Muchness and Light

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind.

I am not perfect. 

I am smart and able and resourceful and determined.  I am exceedingly analytical, especially when it comes to relationships and my own role in them.  I spend an inordinate amount of time in my own head, breaking down the minutiae of every conversation, every encounter.  What did he mean by that?  Was there really a disjoint between his words and his expression?  What did I do to encourage or discourage him?  Why the hell am I feeling this?

Some days it's incredibly loud inside my head.  I will replay every detail over and over.  (Add obsessive and dogged to that list of qualities.)  Hiding behind every memory there is always a ghost, taunting me with the rattle of its chains and reminding me of every time I have been less than perfect. 

Truthfully (and with a bit of well-earned arrogance), I do most things I attempt very well.  When I set my sights on a specific path, I will follow it to the point of exhaustion, just to see it through.  It's the encounters along the way, the people I stumble across and sometimes joyously or painfully into, who help to shape that journey.  Because I remember the details of almost everything in my life, it's very unlikely that I will ever forget those people. 

I don't want to be forgotten. 

I wrote about this back in the summer, in the midst of the divorce and the midst of Bounder:

Sometimes it feels like competition, but you don't always know the specifics of what you're fighting, or sometimes even that you are.  This is why I try so damn hard to be bigger, better, faster, more.  If I can create something new, something unique, it is unforgettable in its own right.  If I am at the core of those memories, I only have to compete against my own ghosts.  When it comes down to it, there's only me to fuck with my own head, and I relish that hard-fought battle more than any other. 

I did have a conversation recently with Bounder about this.  I talked with him about a specific drama that had injected itself into my world—yet another fragile cat who went totally off the deep end—and how I didn't know how not to attract these fucked up men.  He argued that it's the reciprocity of attraction, that in the same way I always seem to be hunting them, they can smell me on the wind. 

"Because you are the alpha female, the lioness of lionesses.  It's built in somehow, parallel to how you're a badass mom.  Same psycho theory...."

If I care about these men, the souls they are beyond any sort of romantic relationship we have, is it wrong for me to be active in that when they are struggling?  It's right to do what you can to help the people who matter to you—that's how interpersonal relationships work.  And there are a very few whose souls have touched mine so deeply that they could get my attention and help no matter what.  Forever and always and no matter what.  I may have every reason to tell them to fuck off, but I care deeply and cannot bear the thought of not honoring that.

"You do honor it, Steph, just by trying.  You cannot do it yourself.  It will always take two."

"I don't know that I even believe that anymore, that there's another one who can be what everyone else so plainly believes I need.  So what's my option?  Be miserable alone?  If I'm gonna be miserable, I'd rather have it peppered with moments of incredible connection."

Bounder says the key is to not ever be miserable alone, to enjoy and thrive in those moments until the connections are there, intentional or not. 

"Trust," he said. 

"But that means I have to trust myself," I replied. 

While I am sometimes too free and quick with my emotions, there are a very few people in the world who I truly love.  I am fortunate that I have a list at all, but it can be very hard for me to let anyone in.  The list of people I trust is far, far shorter.  I have every historical reason for that, certainly, but the ones who have gained my confidence have been the ones who very strongly encouraged me to see something about myself that I couldn't or wouldn't face, good or bad.  That's part of why they matter to me and always will. 

If I can find people who trust me enough to let me care for them, then I hope for reciprocity.  I hope to see my own worth through their eyes, because I can only see my value, really, when it's shown to me. 

This is why I asked Bounder and DH and sometimes Absolem and others why I wasn't worth their fight.  Every time I think I am, that I have done enough and earned it from them or for them, I get the response that somehow I just wasn't enough—usually while being told I was just too much. 

"Who are you not good enough for?" Bounder asked.  "Certainly not the drunken cats or your ex or any of them and definitely not Daddy.  So who's left?  Who do you pale in comparison to?  You."

