"Stand back and watch it crash and burn and turn into ash"

I think it was the first time I've ever heard her call me her girlfriend before. I'd said it several times in her presence, but I don't think I'd ever heard her use say it. We talked for hours, while I did that light touch thing on her back. I felt a little better. I felt like she had heard me and she could see where I was coming from, what some of my concerns were in going forward in what is, for her and I, unexplored territory. Is it a triad? Is it her and him, and then me? Of course, though she validated my concerns, she's fine with it developing organically. The crazy doesn't even know what that word means. But I felt better.

He was still asleep and I went to lay down with him for 15 minutes before I had to go to work. I already didn't want to leave. Half asleep still, he apologized for sleeping in so long, rolled over, pulling me to him to spoon him. And I started to cry all over again. I thought I had finished that in the shower earlier that morning, hours and hours ago by now. The only reason he didn't hear me was because he was having his own issues, breathing issues. I closed myself in 'my bedroom' long enough to get it together, then splash cold water on my face, before saying goodbye for the day. For the week actually. I hate leaving and can't wait until we actually have a place of our own.

But I'm scared and I am realizing that I have no good way of expressing how scared to anyone. When you are reading the literature about borderline personality disorder, they use words like "attention-seeking" and "manipulative." When looking at it from an outsider's perspective, I see how it is viewed that way. But from my perspective, I have always had a hard time feeling like people heard me or took me seriously, like people understood how important something was or how intensely I felt something. When I was 11 and 12, I went through an aggressive phase, especially at school, where I punched and hit things, thinking that the outward display would make people care about the inward problem, but it didn't. I retreated into myself. By the time I was 13, just about the time we moved 2 states away, the depression had settled in and I rarely tried to tell or show anyone how wrong things were. The times I got so angry or frustrated that I cried were just the times that I couldn't hold it in anymore, though I still wanted to. Though, to be honest, sometimes I wasn't even aware that things were wrong, just that they hurt, all the time. By then, of course, I thought that was normal. At least normal for me. I don't think it was really until after high school that I started freaking out on people so that they would understand how serious I was about how I felt. Just as quickly as I had learned as a preteen that no one thought anything was really wrong when I cried, I learned that, when it got too much, if I could make it big and over the top, the people who cared about me would pay attention. And yep, I see how that's attention-seeking and manipulative from the other side, but from my side, I was doing the only thing I knew how to do to get any kind of help or validation or love.

I'm doing so much better and being so much more effective. Gods bless Marsha Linahan and her dbt. But romantic relationships seem to really be the test of all that new-found effectiveness. I feel all these things and I feel them so intensely. They can change so fast and they are so confusing sometimes. Not to mention that I'm in a situation that doesn't have a guide book and I don't have many people who can show me the path they walked because we aren't even in the same forest. Everytime I get scared or freaked out or unsure, I feel like I'm hitting the same wall. I try to tell him, but I don't feel like he hears me. Then I do something stupid and make some bad decisions that actually are clearly against the rules. The times that this has happened, in the correction of the transgression, I've worked through the fear or the uncertainty. Driving to work after the incident today, I realized that I don't know how to feel like I'm getting people to hear me, to take me seriously, to understand how intense this is for me, without acting out. I don't even know what that looks like. But I'd rather not let the crazy out. So I try to deal with it myself, internally. Then, I panic a little, do some not very effective, but still minor things- like crying alot, smoking a bit more, drinking a bit more often or a bit more than I should. Usually, after a bit of this, I'll work up the nerve to express that I'm worried or scared or freaked out, which is usually met by "Don't be worried/scared/freaked out. It will be ok." This does not assuage the crazy. It makes her mad and defiant and we end up acting out. I don't want to do that, especially now that I'm fully grasping how far back this pattern goes, but I don't know how to feel like I'm heard without the acting out, especially since the acting out is just so fucking effective.

So, what's the problem, you ask?

First, let me say this. It's been a long time since I've had a relationship that felt like it was going someplace from an early stage. Within weeks, maybe even less, it felt like this was going to be something more. Not only that, but the other person wanted that too. (It took a little bit longer for her to get on board, but it wasn't that much longer.) It took much less time for the other person to want something more in this than it did with TyRoy or my ex-husband or Moneypenny. And it probably hasn't been since my ex-husband that I've had a relationship where we talked about living together and kids and living a life together, where the other person brought up how that looked to them, not just me bringing up how it looked to me. (Yes, TyRoy and I lived together and we did talk about those things, but I still always felt like there was an expiration date on our playing house, even when I did want more.) In addition to this not being a traditional situation, which can be scary, or the situation I envisioned, which is scary, but it's the first time in a long time that I've really been thinking about a long-term situation. So every step along the way, I freak out about something different. Yes, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't freaking out about something. I know.

They just came back from a four day trip to bumfuck Midwest tiny town for her friend's wedding. Before they left, we had a practical talk about moving in together, like it can't be until March when their lease is up but we want a three bedroom place, we want to save for movers, if I bring my cats he has to have at least one room where no cats are allowed, and we want a king-size bed for puppy-piles. My unfounded and unrealized anxiety about their trip away was that they would change their mind about me and the whole situation while they were away. Of course, what actually happened was that they missed me terribly and came up with more ideas for how we could spend time together, the three of us. But they were wiped out. Her sleep schedule is completely messed up and I barely saw her in the past three days because she was either sleeping or at work. He needed time to do his own thing since he hadn't gotten much alone time in the past three weeks, so he was geeking out on his game. His allergies and asthma were also bothering him. My reasonable mind understood this. Part of this being home, not sexy-visit-sex-play, is that we aren't always on, aren't always having sexy visit sex play time. There are going to be times when, though I am there, I want to be left alone, to read, to talk to someone else on the phone, to do whatever it is I want to do. But it felt like they were in their own worlds and I still felt shut out, which is something that has been bothering me more and more lately. When I came into this situation, I had it in my head that they were a them and I was just something on the outside. It made it much easier to respect the boundaries made and their relationship in general. But as we three have started to become the we, or at least as he's expressed that that is what the two of them want, I'm trying to adjust my framework and I keep seeing the ways that it's not the three of us, but them and me. The past few days, I've felt that acutely, but didn't have a way to say it. So I smoked and I drank and I shoved it down. And when an interesting guy sent me an interesting message on a dating site, I talked to him. And when he said that he wanted to take me out on a date, I said ok, after getting permission, of course. What can I say, it stroked my ego. But as the anxiety of the idea of a date sank in, so did the reality that I didn't really want to go on a date with anyone else. They want me to, so my world doesn't shrink to just them. But what I really wanted to to feel more connected to them, to feel more like an us, and I realized that going on a date with someone else probably wasn't going to make me feel that way. When I finally got the courage to say that to him, I feel like he waved it away. Sometimes I think he forgets that I'm not her, that we don't have their four years of hard won trust and decade of friendship. I think he forgets that I don't have that kind of trust with anyone, where they can just say that it will be ok and I will believe them. When he got up after tucking me in, I cried until I fell asleep. And I cried when I woke up all by myself. Because when I don't feel like I'm taken seriously, there is only about 2 minutes of negative self talk before I get to a place where I feel like this person doesn't care about me, because I'm not the kind of person that people care for and no one is ever going to care for me and I'm always going to be on the outside, a sock without a mate in a world where no one has three feet. And in that place is where the dragons live, folks. Sigh. I've been seeing alot of the dragons lately. I can't seem to destroy that old tape.

And I'm writing this now because I can't not express it, but I don't know how else to say all this. I just want to have a way to tell people, not just him, not just them, but anyone, that something is bothering me, really bothering me, and have them really take me seriously, have them see how intensely I am feeling this, without going out and doing something stupid. I can only hope that this is heard.

