The Slippery Slope of Day Drinking

I think that some days are just meant for a person to drink from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. Most days, I like a cup of coffee or an energy drink with my small breakfast, usually taken as I walk run out the door to work. Though even then, with the coffee, I like the Bailey's Irish Cream Creamer over the French Vanilla or Creme Brulee, though those are good too. On the first anniversary of my uncle's passing, we all gathered at his neighbor's house for a get-together, a potluck and firepit. His boyfriend made "Antifreeze" and I drank from the time we arrived, at about noon, until the time we left, maybe 8. I might have also drank when we got back home. I probably would have drank on the ride home as well, as I think my mom was driving, but she has a whole thing about not driving with open containers in the passenger compartment and following the law and all that bullshit.

It feels like today is one of those days, where you drink all day. It's the Fourth of July, after all. Most people start their bbqs in the early afternoon. If they are smoking meat, like the Professor's friend who's party we are going to a bit later, they start much earlier in the day. And nothing goes with bbqing like drinking, right?

Of course, I'm writing this at a quarter after 1pm, so I've already wasted a good portion of that drinking time. Sigh. Trying to be a good girl. I actually just started a cup of coffee-hot cocoa mix-creamer and I'm working on a 24 oz bottle of water as well, so I won't get dehydrated later. But the red, white, and blue jello shots that I've been working on since yesterday are calling me. (Note to self: next time, fill in more blue on each, so less shots overall, which will end up with a wider white section and fuller shots overall.)

The key to drinking all day is not getting too drunk though. I imagine it is the same for smoking pot continuously throughout the day, as opposed to just getting really stoned at the end of the day. Sadly I wouldn't know because I'm still trying to 'get high.' But you want to be able to function, maybe even drive a bit if you needed to, so you want to stay a bit buzzed but below the legal limit for much of the day. You also don't want to get dehydrated, so you need to have some water in there too.

I grew up with my grandfather drinking during the day on weekends and my uncle followed in this proud tradition. I definitely remember weekend days where my grandpa was having a beer at the kitchen table before he was properly dressed. Now I will say that I never saw my grandfather drink and then drive. My uncle really only did that after he moved out into the country where you could drive the gravel roads for hours, never get above 30 mph, and never run into anyone. He and his neighbor even had a name for it, "country cruising." (Don't get me wrong. I am very opposed to drunk driving. I try to be very careful about my alcohol consumption if I know or even think I might be driving later on. But sometimes we all do stupid shit and sometimes we can't stop the people we love from doing stupid shit.) Honestly, while it isn't as if he didn't have issues before he moved out into the country, I think that having a friend and neighbor who was (and still is) basically a functioning alcoholic did my uncle no favors. I am pretty sure that if he hadn't passed away, my uncle would have had to deal with some serious alcohol dependency issues. It seems to run in our veins, though. Many people on both sides of my mother's family have had chemical dependency issues.

It isn't like I blame them though. Everyone on both sides of the family were either poor or, at best, working class. Some of their kids reached middle class, but, as the middle class is shrinking year by year, I'm not sure most of them will stay there. A month or so ago, a friend texted me, forlorn about the state of his personal economy, that even though he makes what to me is a really good wage, he isn't making as much as he thought he would at this point in his life, he's had to go into debt over medical bills, and he doesn't know how he would be able to be married and raise a child on his current wage, especially since he would rather his child not be put in daycare but to have one parent stay home during those pre-going-to-school years. I sent him to a country song, Tip It On Back, by Dierks Bentley:

I see main street closing
Miles of “For Sale” signs
And them fields ain’t growing
Fast enough to get us by
I feel the sweet release,
Of a Friday night
For a couple of hours we can run this town
Till it runs dry

Tip it on back, make it feel good
Sip a little more than you know you should
Let the smoke roll, off your lips
Let it all go whatever it is
And tip it on back

I don't think he found it very comforting and, honestly, I guess it wasn't supposed to be. Shit sucks. For most of us, no matter what high ideals we had in college about not working for the man and not being like our parents, guess what? That's what we're gonna do. And most of our parents actually started out better than most of us because going to college was much cheaper back then, whether you went right after high school or went to night school. I'm not saying it was easy but there were somethings that were easier or cheaper for them. And our parents still smoked, drank, did drugs, were sometimes shitty parents, got divorced, etc. (Not all of our parents did all of those things, but you get what I'm saying.) A few weeks after I let him in on the harsh reality of what the rest of his adult life was probably going to look like, I had it myself. I was doing my budget and I knew I couldn't even get by working as much as I possibly could in the job I was at, where working close to full-time hours broke me, so how could I possibly imagine that I could do that and also go back to school for anything that might get me a better job while also working? But I had to do this everyday to pay bills. And this, folks, is why you drink once you are out of your twenties, once you stop partying.