"I pale in comparison to those who've come before me, to those ghosts who can garner more attention that I can."

"Not true.  You believe it, clearly, but it's not true."

"Really?  If I never say the words I'm not her again, it will be too soon.  And, yeah, sometimes I'm not good enough for the drunken cats.  I'm not perfect, or even just right.  I get upset when I'm hurt, and I let them down.  I let you down.  I failed you, and so I failed me.  If I'd been a little quieter, a little calmer, more compartmentalized and covert with my heart.., if I'd backed down , been more pliant, less selfish, less open about my needs..., if I'd just seen you coming and been able to plan, then maybe—just maybe—you would've been willing to keep the cracks in the walls that let me and the light in, maybe I would've been good enough for you to accept that love and let yourself love me back."

But I didn't.  I trusted who I was, that persona of Stephanie that I toss at men and the world like a grenade, challenging them to disarm it or die.  I was defiant in all that I presented and felt and lived, and I lost another man that I loved.

Then I found myself alone and crying in the dark on my deck, sobbing because I am not perfect.

When you are a true perfectionist, everything takes on a gravity that most people can't understand.  They can't empathize with how consuming it is to constantly maintain the level of energy required to be not only your best but better than anything or anyone else, how the slightest of mistakes and imperfections can rock you to the core in such a way that it feels like the goddamn universe is collapsing on your head.  When it comes to love, your heart is all too likely to be crushed, sucked into the black hole of itself where not even your own light can escape. 

But to expect perfection in the realm of interpersonal relationships is a fool's quest.  It is absolutely noble to strive for the best, for better than best, but it's dependent not only on my actions but on the reactions of another flawed human.  That give and take is incomparably beautiful.  For me, it can feel deadly. 

One mistake, one minor misstep, and the person I love responds in kind.  The first, tiny ripple of incident creates waves and wake of hurt and ache, and somehow I am sucked down by the undertow, berating myself for having chosen A over B, for not having known ahead of time what would come as a result.  For being human.

No one is harder on me than I am, and I am a formidable opponent.  I am a force of nature.  Nothing wreaks havoc on Glamazon Island quite like Hurricane Sass.  Somehow I am constantly surprised when I ignore the storm warnings, ignore the windblown red flags, and dive into the choppy, churning waters.  It doesn't matter how I move, how perfectly I execute each stroke of arm and leg or each turn of the head as I gasp for breath; a storm like that will eventually exhaust me.

I'll still be berating myself for not being a better swimmer, for not being able to see through the riptide and stay parallel to the shore.  Even as I'm drowning.

 

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The chains that you break to be free, well they tear up the ground when you drag them around.

I'll love you in your dreams, but please don't try to hold me in your arms.

Someone another that's as sweet as your mother.

During one of the last face-to-face conversations I had with Bounder, he made the comment that women's expectations of men are—and should be—set by their fathers.  He gave me that knowing look, urging me to think about how that has played out in my relationships and how it continues to influence my expectations of men. 

I wrote a lot about my relationship with my mom in Persona Non Grata.  I did touch on my dad to some degree.  This is a topic that even my therapist and I have veered around for the most part, having spent so much time and energy on stabilizing and rectifying other issues.  While it's definitely something for me to explore—and I'm sure I will—I'm not quite ready to go there yet, at least not publicly. 

What Bounder's statement did set me to thinking about, though, was the reverse, specifically the role of the mother in setting up male expectations of women and how that will play out for my children.  Based on who I am, on the behavior they've seen modeled in me, what kind of women will my sons be drawn to?

Max is almost 13, and Tricky just turned 9.  They aren't even that interested in girls yet.  (Thankfully.)  Max is still at the stage where he denies any and all attraction to the opposite sex, while confidently asserting his inherent heterosexuality.  Tricky is past the point of playing with girls at recess.  Both have female friends.

They've both been long drawn to the tall, leggy girls.  Usually blondes.  Duh.

