The first year DH and I were separated, I couldn’t stand being at home for Christmas. The boys and I packed up all our gifts and drove three hours to Alabama, back to family and where DH and I had grown up and where the boys had been born, locking our jaws tightly on high-held heads and got through our first Christmas as a family of three. The second year, I couldn’t stand to drag out the Christmas ornaments we’d collected as a family for years, so the boys and I made our own decorations that year. The court-mandated visitation schedule had begun, and Max and Tricky spent the first half of their Christmas holiday with their dad and his then-girlfriend. When they came home on Christmas Eve, they were sugar-coated and excited, announcing that we would be doing Christmas Guatemalan-style! and opening gifts at midnight. I made breakfast at 2 a.m., and that was the last time both boys slept with me in my bed.
For the next three years, we incorporated Rango into our new tradition. He didn’t have fond Christmas memories from his own childhood, and he was amenable to adopting ours. The day of celebration and the celebratory menu changed, depending on the visitation schedule and on his food allergy. He refused to participate in our annual viewing of A Christmas Story, saying it reminded him of unhappy Christmases growing up in a dysfunctional family. He would game elsewhere, while Max, Tricky, and I piled on the couch and yelled lines at the television, like we’d created our own Rocky Horror Christmas Show.
This year, without Rango, we weren’t limited by his food allergies or his ghosts. When I casually asked the boys what they’d like to eat for middle-of-the-night breakfast, Max cried out and demanded Waffle House.
“It’s Christmas. They’ll be open.”
And this is how a new Christmas tradition was born.
Traditions are beautiful. They tie you to a shared past and anchor you in loving nostalgia. But they are not fully fixed and are open to adaptation, to making them contemporaneously cogent. Some changes are welcomed—a new baby, a new marriage, a new home—and some are not. Since my divorce, both of my grandmothers have passed away, and childhood memories of being at their houses for the holidays are forever frozen in time. While the respective families have worked to create new memories and new traditions, it is bittersweet to conjure those last Christmases with my grandmothers.
I know many families who are creating new traditions this year. New babies make the holidays seem so much brighter. The loss of mothers and children and beloved family members can blur the holiday lights with slow, hot tears. But another Christmas, another new year, is coming and going, and how it is marked is completely up to them.
This is the last Christmas I know for sure that Max will be home. My baby will be graduating high school soon, and he will begin the slow embark on his own adult life. Eventually he will establish his own traditions and schedule that may not include me or his dad or his brother, not in the ways it has through his childhood. He will always be here in some way, but I don’t know how many more times I will get to hear the cacophony of my little boys parading down the hall to open gifts, or the sound of wrapping paper being ripped and tossed at light speed, or the boyish squeal of delight at having received just what they wanted.
“I’ll always come home…. I have to get my presents!”
“But you may be at your girlfriend’s parents’ ski retreat in Aspen,” I retorted.
“Yay. More presents for me,” Tricky chimed in.
But even when they are grown and bringing their babies home to create new memories at Sass’s house (yes, we’ve already agreed that Sass is the likely grandma name), Christmas at midnight—even if it’s on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day or by phone—is something the boys and I can always share. Waffle House is always open; middle-of-the-night hashbrowns can come any day we like.
We were surprised to find our local Waffle House half-filled with grown families, dressed in spirited dress wear, as if they’d come after midnight mass. Two were apparently regulars who’d come to share a meal and bring a gift for their regular server, who hugged each of them and wished them a merry Christmas. Our new tradition of leaving a generous tip for our 1 a.m. server wasn’t original, but it did help to anchor us in this time, when it is still just Sass and her boys, for the inevitable coming change.
To everyone who is living tradition-challenging change this year, go with it. No matter the reason, find something in the newness in which to anchor yourself, and make it your own. There may be laughter or tears, unequivocal joy or breath-stealing heartache. Make them into what you need. They are yours to do with as you wish.
I wish you all love, light, and peace in this holiday season.
Because I horde the memories, because I keep an extraordinary amount of minutiae in there, and because I'm an intensely emotional girl, there is a constant swirl of emotion in me. In a given moment, I will drive along a certain street or hear a specific song, and it will dredge up a memory—Oh, I talked to Absolem from that parking lot or That song was playing when Bounder and I <did whatever>--and then I will re-evaluate the entire relationship. It may take hours or it may happen in an instant, but every emotion I ever felt about that person will come in waves of good and bad, roiling over each other and crashing against the shores of my heart in quick succession.
But none of those emotions are happening now. I'm not living the event that led to the original emotion. It's just an echo, a ghost.
"Ghosts can't hurt you," Rango has reminded me a hundred times. "They're powerless."
Theoretically, they have the power I allow them to have, though I don't really know how to make them feel less important. Some have just taken time to fade. There are dozens of faceless, nameless shifting shapes that are little more than a murmur in my periphery.
But then there are the others.
My therapist said to me once that our bodies have a memory of their own, that our memories play out on a deep, cellular level because our bodies were physically present for the events that occurred. As she explained it, this is why anniversaries of powerful and vividly-remembered events can bring on the same emotions that were felt originally.
Right now, at this time of year, I am in a cycle of dozens of anniversaries. For whatever reason, the period from mid-April to the beginning of August is peppered with anniversaries like a minefield of memories. They run the gamut from wonderful to confusing to downright heartbreaking—and sometimes all three at once.
My therapist also had me work on sitting with my emotions, on allowing them to fall in and around me and just be, without reacting or overreacting to them, naming them and being aware of what they were and where they came from. But with emotions constantly on this rollercoaster down Memory Lane, it's too easy for me to become stuck in place, sitting, paralyzed in my useless fear.
And I do know that the fear is pointless and counterproductive. In my head, I am fully aware that what I'm feeling is wrapping its cold hand around my heart because I let it. I know that the ghosts are vaporous re-imaginings of what I remember, vacillating around my perspective at the moment that I am reminded of them.
But what is it about the others that I can't quite seem to escape them fully?
Absolem was both witness and accomplice to the inner transformations that were the cause of so much outer revolution. There are days I think of something that I should tell him and then remember that we no longer have that relationship, that I can't just message him and tell him to call me when he gets a chance. While I miss that friendship, I do not miss the emotional craziness that sometimes ensued because of it. I don't miss those tears, but I do sometimes change the route I drive just to avoid passing my own ghost.
Bounder was... Bounder. He was the one who broke my heart and wouldn't give me the closure I asked for. There was an ending—and one that took far longer to play out than we were actually a couple—but it didn't come how I felt like it should've, and it never will. Because he lives close by, I sometimes pass him on the street. It's not a ghost with him so much as a poltergeist, make me nauseated and ill from a sucker punch to the gut.