Now there are some people who don't have this urge to escape when things are shitty. I know maybe one or two of them. I was in a fark comment thread (or was it a fetlife comment thread?) the other day that had something to do with alcohol and there were several people who asserted "Why would I want to not be present in my life and in control of myself?" It must be nice to be those people because, even though I know and, in reasonable mind, agree with all the DBT and Buddhist stuff about being present and participating and being mindful, I also know that life fucking sucks and I can't always deal with that, so there are a great many times when I would rather veg out in front of the tv or drink til I am buzzed (or beyond) or try to get high, or some combination of the above, than deal with what is in front of me. Now someday that might not be the case, but it is right now and I try to tell myself that it doesn't matter as long as I do the things I need to do before I start drinking, or if I can comfortably do it the next day and if I get up and go to work when I'm supposed to. But I also know that, for me, day drinking could become a slippery slope into alcoholism. You know, because things suck everyday so if you accept that there are days that just call for drinking all day then why don't all days call for that?

Anyway, here's a picture of my shots:

Why I Can't But Why I Still Want To

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"Well O.K. Then, Don't Cry"

I am probably still too emotional and close to things to really make sense but I feel like if I don't get something out and on paper (so to speak) I'm going to burst and I need a way to sort through my feelings.

'cause someone you don't know
is someone you don't know
get a firm grip, girl
before you let go
for every hand extended
another lies in wait
keep your eye on that one
anticipate

...

if there's anything I've learned

all these years on my own

it's how to find my own way there

and how to find my own way back home

The set-up: So Ginger is out of town on a much deserved vacation, after she drops her son back off at his father's house. My parents have just come back from a two week trip during which I took care of their dog, which meant never being away from their home for more than eight hours and never gone overnight. The Professor and I had made plans last week that we would do some more hardcore play Monday night and into Tuesday, since Tuesday is the only day that I didn't have to work. I was really excited because I have all these things I want to explore but he hasn't been in a headspace to play, and honestly I probably haven't at times either though I will usually play anyway and deal with consequences later. This was supposed to be the first getting-our-toes-wet-again playtime. But evidently the Universe had other plans because I got my period over a week early on Monday and he was having allergy and breathing issues. So not only was there no play last night (Monday night) but there ended up being no sex of any kind, period. Now I knew that later today (Tuesday) the Professor was supposed to be going out to dinner with his mom and sister, who are visiting sort of unexpectedly from out of town, but dinner with his mom is almost never until 6 or 7 o'clock, so since his breathing was better, I had had hopes that we would at least get some frisky time, or even just cuddling time, especially since his breathing had been better today. Then his sister calls and says that she's outside. Right now. "Well, I guess I better put on some real clothes." "You might want to take your collar off too." "Oh shit I almost forgot about that. I just get so used to it being on while I'm here."

Now last weekend when she came over the first time, it didn't feel as weird because Ginger and her son came in shortly after so everyone was there and it wasn't just him and I. Wait. Let me back up. So the Professor was brought up in a very strict, conservative, evangelical Christian church, which he calls a wacko fundie cult. While all the kids have strayed from it, his sister went back to help her get clean and sober from drugs and alcohol. His brother, while not in the church, is fairly successful, lives far enough away that he really only comes back for holidays, and was always the golden boy. The Professor is seen as the black sheep and it seems to be magnified by the religious context that his mother and step-father view everything. They have told him that the reason he has so much trouble in his life, why he isn't doing better job-wise, money-wise, and even physical health-wise is because he has strayed from God and that everything would be better if he would just come back to the church. He has come a long way from who he used to be in so many respects but they refuse to give him any credit for that because he still isn't in the church. But he loves them and they are still his family so he tries to have as good of a relationship as possible with them, which means not talking about a great many things. While I am totally out to my family, which is made easier by the fact that it's just my parents and I really, the Professor and Ginger come from more conservative backgrounds than I do and both worry about members of their family shunning them if they were as out as I am. (Ginger is kinda in the middle of the Professor and I's extremes as I know her family, have done family events with them, and one sibling even knows exactly what I am to her, but she maintains a don't ask don't tell policy at this time with most everyone, and they just assume I'm a really close friend.) I'm sure that it's bad enough in his parents' eyes that he lives with Ginger outside of wedlock, but for them to know about me would be even more detrimental to the relationship. Over the holidays, when his brother came to town and stayed at the apartment while I was there, the Professor told him, but I don't envision him telling his sister, at least not while she's so caught up in the religious sect of his parents and living so close to them. Back when I first moved in, which was right around the holidays, I was very insecure about all of this. Rationally, I understood both the Professor and Ginger's positions with their families but it made me feel like I was less than in the relationship. Now that things are set up differently and will be for awhile, it underscores that the relationship is different, but I know that I am not less than anyone else, that I am not loved less, and that they would stand up for me if they needed to, which is really what is important to me.

