Calm Before the Next Storm

Alright so there’s no crisis. But I am taking a moment for things I shouldn’t say. In the grand scheme of things, I feel that I would still say life is great. When I have visited the Rockstar, it has been romantic and fulfilling. We have been secure enough for me to date, secure enough for him to miss me, secure enough for me to get some support from him. I finally saw my girlfriend again, after so long with her not really talking to me. And she greeted me warmly and affectionately and I was just so excited that she didn’t end up breaking up with me like I had expected! We hung out with the Rockstar, flirted, touched, and caught up. I snuck the Rockstar a quick blow job randomly in the afternoon. Just for his birthday. And she’s fallen into a relationship with someone new, and the girl who’s in love with her hasn’t been back. I was glad to hear her plans and activities. I know I wasn’t there, but that she would find a way to keep going.

I’ve been hanging out more with some of the meet-up people where I live and work. They dream of communal, off the grid living and do fun things. My best friend is quirky and opinionated. She met the Rockstar when he visited, and approved. I’m still trying to make room for dating. Nothing big yet. Mostly cancellations, now that I’ve finally made dating a priority. Finances are tight because I wasn’t paying attention after my tax refund.

There’s no crisis. But I have noticed some things. You knew it, right?

I’ve noticed myself being negative, defensive, or awkward. I put myself down when I get complimented and call it more realistic. Worse, I did the same about my Rockstar, making it sound like I don’t take him or our relationship seriously. Like I pity where he is, but can’t respect him, like an awful betrayal I don’t think I should tell him. I questioned his character, then my girlfriends, then I remembered how flawed I am. I wasn’t working out consistently, I’m still struggling with the same things at my job, and I haven’t gotten an interview back home so far. I make negative comments about being female. I excuse gender differences. I defended my family. I am unhappy with my work, my habits, my thoughts, my self. Just a little. Always discontent. Hard on myself. Hard on others. Seeing what’s wrong. Not knowing how to be happy or resolve my hopes for the future. Still some part of me despairs at reality, that this is all there is. Some part of me keeps waiting for me to change before I admit I have tasted love and happiness. Not only sorrow and dysfunction.

But the moments pass. I keep trying. Somehow.

Happiness Makes for Poor Writing

Oh, right, blogging!

Sorry.

Things are great right now. Just found out I finally have my shot at the job back home. Just when I was putting down roots with a local meetup group and dating out here. At the end of all my existential depression and complaining, the major solution for my weekday misery was to form a peer support group to start getting my needs met to better cope with my draining job.  Instead I started filling my evenings with late hours, working out, meetup events, and the occasional dinner with dating site strangers! And I’m doing okay. Not enough time for anything.

Also, I think I can articulate what I want in a primary better, but the Rockstar stepped up by getting off work for a weekend so he could visit ME and it was dreamy. We were affectionate and did weird, fun activities like becoming licensed ham radio technicians. I can’t really rule him out as my primary and I want him in my life.

I want a lot of conflicting things and I’m still waffling a lot over whether or not I am aiming to have kids, but I feel… very soothed by the fact that I’m actively applying for a job in the place I’ve been missing for the past two years. And my supervisor complimented my work today, so that crisis is over too. I just have to live up to it now. My weekends are still very full, but my future suddenly looks like every day might feel more worth living.

I’m sure I’ll let you know when I concoct my next crisis.

On that note, ever since Mario and Peach broke up, I haven’t gotten to see her and she doesn’t really respond to my texts. I think I messed up by being too afraid that this would change our dynamic too, and therefore changing it, but we’ll see. She’s still grieving. It’s sad.

“Primary”

We talked on the phone tonight. He was very nonchalant about the whole, “Childs!” concern.

Talking to him was like everything coming into clear focus for a moment and everything falling into a comfortable blur at the same time. It was like water after too much heat and effort; sun after hours of stumbling around in the dark. I felt alive for a moment, as compared to the lifelessness I have been battling.