Got To Get It Out The Way

Try to steel my courage.
So important to get this right. To do right by my friend, by our friendship. Hell, just do right by my own self.
A country song on the car stereo talks about a man's eyes being blue just like the ocean and I realize I don't know what color Professor's eyes are. We spend too much time in the dark or with my eyes rolled in the back of my head when we're close and face to face. But I think of what he whispered in the dark to me about my eyes, about why they drew him to me and my breath catches in my throat just like it does every time I remember flash back to it. After so long feeling like I could not live up to the goodness of my partner, I feel like I finally found a home with people who are dark and twisted but still manage to .... not overcome, but live with it and make a beautiful life where they love and take care of each other. They show me that I don't have to be that impossible version of "good" that I have in my head to love and take care of my family. Remind me all the time that I am good and I do take care of my family. Make me want to work harder to create more of a family and more for it.
And I know what color her eyes are. That green-hazel is seared into my mind. As is how her togetherness is what I thought was impossible for me to be, but her path has been harder and she does it.
And I touch the pentacle with the stag hanging on my neck, given to me by the friend I am striving so hard to prove myself to. Remember my uncle's admiration of it. Think of all the things on my body that are talismans of the people I love, drawing strength from them. After all I've done for people I love, this should be a cake walk.
Just erase the old tapes. Record new ones.
"We took down all the pictures
and then we took down all the walls
packed up our expectations
piled them in the hall
yeah we bagged our future
kicked it to the curb
and then we stood there unencumbered
and we stood there undeterred
cause we were done clinging
to the things we were afraid to lose
and the only thing left
was a breathtaking view
you looked at me
and I looked at you
and we said, "How about now,
"what you wanna do?"
now there's something in the way
In the way of my love for you
now there's something in the way
in the way of my love for you
i got to get it out the way
the way of my love for you
i got to get it out the way
the way of my love for you"
-Ani DiFranco "Out the way"
[While editing, I realize how the chorus might seem. To see what is in the way, see the verse above. It's not in reference to other people, but ideas. Just to be clear.]

"Had To Learn It From the One Who Let Me Go"

The first time Moneypenny visited me in Small Midwestern City, after our great visit in Mid-size Midwestern City and a month of talking on the phone whenever we could, he brought a mix cd with him, the most romantic of gestures when you're broke, in college and have fast and unlimited access to file sharing sites. It started out with songs of motivation and taking control of one's life in general and then at track 6 transitioned to songs that described how he felt about our burgeoning romantic relationship. Track 7 is Oleander's I Walk Alone. 

I can't take this anymore

And I'm almost pretty sure

I've been here before

I can't take this any longer

I won't heal until I'm stronger

Strong enough to not be afraid

Of what anybody thinks

Of what anybody says

About the way

About the way I am

So I'll wait until the day

When those feelings fade away

Then I'll make my break

I remember being so touched by the song and what it said about how he felt about himself in the relationship. But later lyrics made it hard for me to see myself in the song. (Which now, actually looking at what the internets say the lyrics are, I realize is a mis-hearing of the lyrics. Well, damn. Ok, I'm gonna write the lyrics as I heard them.)

Had to learn it from the one who let me go

Now I walk alone...

[Because she] had to step away

To make me want to be

A bigger man, a bigger man than that

At the time, it was only my interactions with Moneypenny that made me want to be a better person. My previous relationships hadn't really made me want to be a better person, just reinforced how bad of a person I already felt I was. If I was going to learn anything from the "one who let me go," that person was going to have to be Moneypenny, and him letting me go was not something I really wanted to think about then. 

Today I heard a little bit of it and decided to listen to the whole song.  Within six lines, I was crying and it just kept hitting me as the song went along. So many of the things that I'm trying to do now in my relationships, whether it be with the Professor and/or Ginger, or even with Troy, were seeded in my relationship with Moneypenny. I was a hot jealous, possessive mess when I was with him. I could not have imagined that in the course of a decade, I'd be able to have what I'm trying to have with the Prof and Ginger, where the biggest jealousy I've felt so far was situational and easily worked through. Or a whatever-we-have (-had?) with Troy, where I enjoy talking with him about the other women in his life, discussing the pitfalls of each potential situation, even while we're lying in bed about to have sex. (Hell, sometimes during sex.) Of course, the ability to do this, the trial and error, were things I lived through with BT and TyRoy, but it isn't the ones who let me go that are reaping the benefits of what I learned with them. It's these new people and these new relationships. 

I need you by my side

As I take it all in stride

I put away, I put away my pride

Oh I leave it up to you

Yeah I leave it in your hands

Respect your wishes and your demands

But if it was up to me

Honey we'd already be back at home

And living out

Something I'm struggling with more in this relationship with P&G is taking things at their pace. I believe I am doing well at respecting what they have in their relationship and in their household. It's the feelings part that is more difficult right now. I know that I feel much more strongly at this point than they do. I'd like to think that if I could I wouldn't feel this way yet or I'd slow down the development of my feelings, but, honestly, knowing me, I probably wouldn't have it any differently. Once I went all in, I was all in. As they are different people, coming at this from a different perspective and different experience, their feelings aren't anywhere near to mine. I do know this and I don't want to rush anyone, but the other side of that is that it can get pretty chilly so far out on this limb all by myself. It is difficult to just let it be, to not worry that because they don't feel that way now they never will, to not think that I'm making a gigantic ass out of myself, to not shut off my feelings because they aren't exactly reciprocated. 

Strong enough to not be afraid

Of what anybody thinks

Of what anybody says

About the way

About the way I am

I'm also struggling with this. To say that I don't care about what anyone thinks of me would be a lie. The bigger truth is that I often do what feels better for me with some measure of spite for what other people think. The big things in my life I don't do just because people might not like it, but it certainly helps when they don't, which is why I am often so vocal about doing or feeling those things that others might make others feel ashamed. Of course now I'm in a situation where that spite could actually have real world consequences and I feel like a giant hypocrite for not completely owning who I am, for being ashamed of who I am.

There are actually two issues here. The first is something I talked about in therapy a few days ago. Now that I'm in a bdsm relationship, I'm getting to explore parts of myself that I'd let lay dormant for a very long time. I think I'd honestly thought I'd never find anyone to explore them with, at least not anything past some rough sex and light bondage and tamer fantasies, so I'd shut it down. Now that I can, with each new thing that comes up, I'm having to struggle against my own definition of what a good or decent person is. A big part of my struggle with mental illness has been getting over feeling like I'm a bad person. I've not necessarily gotten to a place where I feel like I'm a good person, but I was at a place where I felt like I at least acted like a good person should. But the combination of the things I'm exploring in my head and the reality that, the more I'm submissive in one section of my life, the more assertive, aggressive and even downright mean I am in other parts make it difficult to hold that belief. There's also the added struggle that has come with playing with people who are much more in touch with their desires, desires more extreme than my own. Like the quote the Girls quote I used in this blog post, I am "letting everyone say anything to me." And the struggle comes from knowing that I don't think these are bad people. In fact, these are people I love and care about, who I trust. Hell, these are people I have let or will let do many of those things to me. But there's still this little disgusted voice that questions how I could be around them, much less feel this way, what kind of person am I that I still feel this way about them, that it often in fact deepens how I feel about them to know these things. 

Then there is the poly aspect of the relationship. I came out as bisexual when I was 17 because I couldn't stand to not be honest about who I was anymore and because I knew there would come a day when the person I loved was of my same gender and I felt I would be betraying that love if I was ashamed of it. Now, fourteen years later, I feel like I'm in the closet again. In my job, I work with the elderly, most of whom do not appear to be accepting of anything other than 'traditional' relationship arrangements. I feel like it's scandalous to them that I sleep over at my boyfriend's house. And I feel close to these people. I know that I am only the hired help and if they decided they didn't like me, for whatever reason, or for no reason at all, I'd be gone, but it is difficult not to form some attachment, especially when you know about each other's lives, when they ask with genuine curiosity about your life. But I don't feel comfortable being out as bi with my bosses at this job, much less out as bi and (trying to be) in a poly relationship with my bosses or my clients. When speaking to them, Ginger is my boyfriend's roommate or my friend. While both of those things are true, they are not the whole truth. I feel like a fraud saying them, but I am afraid that I might lose my job, or at least any standing I have with my current clients, if I told the whole truth. 