All that said, today still felt sucky. Like I cried for quite a bit kind of sucky. Like I'm crying as I write this kind of sucky. While I would like to get to know the Professor's sister better, to get to see him in that dynamic, I also thought that she probably wanted to get to hang out with her big brother on her own and that she probably wasn't expecting some random chick to be there. And that is probably exactly what she thinks I am, some random chick. Or, to be even more honest, some random trick. Before his sister got sober, she spent more than enough time around her brother and his friends to know, generally, what he was into and how his relationships went. I told the Professor that I was going to leave so they could hang out together and, despite the evil bitch in my head wanting to turn it into a "but I really wanted him to say 'no, stay and hang out with us' so I'm going to be mad that he didn't" kinda thing, that is completely unfair. I know that I would have been even more uncomfortable staying and they probably did want time to hang out together. At least she did or she wouldn't have come over by herself before dinner. But I had a bunch of stuff that I had wanted to do before I left, including have some sexual or cuddle time, all of which I had to just drop. I walked right by his sister with my overnight bag, after having come from the kitchen where I was starting the dishwasher. I was also going to run up to the convenience store with the Professor so he could get some cigarettes. As he said that his mom and sister probably wouldn't stop by there for him to pick them up, I ran to the store and back, rather than leave him with one cigarette. I felt so stupid when I came back. All I could think was what his sister must be thinking, "Who is this slut that he has staying overnight while his girlfriend is gone? Doing his dishes, running and getting him cigarettes? She's obviously ashamed to have been here, since she's leaving as soon as I got here. And she should be. I saw her just a few days ago being all good friends with his girlfriend. She should be ashamed of herself." Last week, the Professor and I celebrated being together for one year, a year with plenty of struggle on everyone's parts but where I love them more than ever, even if things don't look how we planned for them to. It's really difficult for me to remind myself that all that hard work wasn't meaningless when I feel like I'm probably just seen as some trick.

Last Friday on Facebook, I re-posted this list that a friend of mine had posted a list called 15 Things You Don't Owe Anyone At All (Thought You Think You Do). It includes "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your living situation", "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your sex life" and "You don't owe anyone an explanation for your relationship choices." I re-posted it with the following (long) comment "My friend who shared this said she doesn't usually read or share these things but this spoke to her. Obviously it spoke to me too & though it is about not owing an explanation, I wanted to throw my 2 cents in. 
Several things in my life right now are not how I had been planning them to be, plans I'd been sharing for months. It's been difficult and embarrassing to have to explain why this is to people, especially in my work situation where I am not completely honest about my relationship. Maybe this is partially my fault bc I wear my life on my sleeve. If I hadn't told anyone about the plans, they wouldn't have known when it fell through. What's been just as hard is that people in my life want to blame my significant others or the kind of relationship (or just my bf if that's the only one they know about) and it ends up feeling like I'm protesting too much when I assert the truth, that I am still really happy & in love & that they helped me a great deal through all the problems & that they are also disappointed with how things went. I don't really know how to straddle that line between "let me share my happy/share my life events so we can build mutual trust" and "I dont really want or need your negative opinion on the people I love or how I live/love/fuck."" It's still really difficult for me. Obviously. No, I don't owe it to his sister to tell her who I really am to him. Nor does he. If she went off on a tirade about me, actually calling me some random trick out loud to his face, I would expect him to stand up for me and at the very least say, "You don't know her. You don't know the situation. She's someone Ginger and I care about very much and she isn't doing anything to hurt either of us. Anything more than that is none of your business." I don't think he would let that shit slide. (And I know Ginger wouldn't.) But it sucks. Just like it sucks when people in my life blame things not working out as planned on it being a poly relationship or just on him (mostly those are people who only know about him, but sometimes not.) For the most part, you get to say that once, after which I will explain as much as I can depending on what you know why that isn't the case, and then I'm going to tell you, very nicely, that I don't want to here that bullshit again. It's always more complicated than you know, even if you know everything, or think you do. (Which, yes, is something I should remind myself more often when I butt my nose into other's people's business too.) But I have a client that I just can't seem to get to STFU about how he thinks that it's all the Professor's fault. Look, it's nice that you're on my side and acting like my grandpa and all, but you don't actually know what the relationship is at all and I don't feel like I can tell you, much less also tell you about all the fucked-up shit on my side, not to mention that some of it was just that things out of our control happened long before we met and continue to this day, like his health issues, like my mental health issues, like the management at the apartment being shady assholes, like me hurting my back right as all the moving stuff was about to happen which put even more stress on an already stressed out me. He might have been the one who chose to talk to me, to pursue something with me over a year ago, but everyday that I'm with him, I chose him, and Ginger and this situation, over and over again.