First of all, this shows how bad I have been at addressing whatever this is. I know it is bad, because of how this is absent when I am with others, because of how sharply it doesn’t feel bad then.

Second, this perfectly illustrates why I have been practicing thinking of him as NOT being my primary. He is still my primary by default and behavior, but I decided I can’t afford to think of him that way. I don’t know if I mentioned that.

Maybe I’m too sentimental, but not only does a primary become so by living as your primary support and connection, I want my primary to care for me with at least a fraction of the intensity that I care for him or her. I want my primary to be emotionally attached enough to me that the idea of losing me matters. I’m not saying panic. I’m not saying I want someone to cling. I want to be attached just enough that my partner KNOWS my loss would have a significant impact on his or her life. Knows it enough to feel it.

And I’m not sure if the Rockstar does.

Suffering

Dear anonymous internet. I am so very unhappy again. Something is wrong with me, but I’m not sure what.

The unhappiness is something I live with, but I haven’t been fully incapacitated yet. Just slowed down. I really need to start exercising again. I am sleeping terribly. I dream of work and all the things I need to do, but then sleep deprivation has made me clumsy and inefficient at work. I asked my supervisor how I was doing, and she was both realistic and encouraging, but I am terrified of failing my job and my clients. Moreover I feel like I am failing life. I have crying fits sometimes, for example after leaving my friends and family on the weekends. The job I have is overwhelming and demanding, but I need it desperately to pay off some of my school loans. I feel buried in debt and limitations and fear, drained of life force and the strength to reach out to others. The impossibility of authenticity haunts my future. The only motivation I have is to eat and ruminate further.

Today I had a crushing moment of grief because one of my families had services terminated to them. If the children weren’t with relatives, that could have meant termination of parental rights next. That probably doesn’t mean a lot to most of you. Good.

It hurt to be alive, I wasn’t coping, I was barely getting to my next destination. And all I could think was: I’m doing it wrong. Why don’t I know how to live?

I had odd thoughts about how all of the mental suffering in the world dissipates into nothingness. It feels unfair, maybe sacrilegious to many… but imagine if the anguish of consciousness really did linger in the physical world. You can say the earth is indirectly effected by suffering if you want, but that careless warping comes from real pollutants, the physical devouring and destruction. All the immense mental anguish of comparison and poverty and discrimination and a system that doesn’t fit real human beings well? All that pain only exists in the moment. It all seemed so inconsequential, for all that the idea of intense human suffering upsets humans. It doesn’t upset the earth. Maybe that is why we invent the eternal. To try to match a healing concept to the vast experience of unquenchable misery.

I forget what happened but there was something positive I must have heard on the radio, something about people who… expect and notice more positive things than negative things. The negative has always been more powerful than the positive for me. I expect life to be full of struggle. I expect the broken things to be more numerous and positive things more fleeting. Then I thought… if I really think that, I would raise my children to think that, instead of believing in the attainability of health and happiness. Why would I pass that on? Maybe I can’t have children.

Which made me think, what if the Rockstar would be crushed by not having children? Sure, he can just have them with someone else… but the chances of him getting a good partner increase dramatically if he is free to be monogamous. It sounded like an important point, but also like a bullshit self-fulfilling prophecy to me. I had just discounted my relationship in my head, one of my few refuges from the ever-present discontent.

…even as I document this we’re texting. I should address it directly. As a fear of mine, to assess the reality of my created problem.

And the intensity does subside… most of the time. I am relatively fine. Surviving. Doing some things really well. Letting everything else go. And all my excruciating existence doesn’t really have any weight. It’s what I do with it, despite myself.