There are still some songs I just. can't. bear. to hear.
And with DH, it seems like there should be more than with the others, but there's not. In fact, it happens far less often than it used to. Yes, I've had almost three years to put that damage behind me. Yes, I still have to deal with his shit in my basement.
But I can also see the very best of him every single day in our boys. I chose to have two children with him for a reason, and Max and Tricky remind me all the time of how that decision was the best one I ever made. Somehow I've been able to unpack and repack all of that emotional baggage and keep only what mattered, and it's very rare that those memories have the power to upend me.
So I've been a bit on edge for the last few days. I told the Castration Committee that I felt like I was about to crawl out of my own damn skin again. Last night, the first good spring storm came, thunder like the laughter of those specters. I sat on my porch swing, feeling the cold spray of torrential rain on the breeze like phantasmal fingers stroking along my neck. I let the emotions come and swing with me until I thought I would choke on my own breath.
What was I feeling? Why was I feeling it?
I couldn't name it. I couldn't exorcise it.
One of Rango's superpowers is to be able to replace those memories with his own, our own. He is a Ghostslayer Extraordinaire.
"What do you need me to do?" he asked.
"Nothing. Just hold me."
Is it that you miss them? One of them?
No.
Is there something you're not getting that you need?
Not at all.
It wasn't that I was missing anyone else. I hate to compare old loves—each relationship was special for its own reason—but Rango is undeniably so much more than any of the others. There is nothing any of them was or has that he doesn't offer to me willingly and completely.
"Sometimes I just... hurt," I whispered to Rango.
It just hurts.
And there it was. Just hurt. Not grief or anger or longing or sorrow or love. Just hurt that hasn't fully healed. It doesn't feel like it did when the wounds were fresh, but it still aches sometimes when I twist just right or move too quickly in an unexpected direction. Sometimes I just bump the old wound.
And somehow, giving that to Rango makes the hurt fade.
He kisses me and makes me better.
Today, the ghosts are mostly quiet. They're just kind of hanging out and busying themselves with other things, playing quietly off in the distance. I can feel their presence, see them out of the corner of my eye, but I'm doing my best to stay out of their line of sight.
Somewhere between them and me is him, Rango, who will stand guard for as long as I need.
As I was turning 14, I made the decision to leave behind my schoolmates and the few friends I'd managed to make, opting to go to the smaller, alternative magnet high school. I'd always been an outsider—the strange, poor girl who transferred into the upper-middle-class school where she could be guaranteed the gifted education her test scores demanded.
In elementary school, I never had classmates who came to sleep over at my house. My parents and I lived in a trailer two doors from my paternal grandparents, seven miles from the edges of the other school's district. Occasionally I would be invited to a birthday party or sleepover at a classmate's house, but it always felt strange, like I was included because someone's mother made it that way.
Junior high was better but only just a little. I had a few close friends, and my happiest memories of that time almost all involve being at someone else's house. My friend, Kelly, and her parents never failed to include me in their life, week after week of Saturday sleepovers and Sunday church and family dinners. Kelly's home was warm and inviting, especially as I was surviving my own parents' divorce.
I was abandoning the young girl persona of Cissie, but who was I becoming? Adolescence is a terribly unsettling time, the shift from child to adult. Confusion and disorientation are rampant, and I was especially susceptible to that. The gifted high school, RLC, seemed like an opportunity to break entirely from Cissie and the painful memories of growing up different. The school had its own unique history of being a safe haven for outcasts, a defiant eye-sore of a building in a suburban slum, and the students and teachers were unlike anything I'd experienced growing up in the White Flight safety of mid-80s Bluff Park, Alabama.
RLC was the place that I became not just Stephanie, but Stephanie Quinn.
Quinn - Age 15 or 16
For a while in the 1980s, monogramed sweaters were all the rage. I can remember desperately wanting a crewneck one in turquoise, my SKQ initials elaborately adorning the wool blend.
"They don't do a Q," my mother explained.
I scanned the Sears catalog, looking at the choices of color and style, wistful for the tightly-woven threads that sheened the flourishing embellishment of "Diane Elizabeth Jones" or "Roger Adam Smith". Q and X and Z just weren't options, so I never had a monogrammed anything.
By the time I graduated high school in 1990, I had been the only Q-named student ever to attend RLC.
I was not like other girls.
Looking back, I realize that my habit and joy of finding jellicle names started in my own childhood but certainly continued in my teens. Budgie and Tomato Butt know who they are, and Tomato Butt began to call me "The Mighty Quinn".
Who was Quinn? She was different, even by the strange standards of the socially awkward, creative group she lived and thrived in. She was tall and big and loud and awkward. She was a slacker who found it easier to not do something that was hard, because dropping from the lower branches meant a faster, softer landing than crashing from the top of the tree.
Where Cissie had tried her best to be a good girl, Quinn plainly said, "Fuck that!" and began to demand that life be on her terms. If anyone expected anything of her, she would go out of her way to do the opposite. She was openly defiant and disagreeable and rebellious. She was sneaky and manipulative and mostly learned how not to get caught.
Because Cissie hadn't gotten the attention and care that she so craved even when she was a good girl, Quinn learned that a gut-wrenching, lung-wailing tantrum could bring about attention. Bad attention was better than no attention, so she worked with what came easy to her.
Early in my freshman year, I met a guy at school. He was a senior. He never had a jellicle name, though I'll call him Jack for ease of use. Jack and I were friends immediately. We spent long hours on the telephone almost every night, talking about everything and nothing. He would play his guitar in the background while we talked or watched TV or while I did my homework. When I would argue with my mom, he would talk me down. When DH and I broke up in that stupid high school way, Jack spent weeks and months letting me talk through it all. Sometimes I would hear about the girl he'd gone out with over the weekend.
We hung out some at school, though far less than seems likely given the nature of our relationship. We kind of made out once, on the third floor hall during our shared free period. There was no kiss, but my French teacher stopped to talk to us while we snuggled against the painted cinderblock wall near the stairs. She had no idea that my baggy sweatshirt was hiding his hands on my boobs.
And Jack and I never failed to tell each other that we loved each other. I can remember the first time we did, on the telephone while he was at his house and I was at Karolina's. It was just sort of said after a strange, rough night at the mall, and we continued that tradition for the length of our relationship.
Jack was also the first person I ever told about my molestation. He was the first safe place I'd ever known, and then he graduated and went to college. I have the strange memory of Jack calling me from college moments after my molester tried to grope me for the last time. I cried, hysterical and broken, explaining that I'd just told the man never to touch me again or I would kill him. Jack listened patiently and soothed me through it.