So now that I'm at the end of my story, I'm not really sure what the point is or where it leaves me. For so long, I spent so much time cultivating this attitude that I didn't really care about what others thought and the idea that that was why I was so honest about who I was so early into all kinds of relationships. But I think it was really that I would rather they dislike me for who I really am than dislike, or even like, me for who I'm not. If the Professor's sister wanted to dislike me or think I'm a horrible heathen for being his whore in the true context, I think I would be much less upset than I am now. It's the idea that she might think I'm just some random fuck of his and that I would do it behind Ginger's back that I think digs in deep. I can't get to the point that the Professor and Ginger are at where they don't care what people might wonder or gossip about as long as it doesn't negatively effect how the people treat them or us, because what our relationship(s) are or aren't isn't really any of their business. I'm not upset with them for this attitude or think they should change it, it just isn't how I feel. Just like I am not saying that the Professor should have or even could have done anything different, especially while attempting to keep the current relationship he has with his family and I completely understand that, but that it is also true that, while not his or anyone's fault, I'm hurting. I guess I just needed to get it off my chest. One of those DBT lessons that sticks in my head is that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time- nothing could have been done any different but I also felt like I was probably being judged in a way that erased all that we've all been to each other over this year.

everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says would you prefer the easy way?
no, well o.k. then
don't cry

Far From Fantasy

When I first met him to play, I had never played with a Dom. I'd taken turns playing switch with a sub friend of mine and I'd had an aggressive but not Dom (his words) boyfriend but no Dom. Even though I said I didn't want to be "on" all the time, because we were together for play,  not a more serious relationship, I guess I still thought he'd just be big bad Dom most of the time I was with him,  not ....well, not a real person.

Tonight I'm sitting in the living room, reading my book after doing dishes, across from Ginger's preteen son, who's visiting from out of state, with the Professor,  my Master, sleeping on the couch, so he won't be too asleep to make dinner (with any luck.) Every ten minutes or so, he rolls over, pulls the pillows back over his head, snorks or coughs.  The blanket I'm guessing was covering him up in the beginning, is mostly on the floor,  with one corner still trapped between his legs. The blanket & sheet we use to cover the ratty old couch is also almost completely on the floor, and getting more on the floor everytime he rolls over. His shirt and pant legs are both riding up. Oh, and he just started snoring.

This isn't exactly what you think of when a sub or slave (I'm gonna use s-type from here on out, ok?) talks or writes about their big bad Dom(me) or Master/Mistress (I'm gonna use D-type from here on out for this one, mkay?)  Or at least it isn't for me. For some reason,  all I think about is a big dude in leather pants, no shirt, and a leather masks, not the gimp kind but the kind used to disguise your face but allow you full breathing and sight abilities.  When I read things and someone talks about their D-type, it still seems like some scary distant stereotype of a person, not this person like I have, who I've seen make mistakes and be sorry for them, who i've seen be upset for stupid reasons or no reason at all, who I've seen be sad and grieving and hurt and vulnerable and even, gasp, cry. Who never uses his gruff Dom voice to derail my (perhaps unjustified) anger. Nope, instead, when I was trying to cry privately in the shower, he came in, got naked, said "Are you done crying yet? Because I'd like a shower before you use the hot water up" and took over my shower. It was too ridiculous to be mad after that, both of us standing there very unsexily naked. I don't imagine the D-types of all those s-types on fetlife snoring on the couch in such an undignified manner.

But here he is. And he's definitely my D-type.  And seeing him in all those situations, or in this one, never makes me doubt it.

On being His

When making cutting off some jeans to make shorts

Me: I hadn't thought to cut them off before because they're going to be kinda short. Can't wear them out but I could wear them around the house. He has this thing for denim. 

Her: What do you mean?

Me: (shrugs) He just thinks denim is really hot.

Her: (sigh) I don't know why you don't just wear something because you like it.

When talking to my therapist about sleeping with other people or dating-

Me: (disappointed about not having sex) I had even gotten permission.

Her: Permission? Why do you have to get permission?

Me: (exasperated that I have to explain this) Because that's how the relationship works.

Later-

Me: We're going to work together to find me someone I can see on the side.

Her: Why do you keep looking to other people in deciding who you date or have sex with? It's like you don't trust yourself to make these decisions on your own.

Me: (now even more frustrated) Because that is how the roles work. Because the only sexual encounters that I've had since I met him were the ones where I had not just his permission but his blessing and encouragement. (sigh because I can see that she still doesn't understand.)

While most people I know have some idea that the Professor and I's sexual relationship is a bit out of the mainstream, it is still difficult when I'm faced with these kind of situations. Even when I am fully honest, most people outside of the lifestyle do not understand. But because we do not stand on much protocol or formalities, I am not sure many lifestyle people would be accepting either. Hell, sometimes I am not even sure I understand it, but after these incidents, I feel the desire more and more to write about what it is like for me.