As they get older, I'll be unsurprised to see them dating busty, blond Amazons.  I'll be perfectly okay if one of them brings home a girl with purple hair or tattoo.  Facial piercings are generally okay, too.

I fully expect their female companions to be loud and a little bossy, neurotic and temperamental.  Maybe even quirky.  Knowing how the boys interact with me now, they'll be attracted to smart, funny, thoughtful women who can carry on a conversation and get a complicated, inside joke. 

Their loves may be prone to crying for no apparent reason.  They may yell when they get mad, then turn quiet and withdrawn when they're truly angry.  They may be sensitive and sentimental. 

What I hope most, though, is that the women they choose are strong and willing to share their voices, that they're able to speak up and stand up for themselves in the face of adversity—even if and when it is coming from one of my stubborn sons. 

I hope my sons have learned to look for women who can appreciate them for the myriad beauty they possess, who can openly love them and share their hearts as easily as they may share their bodies, when the time comes.  I hope for women who can apologize and try not to make the same mistakes again and again, who can tell my sons that they're being pig-headed asses just as easily as they can tell them they're sweet and that they love them anyway.

And if I don't like a girl my son likes?  Make no mistake: I will tell them.  I will also expect my children to make their own choices, even if it's not what I would choose for them at all.  That's what I have done, and that's how I have tried my best to raise them.

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Teach your children what you believe in.

I'll love you in your dreams, but please don't try to hold me in your arms.

It's something of an understatement to say that I am an open book.

Everything about me, all of the stories that led me to be who I am now, have been laid bare in the pages of Persona Non Grata and on these blog posts at Muchness and Light.  There may be a few other outlets—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—that show snippets of my personality, but generally everything about my past is on public display.

When I meet people for the first time, especially men, I tend to throw all of that out there at once. 

"Hi, I'm Stephanie.  I'm a lot to handle.  You will one day say it's too much and that I overwhelm you.  They all do, and I have no reason to think you're any different.  Here I am—take it or leave it!" 

It's kind of like lobbing a grenade of muchness at them and daring them to take me on. 

For all of my talk of loathing the unavailable men whom I perpetually attract, is it really I who is unavailable?

I hate it when men I care about tell me I'm too much.  It strikes a nerve in me, both because it's true and because I warned them.  Just once, I'd like not to feel that pang of I told you so that inevitably comes.

But just because I warn someone of what to expect, and how to deal with me when it happens, does that make it okay?  Does my glittery Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here sign justify my reaction when they give up hope?

If I taunt men into letting me down, I am culpable, both in giving them reason to turn away and in delighting in being able to find those reasons when it happens.  I get a little jolt from pushing their buttons, and I probably try to do it from the onset of salutation.  It's like an experiment sometimes, just to see how much it will take before their façade of availability cracks and they scurry to close the gaps before I can get my hooks into them and force them to open deeper and wider than they'd ever imagined.

And that is exactly what I do.

I test men, looking to see who will fail me and how and why.  Sometimes I know within minutes that they aren't up to the challenge, and I dust their crumbling egos from my fingertips as I walk away.  Sometimes it takes longer, in which case I become more subtle, more unintentionally manipulative in my ministrations.  They rarely see or feel it coming, though, as I do seem to have the inexplicable power to sweet talk them into smiling submission.  (Dimples and destruction.)

I told Hot Pocket that it's one of Sassafras's superpowers, the ability to hide behind a plume of pretty, swirling smoke until they're so entranced they can't help but stare dumbfounded at the glittery chaos that bats her eyes and nods her blond ponytail as she wishes what she wants for their world. 

(This is one of the many reasons that my TARDIS would be the I Dream of Jeannie bottle.)

My girls, the Castration Committee, are the ones who can accept my muchness for exactly what it is, no matter what.  They will sometimes call me out for being too much, but they never judge me for it and they never, ever turn away from it or from me.  I constantly experience the depths of love from the people who adore me no matter what.