When he first left, I missed him but was okay. We would keep in touch through letters and then the occasional phone call. (Long distance was expensive in those days.) Eventually—and some of this is totally skewed by hindsight—I didn't fully understand that I missed him and why I missed him. I became petulant and argumentative. There was a nasty exchange of harsh, sometimes vitriolic letters, and then our friendship was dead.
Eventually I started dating Damien. The two of them had actually known each other in high school but hadn't had contact in several years. Damien was loud and gregarious and pushy and funny and strangely charming. He would call me, while he was dating another friend of mine, and talk for hours, about everything and nothing. He would play his guitar in the background while we talked and watched TV or while I did my homework.
Jack warned me not to get involved with Damien, months after our own relationship had passed the point of disintegration. I specifically chose to date Damien because Jack had told me not to.
Damien goes on to be a tempestuous, on-again/off-again four years of utter Hell. He was verbally and emotionally and physically abusive. He was the catalyst for a couple of half-hearted suicide attempts. He was the intentional, malicious cause of some serious self-harm.
DH returns to my life. Twenty years later, I'm cycling through a series of bad relationships with unavailable men. I'm intently examining my history, unearthing any clue as the what and how and why things went wrong, so that I can at least have the potential to move forward in a healthy, fulfilling relationship.
This morning, it hit me: I am continually recreating this relationship with Jack.
Quinn smacked me upside the skull with a derisive, "Duh!"
Hell, Damien and Bounder were even physically built like Jack, and Absolem's hands always reminded me of Jack's. Interestingly, DH and Jack knew each other, as well, and there was never any love lost between the two of them.
Time and again, I am drawn to creative, smart, funny, unordinary, passionate men. Men who love music (including a couple of musicians). Men who can talk to me for hours and meet my need of quality conversation. Men who don't always have a lot to do with me away from that venue. Men who hide me and sometimes deny me and the impact I have on their hearts.
I have never once had an initial exchange of I-love-yous face to face. I've never had the experience of seeing the look on a man's face when he tells me that for the first time, of being able to look him in the eye when I say it as well. It has always come over the phone. Once, it was even in a text.
For months, I have been angry as hell that, to the best of my knowledge, Bounder never told another living soul that he loved me. Absolem certainly didn't. Neither did Katniss.
And so even Quinn became a secret. She learned to trade men's secrets and deepest, darkest truths for their affection. For their love. For sex. As long as it was quiet.
The Mighty Quinn, who has the power to make the crazy better, to return the frazzled to restful normal. Who knows better how to deal with cold and dark than Quinn the Eskimo?
During the final bench trial for my divorce, the judge asked if I wanted to keep my married name or go back to my maiden. I knew from experience that it's much easier with schools and friends and the like, when a mother's last name matches her young children's. I'd also fully established my writing persona as Stephanie Quinn Jackson.
But I have gravitated over the last few months toward images of Qs. Initially I saw them as magnifying glasses, as a tool for closer examination. Then I began to associate them with questions, with my own inner searching. Lately they've felt more like a reclamation of who I was before DH.
Today, I see all of that as valid. I also see her, the 17-year-old girl who wants to make sure I hear what she has to say, who wants to make sure her valiance wasn't in vain. She wants to make sure I know Jack.
So, Quinn, you crazy nut, I hear you. I love you, and I thank you for poking me hard enough to make me finally notice the puzzle piece that's been upside-down and sideways for 25 years. Now take your self-satisfied smirk and go take a nap. You deserve it.
This is my favorite time of year, these very early moments of spring.
Seasons don't follow a calendar here in the South. Plants don't check the date to see if they're supposed to bloom. So even though the vernal equinox won't happen for a few more days, spring has sprung in my world.
The daffodils come first, often in late January. We've had a snowier and icier winter than normal this year, but it hasn't seem to have deterred the first shoots and fresh buds from reaching for the sunlight. Every year, there are a few warm days followed by a few cold and then the first of the spring rains. As soon as the clouds clear but before anything has dried, my world is suddenly verdant. The lingering droplets refract the differently-angled sunlight, and everything is green and fresh in a way that makes my heart swell into its own brilliant smile.
It is the return of Perstephanie.
What started as an inside joke with Moonshine more than twenty years ago has become the moniker of a persona. Major life events always seem to happen for me around the first of March and the first of October, as the world is gearing respectively up and down for seasonal change—during the procession of Persephone from and to the Underworld. And even though the time around Valentine's Day is often cursed with chaos for me, I always know it is on the cusp of rebirth.
It's always darkest before the dawn.
This year, I have been lucky enough to have a significant paradigm shift with the return of lengthening daylight.
It came in the guise of a man, Rex. At this point, I am choosing to keep details about him and that relationship within the confines of the tightest of the Inner Circle. What will happen between us remains to be seen, but suffice it to say that he is the catalyst for a significant shift in my energy.
As has happened before, there was a bolt of lightning. Again, I am turned to face a man who is a reflection of me in this place and time—simultaneously similar and opposite. My current story is reminiscent of his past. Our neuroses and demeanors are so eerily alike that he commented that I'm him with expensive lady parts.
Yeah. He's me with a penis.
But he has experiences that I don't, as well as a male perspective that I will never be able to gain.
He came with brash admonitions to take the things that taunt me, the vices of my self-flagellation, and to put a fence around them, to keep them safely unable to harm me but close enough that I can keep an eye on them when I so choose. He brought the gentle reminder not to overthink anything and everything at any and every given moment. And he brought living proof that a single mom of two handfuls of young men can be a successful parent, even in the face of utter familial turmoil.
Rex is one of those people who are brought into my life to teach me something. Maybe a lot of something. I'm almost certain I have something to show him, as well.
But even if he were to be gone from my life tomorrow, he gave me this little gift of a tool to be able to slow my own head down, not to have to rely on someone else to bring me back to the ground when I glide too close to the sun. And when it happened, the shift and exchange of energy was so palpable that we both were physically moved and could touch it in that wondrous moment.
The spring storms will be here soon. I'm a little anxious about what that lightning brings with it. But where I felt trapped and unable to move forward just a few weeks ago, I am lighter and freer than I have been in months. Still stumbling along my path, I'm being rebirthed. Again. And I'm skipping my way into my spring.
A couple of months ago, I met a guy online. We hit it off and agreed to a first date, which turned out to be fantastic. Schedules were a little tough to sync at first, but we did manage to eek in a couple more great dates. He was cute and smart and funny. We had long, engaged conversations and fantastic chemistry. Even though he was clearly into me, I knew pretty quickly that I didn't have substantial romantic interest in him. (I never even got around to giving him a nickname.)
