Resonate

For some strange reason my ex-husband has been on my mind a lot lately.  It hasn’t been an angsty thing.  For a little while now I have been able to look back with a more balanced view.  I remember all the good things and acknowledge the bad with less pain.  I would be friends with him if that were possible, because I miss some really great things about him as a human being, but I would never want to date him or any of that.  And I do of course remember the hurts, but without that fiery ember.  I’m not angry with him and I see it more clearly, the ways neither of us meant to hurt each other and the collision that was our end.

And maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking of him.  For a long time I made myself crazy going over things and then for a long time I tried not to think of him much at all.  But I can think back now.  I feel healthier.  I feel like I can see things more accurately.. all of the ways I contributed to things good and bad, and the ways he did too.  Neither one of us is a blameless victim of anything and neither one of us were evil.  We were both such fallible human beings.  Have you had a break-up?  Relate to this at all?

I have been thinking about the people that resonate with us.  My ex used to hate this, that I talk about people resonating.  I can’t help it. It interests me.  I wonder what the effect was on us of loving each other.  What did I leave there, after the healing, after the end, after all of our years, what’s he holding?  For a while I couldn’t see him accurately.  It hurt too much and I was angry.  I know it was like that for him too. I could not imagine he knew me so little.  It was crazy. But I was making him the angel and the demon in my mind when really he’s just a man.

Gushing

This one has a lot of sex.  Skip if you like.  😉

Okay.. so I need to put my whole BRCA genetic cancer deal on a slower track.  The next test will take a few weeks or a few months.  So I guess this isn’t going to be a sprint.  Which is nice.  I feel this urge to enjoy.

Part of what seems kinda unfair about this is that I finally gushed.  I’ve squirted for a few years and I recently reached a new peak.  I gushed.   I thought it was a fluke.  It wasn’t.  Damn you Quinky!  You sexy beast!  Quinky cursed me.

The Dark at 1am

So, things are pretty good… but I was freaking out a little.  I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at reconstructed breasts and what the hell all of this involves.  And it’s freaking me out a little.  In NOT-unexpected keystone-cop-style awesomeness, the VA lost the consult to finish my genetic testing.  It’s going to take about a month to get results and I have to start over.  The office that recommends where to get the test is overwhelmed and can’t recommend where I need to go.  So I spent a bunch of today looking at websites for genetic testing centers and oncology departments and trying to figure out how to gauge such things.  Then I spent a bunch of time last night and tonight looking at reconstructed breasts and procedures.  I had been laughing and amusing myself with the idea of perkier, bigger augmented breasts as a reward for all of this BRCA gene bullshit.  But that’s not really accurate is it?  I might end up with breasts that don’t have nipples.. or surgeries that remove muscle and fat from my stomach to make new breasts, or weeks of inflating tissue expanders under my “breasts” to make room for implants under my chest wall to make new breasts, AFTER mastectomy and a surgery to preserve nipples, if I’m lucky.  Is it just me or does all of that sound like a horror show?

And the pictures.  They are freaking me out a little.  I don’t like getting fillings in my TEETH because I hate being vulnerable.  What the fuck am I going to do if I have to spend months removing and making new breasts??!?  Deep breath.  I’d live.  

The Aspiration Gap

***Okay.  This one is long, really really long.  I’m sorry.  I had a bit of a crisis and rethought everything.  Feel free to skim or skip.

_______________________________

I’m thinking about the aspiration gap. We take our hopes and wishes and expectations and compare them to reality.  The difference between what we want and hope for and what actually exists determines in great part how happy we are, and this is the aspiration gap.  There is a good article here describing this idea in more detail.  The really short version of this is that researchers measured happiness and expectation and found them to have an inverse effect, meaning that when people have reasonable or low expectations they were happier.  It seems that the happiness with what actually happens is less important than how it measures up to what we thought or hoped would happen.  If we expected $100,000 a year and got $90,000 we were less happy than when we expected $50,000 and got $60,000.

This is so damn true.