Aannnddddd I really don't know where I'm going with this. This would make a very poor high school essay. I just wanted to share the song and get down how I was feeling, how it parallelled things both positive and negative that I'm going through right now. When things grab me that hard, I feel like I have to get it out or I'll drown in it, so there it is. 

"But Home For Me Was Always Someone Else, You Know?"

It's Wednesday morning, quickly slipping into afternoon, and  I figure I should start the dishes. We're supposed to go to the store later, but the Professor woke up with a bad backache and Ginger is currently giving him a very rough-looking massage. A part of me wants to stay right where I am and watch. I like learning from their interactions. But it also feels intimate, like I'm spying, like I should leave them along for a bit. I'm sure they'll come get me when they are ready to go and I don't feel it's my place to rush them.

But as I'm doing the dishes, things start to feel familiar. It sounds like Prof and Ginger have moved on from the back rub to playful couple 'fighting.' But they are happy. That much is evident. And I'm happy, in a warm, contented way.

Having a house full of people just living, interacting, both working and playing, separate yet also together, reminds me of happier times with my family. Being at Gram's for the weekend with people doing stuff, some work, some visiting, some playing, some relaxing, wondering in and out of rooms occupied by others, but knowing we'd all come together again for dinner. That 'out of the corner of your eye' awareness of what someone else was doing without getting wrapped up in it. Knowing it was all ok and all going to be ok.

Last weekend, when I was about to start the dishes, there was a short summer rainstorm. I went outside and stood on the back porch, just breathing it in. It reminded me of standing on the cobblestone road in the middle of the night in the cool rain, taking a break from painting my uncle's new 'fixer-upper in exchange for no security deposit' apartment in his college town. I was dirty and hot and covered in paint, bone tired, and we stood out there, barefoot on the road, the only ones up at that hour. I remember eleven-year-old me being so envious that adults got to do this anytime they wanted to, sure that this freedom was what it meant to be an adult. It was then and still is now, another life and then some ago, one of my favorite memories. Standing on that back porch last weekend, I cried alittle, but I felt like, as he so often has this last month or so, that my uncle was trying to reassure me. That this might not have been the situation I had asked for, but it is a good situation and he is supporting me.

(Yeah, maybe a month from now or a year from now, if/when this all blows up in my face, I'll feel differently, feel like I was completely delusional, but I need all the support I can get right now so I'll take it. Even if it's all in my head, I have to hope that it is that part of me that comes from him.)

As I do the dishes, I think of all the times hanging out with him and his (now ex-)wife. In some ways, as a kid who could only see the world in terms of couple, of pairs, I felt like a third-wheel. But they never made me feel like that, even when they probably should have kicked me out so that they could enjoy more intimate times. Actually, it seems like growing up an only child with my mom and step-dad as well as the time I spent with my aunt and uncle, and hell, to a lesser extent, the time I spent with my grandparents as an only grandchild, has prepared me for how to blend myself into a couple, perhaps create a triad, now. How to not feel competitive. How to not feel excluded when they focus on each other. (Though I have to admit that in this romantic and sexual context I'm still getting over my embarassment when one of them is focused on me while we are around the other. As well as when both of them are focused on me actually.) But it feels nice for everyone to already be comfortable enough that they can do their own thing and I can do mine, that I can feel connected to them as we do and enjoy the snippets of eavesdropped conversation and play. I miss the feeling of that larger, connected but still doing our own thing family. Of course,sadly, I rarely appreciated it in the moment as much as I do this now.

Later, in the car, as we run our errands, I ride in the back and listen with bemusement as they banter and bicker, the way that long established couples do. It reminds me of so many car rides with my parents or my uncle and aunt, that familiar feeling of being part of a family while also having my separate space, enjoying the eavesdropping as they talk to each other as if they've forgotten that I'm there. I know it sounds weird, but this is what home feels like to me. This is feeling like the home I've so missed since my larger family started passing away. This is starting to feel like home.

With These Things There's No Telling

It's her day off so she's there when I have to leave for work. Even after last night, I'm still too shy to kiss her. But if she is not mine, at least I know that I am hers. And his. And that is enough for now. I sneak into the bedroom to kiss him goodbye and then hug her as long as I can before I must leave their happy little home.

With nothing good on the car stereo, I go for the mp3 player, deciding to play an artist I haven't listened to in a while and a song that reminds me exactly of how I feel when I am driving to the place I am leaving, rushing to see her before she goes to bed in the afternoon or leaves for work at night:
Maybe some other time
I can't slow down
Right across that state line
Right about now

Her hair's still wet from her bath
She's sittin' on the front porch
With a glass of iced tea
In my sweat shirt and her bare feet
This I gotta see
If I hurry I can catch
The colors on her skin from that sunset
And her face and that love waitin' on me
This I gotta see, this I gotta see
(Jason Aldean, This I Gotta See)

For the past several weeks, my uncle has been riding shotgun when I leave, helping me through my freak-outs about how much I care about the people in this situation I did not plan for. But today I don't need him there. Her sunny face and honest words are enough to soothe my troubled soul. As I turn onto the main road though I kiss the Celtic cross ring that reminds me of my uncle's tattoo, until I can adorn my body similarly. Overhead I see the Daytime Moon, my grandpa watching over me as I drive in my grandma's car. Smiling, I  feel bursting with love. I don't know how I could have panicked last night, feeling like no one could possibly love me, a tape left over from a previous life, and am glad I self-soothed until sleep, before bringing my unjustified fears to them and ruining the beauty that was shared.

*****

After work, the car radio blesses me with a favorite song that I haven't heard in a long time, which also fits how I feel right now.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am 
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you 
And I wondered if I could come home

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you'd just woke up 
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you 
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”

So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me

All In

A few Saturdays ago, when I wrote this, I have to admit that there was also something else that happened on my way to work. My uncle was in the car with me, riding in the passenger seat with me on my way from my night of sex and play to work. Yes, I know how this sounds. And I'm not necessarily saying that it was his ghost or that I actually saw him. Maybe it was just the part of me that came from him that manifested itself in my passenger seat that morning. At the time, I felt like he was there because he didn't want me to feel any emotional dissonance over the really amazing night and how strongly I was feeling for this guy, even though it wasn't the way I had thought things were going to go. I became less sure of that when I found out some news about people in his circle and it stirred up a bunch of feelings about his loss. Now I'm sure it was the former because he showed up again in my car this morning, as I left the same apartment and that same person, after an even longer and more intense time period. When all I wanted to do was to run away, my uncle was sitting there telling me not to run. 

In this dating thing, I had some specific ideas about what I wanted and, by gods, I was not going to settle for less. I wanted a primary romantic long-term relationship partner, who was also more dominant in bed, and hopefully who was also into the idea of a monogam-ish relationship. And, somehow, he managed to find me. Just at that wrong time. Someone else also found me, a real Dom in a long-term polyamorous relationship, who seemed more than happy to just play with a fairly inexperienced submissive while she found her white picket fence. Of course, that isn't what happened either. We got along well over lunch and I melted the first time he touched me. Not only has he been a good Dom to me so far, but we get along like gangbusters outside of the sex and the play. And I really like his girlfriend. After my last experience with a couple, I wasn't at all interested in having a triad, or larger poly, relationship. When the option came up with someone else that I really liked, because it would have started different, I thought I might as well at least talk with the other person in the proposed relationship. But I wasn't interested in coming into an established couple. Then I met his girlfriend. 

I have only two emotions

Careful fear and dead devotion

I can't get the balance right

Throw my marbles into the fight

Each time I am there, I stay a little longer and things become more intense. I start to have deeper feelings for both of them, though obviously more for him because we are together longer and share a physical relationship. I love being there. I love being with them. How I feel about them, but especially about him, seems completely out of proportion to the short amount of time we've spent together. But they want me back.I text What do you want with me?  When I want to own you comes back as a response, I stop breathing. In the dark, he whispers to me that, if things were all the way he wanted, I wouldn't leave there. How can that not be appealing after all the men in my life who tell me how great I am but that they don't want to be with me. Especially when I think he and her are so great.