I was mulling how best to go about ending it when the court date came up for my divorce. I was so caught up in that week that I didn't think much about it when I didn't hear from him.
Eventually I did get a text, though, asking how court had gone, how I was, etc. I caught him up quickly, while I was in the middle of working one of my three part-time jobs, and then asked how he was. He finally admitted that he hadn't checked on me because he'd gone on a week-long bender.
Red flags flapped ominously in my breeze. He knew my history of falling for alcoholics, and I knew his history—what he'd been very adamant was an ancient history of non-alcoholic addiction that had been long-ago dealt with. I knew I was ready to end the romantic relationship, but I liked the guy and wanted to be able to be his friend through the hard time he was having. I offered to be a sounding board.
Another week went by with no word from him. I was both busy and not unhappy about having a little distance from it. Then came the voicemail, telling me he had gone on another black-out binge and was hospitalized in a detox unit. He asked me to call him. He texted me the next day, asking if I'd gotten his voicemail.
I replied that I had but that I had to distance myself from the situation and from him.
"You know my history," I texted. "I am clearly an enabler. This is more than I'm willing to deal with right now. It's unhealthy for me and unhealthy for my children, given the energy shift it will create in me. I feel like a cad for not being your friend through this, but I just can't be around this right now. I wish you well."
Alcoholics aren't always, or even usually, the people who drink all day, every day and can't hold down a job. I've never dated a man who sat on the street corner, sipping anything out of a bag. (At least not more than a couple of social times.) My history, however, is peppered with functional alcoholics—those who lead productive lives filled with work and family and friends, who seem perfectly normal to anyone outside the closest inner circle. It wasn't just that they were alcoholic abusers, they were alcohol dependent.
When an addict of any kind begins the process of recovery, there are several paths they can take. Going it alone, private counseling, community-based therapy and support groups. Each has to find their own path.
In my personal experience and through my research for Persona Non Grata, there are two main thoughts about recovery. On one side, the addict needs to give all of their time and energy to recovery, at least initially and for some indeterminate amount of time, in order to stabilize and come to terms with themselves and the immediate consequences of ceasing substance. Different substances—whether alcoholic, heroin, cocaine, food, etc.—will have different effects on biochemistry, and withdrawal can be a bitch no matter your poison. Some addicts choose to immerse themselves in the process of recovery, sometimes to the point that the unavailability they showed their loved ones is just as prevalent even though it's in the name of meetings and sessions and getting better.
There's a second line of thinking, in which the addict has been a selfish bastard for so long that they need to immediately begin rectifying that damage to the people who've paid the highest price for it thus far. It's time to step up and show those people that you really do love them; it's time to start making amends for your asshole behavior of the previous weeks and months and years, balancing them with your own needs and therapy.
Often on the other side of an addiction is an enabler, someone who excuses and justifies and cleans-up and forgives the selfish, destructive behavior in the name of loving the addict. Someone like me. I've been known to give so deeply of myself to maintain the status quo that I would find myself frazzled and exhausted, a shell of who I was supposed to be.
If recovery for the addict includes stopping being a selfish asshole, recovery for the enabler is the time when they have to learn to be a little bit selfish, to take care of themselves before they care for the addict.
It feels completely unnatural.
When you are structured around this idea that "care" means self-sacrifice, you'll do anything for the people you love. Every detail of your life becomes about how you can help this person you adore, how you can make things easier so that they can accomplish their goals, even after recovery begins in earnest. It's all too easy to find yourself still in that pattern of compensating for the addict who has floundered for years.
But isn't that what you do for the people that you love?
If they're young children, absolutely. But even adults who were badly parented or never learned the life-skill of self-care are still adults; they have to be responsible for themselves.
It is hard as hell to turn away from someone you care about, leaving them to deal with the process of recovery without you. You, who has taken care of everything for so long, who has loved them like no other and for reasons and in ways maybe no one else would ever understand... you are abandoning them in their greatest moment of need.
You're a fucking heartless bitch.
As the enabler, you have to heal from this process of addiction, as well. You have to learn to care for yourself and how to devote time and energy to those who really need it, not just those who refuse to do it for themselves.
Given my history, my telling Bender (okay, so I named him just now) that I couldn't be a part of his process not only took my support away and forced him to stand with one less crutch, it allowed me to drop that fucking crutch, too. My hands are free to hold something else. Something more important—myself.
Even though that romantic relationship wasn't hugely impactful on my life, it came at just the right time to remind me that I am important in a relationship. My needs, my care, my wants are just as important as the other side's, even and especially when that other side is addicted.
Being cognizant of this, being fully aware of how necessary it is for me to make those healthy decisions means I have to follow through. To continue the behaviors and patterns when I absolutely know better makes me no better, but also no worse, than the addicts I have loved.
Even after Bender, there is another friend who is maybe in that process of sobriety and recovery. It's likely, though I don't know for sure because I had to make the decision to cut this person out of my life. And it is hard. Every single day, I want to know how they are, to hold them and listen while they talk through what I know is coming. Some days that connection still feels as strong as it did when we met so many moons ago.
I want desperately to reach out, to ask how they're doing. I can't, and it sucks. Some days, it hurts like hell.
They're no more irredeemable than I am. We've both always known that change would have to come from within them, no matter how much support I offered or shoved or emotionally blackmailed them into taking. But taking is not accepting, and I had to stop bashing my head against that beautiful brick wall.
As much as I hope they are taking the time to really face this and heal, I hope I am able to turn and face my own role in my life, my own choices to excuse and justify and encourage—all in the name of love. This time, I have to love me, in the same active way I have tried so fucking hard to love them.
Keeping them out of my life is supposedly the best thing for me. Supposedly it's also the best thing for them, but it smacks of abandonment and dismissal in the ways that feel most brutal to me. I hope to God, every day, that there's a healthy way forward for us, together or not, in each other's lives or not. I hope to hear that they're okay, that they're doing their work and dealing with what has been so long neglected. I hope I do the same.
Above all else, I hope we both can one day see that we are loved, not because of our roles in that dysfunction—not in spite of them—but for the people we are on the other side of the addiction and the history and the hurt.
Oh, my heart is a brutal,
tempestuous little bitch sometimes—trapped in the delicate, fragile teapot of
my head.
I'm now three years into Muchness and Light—November 25th
will be three years exactly—and this forum has been as cathartic for me as my
therapist's office, though substantially cheaper. Sometimes I find myself covering old ground
again, about love and those life lessons I have tackled so openly during this
time. When I realize I'm circling back
to something I thought I'd exhausted before, I realize there's a reason,
something I didn't get right the first time.