Is it too much to want that same connection in erotic love?

It's unimaginable to me that it won't exist for me, that given everything I have lived and done and seen and experienced, that there isn't a lover who can adore me and accept me and embrace my batshit while they kiss me breathless.  I have paid so much, done so much work, to get to the place that I have the ability to love as deeply and intensely as I do, and to do it willingly and from a place of utter awareness and selflessness.  Can it really be true that there is no one worth that price?  Is there no reward for having worked this hard? 

Even asking those questions feels arrogant and makes me think I have so much more work to do.

But I don't want my book to end now.  I don't want my stories to end at 40.  I want someone, maybe more than one if that's how my journey goes, who will make new stories with me—bigger, better, faster, more!  I want someone who reminds me to breathe when I'm so excited that I stammer over my own head, but who also smiles patiently and happily when I tell them for the hundredth time that day just how and why I love them.  And I want that to be the same someone who can sit in the quiet with me and let me cry out whatever my heart can't find the words to express.  The same someone who can make time stand still and the seas to turn to dust with just one kiss. 

It comes back to the idea of expectations, what's reasonable and what's not.  Growler and Absolem would advise me to be willing to lower those expectations.  Maurice reminded me when I needed it most that doing that will only lead to tears.  Bounder reminded me that my expectations can be met in the most painful and unexpected of ways.  But Hot Pocket says it exists for me, that there's someone out there who can and will love me like that. 

I hope she's right.  It feels like she is, like she just has to be, but maybe that's my tragically romantic heart being unreasonably optimistic. 

And maybe, just maybe, someone else will get the chance to tell me, "I told you so."

It's just prediction, then fate collides. Not sure if I'm surprised.

After a conversation with Hot Pocket and my therapist, I finally made the decision last night to go to the Hunter Hayes show at the Fox, just to see if Bounder would show.

He didn't.

It was okay.  I'd told HP that I expected he wouldn't.  But I knew if I didn't go and give it the opportunity that I would never know what happened.  I would constantly be rolling around in the What-ifs.

It's over.  It's done.  It makes me a little sad that I'm unsurprised by his refusal to show--or even his cowardice at not letting me know so I could at least sell the tickets.  But I'm honestly okay.

I don't know what's coming next--or who--but I'm ready.  I'm ready to just get on with my life without this constant dark cloud chasing me. 

So tonight I'm going out with a new friend.  It's a second date.  And I'm okay with that, too.

Fate has something else in store for me.  I probably won't see it coming, and I'll probably flail about when I feel her hot breath on my neck.  (She always comes in from behind.  She's like that, you know.)  But that's okay, too.  It'll happen when it happens, and I'll be better able to handle it with one less albatross haunting me.

 

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What a beautiful mess.

What a beautiful mess.

I've been caught in a loop in my head for the last few days.  There's nothing new about that, honestly, but my heart has been especially unrelenting.

There's a lot going on right now.  Some days there are so many balls in the air that even a well-practiced juggler would have trouble keeping track of them all.  And if the actual logistics of my life weren't difficult enough, there is still my shredded heart to contend with.

Tomorrow is October 17^th.  That doesn't mean much, except that I have tickets for a concert.  Hunter Hayes at the Fox Theatre. 

Oh hell.

I have historically loathed country music, but something with that shifted in the summer, directly because of my relationship with Bounder.  I fought the twang as hard and long as I could, but when the man sang (quite off-key, mind you) country songs and danced to said songs with me on my deck in the middle of the night, it was hard not to get caught up in the emotional sap.  A couple of songs in particular became stupidly poignant—Jake Owens' "Anywhere With You" and Hunter Hayes' "I Want Crazy"—and they always seemed to start playing at just the right moment.

When tickets went on sale for Hunter Hayes at the Fox, I bought the tickets and immediately texted Bounder:

October 17^th.  I have plans.

You have an invitation to join me.

You are a brat.