I was just supposed to be a side play partner but things just got away from us. Pretty soon I went from exploring being a sub to wanting to be his sub. But I was still determined that it was something you did in the bedroom, not who you were. Initially when discussing names to call each other, I turned down the idea of calling him Master and him calling me slave because of all the connotations master and slave have in our culture. 

Then we had a really bad night, the first night together where my particular self-destructive brand of crazy came out screaming. When the smoke cleared, he held me tight and growled into my ear, "You don't get to hurt yourself. You are my property and you don't get to damage my property." The next day, I wore my collar and served, probably for the first time when neither were related directly to sex. And I knew that I wanted to be more. I wanted to be His. I wanted to serve him. I wanted not just to follow his orders but anticipate his needs. I wanted to push myself in learning how to please him more, better. Shit, I don't feel like I'm doing this justice. 

On the other hand, he's not one for protocols, excessive formality, or micromanaging. He doesn't want to pick out my clothes everyday, or even for them to be clothes he particularly likes. He doesn't want to have to tell what to do everyday, or that I should do my chores and how I should do them. As much as he feels that the responsibility of being a Master pushes him to be better, just like it pushes me to do better, we recognize that we're both human and not nearly as good as we want to be. Hell, I just asked for a new rule today which I am about to break in ten minutes. (I am really bad about getting up on time. I am hoping that a bedtime will help. Of course, I have to follow it for it to do that.) 

But being His means that I want to be stronger for him, to live up to his ownership, to deserve it. It means paying attention to the little things, to remembering when he says he likes something so I can replicate it later. It means knowing that he grew up in a culture where only bad girls wore blue jeans, guessing that the only girls who wore short cutoffs were probably whore, and knowing how much he likes bad girls and whores. It also means knowing that he likes a girl next-door look too and cultivating that when I can as well, because what I want is for him to want me, to know in my head that even if he isn't doing anything about it (yet), he thinks about my ass every time I walk by in those white shorts that are neither short nor tight. 

It means having consented to have to get permission before I have sexual contact outside of our relationship, even though it is an open poly relationship. He is nowhere near as strict as most Masters are with their slaves and I often get permission to do what I would like with who I would like. But he is there to protect me from my worst urges, from being unsafe, from disregarding warning signs of an unsafe situation because I'm horny or destructive. And I know what punishment will happen when or if I disobey. I would have to pull some crazy horrible shit to end our relationship. Mostly, I will just get a severe punishment. Not the fun kind. He is also there to encourage me when I'm exploring things I can't explore with him or just getting a little ego-boosting strange. But, for me, being His means that I don't want anyone more than I want him. It means that he's rolled me completely and I am His, even if he doesn't choose to use that as strictly as he might. 

Our situation is much different than we had planned it would be even two months ago. I am living away from him, on my own, the rewards and challenges of which I plan to write about in a later post. I am not sure we will ever be able to live together day to day. (More that I'm not sure I will ever be able to live with anyone day to day.) He has said that he does not want this to be the end, that we can find ways to make our (M/s) relationship stronger. He chooses to believe this and I choose to believe in Him. 

On Being a Shitty Friend

I am a shitty friend. I try not to ask too much from the people that I give too little to, to make up for this fact.

It is not that I don't know how to be a good friend. It is that I don't have enough space in my head or energy in my body to give it to more than a few people at any given time. This means that, for the most part, I choose to give my time and energy to those I'm closest to and, selfishly, who give the most back to me, which usually means the people I'm romantically involved with. Even when I'm doing really well and I have more open time, I seem to only manage to see anyone about once a month. When I'm not doing well... well, you can just forget seeing me. Oh, and I don't go to parties or group gatherings. The few exceptions are when I'm going for or with people that I'm romantically involved with.

I am not always there for the people I care about when I should be, or when they ask me to. Sometimes I don't know how to be. Sometimes I don't have the energy to be. Sometimes I'm sure it seems like I'm selfish. Sometimes I am.

Sometimes I get a brief window in which I have the time and energy and head space to do what I think makes me be a good friend. But sometimes you end up doing what makes them think you are a shitty friend, even shittier than before.