There's always some catalyst—a new
drama or relationship or end of a
relationship—that sends my heart reeling and bouncing around the confines of my
head. My dad would likely make the
"bb in a box car" analogy. The
cacophony between my ears sounds like a thousand simultaneous, murmured
conversations with the bells and whistles of a pinball machine dinging above
the din.
It's overwhelming to me
sometimes. How could it not be too much
for anyone else? How could it not
exhaust someone else, to let them take a shot at the flippers?
It has become part of my
established, public persona that I am a lot to handle. My online dating profile even warned men that I can be intimidating,
that I'm "loud and voracious and a ball of batshit blond
energy." I've received hundreds of
messages, telling me how they appreciate my honesty and that they'd like a shot
at channeling that energy. Five minutes
later, when it's clear that they assume it means I just want great, casual sex,
I'm generally done with that conversation.
It's not usually that much different
in person.
When someone takes the time to get
to know me, though, they do get to see my softer side. I'm really very sweet and incredibly
affectionate, and I am fully capable of being quiet and still when the moment
demands it.
As confident as I am in who I am, though, I'm also very insecure
in how other people deal with me. I can
get my feelings hurt far more easily (and often) than I'd like to admit. In fact, I often hide that from the person
who has lashed me, knowing it's usually not an intentional assault against my
fragile façade. I'm a lot of
personality, which means my heart is a big, easy target. It's that much harder to miss when I've taken
it off my sleeve and am just carrying it openly in my hands, like a shield made
from an oversized box of Valentine's chocolates.
I'm not entirely fearless in my pursuit
of love, no matter how brave I may be.
I'm not afraid to let people get close; I'm afraid to let them stay close. I've been out with a lot of men in the last
year. Less than half of them have gotten
a second date. Of those that have, less
than a quarter have gotten yet another shot.
I tend to throw myself out there and then yank myself back from the
brink. In all fairness, it has usually
been because I could readily tell those men weren't for me, and I didn't want
to waste my time on those fruitless endeavors.
When I meet someone I truly like,
someone for whom I develop feelings, it's very hard for me not to assume that
they will disappoint me. I have a
definite pattern of finding emotionally unavailable men and trying my best to forge
a relationship with them anyway. It goes
back to my childhood (What doesn't? Ask
my therapist.), and I can pinpoint the unavailability in each and every one of
the men I've been attached to romantically.
All retrospectively, of course.
I do not want unavailable men. Maybe that seems like a
no-brainer, but I have this tendency to attract such beings into my life.
Whether logistically or emotionally, I am magnetically attracted to the men who
are least likely to be able to share their life or mine. Maybe it's
something about their being inherently broken—a fragile cat. They're soft
and pretty and purr when I pet them, but they can't give what I need or want in
return. I don't want that anymore.
So
why the hell do I keep going back to that?
My
heart knows better in theory but not in practice. My head knows it's stupid to even glance at a
fragile cat. But I do it all the damn
time, as if one day, just maybe one
of them will break that pattern and not be quite like the rest.
Hot
Pocket chided me in her drawling, gentle way that I need to get it into my
pretty, thick head that I deserve to be happy with good things. I know
this logically. I am human. I'm a good person. I have done nothing so unredeemable that it
makes me undeserving of love.
But
in my heart, I don't know that I'm
worthy of the affection and attention of a man who truly loves me. Everything in my past has shown me the
opposite is true. The people who love me
most will disappoint me and hurt me more than I ever could imagine.
It's
unfair of me to have those expectations of a new person, and it runs the risk
of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. If
I am constantly waiting for them to
back away, perpetually on the edge of heartbreak, I am much more likely to
flinch and flee at the slightest provocation.
It also places an unfair strain on them, to be living under my
super-observant, watchful eye.
Somewhere
along the way, I have to learn to be here now, to let the present be not only
what matters most but what influences
most. I've let go of most of the hurt of
the past, but it's impossible for me to forget about it all. What I can't do is expect someone who has no
ties to that to live in trepidation that one of my ghosts will haunt them.
And
every time I think I've laid those ghosts to rest, when I am finally able to rest, the rattling of their dragging chains
clangs through the commotion in my head and sends me caroming toward the opposite
wall of the teapot, where my heart dings against the crackleware and the echoes
feel like a constant death knell.
There's
a comfort in seeking out what you know, in finding respite in what's familiar. Maybe that's why I feel snug within the
confines of unavailability. I can rail
against the men who compartmentalize me, who put me in the proverbial box that
I purport to loathe, but I am all too willing to climb inside, crouching down
excitedly until I can burst through the top like a girl in a giant cake. I do love the anticipation, the waiting to
see how they will react when I am suddenly and dramatically exposed.
In reality, they almost always freak the fuck out when it happens, when I am
fully and completely me. They make that
face of surprise, with a glimmer of oh-my-god-it's-just-too-much
before they wipe it blank and try to hide their apprehension. That
is the pinpoint of unavailability.
I can't and won't change who I am to
make them more comfortable. I've
discussed this many, many times—it's dishonest to me and to them. I can adjust and hold back a little bit,
trying not to inundate them with my muchness, but when my heart gets invested,
the floodgates will part and set the deluge upon them.
That's when it becomes sink or swim
for us both. I keep looking for the cat who can swim, who can disentangle me from the ghostly chains and bring me back to the surface, even when I know I'm the only one who can do it. But somewhere there just has to be someone who thinks I'm worth that battle, doesn't there? Doesn't everyone deserve a love that will fight for them, no matter what?
So I keep fighting like that for the men I love, even when I know they won't fight back. Maybe I'm hoping it's kind of like karma, that if I put enough out there that I will eventually have to get back what I've given. Like a cosmic love dowry--it takes a huge investment to get what you want.
Until in comes, I'll keep dancing and jumping around, waving my giant, red heart and offering my delicious confections to passers-by. Surely one of them will appreciate it, someday.
Men love to tell me their shit. People, in general, will reveal private
information to me pretty readily, but especially men.
I can fall quickly into easy
conversation with almost anyone. For all
of my talk of being ignored when I go out by myself, it's not entirely
true. In the grocery store or out
running errands, I talk with strangers all day long. While I can be a little shy in the beginning,
I'm pretty loquacious once I'm comfortable.
But there seems to be something
about me that just puts men at ease, to the point that they will share their
deepest and darkest pretty quickly. I
have more unexpected details of random men's deviant pasts and sexual
proclivities than I could write about in a lifetime. (That doesn't mean it won't stop me from
trying.)