How many times were you surprised by great little things and tickled by the smallest things and saddened by the rewards that came and were actually great but not really what you’d thought would happen?  I’m just adjusting my expectations and taking stock.  I’m finding that I’m loved and supported, exactly as I want and need, and more, but maybe not how I pictured.  I had some of this wrong.  And you know, fuck judging myself for having feelings about that sometimes.  I am allowed to feel this stuff.  It’s okay to want and need.  I can fuck up.  And I can admit when I’m wrong and apologize.

So this weekend Traveler was talking about all of his plans and such and I was enjoying talking to him about all this, as I do.  And I noticed something I never noticed before.  I wasn’t in his plans.  I don’t think much about that most of the time.  We really aren’t to the “building stuff around each other” place.  But he was talking specifically about his living arrangements and his home.  And he has this like 10 year plan.  And I’m not in any of that.  So I asked.  “How does this look for you.. your future living plans and your.. maybe.. like.. hopes or whatever?  Is there.. other stuff in there?”.  Hemming and hawing ensued.  I was trying to tread lightly.   Eventually I cleared what I was asking and he said he just really hadn’t thought about it.

Shit.

What?

It's Just a Thing

Isn’t it funny the things you get attached to?  I teared up a bit bringing my car home from my friend’s house tonight.  It was just for a second, but still.

I have to sell the car because the repair bills when something breaks are difficult for me to pay, and I have to sell it now because it’s a stick shift and I broke my foot and can’t drive it.  I’m moving on and just bought a different automatic car that is really awesome and I love.. but still.

It’s the end of an era!  I bought my beautiful mini-cooper S in 2006.  If I could I’d keep it another 10 years.  I have considered learning how to work on it myself so it’d make more sense.  It’s the funnest car I’ve ever driven.  There are faster cars and bigger cars and cars with more utility or whatever.. but my sporty little gem is the funnest car ever.  It has toggle switches!  It has a super charger!  It has sport seats that hug your body while you drive it and it is so responsive it feels like you are WILLING it to go places.  Burning through the gears getting on the freeway feels like you have rockets.  You THINK about turning and it responds.  You feel the road and the panoramic glass and being low like that feels like you are with the road, part of the road.  That alone would make me miss my lovely Clara Bow.  (I named her after the sexy red-headed spit-fire actress from silent film).

But it’s also what she represents.

Being Flexible

In any relationship a little flexibility is good.  And no.. I don’t mean putting your legs behind you head.  😀 I’m actually not super flexible that way.  But I have my talents.  😉 Flexibility and adaptability help us navigate change and change is inevitable.  Relationships grow and morph and change over time.  People grow and morph and change.  I was looking for a topic this morning and Traveler came up with it.  We’re sitting on my living room floor and he’s reading forums and I’m writing because World of Warcraft is down.  There went our lazy Saturday morning plans.  The thing really is this; I don’t care.  I would like to play WoW, and I’m mildly disappointed, but honestly I don’t care what we do.  I just like spending time.  We had a delicious breakfast (If I do say so myself) and I like sitting here digesting and relaxing together.

 

Flexibility and adaptability come up in a variety of ways in relationships.  Currently, Cleveland and I are navigating that place you get to when the romantic bits give way to the real bits.  We’re still plenty romantic, but we’re starting to also be REAL.  You know that place you get to after about 6-9 months?  Yeah.  We’re there.  He has some very definite ideas of how things should be done sometimes.  He’s read and watched a lot of food science things and as I was making him a beef stir-fry he was telling me all the ways that it SHOULD be done.  We, my dears, are going to have a problem.  I don’t like to be criticized.  I like helpful tips and advice, especially if they are not presented as the “right way” or “only way”.  I love learning.  I do not enjoy someone saying “Oh no no no.. it’s supposed to be done like this”.  I’ve worked long and hard to be better at receiving feedback, but I’m not the best.  Cleveland also has a shortcoming.  He has a lot of opinions and thoughts about how things should be done and he’s becoming more comfortable sharing them.  Ruh-oh.  I pretty much told him I wasn’t going to cook for him if he keeps it up.  I think I need to watch him cook.  He also informed me that I wasn’t shifting soon enough.  Ruh-oh.. run-oh.  Can you see that we’re both going to learn a lot, or this is going to be a mess?  Relationships challenge and stretch us sometimes and I can see that this might be part of the lesson this relationship has to teach us.