Apparently he was about to buy the tickets himself when the text came through.  They were intended to be for our collective birthdays, which were just days apart at the end of the summer. 

"I'll give you your ticket," I told him.  "Just in case."

"Just in case we break up again," he replied, laughing in the dark on the deck that weekend, in the middle of the summer solstice.  "We'll meet up—"

"—at the show—"

"—October seventeenth."

Oh hell.

So here we are, and I have no idea what to do.  From the night we met, and then at every turn, there was a strange sense of Fate shoving us together.  Typhoon Bounder collided with Hurricane Sassafras in weirdly tragic, romantic perfection.  And every time we think it's over, something else happens that forces us into each other's orbit.  (Fate, you really are a raging bitch.)

We seem constantly drawn back to this place of choice to make, of some junkture in our path.  Is this the place of Fate (divine intervention) or fate (because of choices we've made)?

There are four primary scenarios:

1. I go to the Fox, and he doesn't show.  (In which case I will leave, because I can't see it with anyone but him.)
2. He goes to the Fox, and I don't show up.  (Like doing your homework the night before a possible snow day.)
3. Neither of us shows up, and we never know if the other did.
4. We both show up, which creates a whole new branch of this flow chart of possibilities.

Queen Frostine feels strongly that I should skip it completely.  Her position is that I have come so far (so she says) in getting over this man, that to open myself up to even a moment of heartache again has the potential to set me back.  She says I'm better, that I've shown progress in moving on, but it's hard for me to see it.  A step or two forward, maybe, but mostly I feel like I've stumbled ahead and am still trying to get up from this path with a skinned knee. 

No matter what I do, it will hurt.  My heart will ache, and I will still miss him.  I don't know that I ever won't.  I can remember feeling that way about other men, and I did eventually find a way to move on, given enough time.  But if the time to heal (as best as possible) is proportionate to the depth of emotion felt for another, it will take a damn long time to get over this one completely. 

I loved Bounder.  Deeply.  Maybe more than I've ever loved anyone besides my children.  I still love him and likely always will.  He is never not there, whether in my heart or my thoughts or my dreams.  Most days are okay, but some are hard as hell, when there's a reminder at every damn turn and I can feel him so intensely.  And the nights can be brutal.

No matter how I feel, there are substantial issues with us.  The perfect storm is at times decimating in its cleansing of our worlds.  As beautiful as the lightning is, it sometimes strikes too close and sets the underbrush afire.  Maybe it's just destructive, and maybe it was needed to clear away the dead wood and allow for new growth.  Either way, neither of us will ever be the same again. 

The thought of standing in that darkened theater, listening to those love songs that seemed to mimic our hearts, is terrifyingly beautiful, whether it's with or without him.  Something ingrained in me can't help but love the tragic romance of it all.  But love is not a love song.  My heart will still be racing and aching when the three-minute swell is over.  I just don't know if it'll be dancing with him in the dark. 

With one breath, with one flow, you will know.

I have ludicrous amounts of coincidence in my life. 

It's far beyond thinking of someone and then they call.  I have quit being surprised when I dream of someone and hear from them the next day, or even when I dream very detailed, seemingly random events that later come true. 

It's really more a matter of synchronicity.  In the 1920s, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed the term to explain "the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, whereas they are unlikely to be causally related."  It's meaningful coincidence, though the events do not have to happen simultaneously and there doesn't have to be explanation of their meaning in terms of cause and effect. 

For Jung, synchronicity gave a basis to his concepts of "archetype" and "the collective unconscious".

For me, it means a whole bunch of batshit. 

It happens so often that it's become a fucking joke within the Castration Committee.  But what also regularly happens is that these patterns of synchronistic events precede the most poignant and profound moments in my life.  They are like omens for what's coming, both good and bad.