It has kind of become a joke within
the Castration Committee, that I can walk into a room of a hundred men and
point them out, the fragile cats, and pinpoint their damage on sight. There's something about the way they carry
themselves or a look in their eye; I just know who they are.
Something about me seems to strike a
chord, like they're seeing a kindred spirit for the first time. I certainly have my own dramatic past, and I
am more than willing to talk openly about it.
Even without revealing my own intimacies, they pick up on some aspect of
my personality that makes them feel comfortable enough to tell me all the ways
in which their parents and exes failed them, to describe how they clawed their
way to and from their own rock bottoms, or to whisper their most lurid desires
into my newly-acquainted ear.
Maybe there's some pheromone that
I'm releasing constantly. Maybe they really can smell me in the
air. Maybe it's just that I am so damn
attracted to the fragile, skittish cat and that I'm seeking them out without
realizing it.
Because I am a non-traditionalist in
so many ways, I tend to gravitate toward the fringes. I like strong personalities that lean toward
the left. I may be on the hunt for a
great alpha male, but he would never be a hardcore Republican corporate
attorney. That may be perfectly fine for
some people but not for me. I like
intense and creative and non-conformist, because that's where I find the
intellectual stimulation I need coupled with the passion I crave. Men like that, people like that, often come
from dramatic and traumatic backgrounds, especially now that we're halfway
through our lives.
Part of me loves being in that position, of being a safe place of comfort for
someone to off-load some of their strife for a while. I am especially adept at filtering other
people's energy and helping them carry what has become too much for them. In the end, it's their job and not mine to
deal with that baggage in the long term; I can't keep it for them forever.
When it comes to men, though, I
often find myself on the receiving end of sincere thanks, of hearing how I've changed and altered them and their
perceptions of their worlds, how I've helped them deal with some shit so they
could move on in a healthier way.
Seriously?
How the hell did I become someone
else's catalyst? What is it about me
that make me worth some time and a little effort, plus a hell of a lot of
intensity, but not worth a longer-term relationship?
I want to be that safe haven for
someone for more than a day or a week or a few months. I want to find that man who can share his
heart and his life as easily as he shares his bed and his secrets. I want someone who is willing to stick it
out, who doesn't say, "Thanks for helping me deal with my fucked up
head. Have a nice life!"
There will always be issues with men
like this. Even the most reformed of the
fragile cats remain skittish to a degree.
I'm the same way. Every so often,
I'm still surprised by a memory or recognition of something from my past that
collides brilliantly with my present. It
scares the hell out of me when it happens.
What I need is someone who can be patient with me through that process,
to continue to love me when I'm scared or angry or hurt, and not just because
it's what feels right that day. I want
someone who can face the worst of me and still love me the next morning. I expect myself to be able to love others
with full openness and reciprocity; it is really too much to ask for the same?
For months I've been toying with
what to write next.
I always knew I wanted to do
something else from the Junkture stories.
I went to Mardi gras and Mobile earlier this year to do research for the
next book, Mantissa. (That's Alex Wheeler's first wife's
backstory, if you're interested. If you
don't know who I'm talking about, read my first novel Persona Non Grata.) Most of
it would be totally fiction with bits and pieces of my youth and stories from
friends' lives as well.
There's also the story of Talia
Wheeler, Alex's current wife.
Sequentially it happens just after Persona
Non Grata but is told from Talia's point of view. I knew a lot of it would reflect my real life
in the aftermath of separation and the process of divorce. I haven't had enough closure or distance to be
able to delve into it quite yet.
I had a dream in the spring that was
the catalyst for an entirely new story.
The details were swirling in my head, and I did hours and hours of
research. While utterly fiction and
having nothing to do with Junkture, the tempest that is Sass and Bounder was
strongly influencing how these characters were evolving. This was true the first time we were together
and even moreso the second time.
I was stuck, though. I couldn't quite see these new characters.
Queen Frostine was asking me regularly where this book was—she knew the
gist of the story and wanted to see it come to fruition. Even Hammer was intrigued by the idea.
"It's all in my head," I
would answer.
When Bounder and I broke up in July,
I was on my way to Mobile again. I
needed time to think and wrap my head around what was happening. The day after it finally happened, I drove
out to Dauphin Island. I sat on a
mostly-deserted beach in the rain, listened to music, and cried. I purged a lot of
emotion that day, giving it to the wind and the rain and the withdrawing
tide.
And somehow over that tempest, I heard the names of the
new characters. Layla and Michael.
From that point, they had
identities. I could hear and see them,
knew how they acted and moved. I
borrowed Lady Hammer's laptop and wrote what would become the first draft of
the first chapter on Sunday. It took a
few days, but I eventually got into the groove and the energy needed to write
this story.
Like all writers do, I'm writing
what I know. Even though the story
itself borders on paranormal romance (but is as about as genre-specific as PNG—which is to say, not at all), the
emotions of Michael and Layla are effectively Bounder and me. Like I did for the first book, and like I do
for Muchness and Light, I am drawing upon
my very real life to drive my writing.
But just once I would like to not have to live a traumatic
relationship just to get a book out of me.
"Most women gain twenty-five
pounds when they break up," my editor said. "I'd say emotional writing is much more
productive."
I agree, but it's hard to relive the
good and the bad just to reframe the sense of emotion. It's hard to see the texts and emails and
then remember what was occurring in the midst of that. It's as difficult to the middle-of-the-night
"I miss and love you" messages as it is to see the "This is too
hard, I don't think I can do it" ones.
It breaks my heart all over again to see all the times we were messaging
simultaneously that we were listening to the same song, or to see when he'd
text me that he was on his way to come and kiss his girl.
In some ways, it leaves me even more
confused about what happened. He was
there, plainly and constantly, and then suddenly not. I knew when
and why I think it happened, but I
don't know how. It seems like there was literally one moment
in time when something shifted and everything fell apart. If I mapped it out on a storyline, I can see
the day that's pinpointed as the climactic turning point. But there are still details I'm missing.
I have to accept that I may never
have that insight. Writing Original Sin is kind of my way of making
sense of it all, though our specifics are differently complicated than Michael
and Layla's. I get to build the monument
to this as I see fit.
"This is what your lightning
strike was for," Hot Pocket said.
She's probably right. And I will take the lessons I learned from
writing Persona Non Grata—step out of
chronology, limit the emotional punch, break down the specifics to only what
you need—and write this story as best I can.
The energy for it is abundant right now, and I'm let it flow openly and
unabashedly. If it's anything like my
actual relationship with Bounder, it will come quickly and then be gone, leaving
something entirely new in its wake.
To say that I am nothing like the girl I was three years
ago is an understatement.
The transformations that came about,
both physical and spiritual, rocked Stephanie to her core. The weight loss (115 pounds), the surgeries
(17.5 hours to remove the excess skin and rebuild this body), the people and
experiences, the music, the divorce... all culminated in a ridiculously
different woman than I and everyone else saw in the summer of 2010, or in the
years prior.
Okay, so maybe Bounder is right, and
the core of who you are as a person never changes. I'm still the same smart, funny, impatient,
resourceful girl I've always been. It's
like a tiny kernel of that is all that remains.
Sometimes it's pulsing from my center like a beacon; sometimes I tuck it
away in my pocket for good luck. But
there's very little of that Stephanie
still there.
Had I not met Absolem when I did, I
don't know that this metamorphosis would've come about it in the same way. I was stagnant, and it was likely going to
take an outside force to shove me into forward motion again. He was a reanimator of sorts for me, though
he has argued that those things were always there, even when I and no one else
could see them. Perhaps it would've
happened eventually or in some other profound way, but I'll never know.
Through all of that time, I had
choices to make. I could move or stand
still, stay or go, hide or reveal, be or not be. Often those choices were scary as hell, but I
made them. My conscious decisions led me
to subsequent ones that permanently altered my course, sometimes with a deep
ripple effect. I made mistakes along the
way, certainly, but all of those decisions were made with the acceptance that I
would rather regret what I did than
what I didn't do.
When it came to time to proactively
incorporate other people into my new
journey, I was shocked to find how often people will recoil from the
challenge. They become so bogged down in
fear of change, even in the name of progress, that they preferred to stay
stagnant in their trepidation. Sometimes
they would encourage me to undo the
things that I'd done, or even to pretend they'd never happened at all, in order
to make them more comfortable in my life or in their own.
Fuck
that.
I fully accept and truly believe
that everyone must come to their own changes, to their own transformations, each
in their own way and time. Just because
I can point to the things I've done and overcome, that doesn't mean that I can
expect anyone else to follow my path and do those same things. I don't and can't laud my progress over
anyone else and demand that they do the same, especially not according to my
proscribed schedule.
What I can get irate about is the ones who refuse to take up the challenge
at all, who allow their fear to determine their course, especially when they know their life isn't working. Not even that it's not what they want it to
be—though that's certainly reason enough to make those changes—but that their
lives are just dead, broken beyond
certain repair. I know from very
personal experience how that is a dangerous and saddening place to be. But to allow your fear to rule your choices
and your life is, in my opinion, the exact opposite of what life is supposed to
be about.
I don't think that everyone should
upend their entire world and begin again.
That could be equally as damaging in the end. But if there are things that aren't working,
and especially when they haven't worked in a very long time, it's on you to really examine not only what they are but why they are, and to determine how
is best to make the necessary alterations.
Otherwise you're stuck ad
infinitum in trying to learn the simple lessons that somehow you haven't yet
been able to grasp.
But when you have the tools and the support,
when you are given the unique gifts of opportunity and resource—especially when
you're granted both at the same time!—it is ludicrous
to me that anyone would choose to ignore
those blessings and turn away from the challenge, simply because they are afraid of the hurt that could come with
trying.
It's okay to be afraid; it's not
okay to be a coward.
Ultimately, I have no respect for
that course of life. I have lost respect for people about whom I
cared very much, who have chosen not
to live their life and to stay trapped
in their anguish. It's like they're
choosing Purgatory over Heaven or even Hell, and I just can't understand it.
My life is a cautionary tale in a
lot of ways, I know that. Sometimes I've
been more careless with myself than anyone else could ever be with
Stephanie. I have often been heartbreakingly
careless with others, even sometimes to the point of negligence or malice, and
I will do what I can healthily to rectify that for as long as it takes. But only until the amend is made and then I'm
moving the fuck on.
While my opinion may or may not
matter to you, if you are reading this, it's for a reason. Desperately trying not to sound arrogant, my
words have been brought into your life as a result of fate or Fate, and there
just might be something here for you to remember. And if you need help, if I can be of some
resource, feel free to reach out to me and make yourself known. If I can point you toward your own catalyst
for transformation, I'm happy to try.
Someone really remarkable did it for me, and I know sometimes we just
need that little push to head us in the right direction.
Those are the most ludicrous words
after a break-up.
It's not that I think men and women
can't be friends. I have lots of male friends, running the gamut
from casual to intimate. (Poor Hammer
knows waaaay more than he'd probably
like to know.) While I do tend to
gravitate toward women for those very close friendships, there are and have
been a few exceptions over the years.
Even within the bounds of
Stephanie-Dude friendships, sometimes the lines have become blurred by deep
emotional or spiritual connection. Sometimes
by both. If there's also a sexual
attraction, the relationship can become complicated rather quickly. Sometimes I've been able to pull back from
that and maintain the platonic relationship.
Sometimes not.)
Usually what happens, though, is
that I go through this experience with whatever man, and the relationship is
damaged by sex and love and what has most often felt like compromise that was
unevenly anchored to my side. Hot Pocket
would toss in the words "unevenly yoked" right here. Moonshine might suggest something about
unbalanced equations. My therapist would
kindly and gently advise me to determine what I'm willing to accept to maintain
a healthy relationship and where I can confidently draw my lines—with the
mindful acceptance that I must defend those boundaries if push comes to
shove.
Bounder and I went back and forth
for days that turned into weeks about how and where our relationship was
going. He says he's not an alcoholic; I
still question it openly and to his face.
Almost regardless of that, there's still the issue of my caring about
him. He is special to me. Tierney says it best, to Alex, during one of
their last conversations in Persona Non
Grata:
"Look, I don't
love a lot of people. I don't like a lot
of people, and all these people in my life have really hurt me over the
years. I have reasons to be wary of
letting people in. When I do, and
especially when I choose to let them in far enough to love them, they're
special. You are a very rare breed of
human being that I both like and love, and not just because I have to. That's why I get so mad about it all. That's why it feels so unfair. I don't want that to have been a waste of my
energy."
Part of the issue for me is this
idea of being compartmentalized, of feeling like I'm being shoved and cajoled
into a box that keeps me away from the other person. Yes, it is something men tend to do more than
women; it seems to be an innate coping mechanism for them. Again, Alex and Tierney discuss this early on
in their relationship:
[Alex Wheeler]
"That's how I am; if someone makes me mad or bothers me too much,
I'll just ignore them—won't answer their calls or texts or emails. I'll just stop."
"Are you that way with everything? Do you just ignore what you don't like?"
He thought about it for a moment. "Yeah.
I compartmentalize everything. I
have to, in some ways, being on the road all the time. It helps keep me sane. I'm really good at keeping everything in its
own neat, little box, where I can deal with it or not, as I choose. I'm probably too good at it."
"I think that's a guy thing," I
commented. He nodded in agreement. "I think it's much harder for women to
take their feelings out of the equation.
Men are much better at tucking their feelings out of the way."
When a relationship is ending for
whatever reason, what do you do after you've been through an intense period of
time with this person whom you both like and love (on whatever level), with
whom you've shared deep intimacies, and without whom you feel a little lost?
While I still occasionally have very
platonic contact with Absolem, he was always
an exception to the rule—though that was no real surprise given the nature of
our relationship. I know damn well that
I will always have that tie to him, that weird connection that brought him in
and out of my life as a catalyst to upend me and bring about my own
transformation. I owe him so much, and I
owe him nothing. But I know that even if
I weren't to hear from him for twenty years, he would know within moments of
making contact exactly how and where I was in my head and my heart and my
soul. We are, in so many ways, two sides
of the same coin.
I made the break, privately and
publicly, from Bounder, but he didn't disappear. It was confusing. It started with the careful arguing and the
constant discussing of what this relationship had meant and was supposed to
mean and how impactful it was for each of us and why, along with where and when
what went wrong—like an emotional debriefing with the only other person who
could truly understand it because
they'd lived it with me. The inner
circle was great about listening and advising and letting me cry when I needed
to do so, but ultimately the answers and solutions would only come from me and
from Bounder.
Our relationship could stop or move
forward in myriad ways. We could take
the leap of faith and delve into this and see what happened. We could agree to part ways for some period
of time and plan to meet back up, if the time was right. We could date slowly for a while and move
along at a more reasonable pace, ignoring everything that had pushed us
together in the first place. Or we could
just say our goodbyes and be done.
Eventually it was plain that we were
tired, dancing wide, serpentining lines around this place and time that wasn't
yet right for us. No matter how drawn we
were and are to each other, here and now
wasn't going be ours. Not like
this. And the seeming pressure of divine
intervention felt yet again like Fate had played a cruel trick, taunting me
with, "Oh? You want this? Too
damn bad! You can't have it!"
So, again, I told him no, that I can't do this, that I can't watch him
from some nebulous place of distant care and be flirty witness to his
life. I am worth more than that; at
least on this we agree. I told him to
find me if and when he was ready to accept the whole of my affections and to
reciprocate healthily in kind. I wished
him well.
"You haven't given me a chance
to tell you what I want out of this
right now," he patiently stated when he called.
Well,
I've given you plenty of opportunity.
It's not my fault you've refused to take it when it was offered.
"So what is that you
want?" I asked, feeling a little defiant underneath it all.
"I want you to be you, and I want to be your friend. I want to still see you and talk to you and blahblahblah."
"So you still want me in your
life and want to maintain that connection with me? But you can't commit emotionally, no matter
how badly you say you want to be able to?
And maybe you want to have sex with me, if it feels like the right thing
to do?"
"Yes."
What
the fuck?
The truth is I don't want him gone from my life. He is sweet and funny and smart. He knows me incredibly well and has seen
through my facade of bravado from the moment we met. Even though he is often willing to grant me
the freedom to maintain that glittery face, he also doesn't hesitate to call bullshit on it and on me. He's one of very few people (especially men)
who call tell me no. I want a healthy
relationship with him. I care deeply for
him, and he has impacted me in ways very few men, or people in general, have
been able to do. But I also don't want
to spiral back into the dark place of striving for attention, of flustering for
a fleeting moment of care and affection.
I don't want to be told no just
because he has the power to do so; sometimes I get to be right.
And as
Tierney sums up later:
Alex had kept me in a box, but within those
confines I could expose myself totally, free to explore the ever-expanding
boundaries of my soul without fear of judgment.
If he couldn't handle what he saw, all he had to do was close the
box. It was how he handled his own
soul.
To ask this of me, to negotiate
platonic friendship with the possibility of an eventual more, is unquestionably
an effort to compartmentalize me and our relationship. I
understand that the fragility of this cat is undercut by recent and deep
trauma, that he could very well crack at any time. It's a defense mechanism, undoubtedly, and he
has every right and reason to seek that comfort in his world in the hopes that
he can heal from what came before me.
I have every right and reason to say
no.
I'm
not going back in the box.
Having lived the life that brought
me to this version of Stephanie, I am very wary and sensitive to that kind of
one-sided consideration. I was left on
my own for years, emotionally, and
tend to gravitate toward people (again, especially men) who are selective in
their attentions. Whether their reasons
are emotional or logistical in nature serves only to explain the behavior; there
are reasons but no excuses.
Because of my sensitivity to feeling
dismissed or ignored, I will never not
respond to the boxers. I cannot ignore
their calls to attention. I know
precisely how that hurts and loathe the feeling so much that I would never wish
it on anyone I care about.
I will always be his friend, but
right now I don't know that I can be just
his friend. I want and am ready to be
special to someone else (though I am not actively seeking anyone to fill that
role), and we both thought at first that he was ready for that, as well—that we
were both ready to be special to each other.
But intention and fruition don't always fall in line with each other; no
matter how much it looked like this was supposed to be here and now, that's simply not how it's working, even though I
question his direct role in that creating and maintaining that obstacle.
The thought that I could go through
this with him, that yet again I could meet someone who could alter my own path
so dramatically, and that he won't be at the end of this leg of the journey
with me is simply terrifying. Right now, while I care about him so deeply
and want him to be healthy and content in himself, the risk of seeing him fall
for someone else when he's finally ready to crack his own facade for another
person... it's just too much. Maybe it's
not me, and it is him, as he's said so roundabout, but it's still me that faces the greatest possibility
of being hurt again. To keep me in his
web of care means that I will feel the vibrations of secondary movement. It could be him shifting slowly toward me, or
it could be him scurrying in another direction.
Either way, it leaves me stuck and slowed by his gossamer threads,
grappling at my feet.
But to turn away from him leaves my
friend in need.
I don't know where this is going any
more now than I did when it started. The
good part is that it has given me an opportunity to understand and accept that,
no matter how much influence I may or may not be able to exert on a force,
sometimes the situation simply isn't mine
to control.
So for a little while longer, he and
I are in this weird, nebulous state of... what?Friends? Not friends?
Not lovers? I don't know, and
I'm honestly tired of not thinking and thinking and overthinking. I will do what I do, be who I am, and
whatever comes from that is what will be.
While I won't attempt to unduly influence the outcome of this situation,
I'm also not sitting passively by, waiting for Bounder to take me out of the
shiny box and play with me.