And this freaks me the fuck out. When I really like someone and they like me back, I rush in head first. Then, the push-pull, fight or flight, only made worse by the borderline, kicks in and I feel the need to poke it with a stick to see if they overcome my push, thereby proving that they really want me. 

The temptation 

To take the precious things we have apart

To see how they work

Must be resisted for they never fit together again

So there was my uncle, sitting there, telling me not to run, to see this through, despite the situation not being the one that I had originally envisioned, reminding me of all the love he had in his life by accepting what came into it. 

I just wish not running wasn't so hard.

I'm Not a Good Poker Player

There are some things that seem to come completely naturally to some people, but that I can't seem to wrap my head around.

When you're with someone, especially in a new romantic situation, and they seem to be saying the exact right thing, how do you not question if they have just read you well enough to know what will stroke your ego and make you pliable to their will, even though they are secretly laughing at you in their head or behind your back?

Anticipate- Ani DiFranco
you are subtle as a window pane
standing in my view
but I will wait for it to rain
so that I can see you
you call me up at night
when there's no light passing through
and you think that I don't understand
but I do

we don't say everything that we could
so that we can say later
oh, you misunderstood
I hold my cards up
close to my chest
I say what I have to
and I hold back the rest

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

dress down get out there
pick a fight with the police
we will get it all on film
for the new release
seems like everyone's an actor
or they're an actor's best friend
I wonder what was wrong to begin with
that they should all have to pretend
we lost sight of everything
when we have to keep checking our backs
I think we should all just smile
come clean
and relax

if there's anything I've learned
all these years on my own
it's how to find my own way there
and how to find my own way back home

Last Night's Underwear in My Back Pocket

It's weird the things that make you feel grown up. Well, it's weird to start with that I'm 30, 31 in 3 days and don't feel like a grown up. But I live in my parents' basement and don't have a full-time job so that contributes quite a bit. Also, felt much more grown up when I was married, even though same living situation, but I was so-and-so's wife. I digress

It's weird the things that make you feel grown up. Leaving someone else's house in the morning makes me feel really grown up. When I was younger, I thought I'd have a slightly different slutty phase than the one I ended up having. One like in the movies or on tv, where you drink a little too much and go home with someone you picked up that night at a bar. Now, to my recollection, I have never done this. What they never tell you is that picking up people in bars is hard unless you have really good game, which I don't. The internet has been the savior of my sex life. Without it, I would be able to count the people I've fucked on my fingers, which, to me, would be very sad. But hooking up with people on the internet is different and happens at all kinds of times that aren't last call. Also, let's be honest, if those people were in a position to attract a potential mate, if they had things like a job or a place of their own, or they were unattached, they probably wouldn't be trolling Craigslist for ass in the first place.

Or maybe they've been more attractive to me because they didn't have the potential for me to be in a long-term relationship with them. Now that I'm looking for something long-term, and I'm ruling out people who can't host, I'm having a different experience. I didn't do it right with Troy. I didn't really plan ahead. I had to go to work the next morning but I didn't bring my get-ready bag or a change of clothes in my car. I also drank way too much and left my own car at the bar. Of course, it still worked out just fine. After a night of too little sleep, I grabbed a quick shower at his place and he drove me back to my car. I even had enough time to change at my own house before I went to work. Still not optimal however.

Neyo lyrics
If she leave the club with me
Then her maturity
Gonna make sure she follow me in her car
She's so responsible, she gone make sure
She leave in time to get home, get ready for work

I did it better last night. To be fair, this night was slightly more planned. With Troy, I had myself convinced it wasn't going to happen that first night. With (doesn't have a name yet), we had arranged that I would stay the night because that was the only way we'd have time together, with my work schedule. I had a small (for me) duffle bag with what I thought I might need. I had even planned out where I would stop to get a quick sandwich and my morning energy drink on my way to work. And now I'm sitting in a parking lot close to work typing this on my phone, as I have to twenty minutes before my shift starts. And I feel great.

fourteenth street and the garbage swirls like a cyclone
three o'clock in the afternoon and I am going home
F train is full of high school students
so much shouting
so much laughter
last night's underwear in my back pocket
sure sign of the morning after
...
maybe I'll live my whole life
just getting by
maybe I'll be discovered
maybe I'll be colonized
you could try to train me like a pet
you could try to teach me to behave
But I'll tell you, if I haven't learned it yet
you know,
I ain't gonna sit, I ain't gonna stay

On repeat: Crash My Party

Yeah, I don't think I need to add anything else....

Crash My Party - Luke Bryan
It don’t matter what plans I got, I can break ‘em.
Yeah, I can turn this thing around at the next red light
And I don’t mind telling all the guys I can’t meet ‘em.
Hell, we can all go raise some hell on any other night

Girl, I don’t care. Oh I just gotta see what you’re wearing.
Your hair, is it pulled up or falling down?
Oh I just have to see it now.

[Chorus:]
If you wanna call me, call me, call me.
You don’t have to worry ‘bout it baby.
You can wake me up in the dead of the night;
Wreck my plans, baby that’s alright.
This is a drop everything kind of thing.
Swing on by I'll pour you a drink.
The door’s unlocked. I’ll leave on the lights
Baby you can crash my party anytime.

Ain’t a spot downtown that’s rockin’ the way that you rock me.
Ain’t a bar that can make me buzz the way that you do.
I could be on the front row of the best show.
And look down and see your face on my phone.
And I’m gone so long, hang on. I’ll meet you in a minute or two.

[Chorus]

If it’s 2 in the morning
And you’re feeling lonely
And wondering what I’m doing...

[Chorus:]
Go ahead and call me, call me, call me
You don’t have to worry ‘bout it baby.
You can wake me up in the dead of the night;
Wreck my plans, baby that’s alright.
This is a drop everything kind of thing.
Swing on by I'll pour you a drink.
The door’s unlocked. I’ll leave on the lights
Baby you can crash my party anytime.

(Call me, call me, call me)

Baby you can crash my party anytime.

Remodeling

People love that cliche, time heals all wounds. But live long enough and you'll realize that most cliches are true. It's amazing what even the smallest passage of time can accomplish, the cuts it can close, the imperfections it can smooth over. But in the end, it comes down to the size of the wound, doesn't it? If the wound is deep enough , there might be no way to keep it from festering, even if you have all the time in the world. -Being Human, US

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. -A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway



Several times, he's said that he's broken. On good days, he says he feels like he may be healing, or that he may only be bent, not broken. When I ask him how or why he thinks this, what it is that he finds wrong with himself now, I never really know what to do with his answers. What he describes sounds rather normal for the people I've known in my life, nothing too extreme, especially considering what he's been through in the last year or so. Some of the things, like not really being able to tell when someone is being genuine or when they are actually trying to get something out of you, are how I feel all the time. Hell, they're how I feel about him sometimes. This is not to say that I don't support him being whoever or however he wants to be. I wholeheartedly do. It's just very far from my lived reality and that of most people I know. It also makes me wonder if we would be suited to each other, long-term, if what he thinks of as broken is what I consider normal.

And while I understand how it might feel like being broken for someone in his position, with his life experience, that terminology really gets under my skin. Just like "broken home" or "broken family." While talking to my therapist a few weeks ago, I put the word in air quotes and she insisted "But we are from broken homes." (She's a child of divorce too.) I didn't have words to express how and why I thought she was wrong, why calling my family broken made me angry, but I did and still do.

So I've been thinking quite a bit about being broken the last few days. As is usually the case, I couldn't think of a good response in the moment, but I am trying to develop one now. Maybe he is right that those things he describes are broken-ness and that my therapist is right about me being from a broken home. For the sake of the rest of this post, let's just assume that they are. It's not the kind of broken that occurs when a plate slips through your fingers and shatters on the floor, where no amount of gluing will restore it to it's previous usefulness again. It feels more like a broken bone, where your body can heal it naturally, with time and proper care, though how close it functions to it's previous state will also depend on how well it is re-set.