Because the thing is.. it’s great to learn from the wisdom of others, and it’s good to try things in new ways, because this is how innovations and inventions happen.  I can’t be so rigid I think my way is THE right way.  I have to be open to the ways of others.

Also with flexibility in relationships, scheduling is a lot easier.  Things have grown with Traveler.  We’ve enjoyed some extra time here lately and we talked about it last night.  One day a week simply doesn’t cut it anymore.  We need more.  And more has been happening and can keep happening if we’re a little flexible.  It helps us to plan so that he can see me and Quinky Girl and so I can see Cleveland and so Quinky Girl can be available to Jonah (her boyfriend).  If we’re too set, we can’t take advantage of that evening here and there and that little dinner or little time in WoW.  And as it turns out, we both crave that.  Yay!

 

Being a little malleable here gives me a lot more of what I crave.. time with my loves.  I get to see more of Traveler and Cleveland and Quinky Girl.  On Traveler’s and my dates this week we got to be a little creative and see Quinky Girl too for a bit.  Wednesday she cooked for everyone (yum) and then Traveler and I had our date and she went out with Jonah.  Friday he and I worked in the yard, removing the bush that smells like cum from next to their porch.  And yes, it really does smell like cum.  Heh.  We enjoyed the sun and some time together and wooded with triumph when we got that damn bush/tree out.  Quinky Girl came home and we all just talked and chilled on the porch, enjoying the lack of cum smell and a nice cold beer as we surveyed the light on the water and the beautiful patch of empty dirt.  We had no specific plans and it was nice to take advantage of some time to have a fun conversation about politics, sex, life, work and all kinds of junk.

Later last night, Traveler and I enjoyed the London Broil I’d marinated and some Greek avgolemeno potatoes.  Uh.. yum.  It was a quiet evening after a busy week, lots of cuddling and petting and a nice long talk.  He kinda opened up and I’m such a girl that it’s maybe my favorite thing he’s done in a while.  We just did whatever, and it was perfect.  Sex that is better and better and so much affection I purr, and it’s just a quiet little friday night.  Perfect. Thank Traveler for the topic.  Now.. what to do since WoW is down?  Hmmmm…..

Tis the Season to Break Up

In the last few days I’ve kinda broken things off with Boss, talked to a dear friend going through a divorce and another with a long anticipated relationship that didn’t grow legs, and another who is parting from his very long-term wife.  It’s going around.  Talking to my first friend going through a divorce, and there in the thick of the most painful bits, I wished I could show her my memories and my mind like something from Harry Potter.  I so feel for where she is at.  I’m just getting out of it myself.  It still looms large in my rear view.  And it sucks, but it does get better.  I have been mourning but also mostly happy this past year.  I realized, I’m doing quite well.

In a bunch of these break up talks, the idea of all the relationships you mourn in a single break-up came up.  There’s the relationship you actually had, the one you dreamed of, the one that now will never be, and the one that really was and could have been.  There is reality, and making the best of it, and hope and dreams and history.  I agreed that it had made me crazy too.  I thought about all those years of sacrifice and sea duty and deployments and long work hours and missed birthdays and holidays and Christmases and whatever that I’d done that for “someday”, a someday that would now never be.  There wasn’t going to be a time when we’d live how we’d dreamed.  We weren’t going to build that big garage and workshop and we weren’t going to build custom motorcycles together or see the Willoughby parades from the end of our street where we lived in our cute little bungalow.  Silver haired “us” is gone.  Poof.

So much loss in a break-up.  Even a pretty small one like Boss and me.  I spent most of yesterday missing him and wanting to talk to him.  I left that up to him, as to how and when and if we’d talk.  I miss chatting here and there all day with him.  It leaves a hole.  But it seems relationship change, like so many things, is inevitable.