These are seriously things I should never, ever say…

Surpassing the Unhappiness

I spent the weekend with the Rockstar, mainly. The one exception was when we went to see The Hunger Games with the girlfriend and our other friends, but then we had to say goodbye right after. The movie was pretty good, by the way, but it made me melancholy. The whole fighting for survival and twisting yourself for a twisted world metaphors are just too real to me. As was the painful unrequited love concept…

I’m sure the dissonance of knowing the main character is trying to act as if they are in love is why we don’t see more of these strong women, women who don’t fall in love just because some pretty boy wants them… but at the same time, it’s almost as if mature men and women ARE open to love. And she just didn’t know what his loyalty was worth.

Hah. Or am I projecting much? Maybe I think her problem was that she didn’t know how to believe she was loved and let herself be loved because that’s MY problem… believing it… letting myself be loved.

That was a major theme this weekend, at least more so than usual. I communicated it as still being amazed and lucky that he cares about me, still cares about me, visibly and audibly loves me, for some crazy reason. Not that I am not lovable… but he picked me. Amazing.

And would he if I didn’t make it a challenge? Hahaha… the twisted paths I take…

I don’t write in the other moments. I don’t write when I am on my own and I hear a love story or I am reminded that people all around me are trying to find their special someone… and I think of him. He is MY someone. And although I don’t know if he thinks about me as much as I think about him, I know that it comforts him that I am HIS someone. For the first time, we looked into each others’ eyes almost the whole time that we had sex, right through the climax. Right now we belong, belong to each other, in the middle of all my efforts to keep it clear that there is no “owning” each other in this kind of belonging, only “knowing.” I know we still think it’s worth it. I think each of us cherishes the relationship and holds the meaningfulness of it close. I think neither of us wants to let the other go. If that is in part because I have pushed him a bit, challenged the idea, pulled away a bit, then who am I to complain? I still have this amazing relationship… someone who is easy to be with and enjoy, and someone who enjoys me in return. Someone who either understands or tries to understand. Someone who wants me to be happy, even when I remind him that it is not his job to make me happy. Someone easy to be close to and accept, even when he is dirty, or smells a little, or has a pimple. Someone it feels so good to be close to. Someone compatible sexually, mentally… and yes, physically and emotionally.  Someone who wants to care for me, be with me… maybe even have kids with me. Actually, I know he would have kids with me and want to change some of his lifestyle to do it. Although admitting that out loud still feels strange and intimidating.

Since this is the place for things I shouldn’t say, I will admit that he makes me hope that I could have kids. I could get over my fears of having kids for him. I could have kids with him. Not yet, not now… but if it is going to happen someday, I’ll be ready then. I’ll keep trying to fill the holes in me so I can be wholly there for the family I will bind myself to…

Settling down like that is extremely scary.

Being unbound and distant and so free every weekend, to go or not go, wherever I want, to do my chores or put them off, to suffer the consequences and joys alone… that is so much more scary.

Until those momentous times, I will not live my life on hold any longer. I have work to do here and doomsday preparation events to attend. I am actively pursuing a new job, near him and everyone else. For now it is where I need to be. I experience life from my own singular perspective. But since when was I made to have all those experiences alone? Without friends? Companions? With co-workers divided by space, time, and distraction… Far away from all those who care about just spending time with me… It hurts again right now, I admit it.

Anyway, I was talking about the good moments. Soaring moments of love and memory. Responses that suffuse me with security and wonder. Orgasmic intimacy. Or just lying next to each other, utterly contented, replenishing. It is not as if I am never unhappy, never remember the pain and hurt when I am with him, or ever completely lose sight of my jarring awareness, over-sensitivity, to the pain and wrong in this world. It just that when I am with him, despite the awareness, the fleeting pain, fear, or unhappiness, sometimes, most of the time, the happiness is so much more compelling. Sometimes just being with him, especially just the two of us, exceeds my sorrowful soul. I have a taste of love that transcends all the unhappiness still resonating within me, and shaken to my core, I can do nothing but smile and answer.

Everything is Wrong!

I wrote about a momentous weekend ( not this past weekend, but the one before) and haven’t gotten around to posting it yet. On the one hand, I could argue it’s too special. On the other, I have approximately one reader, as far as I know, lol. So this functions more like a journal. And I for one want to remember my first sex with my first girlfriend.