I looked up bone fractures on Wikipedia. If I'm reading it right, first, you get a blood clot between the fragments, then new blood vessels grow around the clot. The blood vessels bring the collagen which stiffens and becomes the bone matrix. Then a process called remodeling replaces the initial bone matrix with more mature bone. It usually takes about 18 months but is 80% of normal within 3 months in most adults. I can almost picture the blood then collagen then bone filling up the small space of the fracture, making what was a gap now whole again.

So, yes, I've been broken in many places, many times. I will be again. But when my family "broke" under the strain of a cheating and abusive spouse, my grandparents, my uncle, and, a little while later, my step-dad wove the broken places back together. I would not trade the closeness we shared as an extended family for a unbroken nuclear family. The rest of the broken-ness, well, sometimes you don't expect anything to every bridge that gap, to ever bind the pieces back together. Sometimes it doesn't for years and years. And then one day you realize that you can use that arm or leg again, just like a normal person, That years after a traumatizing robbery, you can walk alone to your car or down the street, without your heart racing. That after months of forcing yourself to hang out with friends, you find that you like doing it, that you miss seeing those people when you don't get the chance to for awhile. (Ok, so that comes and goes. The remodeling may have made the bone as strong, but the bone was never really a people person.) That two years after your last big loss, you can sometimes talk about it without even tearing up. Maybe you also find that the bones didn't heal exactly how they used to be, but that you are alright with that. Maybe you even like it better that way, because it reminds you that you'll never be the person you started out as, for better and for worse, though hopefully more for the better than for the worse.

Then again, I've also done some breaking on purpose. Tattoos, piercings, and scars are not how our bodies were originally, but I'm happy with them. In fact, I want more. I don't date how people are supposed to and I disclose too much too soon to everyone. There are a bunch of other things that society at large says that a healthy person doesn't do, but that I do openly and gladly. So I guess I also accepted a long time ago that I am broken, at least by most standards out there. Many times, I heal. I can bring those broken pieces back together and I find the remodeling to be sorta amazing. The rest of the times, I just develop new strategies for dealing with things while broken. Even if that means I'm too broken for most people, once they aren't broken anymore.

Gary Allan- Pieces

I've been broken, torn and scattered
I've loved holy, I've loved sin
I was rolling on the wind
It didn't matter

I was so sure of who I didn't want to be
Every smile and every fear
Every laugh and every tear
It was all mine, it was all me

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

We've all been lied to
We've all been liars
Nothing's perfect in this world
Everybody's been burned by the fire
Guess I'm learning
That what breaks you, makes you grow
But I'm not hiding where I've been
Gonna let the light shine in
What I don't need
Gonna let that, let that, let that go

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

Pieces, the good and the bad
Pieces, the happy and sad
Pieces, the wrong and the right
Pieces, that's my, that's my, that's my life

Chorus:
Pieces of my heart
Pieces of my soul
Pieces that I'm gonna be
I don't even know
I gave a lot to lovers
Gave a lot to friends
Everything I took from them
Made me who I am
Pieces

Dating Makes Me Crazier

Ok, so things have turned around with the guy I was seeing. The "things in common" part was already there, in spades. But I was worried about the physical, sexual part. I needn't have worried. Though it took longer than I'm used to, once we finally got an open-ended bit of time with privacy, things fell into place. And now he even has his own pseudonym - "Sweetie." It's a Doctor Who joke. He likes it.

No, now the problem is back to being what is usually is - me. All this dating stuff is making me feel crazier than usual. BPD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation, leading to, among other things, unstable interpersonal relationships. I've been doing pretty good, with the therapy and everything. Work is going well. My family relationships are going well. My friendships are mostly going well. But I haven't really had to deal with a 'real' romantic relationship, which are what have given me the biggest opportunity to create a hot mess. So what are some of my biggest problem areas and how am I already creating a hot mess of things?

Disclosure - I think it probably going without saying that I don't really know how to keep anything to myself. I mean, come on, just read this blog. I'm also not so good knowing when is the right time to tell somebody something. Being culturally trained by romantic comedies, I believe that our relationships would all work, or at least get started, if we'd be uber-honest. So I go out on that limb, in case the other person is holding back. Of course, most of the time I end up with my ass flapping in the wind up there all by myself, with the other person thinking that I came on too strong or am going too fast or just generally freaked the fuck out. 

Yep, already did this one. Though I was fine with leaving things non-exclusive, non-facebook'd til he was ready the first night we were together, particularly because I was planning on taking advantage of the non-exclusive while I still could. But after therapy and a weird meditation, I felt I shouldn't be taking advantage of the non-exclusivity (more on that later) and, even further, that I wanted to at least "have the talk." And after several drinks, I told him so. Obviously, that didn't go so great. He's still around, but he's not my boyfriend. 

Cheating - So all my faithful readers know that I've been less than faithful in past relationships, which is why I started pursuing open relationships. Of course, prefer their LTRRs to be monogamous, so eventually I'm going to run into that problem again. Part of what complicates it even more is that most of my friends are exes and, with some of them at least, being physical in some way, whether that's cuddling while watching tv or sleeping together, is the biggest way I know how to show and receive their caring.

This has already come up as well. After Sweetie said he didn't feel being intimate meant we needed to "have the talk," I brought up my problems with fidelity and that I have bigger problems when it comes to exes. And that Moneypenny is coming into town next weekend and staying with me. Also, that there was a slim possibility TyRoy might need a break from his girlfriend and be coming over this weekend. He seemed fine with it, but he's pretty affable all around. Of course, my therapist had a different take on it and now I feel completely confused about the whole thing. I don't believe that "doing something romantic/sexual with someone else" equals "hurting the primary partner." Of course, a big part of that depends on if you actually hurt your partner. Except he hasn't actually tried to lay claim to that, kinda turned away the offer, and I can't for the life of me get him to answer whether or not it would hurt him if I was with someone else. Maybe he doesn't even know himself, but either way, I can't get him to really say anything. And, despite what my therapist (and everyone else) thinks, I don't really see a good reason to not be romantic or sexual with someone else if it's not hurting anyone. 

Taking things slow - I honestly don't even know what this means. Whenever anyone says this, I just think one or both of those people must not like each other very much or very strongly, because if you like each other and strongly, then you'd be spending a bunch of time together and you'd be together. "Taking things slow" just feels like people think there should be arbitrary limits placed on the relationship, no matter what the people in the relationship feel like doing. Also, i always thought that it was sorta assumed that people disappeared for awhile when they got into a relationship. Yes, I do feel like I probably got a bit too lost in the beginning of previous relationships, but I feel like some level of disappearing into the other person is bound to happen.

I've already explained some of the problems I've run into with this. I was frustrated that the physical/sexual part of the relationship took longer than I was used to getting started. I'm now feeling more in the place to "have the talk" because ....well, I feel like I know enough to be in something more settled with him, not what "non-exclusive, non-facebook'd" means to me, while still getting to know him more. I'm also wrestling with trying not to spend too much time together, but we have very little time where we are both free and can hang out together so I naturally want to spend as much of that time as possible having sex with him, er, I mean, hanging out with him and getting to know him. I just feel like I got this shiny new toy and I want to play with him as much as possible when I have the opportunity. I mean, he doesn't even require batteries. But us BPD people tend to get more lost in relationships than most, to the extent of losing ourselves completely, and then when shit gets real we suddenly switch over from thinking the person is amaz-balls to thinking they are the worst person in the history of bad people. I would also be really easy to let everything else I've worked for fall by the wayside to spend more time with someone I really like, but I don't want to lose that progress.

So right now I'm just massively conflicted and most of what I do or want to do is making me feel more crazy and more dysregulated than usual. A part of me misses fucking when I wasn't going to have a LTRR with that person.

Gotta Be Crazy

In DBT, one of the first concepts you learn about is reasonable, emotional, and wise mind, in the form of this great Venn diagram.

Here is one which explains each state of mind and how they work together. In group, we usually start by talking about what ideas, emotions, and actions we associate with each, the ways that reasonable and emotional mind can be helpful, as ways to demonstrate what is in the diagram below.

Most of us in DBT suffer from being too much in emotional mind. Many of the skills we learn in DBT try to add more reasonable mind skills to the mix, to get us to wise mind. Note that reasonable mind is not the goal. If you ask anybody on the street what state of mind you should be in, almost all of them would tell you "reasonable." Society by and large does not look favorably on the emotional state of mind or those living in it. But being too much in reasonable mind is not good either. It just doesn't cause the same amount of trouble in one's life that being too much in emotional mind does. There are times when you need emotional mind. Like for sex, romance, and falling in love. 

So I haven't really done well in the romance department for quite awhile. I guess we could say ever, but let's just go back the last couple of years. While my uncle was sick, TyRoy was my unboyfriend. We did lots of the stuff you do with a significant other  whenever I wasn't at my uncle's, but he knew that my family came first and I knew he was leaving soon. After my uncle passed, well, I was a wreck. Therapy helped. I feel like I've really gotten my life back, and back on a track. I feel like I'm doing better with my relationships in general. but the only real romances I've had were ones that were established before the therapy. Basically, it's easy to have romance with exes. 

All attempts with new people have not gone great. Knowing that sexual compatibility is really important to me, I searched for that first, hoping the rest would follow, like it did with TyRoy. (Well...That was my thought at least. Now that I think about it, how things started weren't nearly that simple with TyRoy. But I digress.) I didn't really feel much of a spark with any of them though and usually they weren't someone I would want to hang out with either. I had a few dates, but I was so sexually charged that I would rush in to get my rocks off only to realize as soon as I came that I really didn't like them. I've never really dated, don't know how to do that like people do on tv or in Cosmo. I don't have rules about holding back the sexual part of the relationship, but I know that I would like a long-term primary romantic relationship. I miss that. I love getting to have a faux version of that with TyRoy or Moneypenny when I get the chance to visit with them, but they aren't my man and I'm not their woman. I want that and I thought I was ready to test out my wings, my new skills from dbt for a new romantic relationship. 

I thought I was ready. Now I'm not so sure. 

There aren't many people in any of my circles of acquaintanceship that I find attractive. I wasn't really thinking about finding someone to date within those circles. But recent events had me interacting more with one guy, who I'd known for several months and that I did find attractive. For most of the time I'd known him, he'd had a girlfriend, but I picked up in conversation that they were no longer together. I found out more and more things that we had in common. Because of weather, we haven't had a 'real' date yet, but we have hung out twice in the afternoons. It's been great. I like him. We have a great deal in common that I didn't have with previous people I've dated- weird movies, politics, life experiences. Though we don't have the same or complimentary kinks, we are both open to the other's kinks and sexuality in general. Everything seems great. But very little has happened physically and all of it has been at my initiation, which does the opposite of turn me on. I'm disappointed and worried.  

I'm starting to think that maybe you have to be a little crazy to have romance or to fall in love. All I've been trying to do for so long is to steer myself away from the emotional mind, towards the reasonable mind, hoping that I'd land in the center, in wise mind. I can make all the lists of qualities I'd like and turn down the people who are completely out of bounds. I can use reason to decide whether or not someone I'm dating is someone I might want to have a deeper commitment with. But you can't have romance and sex without heart and genitals. And I'm not sure how to get mine back without being like I was. What if I can't? 

Or what if my pussy doesn't respond to what my brain does? 

Is it the meds?

"I want all the things"

Let's start with some common cultural narratives:

• That people will have a "slutty" period in their lives, especially when they are experiencing a new-found freedom and just getting their footing, like when moving out of their family home to go to college or when they are just out of a long relationship.
• The idea that even good girls (and guys, but mostly girls) will end up doing something (or someone) sexually that they did at the time because they thought that the person involved cared for them, but regret later when they find out that the person was just using them sexually.

To this, let's add something that I've posted here before, several years ago, during my own slutty period:

I've always been one of those people who, theoretically, wanted to experience everything. Growing up surrounded by mostly conservative and reasonable people, I mostly got incredulous, despairing, or at best slightly weird looks from my friends and significant others when I talked about any of the wild things that I wanted to do. The current truth of the matter is that I haven't done half of those things, partly because reason prevailed and partly for want of a partner to do them with.

But the summer that everyone started to get sick, though maybe out of the desperation felt from my family situation, I did as many wild things as I could make myself do, though mostly in the sexual realm. I had spent the year before that summer timidly exploring my bdsm sexual interests which I had tried to turn off for the five years previously, when I was in a relationship with someone who made it clear that there must be something wrong with me for wanting to do anything of the kind. While I also hooked-up a few times with a secretive douche of a "nice guy," I was still in "sex is for relationships only" mode and not very confident about my sexuality or my body. But I'd lost quite a bit of weight over that year and, with some help, emerged from my cocoon that summer. It probably also helped my confidence that my orgasm switch got flicked early that summer.

I decided to use the above flowchart to guide my choices. Honestly, I don't really regret anything I did and I don't think that the choices I made or the things I did were all that bad, with maybe one exception, though it certainly wasn't any of the hook-ups with strangers. (Yes, if you're reading this and wondering if I mean you, I probably do.) But I did do plenty of things that weren't really all that fun for me. Though most men that I hooked up with were pretty vanilla, I did tons of stuff that wasn't really my cup of tea, for the orgasms that would come with the sex I was hoping would happen eventually and the sense of adventure that I felt. (Yeah, I know, bdsm stuff doesn't squee me out but someone who wants to make out in their car and have me flash a little boob seems really weird.) But I did it, right? That's what you do, isn't it? Despite feeling good enough about my body to show it to strangers, I still felt that, if someone is willing to ignore your weight and imperfections and that you live at home and don't have a job, then you do lots of weird things that they want you to do. What, you mean that's not how it is supposed to work?

So, why am I telling you this?

Though it's taken me almost a full month to write about it, this recent  episode of Girls really struck a chord with me. It aired on February 10th and was called One Man's Trash. Now, I know there are many detractors of this show, and I acknowledge many of the points made. In fact, I didn't watch the first season of the show when it aired, despite all of the critical acclaim, because of the criticisms. But when I watched it, I could relate. In the February 8, 2013, Entertainment Weekly article about Lena Dunham, the creator of Girls, who also stars as the main character Hannah, Melissa Maerz wrote, "People watched Carrie Bradshaw and thought, 'I want to be her!' People watch Hannah and think, 'Oh my God. I used to be her.' Or worse: 'Oh my God, I am her.'" When I watch Girls, I think, "Yeah, I am working really hard on not being her, but sometimes I still am."

Anyway, in this episode, a handsome neighbor to the coffeeshop where Hannah works comes in to complain about the coffeeshop putting their trash in his cans. Though the manager denies it and has an argument with the man, later Hannah follows him to admit that she did it and explain why. In what one recap writer calls a "classic bold-absurd Hannah move," she kisses him and they quickly start to have sex. Played by Patrick Wilson, he is a 42 year old doctor, named Joshua (don't call him Josh), who renovated this beautiful brownstone and is in the process of divorcing his wife who left him because she doesn't like the city. (As opposed to Hannah's 24 year old who has been cut off by her parents, thinks she might be the voice of her generation, and wants to be a writer, but isn't, as of the start of this episode, doing much about it.) When she goes to leave that night because, according to her, that's when you give people their space, he asks her to stay. He takes off work the next day to spend with her. They are shot in soft light and Hannah lounges around either naked or in clothes of his that, like his house, are neutral shades of gray and brown and white. I think this is the most mainstream-tv attractive Hannah has looked in the whole show, both in terms of her presentation and how it is shot. Dr. Joshua even has a little terrace where they both sit and languidly read the paper. It seems so idyllic and the music reinforces that feeling. But after Dr Joshua saves Hannah after she faints from the steam in his huge shower, she starts crying and goes into confession mode (emphasis and transcribing is mine):