I wonder about this desire to have more permanent bonds and how rare they are and how unhappy it makes us to want them so much.  I think about unlikeliness that most of us will get these forever bonds.  Most of us, if we are lucky, have at least a few romantic lives.  I’m certainly not alone out here making my life anew.  LOTS of us break-up and start over and build our new lives.  It is weird that we don’t talk about this as being the way it generally IS.  We talk about trying for forever and that some of us will face loss, but the truth is that MOST of us face loss.  People grow and change and form connections and shit happens.  In fact, shit usually happens.  And then there we are feeling like we’re the only ones, like we failed.  The majority of marriages end in divorce and most relationships don’t last till death.  A lot has been said about this maybe not being the best standard to judge a relationship too.  If both people are alive at the end of a relationship, and they separate to find better ways that work for them, if they shared a time and were happy and grew, is that relationship really a failure?

I like It Like That

I have to tell you that I want you.  I feel my hunger growing.  I’m surprised to find myself coming alive again, and feeling my want uncurling like tendrils of a growing fern.  Even as I’m scared I feel this little… bitty.. stir. 

I don’t know if everything is really different or if anything really changed, but I feel different.  Knowing what I know, I feel like everything is different.  I feel different about me.  I feel different about my situation and I wonder exactly how different I’ll actually be.  I feel like I did after my motorcycle accident.  I was told I was clear to ride and it had been six weeks and I wanted to get back in that saddle and I wanted to feel the wind again, but I was scared of what might happen.  It was different to me.  I knew now in a much more real way my own mortality and fragility.  But I do things I’m afraid of because I’m afraid of them. 

I’m not afraid of you.  I’m not afraid of what we are together because I know that’s good.  I’m actually afraid you won’t want me now.  I feel marked or something, like you’d find me in the scratch and dent.  I’m not like everyone else now.  I’m afraid you’ll be afraid of me.  People are afraid of people like me now. 

I’m afraid that I’ll stroke the side of your face and that I’ll kiss you in the slow calling way I kiss you when I want you, and you’ll recoil.  I’m afraid I’ll run my hands on your spine and pull you against me and your breath won’t catch and you won’t make that sound you make when I kiss the little depression by where your neck meets your body.  I’m afraid your skin will still taste like you and smell like you and I’ll get carried away by my want of you, like I do, and you’ll be stone.  Will you be able to close your eyes and tilt your head back and sigh?  Will my magic fingers work their spells anymore?  Or will you be saying over and over in your mind that I’m different now.  You can’t see it or smell it or taste it or touch it and you would hardly know it’s there.. but I found out and I told you, so can you see me past it? 

Whatever it is about me that calls to you and gives me the same power over you that you have over me, will it still be there?  Will I be red hair and green eyes and pale pale skin?  Will I be kisses and touches and breath?  Will I be chemistry and love, passion and desire?  Or am I something else to you now?  Am I still the woman you want?  Am I the woman that you love?  Am I still me, to you?

I want you. 

I want everything I have with you.

I want you to kiss me and I want to feel the way your body reacts to that.  I want all of your kisses, the small and light and hard and long.  I want the taste of you on my tongue.  I want us to exchange breath like we do, intense.  I want your eyes and the way they pinpoint me and catch me in your gaze.  I love how you can delight me with your loving gaze and thrill me with the way you study me and watch me react to you.  I love your glee when you make me shudder. I love your mirth when I gasp and say so low.. “oh god.  oh god.. yes”.  I know you love the way I respond to your touch, to the things you say and to your naughty ideas.  I love all the kinds of sex I have with you, but right now I’m craving the one that touches everywhere. It’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual.  Fuck it if that sounds too woo-woo. 

I love everything about that sex… the touching the taste smell heart mind sweat soul body need want love ache love friction. I love barely touching, electrons dancing in my touch.  I love that I can’t stop kissing you and that you say my name and tell me you love me over and over and over.  I love you on my tongue and my hands and my mind.  I love that very first moment when you enter me and I feel you slllllllllide home as I open to you. Already I am so very wet.  I love it when you tell me you can feel how wet I am.  I love it when you say I’m so warm.  I love you hitting bottom and pushing just  a  little  bit  more.  Ohhhh. 

I grind against you, loving the little ache and wanting more more more.  It’s passion and connection, moving with you, gaining momentum and power.  I am in your eyes and you are in mine.  We are there in that moment, not thinking.  We are breathing and want.  We are writhing, shivering, taking the sharpest little intakes of breath and breathing deeply too, slowly, so slowly.  You lips, your face, your tongue, your fingers, your cock, your hands.. oh god.  I want everything about you.  I revel in everything you do.  I love the way you touch me.  I love the way you fuck me.  I never never want to stop.  I want to move like this for hours, till we fall on the bed in a pool of sweat and satiety.  I want to not know if that is my sweat or yours.  I want my heart as full of you as my pussy.  I want to bathe you in my sex and I want to leave you smelling of me.  I want you to call forth the flood and I want to flow over you.  I want to feel you too.  I want you to come inside me and not leave.  I want to dance my fingers on your skin as I feel you shrink inside me.  I want to feel your cum leaking out of where we are joined.  I want to hold you tight against me as we return to earth and things other than us come into focus. 
I want you.  I want you as I’ve always wanted you.  More.  I want everything about you and I want you to want me too.  Please tell me that hasn’t changed.  Please touch me.  Come closer.  I need to see in your eyes that I’m still me to you.  I need to see that you want me.  I need you to tell me and I need you to show me.  I want you.  I have to tell you that I want you and that hunger is back.. and it’s growing.

Moving In

I’ve been off the grid a bit because I’ve been moving.  This past Saturday, I settled in.  Tired, relieved, sore, happy, worried, relaxing sigh… I’m in.

My one roommate, the one that kicked me out, has been asking me how the new apartment is, and honestly part of me didn’t want to tell her.  It’s wonderful.  I’m so happy to be there.  So many things about it are just awesome.  It’s such a relief to have my own space.  It’s so comforting to have a place where I could have my friends over.  After we’d moved everything, Traveler and Quinky, Cleveland and Chicago and Chicago Boy and I toasted with pizza and beer.  Quinky made a lovely toast to the new place, and to this being the first of many good times in it with family and friends.  I held my breath not to cry.  We sat on the floor and ate pizza and it was glorious.  I am blessed beyond belief.  The family I’ve found, and these beautiful generous loving people are more than I could ever hope for.

Quinky worked something like 50+hours and still came and hauled things all day.  I know she was tired and sore, and I never expected her to pitch in like that.  Traveler had been out of town all week and had woken up at 330 am to take Peaches to the airport and then crawled in my bed for snuggles and a little more sleep that morning.  I was nervous, and he soothed me with his loving touch.  Cleveland was there, bright eyed and his usual happy self, acting like moving me was fun, even as he sweated and carried all the heaviest things, he never complained.  Chicago and Chicago Boy showed up, worked their asses off, and made everything just a little bit more fun.  It was actually about as pleasant as a move can be.

Everyone loves the new place.  It’s simple but really nicely apportioned and maintained and in a great location.  It’s a good size toot.  It’s definitely better than anything else I could get at the price range, and the drawbacks are few and easy to handle. 

Waiting for the Other Shoe

I had this good talk yesterday with an old friend.  Talking to her, I remembered again how things were, even 6 months ago, but also how some things had been for a long long time.  It’s funny the things you get used to and the things you’ll overlook or gloss over.  She was talking about how she’d been in a situation with a lover and she’d loved the good so much that she kept glossing over the bad, trying to forgive it, or see it as her being too critical or how she needed to be more understanding or more patient.  “He’s just going through so much”, “he’s tired”, “this is hard for him”.  It’s how both of us had been in a relationship that wasn’t right with somebody who had a ton of wonderful qualities, and a few really bad ones that made being with him toxic.

Things came to a head with Hubby, and he asked for a divorce, probably days or weeks before I could ask for one, about 6 months ago.  So I’m just slightly further on this particular path maybe than she is.  She’s still where I was very shortly ago.. wondering if her life is really going to be okay.  And I found it hard to explain, but I really think it finally will be. 

Letting go, even of something that isn’t right, is so fucking hard sometimes.  Sometimes we get so used to bad things that they’re comfortable.  I spent my 20’s undoing a lot of my tendency for that, but I have to admit there was obviously still a little bit of that there in me to have taken so long to get out of things with my husband and then so long to get over them (still working on that) and so long to see that I was better off without him.  This last bit is new.