I hope you are not too mad at me, or that with time you might stop being mad at me and see that I was trying to do what I thought was best. While I can't say I know exactly what you are going through, I have felt hopeless and had a friend stop me from doing the only things that would actually take all hope away. Hell, I've had the same friend do it on multiple occasions. I know what it feels like to think that the world is better off without you or that you are better off without the world and not care what it is like without you. But I've also been at the funerals of two people who committed suicide, seen firsthand the toll that it took on one of those people I am a shitty friend to. There have been times that that thought was a large part of what kept me not doing the same. Even if your family is horrible, there is someone in your life who doesn't deserve that. When speaking philosophically, I don't feel like anyone should get to tell a person that they must continue living an intolerable life. When it is a terminal physical disease, I'm the first to argue for their right to end their life with as much dignity as possible, at the moment of their chosing. But mental illnesses are not so clear cut and, especially when it comes to someone I know, I have a much more difficult time giving up the hope that their life can be better. Though maybe that is because if I do that, then I can start letting myself give up hope that my life can be better. And without that hope, I am lost.

So today I'll be a shitty friend.

Untitled short 5/16/14

"Last time I saw him we packed up my things and he smiled like the first time he told me his name. And we cried with each other as we split the blame for the parts we could change. Pictures, dishes, and socks,  it's our whole life down to one box. There he was waving goodbye on the front porch alone. And I was already gone. Life is a runaway train you can't wait to jump on."-sugarland

If only I was. Won't go back til tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.  Will probably be "at home" Tues-Thurs nights then, with any luck, out of town Fri & Sat nights.  I know this is what not living there is. I do want to give them more time to themselves, individually and together, especially after our blowout yesterday. Particularly bc maybe one less crazy person that she feels she has to take care of will give Ginger the space to take care of herself. And maybe being there less will make things more special with the Professor when I am there. But gods after being there so long it is so lonely. Maybe it's just me because I was lonely when I was there and now I'm lonely when i'm not.

"There is nothing that can take the pain away, but eventually you will find a way to live with it. There will be nightmares, and everyday when you wake up, it will be the first thing you think of, until one day, it will be the second thing." -Blacklist

Short untitled 5/15/14

The nice thing about living on your own is that you don't have to feel self-conscious about crying yourself to sleep. Nor do you have to explain yourself to anyone when you sit in front of the tv until you fall asleep every night because you just don't feel like crying yourself to sleep tonight.

Can't Stop

I just want to collapse. I'm tired and cranky and sad and depressed. I just want to go to bed and cry and have for a significant portion of the day. 

But I don't. 

I took a nap but that was the only time I allowed myself to really rest. 

I'm afraid that if I stop, I might not start again. I will probably soon be unemployed. I am supposed to be moving out. I know that usually when the depression hits, I spend months on the couch, staring at the tv until I can start to get myself back together. But I don't have the luxury any longer. 

Or I don't feel like I do. The closest I will be able to get to what I used to do at my parents' house is what they are talking about doing anyway, setting me up in their house now and having me get a room or two who pay my parents rent while I live rent-free for a bit. Of course, I still have health insurance, a car payment, and a student loan that I have to pay, no matter what. And though I know that they are trying to help me, it sounds like a rather disappointing option after I had allowed myself to dream of having a place on my own. 

Even if I took that option, I would still at the very least have to work enough for those bills and I would have to move out of here. Neither of those things are things I can do if I just give up for a while. In my head, it seems the only other option is to just keep doing stuff. 

What I Wish I Could Tell Work

I really don't want to have to look for a job right now. What I want is to be looking for an apartment, to be applying for housing assistance on the off chance that I qualify, and/or to be looking for a roommate situation for awhile. What I want is to find a cheap but airy studio or one bedroom apartment that is just mine, where my cats and my stuff can live, where I can settle in, where I don't have to be anything to or for anyone.

But to keep my job, you want me to be able to tell you a designated person who I will be able to tell when I'm starting to not do very well, so that they can call you and tell you "Hey, she needs a bit of a break, even if she isn't in a place to ask for it herself." I get it. You want to make sure that the clients are taken care of, that I don't no-call no-show and leave everyone wondering what happened to me. And I even understand that you do care for me and you want me to take active steps in dealing with my mental illness, in making sure that I go through an easier time next time that I go through a difficult time.

Just two things.

One: You don't know what I already do for my mental illness and I don't really feel like it is any of your business. While the manager who has dealt with mental illness in her family is sympathetic, the boss ended up throwing out a bunch of the stigmas about mental illness in our conversation and I don't really feel like talking about it with her. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time talking about it with people I am close to, people I love, people I am living with. I sure as hell am not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that I've been on medications for 13 years. I'm not going to tell you that I picked out my health insurance plan, which you contribute nothing to by the way, specificially so that I could go to the mental health in-patient hospital that I liked the best of the three I've been to. I'm not going to tell you that I go see a psychiatrist every couple of months to tweak my meds, except that until recently I couldn't afford to think about adding another one because I didn't have health insurance to help me afford anything other than barebones generic medications. I'm not going to tell you that I've been in a therapy program for over two years where I see my therapist once a week and go to an educational therapy group once a week. I'm not going to tell you that my girlfriend, who I live with, works in mental health, understands my illness, and I still couldn't tell her. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't tell my therapist how bad it was because I didn't realize it was that bad until everything blew up because I was trying so hard to keep everything under control that I almost thought I would be able to keep it all under control long enough for things to settle down again. I'm not going to tell you these things because I'm not sure that I think it's any of your fucking business. I'm also not going to tell you these things because I worry that you'll think "Well, damn, if she's this bad with all this help, how bad is she really?"

Two: It never works like what you are wanting. It is not like I don't know that this is a chronic illness I have. It's not like I don't say the same things to other people about mental illness, that it is like any other chronic illness, like say diabetes, that must be managed and evaluated in a realistic light. But when I am bad, I am lucky when I can express to someone else that I want to hurt myself, that I have hurt myself, when I'm starting to feel suicidal, when I'm feeling full on suicidal, when I've already attempted. Hell, I had one attempt that no one knew about at the time, that no one knew about until months or maybe a year later when I was joking about it. It doesn't work like that for me. You are right that maybe it should. But guess what? That's something I don't have the head space to change right now. Right now, all I can manage to do is to keep moving, to keep getting up each day, to keep doing chores around the house, to keep going to appointments, to keep taking my meds, to keep eating, to not just decide to fall into a bottle until the money runs out, to keep applying for jobs since it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to this one. Right now, there are moments when it is all I can do not to harm myself or start drawing up plans, so I can't really promise that I'll  make this thing that I've never been able to do in the 13 years that I've been dealing with this mental illness happen.

I have until Friday to figure out if I'm gonna lie and say that I can do it and name a person or be unemployed.

Ghost- Jeremy Messersmith

Though not for everybody, it's not country so you can listen to it. 

my favorite lyrics in the song:

If there is a line I'll cross it, no lesson will I learn

Even if I'm standing on it, no bridge that I won't burn

Coming back to where we started, I'm only passing through

"Every Love Story is a Ghost Story"-DFW

This is not a love story. At least not in the way that this term is taken today. At the end, the girl doesn't get the boy (or girl, in this modern age.) At this point, it is a little early to tell what the girl does get. (And she's not a girl either. She's a woman. She's over 30. Not only is she older than her mother was when she had her, but she's older than her mother was when she remarried and did her 'happily ever after,' even though we should all know by now that 'happily ever after' is only the start of all the real hard work. Though of course we always forget that.)

But maybe it is a love story. Because the girl, wait, scratch that, woman has found love. Lots of love. Love she didn't think she'd find again. She found two people to love at the same time. On the same date that was supposed to just be for a side fling D/s relationship. (She was supposed to marry a lawyer and start having kids, but that didn't exactly work out like the fairy tale it was on paper.) So she did find love and people who wanted to commit to her and start a family, though not the traditional kind of family but a family nonetheless. She moved in and they started making plans for getting a bigger place, one to fit the three of them, allowing them each space and privacy and give the visiting child a place of his own too.

But this is not a love story because it doesn't end there. Love stories always end there, at the happily ever after. The woman has two major shortcomings. One is that she doesn't work a job that allows for her to work enough hours to pay (what she feels is) her fair share, at least not without working so much that she has a nervous breakdown. Which leads us to her second and larger shortcoming- she's crazy. I'm trying not to put this in a derogatory way, but just the facts. She is bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. To say the least, she has a low tolerance for distress and doesn't have as good of an ability to bounce back as the average person. She's doing better than she has in the past and she tries to work on being better but things are as they are right now and she will probably always be this person to some extent.

This is also not a love story because her lovers also have shortcomings. Not cute ones that resolve themselves by the time they decide to be together or ones that the lover is miraculously able to change by the time they coming running through the airport to stop their lover from leaving. Nope. These people are who they are as well. She knows this and loves them because they are who they are, though, like everyone, sometimes she'd like them to do something(s) differently. She tries for unconditional but she's not perfect. Mostly she just tries to not be one of those types who wants to change a person. But as things got closer to moving day, everyone was stressed and had turned inward and away from each other. "This is just how they are," she told herself. "It will cycle back and everything will be fine after the move."

This is not a love story because they didn't move. The apartment complex was gonna screw them and they decided not to sign the lease. They were a week away from moving, half packed. While they felt triumphant in not getting screwed and working as a family, they were now further away from their goal of living together in a larger place. And the woman was still just as worried as she had been before about being able to afford her share of any place they got that was big enough. Hell, if anything she was more worried. The place that they thought they could afford was only that way because they screw people out of money. Everyone else was still stressed and turned inward. She was so lonely. Every night she went to bed alone. There was very little physical or sexual contact in the household, which was what she craved to keep her head straight, to feel loved and wanted. It's not that they didn't show her or tell her that they loved or wanted her, just that it wasn't in a way that she could take in. That first week after she had a heavier schedule because she had told her work she needed more hours to afford the new apartment. She caved under all the pressure. By Friday, she missed a shift, no call no show. Only a compassionate coworker who's son has bipolar saved her job, or so she is hoping. She started to spiral into that suicidal depression she had struggled with all her life, blocking everyone out herself.

This is not a love story because the woman is leaving. It's not unreasonable for her to ask for the things she asks for. (At least for the most part.) And it's not unreasonable for them to say that they can't give her those things, at least not right now, at least not at the level she needs them. But that leaves her feeling lonely and unloved by people who are just in the next room. Which will leave her resentful and angry before too long. The woman has a friend who has space to rent out in her house for pretty cheap and, though it is her friend, if she can't pull her weight there, it will only be her who eats ramen noodles every night and her credit that gets fucked up. (Update: the woman's friend's therapist doesn't think it's good for two crazy chicks to live together so she's not really sure what she's going to do. )

This is not a love story because the woman knows that leaving could mean the end to their story. Though they cry together and reassure each other that they are still together and it will actually be more special when she comes to visit because they won't have seen each other for awhile and they'll be all over each other as soon as she walks through the door and they are making plans for how to actually shore up their relationship, she knows this could be the beginning of the end, the slow death of what they had but could not sustain. The woman has seen lots of movies and love stories don't end with the heroine alone with her two cats in a two room mother-in-law apartment on the other side of town. But the woman knows she'll kill herself if she stays, that she is killing herself with each night that she masturbates and then cries herself to sleep when the people she want to have sex with are just twenty feet away. The woman knows that it is killing them too. That there isn't enough for them to care for her hurt in the ways they do and care for themselves and/or each other too.

So this is not a love story.

"You get me dancing and you make me sing"

I really am supposed to be leaving for work, so this will be as quick as I can make it.

So I've had this little snipit of lyrics in my head for the past several weeks but I don't have the cd anymore and it's not readily available as (legal) mp3, so I haven't been able to listen to the whole song. This morning, as I took a bit of extra time to enjoy the amazing spring storm, I listened to (covers of) that song and another one of my favorites off that same album. And they hit me like a ton of bricks.

That maybe this is what the men and lady in my life feel, that part that I can't touch, part of a part of what keeps a bleary eyed Professor up hours after I've gone to bed.

This is a song that nobody knows
I couldn't begin to describe how it goes
But it makes me cry or laugh right out loud
It's a song that I sing when there's no one around

This is the man that nobody sees
He wears my old clothes and he looks just like me
Just one of the boys who gets lost in the crowd
He's the man that I am when there's no one around

It's four in the morning
Im lyin' in bed
A tape of my failures
Playin' inside my head
It's heartaches and hard knocks
And things I don't know
I listen and I wonder
Where will it go

This is a glimpse of the child that's within
He's so immature but he's still my best friend
If he could learn how to fly he'd never touch down
He's the kid that I am when there's no one around

This is the dance I do every day
I let my feet go and get carried away
I let my soul lead and follow the sound
It's the dance that I do when there's no one around

It's four in the morning
Im lyin' in bed
A tape of my failures
Playin' inside my head
It's heartaches and hard knocks
And things I don't know
I listen and I wonder
Where will it go

This is a song that nobody knows
I still can't begin to describe how it goes
But it makes me cry or laugh right out loud
It's a song that I sing when there's no one around
It's a song that I sing when there's no one around

But this song that I've been hearing the little bit of in my head is what my people make me feel like, how I hope I sometimes make them feel. It's Ginger's belief that everything will be all right. It's Moneypenny's belief that there is always something more profound to uncover and share with each other. It's TyRoy's straight-forward drive. It's The Professor's ...well, all the things that I can't describe or understand about what he does to me and his faith that this is the right thing for all of us.

(lyrics for those who can't bear the country)
This is how it seems to me 
Life is only therapy 
Real expensive 
And no guarantee 

So I lie here on the couch 
With my heart hanging out 
Frozen solid with fear 
Like a rock in the ground 

But you move me 
You give me courage I didn’t 
know I had 
You move me on 
I can’t go with you 
And stay where I am 
So you move me on 

This is how love was to me 
I could look and not see 
Going through the emotions 
Not knowin’ what they mean 

And it scared me so much 
That I just wouldn’t budge 
I might have stayed there forever 
If not for your touch 

Oh but you move me 
Out of myself and into the fire 
You move me 
Now I’m burning with love 
And with hope and desire 
How you move me 

You go whistling in the dark 
Making light of it 
Making light of it 
And I follow with my heart 
Laughing all the way 

Oh ‘cause you move me 
You get me dancing and you 
make me sing 
You move me 
Now I’m taking delight 
In every little thing 
How you move me 

"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