When my crying jag started last week, it took about two days to run its course.  In addition to all of the stress I've been under, Friday brought a series of events that were both unexpected and unsurprising.  Unrelated to each other, but these two currents in my life that should be skew—meaning they are not parallel and do not intersect—began to curve toward each other and resulted in a momentary traversion. 

That continuum of crisscross marked yet another landmark event in my life, specifically with Bounder—the person with whom I am most synchronous.

Days before it happened, I told Hot Pocket and Growler that something was brewing.  ("Something penis this way comes," I said.)  I could feel it, the shift in energy around me.  I'm very sensitive to such things; Absolem once told me I was like some kind of freaky, voodoo static magnet.  I just feel other people's energies.  With the people I'm closest to, I can do it from a distance.  I just know when something is wrong or happening.

The synchronicity often comes in waves, and inundations of it often herald the approaching crazy.

Right now, and especially tonight, I am swimming in portent. 

I don't know what this will be.  I almost never do.  I just know that it is coming.  It doesn't feel bad, though it does feel colossal.  Based on what happened in the past week and what I know is supposed to happen over the next month, I could take a guess as to what (and whom) in involves, but the details won't be revealed until the actual time.

Part of it is that I am open to the idea.  I am willing to see signs and meaning in the strangest of things.  I do actively look for it in my life, though I try very hard not to see more into something than is actually there.  Sometimes when I call something out and name it for being important, the person on the receiving end of the prognostication will tell me I'm full of shit.  All too often, I get to tell them I told you so.

Four hundred years ago, I would've been burned at the stake. 

I pay attention to these things, because my life has consistently shown me that there's reason for me to do so.  I get these vibes, for lack of a better term, and they almost always happen just before my path shifts dramatically. 

In the past, when it's been this strong, Fate has stepped in and forced me to come face-to-face with my next step, the impact so strong that it leaves me figuratively bruised and shaken.  She's a bitch, for sure, but I know better than to fuck with her.  There's a reason for it, every time, although I don't always see it until it's too late to even beg her to let me turn back. 

Whatever it is this time... okay.  I can rail against it and be a petulant, ungrateful little brat about it, or I can just accept that something crucial is about to happen and conserve my energy for when it actually plays out.  Someone important is going to need those energy stores, and I have the feeling that it's someone very, very important to me. 

It feels like a test, of everything that has come before, of everything I have learned over the last three years.  And I hope I'm up to the challenge.  I hope I have the skills to fight this battle—and maybe even the Vorpal sword one of us will need to slay that Jabberwocky. 

 

NOTE:

Just as I was finishing this piece, getting ready to post it, my phone popped up with a push notification from my Facebook fan page.  Earlier in the evening, I posted asking for suggestions for what to write about for a new blog post.  This is what I see when my phone got my attention:

THAT is how my life works. 

 

Getting bigger and brighter, wider and lighter.

The girls and I have agreed for ages that Growler's husband, BC, is an über-Alpha male.  In any given situation or room of people, he will quietly take control and direct almost everything that happens.  I'm sure he has moments when he can be an utter ass about it, but I've never really seen that aspect of him.  Granted, I don't live with the man.  However, I have spent a lot of time with him and in their home. 

"Alpha Male Traits" on AskMen.com outlines some basics, from the book Men 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life by Adam Bornstein and John Romaniello:

"You see, to be an Alpha male in the traditional sense simply means the most dominant within a group, or the strongest in a group or the most confident in a group. Not a person who is necessarily strong or confident in the absolute sense; just someone who, in a given group of people, most outwardly projects strength or confidence. In other words, the problem with the definition of Alpha isn’t really the assumed aggression or implied cockiness; it’s the fact that the entire foundational principle for self-value is  comparative analysis."

They outline seven characteristics of the new Alpha:

1)      helpful but not condescending

2)      confident but not cocky

3)      vain but not conceited

4)      prideful but not arrogant

5)      humble but not self-loathing

6)      tolerant but not weak

7)      dedicated but not obsessed

After Bounder and I broke up, