped he'd wake up over the course of the movie and we'd get some sexy time alone when Ginger went to bed, bu it was clear on the ride home that he would be going to bed when we got back home. This put me in a sad and lonely mood, then several things went wrong and my mood completely tanked. (I've been having a difficult enough time with my moods, I suspect because of the season.) Ginger cuddled with me a bunch but she had to go to bed as well, to maintain her third-shift sleep schedule. 

When everyone was asleep, I became increasingly depressed and lonely. I tried being productive, doing dishes, putting up the Christmas decorations I got from Ginger's mom, but it didn't help. I ate a bunch of food I didn't need. The only thing that saved me from drinking without permission was thinking about the Professor's disappointment. And that I had some Coke to drink instead. But I looked at pages of Craigslist ads and downloaded Blendr, thought about just having some random hookup. I was sure I'd be back before anyone woke up and no one would even notice. Later on that night, when I still felt lonely, even though everyone was technically awake because they were half asleep and in their own world, I had a horrible solo session where I just felt shameful and unfulfilled. I was too empty to even cry. 

Doesn't help that I'm not feeling very desirable. I know that part (all?) of it is the crazy. I can't see to hang on to someone saying they desire me for more than 5 minutes. But I've lost this weight and yesterday I looked really cute and little (for me) but no one noticed. No one wants to have sex with me right now. Even TyRoy, who is now single, doesn't want to have sex with me now. Well, like everyone else, he does but he doesn't. 

Ginger and the Professor half-joke that I'm greedy and a nympho. Maybe they're right. I think at this point the emotional component has pushed me from "looking for extra" to the compulsion to do bad things. 

Dammit! Where is all the sin of living in sin?!? How did it all get so boring and day-to-day so fast? And worse yet, how did it go from him wanting me all the time to sometimes barely feeling like he knows that I'm there. 

Addendum: Spent all afternoon looking at OkCupid and Blendr and Craigslist. I think I feel more empty and hollow than I did before. 

"Show Me How To Fight For Now"

Weekend with Moneypenny & his new gf, taking my cats to live with him.  Visited with friends of my uncle's,  ppl I grew up with.  Cried on the way back to Moneypenny's house from the suburb I grew up in, knowing it would never be home again.  I can't even drive by gram 's old house.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here it's like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself. If I could just come in, I swear I'll leave, won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.

But going back only tells me part of the story.  An important part but still only part. The part that is who I was and where I come from.  The part that with each mile under my wheels I'm getting farther and farther away from as I get closer to who I will be, to who I am becoming.  In many ways the person I thought I would be someday, the person I couldn't figure out why I wasn't yet when I was in my 20's. I didn't know then that what I needed was more pain, real pain not just suffering. And time. And hard work. So much more hard work. Hard work that I have to remind myself to do everyday if I can ever hope to get what I want. Well, all that and a little bit of luck.  

I also never knew that the pain would change the color of whatever joy would come. Or that all that "being an adult" that I always wanted would be so hard.  You know it's funny how freedom can make us feel contained when the muscles in our legs aren't used to all the walkin'.

But this weekend, spending time with my bestfriend and his new girl and having an amazing time, feeling that joy for him, for them, something I'm sure neither of us thought I'd ever be able to do as his ex, and thinking about Ginger and the Professor and how lucky I was to have them and how I wanted to work harder on being a better partner brought so much joy to me as I was driving home, when I heard this:

'Cause with your hand in my hand and a pocket full of soul
I can tell you there's no place we couldn't go
Just put your hand on the glass, I'm here trying to pull you through
You just gotta be strong

'Cause I don't wanna lose you now
I'm looking right at the other half of me
The vacancy that sat in my heart
Is a space that now you're home
Show me how to fight for now
And I'll tell you, baby, it was easy
Coming back here to you once I figured it out
You were right here all along

It's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me
I couldn't get any bigger
With anyone else beside of me
And now it's clear as this promise
That we're making two reflections into one
'Cause it's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me, staring back at me.