A recent mini feature in Psychology Today argued that one should keep one’s happy memories to oneself and share the bad ones, as sharing memories blunts the emotion, changes the details, and my invalidate or alter one’s view of the experience. I think that the premise is flawed. Personally, I experience all these losses, and forget even more, just by the passing of time. Memories ARE flawed. Why then the illusion that we have purer memories somehow if we keep them to ourselves? Relive anything enough and it will be divorced from reality.

Then again, maybe I resented the part about telling a memory putting it through the analytical part of one’s brain, as if that were somehow a lesser experience… Or even avoidable. Dear one reader, I obviously do THAT all the time too!

I guess I just don’t make this a priority. I’m too busy with my seemingly awesome, unbalanced life, frantically trying to figure out what’s wrong with everything and how to fix it. The trends of the past posts have culminated in full-fledged distraction, complete with insomnia and a sense of being overwhelmed whenever I try to get a handle on work, whenever I try to keep up at home, whenever I have to leave at the end of the weekend…

I’ve reached the point where I feel broken. I don’t think being with the Rockstar takes me in a direction I don’t want ( I’ve been doing that myself), but I have asked him to step up and I am finally actively letting go of… Ideas of him? All that practice is culminating in more of my “I will not rest until I find a way to be happy” quest.

All these culminated worst moments certainly look broken to me.

Other Life Stuff

I always write at my worst moments because that’s what this blog is for.

I just wanted to mention that I have a very demanding and meaningful work life right now, which fills my week. I have been jogging or doing yoga every day, and trying to eat well and squeeze in chores. I listen to my favorite news radio during my work driving.

I joined an awesome sort of doomsday skills group and I’m making some time for friends this weekend, as well as laundry, finances, whatever else, maybe reading, writing dating site profiles…

You can see from my entries that I still desire progressing, every-day relationships and that I haven’t quite attained that yet, although his efforts are noticeable. I don’t want to overwhelm him with my insatiability or ask him to fix my fears. My girlfriend can randomly offer me a lot of support.

I think a lot about who my family believes I am and my unsustainable double lives. I think about having children within a few years. I think with sadness, and less panic.

I live intensely, but lately that has been overwhelming.My life is not focused around despair. I’m just working out some serious directions.

I Dream I’m Starving

Sometimes I wake up after what seems like an innocuous dream, feeling panicked and alone. Feeling that I don’t really know how to be polyamorous, but I don’t know how to be monogamous anymore either. That I’m wired wrong and that love will always hurt.

I reassure myself. I have to believe my needs can be met. I have to believe that truth and health are better than my old ways of giving into clinging fear with no reward.

I hold onto myself and take deep breaths. I tell myself about value, worth, and love being things I choose. I go easy on myself and again resolve to practice more. And I cry because I don’t have the challenging, but abundant life that could dispel my fears and needs with reality. Not yet.

I am still learning to digest all the love I already receive. I am still coming out of a life where I am starving, and where I think I can never choose anything else.

Symptoms of Unhappiness

I really should have written about last weekend. I don’t think it was about the more spontaneous sex, it was more about conversations about flaws and intimacy. Also, I saw my girlfriend and we had a few excellent interactions and a good meal between the three of us. I tried to have a mojito at dinner with silly results. But that was last weekend.

This weekend… No girlfriend time could be had. Saturday was pretty excellent with the Rockstar, except for not having sex. I think we just attained a feeling of closeness eating and talking together, following his father’s instructions on claying and waxing my car, setting up the Sims on my computer, and feeling good about ourselves as a couple.

Sunday he worked and I spent all day with family. It was a productive day, if destabilizing. After catching up with my Dad, I couldn’t help but conclude that the life I want goes in a different direction than the life my family wants for me. My family needs me to recreate a compatible, traditional family for myself. I’m trying to build an unconventional, very different family of my own. I didn’t see the Rockstar till late that night, but it was okay. No sex, but still loved. That was Sunday.

Today both the Rockstar and I had the day off. It went fine. I didn’t eat as well as I usually do and I hardly had any physical activity… He was sweet in the morning at breakfast and driving around and then we picked up the Sidekick, one of his best friends. I really like the Sidekick too, but I was snarky and indirect while he hung out with us. The Rockstar doesn’t hear me as well when his friends are there. I didn’t want to leave when the day was over.

I was unsatisfied.

Which is crazy. We had so many good moments. We started the day with awesome sex, and then I played with his anus for the first time. That’s a huge deal, right? Using trimmed plastic bag squares as barriers and with plenty of lube, I fondled him, penetrated him with one finger, and even used my tongue and mouth. He was cautious about the experience, but seemed content with it after and I was satisfied with his responsiveness and trust during the experience. He confirmed it was pleasurable for him.

But then… I was thinking… I stretch and try to find ways to make him feel good. I’m always looking for ways to make him happy. I’m lucky he still tries to do the same… But he doesn’t try very hard. I know he does try. He just hasn’t tried giving me oral yet. It’s not even a matter of him not caring about my pleasure. It’s how we pursue life.

It’s one of the ways we are different. Content. Discontent. He’s content with weekends and what I do sexually and claims that he doesn’t have fantasies to play out in bed with me. All the role play he does online? He says it doesn’t travel past that forum. He plays things for other people.

I thought I would write about how even though things can be so good, I have to believe it gets better. I never want to look back and wish I were here again Because here hurts. Here, now, I am always hungry for more, wondering how to get my needs for intimacy and sex met without these strange binges. Here I am hard to satisfy, believing I am just insatiable.

Here I am trying to be open to other people, strangers who won’t get me or what I will give to those who stick around and want what I have to offer. Here I am trying to step back while my significant others grow up. Here I am sick of trying to change who I am to change my life. Maybe I will try to change my life radically, make that safe home and space and stability I need to be happy and adapt as life goes on. I will keep trying to find out if a fulfilling life is possible for me, or try to accept the way I am, or both.

Right here I am hurting badly. And I only know how to treat the symptoms. I do not know how to reach the causes of my deepest unhappiness.

Warped Fantasy

Wow, I am so over and done with the struggles of the last post. Integrated, processed, moved on. I basically took the good parts and desensitized myself to another label. All good things.

Anyway.

I should be asleep. This is what happens when I drink coffee in the morning and don’t work out. Instead I read articles online about finances and politics and went through some e-mail and Facebook material. And masturbated.

I’m not going to tell you about how I masturbated or even about the great sex I had two weeks ago… Although that was mind-blowing. He did this thing where… I digress.

I had to post, because, fuck, I think I must be a really weird person. I masturbate to my lover not only fucking other girls, (and actively encourage him to consider his desire to do so in real life), but leaving me. And I torture myself this way to imagine that I’m okay with it.

And I’m getting better at it.

In the fantasies so far, I’m still hoping that we get back together, but I’m getting better at imagining being okay even of we don’t. I guess that’s a good, what, self-nourishing exercise? (Unlike the purely masochistic fantasy I have where I tell a shooter that I choose not to tell him where his target is, even though I don’t want to die. You know, just as practice. Thank you philosophically bent University worship group.) It’s some kind of defense, of course, but goddamn, what a mind I have. I keep practicing letting him go.

My insecurity has distilled into a certainty that he will leave me for a better suited partner one day. So that I can accept it and not let it get in the way in the moment, maybe.

Mostly. These shit beliefs of unworthiness just come out as statements instead of fears. And damn if that’s not a great way move more towards self-fulfilling prophecy.

The last thing he told me this weekend was that I make it easy, to love me, that is. So I guess he’s not leaving me yet, heh.

So I guess I’m just damn lucky. Lucky and awesome and oh, so twisted.