"You said nothing. Honestly you didn't say anything or do anything besides just be so great and perfect and ...Please don't tell anyone this, but I want to be happy. [Joshua: Of course you do. Everyone does.] Yeah, but I didn't think that I did. I made a promise such a long time ago that I was going to take in experiences, all of them, so that I could tell other people about them, and maybe save them, but it gets so tiring- trying to take in all the experiences for everyone, letting everyone say anything to me. And then I came here and I see you. And you've got the fruit in the bowl and the fridge and the stuff and I realize that I'm not different. I want what everyone wants. I want what they all want. I want all the things. I just want to be happy. [Hannah sobs.]
And there's all these experiences that I just feel like I've asked for. Things like who in their right mind would want that. You know, like one time I asked someone to punch me in the chest and then come on that spot. Like that was my idea, that came from my brain. And it's like, what makes me think that I deserve that? [...] I think what I didn't realize before I met you was that I was, like, lonely in such a deep, deep way. And, you know, I was reaching for all this stuff when all I needed was to look at someone and go, That person wants to be there after I'm dead, you know?
You think I'm a crazy girl? [Joshua: No, no, I wasn't thinking that.] I mean, if anything, I think I'm just too smart and too sensitive and too not crazy, so that I'm feeling all these big feelings and containing all these feelings for everybody else ....And I just want to feel everything. I just want to feel it all." 

And the idyll is broke. He has to go to bed because he has to get up in the morning. She's brought all her trash to his house and he doesn't want it, though he's too nice to really say so or to just kick her out that night.

Man, oh, man, have I ever been there. The moment that you hook up with an older person, who has all their shit together and you realize that you want something like this, but you can't have it because you are still too fucked up to be really be a grown up. And, unlike all the non-grown-ups you've been with, they're too nice to kick you out or throw that back in your face. Of course, Hannah's fantasy lasted three days before she saw it for what it was and left. Mine lasted three years and I never really did leave.

When I read some of the online recaps about the episode, most people talked about how unrealistic the whole thing was, a hot guy who has it all together fucking this weird, ugly, fat chick that he just met and then letting her hang out at his house for days and days. Well, I'm here to tell you, it happens. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Though I wasn't a complete stranger off of the street when he first had me over at his house, I feel like things went similarly. He was going through a divorce, (I think) lonely and sad, and living all alone in a big house that he had thought he would get to share with someone. He lived much more comfortably than I ever had while living on my own. He had had a stable career path and job since he was 18. He wasn't demanding. He was so much more accepting than anyone that I had ever met, though sometimes, when I was revealing my crazy and my damage, I did feel like I was getting that same "I don't want to react badly but I have no idea how to process this information or how to help this chick" blank look that Joshua has during Hannah's confession. And when I met him, I feel like I was in much the same area of my life as Hannah is.

But being with him changed me. One of the big changes post-him for me is that now I look for someone who is stable, mostly in their personality, but also in their lifestyle, and preferably both. I never thought I would want that. Another big change has been a focus on getting my own life stable. I know I haven't done the best job of that, but it is something that I'm working on. The next time I meet a real grown up that I click with, where we both would like to have a relationship with each other, I would like to be able to bring something to the table that isn't just my sex drive and superior pop culture knowledge.

I know that not everyone goes through this, these growing pains that Hannah goes through on the show and that I see myself in, which is probably why some people love the show and others think that she's a self-centered, clueless narcissist. But I know what it's like to be floundering, to be struggling to find where you belong, to feel like your place is to experience everything only to have that turn out to be not very uplifting things and then have a sexual relationship with a real grown up show you what you're missing but aren't yet ready to have. I also know that I have been just as stupid and self-centered and ignorant to my own privilege as she often is.

Another thing that this guy showed me was that close romantic relationships didn't have to be all those things I didn't like and that I could be satisfied in one. When I was doing my recent thinking about monogamy and had a great first date with a guy who only wanted monogamous LTRRs, when wondering if I could be monogamous, MP asked me if I thought I could have been satisfied and happy in a monogamous relationship with this previous man I'd been involved with. I'd never asked myself that question, because that was never a parameter of our relationship, but I think the answer is yes. And since then I've looked forward to being happy in a LTRR built on honest and keeping each other sexually satisfied, though it is yet to be seen if that involves being monogamous, open, or poly.

Two Fridays ago, I posted an ad on CL to get laid. I had an unexpected day off work, with no plans. I hadn't had sexual contact in months and I'd recently passed the 'year and a month without intercourse' mark. I was also just really horny that day. I fucked one guy that day. Meh. It was ok, but, after the horny was sated, I wasn't interested in him at all. I talked to two other guys over the weekend and into the next week, both of whom wanted friends with benefits, but who I had intensely mixed feelings about, though I ended up meeting one of them in person last Friday and giving it a shot. Ugh. Knowing more about the guy meant I had more to not like. I wouldn't really want to be this guy's friend and the benefits were not good. I'm starting to think that I need to focus on finding another grown up, one who also wants a grown up relationship, now that the horny isn't intruding on everything I do. I just need to find another grown up who's not a racist, homophobic bigot, who can host and doesn't mind that I can't, who's dominant in bed but not in the relationship, who likes at least some of the shows that I do... . Yep, no problem.

(Sorry if I posted this recently to the blog, but it seems kinda appropriate.)

Faith- George Michael
Well I guess it would be nice
If I could touch your body
I know not everybody
Has got a body like you

But I've got to think twice
Before I give my heart away
And I know all the games you play
Because I play them too

Oh but I
Need some time off from that emotion
Time to pick my heart up off the floor
And when that love comes down
Without devotion
Well it takes a strong man baby 
But I'm showing you the door

'Cause I gotta have faith...

Baby
I know you're asking me to stay
Say please, please, please, don't go away
You say I'm giving you the blues
Maybe
You mean every word you say
Can't help but think of yesterday
And another who tied me down to lover boy rules

Before this river
Becomes an ocean
Before you throw my heart back on the floor
Oh baby I reconsider
My foolish notion
Well I need someone to hold me
But I'll wait for something more

2 years gone

you'd think you'd remember the exact time, remember what you were wearing, remember how things smelled

but you don't

or at least i don't

i know that two years ago today he started having trouble breathing and everyone came to his bedside at the hospice

i know that he couldn't really see very clearly and he said that someone must have on perfume, they smelled too strongly. he said it was me and told me to go back to the shower to wash it off.

i know that someone, don't remember who, came to the large bathroom with the shower that was for family members and told me to come back quick.

i know i don't feel like i got to say good-bye, though i was there all the time those last months

i know that how he died sounded just like how my grandfather, his father, died. i know that his death didn't take as long as my grandfather's, though it some ways i guess it took almost four years

i don't know what time it was but i know it was over before this time two years ago

i know at the time it felt like it took forever but looking back it feels like it took no time at all

it's two years on and sometimes i don't know how we're all still standing. at first i thought i'd never stop crying then i thought i'd never be able to talk about him without crying now sometimes i don't even cry when i feel like i should. i'm sure there will be a time when i don't remember this anniversary and i'm sure that he'll be just fine with that, even if i'm not.

i feel like i've changed so much in the time since then, though it might not be easy to tell from the outside. i wish i could tell him how much this has changed me, i think for the better, given me the job i do now, pushed me to really work on myself and stick with the dbt, though if there's something after this, i'm sure he already knows. i with i could tell him that i'd give it all back to have him back, not that it's a choice we get to make though.

i wish i wish i wish i wish so many things

but what i know right now is that i have to wrap this up and stop crying so i can go to work and that after work i'm going to break into that 6 pack i bought and drink to him

god Radio

Smoking my second cigarette, because I'm watching what I eat and thus can't go have a mocha frappe or other ice cream treat, window rolled a quarter of the way down in the rain. I get his voicemail.

Hey. It's me. I just wanted to talk. Work sucked. I got called in at 2:30 to work at 5, when no one would even work for me when I was sick. Then the meal I cooked was tough as hell. Well, his wife started it before I got there so I guess it's really her fault but it was still tough and they didn't eat it. Then I almost dropped my client on the floor. And he was using something that I'd never seen before and no one had told me how to use. ugh. So work fucking sucked. I just wanted to vent. Hope you're having a better night than me. 