I just want to hold on to that joy and hope to reflect it back to the people I love.



"House that built me" Miranda Lambert
"Waste" Foster the People
"Mirror" Justin Timberlake

"Bringing My Best With Me, Nothing to Conceal"

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.

Making Up for the Lag Time

Lag Time

There's really no hope for me

And that three second rule

Somethin gets dropped

And still I'm the slowest damn fool

Slow to realize what's really going on

Slow to know in a moment

Who or what has gone wrong

I wanna tighten down on the lag time

Your consonants were buzzing

Around your head like flies

Your true colors were showing

And your shape and your size

You were drinking your way though it

I was shrinking right there inside of my clothes

My eventual twenty/twenty

Arms crossed

Tapping her toe

I gotta tighten down on the lag time

Survivors are part turtle

We are part potato bug

We know enough to go fetal

'Til it's still up above

And you gotta crawl through the desert

Between when you hear it

And when you can play it with your hands

Just to rendezvous with whoever you are

When you finally understand

I gotta tighten down on the lag time

I wanna tighten down on the lag time

Gotta tighten down on the lag time

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.)

It's Not Real Life Yet

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.

The Evil Bitch in My Head

Two faces have I
One that laughs one that cries 
One says hello one says goodbye 
One does things I don't understand 
Makes me feel like half a man 

At night I get down on my knees and pray 
Our love will make that other man go away 
But he'll never say goodbye 
Two faces have I 
-Bruce Springsteen

I haven't talked much about it yet on this blog but my relationship with The Professor is even more complicated than just being polyamorous, than just me also having a relationship with Ginger, who was his girlfriend when we met, than just all three of us having a relationship too. He's also a Dominant, while both Ginger and I are submissives. Actually, when he and I met, we were just supposed to be casual play partners. Things don't always happen according to plan, this time for the better. Obviously, it is still early, only four months in and we are all still working out our dynamics, as couples and as a whole, both in and out of the bedroom. Obviously, as a couple of almost four years, The Professor and Ginger have their own established dynamics and roles. He and I are still working out ours and, but we've touched on something that we both want to explore further, even one we want to let bleed out from the bedroom into our everyday life. We are trying to explore it more. We had definite plans to spend my first two full days off (yesterday and the day before) in intense exploration of the new roles. But it's never really that simple.

Because they both have ample experience with "the crazy," both as crazy people themselves and from dealing with crazy people in their lives, I am not quite as difficult for them to deal with as I have been for previous romantic partners who have never had to deal with the crazy. To my surprise, I regularly underestimate how much they will understand and how patient they can be, especially when I act out because I am feeling insecure or overwhelmed. Which I seem to always be right now. First I was overwhelmed simply by the new relationship. Then by the certification class that I've been doing for the past month. Last week, because of the end of class crunch as well as working over the weekend with a rather difficult client, I wasn't able to get back to 'our place' from Wednesday afternoon until after my final class on Monday afternoon. So I was feeling especially overwhelmed, which leads me to wanting to act out, and because I wasn't with them, I was feeling insecure, which leads me to want to act out.

Understanding and patience can only go so far. Especially within the bdsm dynamic that The Professor and I are exploring. When he is just my boyfriend in an open and honest poly relationship who knows that he's dealing with a stressed out crazy girlfriend, he's so far been more understanding that I could have asked for. (Same goes for Ginger.) But when he's Sir or Master, things are little bit different. Sirs and Masters expect obedience. Even when you disobey because of the crazy, there must still be consequences. Mostly, I'm a good girl. A large part of it aren't even things I'm trying to do but things that I just do naturally. But there's this other part of me, the part that wants to act out, to do reckless things, to say "fuck you, you're not the boss of me" when someone tells me to do something. The Professor likes to call it the evil bitch in my head, likes to say that the real me is the good girl but the evil bitch in my head gets in the way. "I don't want to break you but I do want to break her. You can be such a good girl or such a bitch. I prefer the good girl."