I lit another cigarette. And heard the tell-tale piano playing

You might put your love and trust on the line
It's risky, people love to tear that down
Let 'em try
Do it anyway
Risk it anyway

And if you're paralyzed by a voice in your head 
It's the standing still that should be scaring you instead 
Go on and 
Do it anyway 
Do it anyway 

There will be times you might leap before you look 
There'll be times you'll like the cover and that's precisely why you'll love the book 
Do it anyway 
Do it anyway 

Tell me what I said I'd never do 
Tell me what I said I'd never say 
Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are ok 

Sometimes it's not subjective: wrong and right
Deep down you know it's downright wrong but you're invincible tonight
So you
Do it anyway
It's done
You did it

Despite your grand attempts the chips are set to fall 
And all the stories you might weave cannot negotiate them all 
Do it anyway 
Be honest, anyway 

So tell me what I said I'd never do
Tell me what I said I'd never say
Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are OK
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Woah woah woah woah

It's gonna be so very hard to say
And watch the trust and joy all drain from her innocent face
But you must
Do it anyway
It sucks but
Do it anyway

Call it surrender but you know that that's a joke 
And the punchline is you were never actually in control 
But still, surrender anyway 

Tell me what you said you'd never do 
Tell me what you said you'd never say 
Read me off that list of things 'cause I used to not like you 
But now I think you're OK 
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Woah woah woah woah

Everybody knows that you just gotta do it anyway

Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway
Do it anyway

Cause you don't do nothing to avoid self punishment
You won't do nothing
You won't feel nothing
Gotta
Do it, do it, do it anyway
Ah
Do it anyway



And now I feel better.

*god Radio: What my uncle called it when the radio played something that really spoke to you, in whatever way. It's become a whole thing with those of us who were really close to him, especially as many of us have had times when we thought my uncle was speaking directly to us through the song on the radio, though I still use it for general mood-changing, epiphany-giving events.

**BFF's performance of the song on the Colbert Report is also great, though not as fun as the video above and no longer available online.

Fear of Walking

3:48pm. I'd only been walking 12 minutes. I felt like I should walk more. Wanted to walk more. But where I really wanted to go was near the park area a block down and a block over. It has a really cool lookout over the city, but is always populated by people who looked...well...sort of shady. Why are there always cars parked on the roads on the edge of the park, often with people sitting in them, all day long? Of course, I have some assumptions about why they are there, which might be wrong since sometimes I sit in my car just to kill time. But it is hard enough to enjoy walking on my own just around a few blocks, without having any major anxiety, so I decided to quit while I was ahead and just go inside the building where I go to my therapy and write. Hell, if it had been dark, I might not have been able to go on the walk at all.

When TyRoy was visiting, he would walk from his girlfriend's work to the downtown library, not far from where my therapy center is. In fact, the week after he left, when I had several hours between my individual and group therapies, I walked down there to read. In an email that night, I expressed that, though it was a brisk Midwestern January day, I enjoyed the walk, that I like walking through cityscapes. He agreed, said that he found the walk invigorating. But I'd seen him walking away from my car on his way back to his girlfriend's work, laptop bag hoisted across his back, and I'd seen a confidence, a carefree-ness, a self-possessed-ness that someone watching me, even on a sunny afternoon like today, would not observe.

The only time I've walked alone in my own neighborhood without my dog or a (male) friend was a few times when I walked to the bar a few blocks away and when I used to walk to work, which was only 5 blocks away. When I was a kid, I watched with envy when characters in movies would wander around late at night, whether they lived in a city or not. I envied people living in densely populated cities who could walk where they were going, or at least from the subway. I envied their autonomy, that they got to do this alone, without having to tell a parent or bring a friend or a dog. (Yes, now that I'm older, I realize that most of those people wish they could just drive their own car around and park it right in front of their house like i do.) Whenever my mom and I were out, or even if we were watching one of those tv shows or movies where I was envying a character's autonomy, she would drill into my head that you had to be vigilant while walking anywhere, watch out for robbers or rapists or murderers. Don't go here. Stay in the light. Keep your keys in your hands. Be aware of who is around you and what they are doing at all times.

Even once we lived in a better neighborhood, I wasn't allowed to just be out by myself (or at least that's how it felt.) I could walk short distances alone, like to friend's houses or the bus stop, but only if there was a specific person or people waiting for me on the other end of my journey. When I got the bug up my butt that I was going to get up early and go for jogs, my mom made me take the bigger and meaner of our two dogs. I was not told that this was because the dog needed the exercise, but that she was with me to keep me safe.

I know that my mom was just trying to keep me safe and trying to teach me how to keep myself safe. And I don't know how much it would have been different if my name had been "Christopher Michael," but I know some of it would have been. [Here is where I start to deal in some assumptions and some broad generalizations, but they aren't wild guesses. They're based on my observations and what I've read of/heard from/know of other people. Bear with me and don't be too quick to dismiss it.] You know why TyRoy walks down the city street like he owns it? It's because he does. Though he is subjected to a different cultural narrative as a black man, and I'm sure there are places where he will get a second (and third) look, a street in this part of the city isn't one of them. While I don't know this for a fact, I doubt he has been taught that everywhere he goes he needs to be constantly vigilant for someone who seeks to victimize him. I doubt he was told as a kid that he couldn't walk down his street without his dog or a friend and I know that didn't translate into an adulthood where he doesn't walk around his neighborhood without a dog or a friend.

My belief, deep down, is that I don't have any business walking around by myself, especially if I'm not going from one set point to another set point. If I do choose to do that, I need to be constantly aware (read: fearful) because I am a victim screaming out for a criminal.

Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with this. I don't think that women (or any people of color or gay people or transpeople) should feel any less welcome to walk down the street in safety and confidence. I just know that is not the lived reality for many people. (And, yes, I do know that there are plenty of non-minority cis men who live with these fears, but they don't have this fear because of this cultural narrative.) 

I just know how stifled and constantly fearful internalizing this cultural narrative has made me. Right now, I'm lucky enough to have constant access to a car for any and all transportation I might need to do, ample parking, and a small yard for my dogs to use the restroom in, but I'm not sure what I'd do if I suddenly didn't have those things available to me. Obviously, I'd have to use other options, but how do you switch that off? Just the other day, I mentioned the possibility of going on a walk later in the day to my mom. "Better take the dog" she said. Rrrr, "It might rain. She's such a princess. She hates walking in the rain," I replied. "Who will protect you then?" she asked, sorta joking, sorta not. What happens if I needed to walk to work or to public transportation because I didn't have a car or the money for gas or car insurance/tags? How do I suddenly turn off that fearfulness that doesn't let me leave the house without a friend or a dog? And if I am supposed to be scared enough not to go out alone, does anyone really think that my stupid little Corgi is going to make me feel suddenly safe and secure? As long as this shadowy robber/rapist/murderer petted her, she'd love them.

For me, it's also become bigger than just being fearful of going on walks alone. As I said earlier, that has seeped out, turned into a belief that I have no place on the street by myself which then turned into I have no right to be out on the street by myself. Then to not having a right to my own self. It sucks and it's horrible and I hate it, but that doesn't change the fact that if something bad happens to me, someone will ask why I was there at that time, because it's my job to be constantly vigilant, not that the person or people who victimized me absolutely should not have done it.

***************************

A week later. The weather has turned back to what I think January should be like. It snowed this morning, though the streets are clear now. I bundle up, pop my earbuds in my ears, and force myself to go on another walk between individual and group. I even wore my ugly ass hiking boots, which are usually used for walking the dogs when it has snowed. I walk several blocks farther today. I left everything but my phone, ID, and debit card back at the therapy center. I try to walk with my shoulders back. The few people that I do pass on this chilly afternoon I look in the eye, smile, and say "hey" to. I'm not so much un-fearful today as I don't give a fuck. I don't walk all that long, just long enough for my face to be starting to feel numb. But this day I went for a walk. By myself.