The problem is that you can't break her, or at least you can't break her without breaking me too. After some intense play, this was the conclusion we reached. I also realized that The Evil Bitch in my Head is there for a reason. She is supposed to keep me safe, or at least in control. Now, it might not be in the most life-effective positive-coping-mechanism ways, but she still has her role in my life. When I feel overwhelmed, she helps me blow off steam. When I'm feeling insecure in a romantic relationship, she reassures me, "Yep, everyone leaves, you might as well blow it up yourself by doing something or someone that will make you feel better right now," which at least gives me back some sense of control. When someone orders me around and I start to feel put upon, she is the one who refuses to move and says "Fuck you, that's why." Ok, ok, so none of this is making her, or me, look any better. The best thing I can say is that she isn't as in control as often as she used to be and that I am more likely just to let her take over my brain now than I am to let her take over my whole life.

Of course, I have no idea how to tame her enough to not get into trouble, so I can be a good girl all the time.

Unresolved Grief

I've been thinking about and talking about the last blog post, about how getting what I want doesn't feel how I thought it would feel like it would. When talking to my therapist, she asked me what I thought it would feel like. I guess 12 year old and 14 year old me thought it would fix everything. But, of course, it doesn't. Like I told The Professor, there's still this hole. Don't get me wrong, I'm way to old to really think that finding love would do that, but there's still that part of me...Sigh. Even though this makes me feel amazing, I feel like I should feel better, like I have felt better during the honeymoon phase of previous relationships.

I heard this song driving home from work last week and it grabbed me right away, made me cry before I could ever even pinpoint why I was crying. (Yes, I heard it on country radio but I think it would be just as comfortable on Alice or one of those stations. Go ahead and listen to it.)

I put that record on. 
Girl you know what song
and I let it play again and again
you're in every line
takes me back in time....

 I hadn't heard it since so I found it on youtube and listened to it just now. Even as the tears dropped, I thought, "Why the fuck am I crying to a break-up song? I feel completely resolved about my past relationships. There isn't a single ex that I feel like this about or that I'd leave what I have now for what I might have with them. What is this about?"

And it hits me. It's about him. About them. About the ones I've really lost. That it'll never feel like it used to because all those times where before. I tell other people that sometimes you never really get over it, sometimes it never gets better, but that you just adjust to what is now your new normal. And I firmly believe that, but sometimes it hurts like hell when it slaps you in the face again. Two and a half years on and it still seems to color everything.

Last week, in my CNA class, the teacher was giving us definitions of terms for the chapter and one of the terms was unresolved grief, grief that a person doesn't get through within a normal amount of time. I wanted to get up and ask what a normal amount of time is and basically just throw a fucking fit. Yeah, obviously, no issues there. We also learned complicated grief, which is grief that is complicated by some other mental health condition or substance abuse problem. Yeah, don't know anything about that either.

Last year, I read this blog post, which I can't find right now, about trigger warnings (completely unrelated to grief) with a quote that really stuck with me: "It's untenable to go through life an open wound."  I do believe that this is true. Sometimes my life feels pretty untenable. What I actually feel like I'm living is more like this quote from Being Human: "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." For right now, I'm gonna go back to my song....

I like to believe 
That you're just like me
Trying to figure out how a good thing goes bad

I don't know 
And I can't let it go
Yeah it's about to drive me mad

What are you listening to
Is it a cover band in some college town bar
Where it's na-na-na's and air guitars
And is it something to get you through
Just a sad song playing on the radio station
Tears still fall and hearts still breakin'
Cause you're hanging on
Or is it a love song about someone new
What are you listening to

Is it a feel good song gets you driving too fast
The one that gets you moving on pass to pass
Or the kind you can’t help singing along 
Singing woh-oh-oh-oh-woh

Is it headphones on on a downtown train
Or a window seat on an outbound plane
Is it LA sunny and Memphis blue
I wish I knew I wish I knew

I Can Listen With My Heart

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."

He Gave Me You

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.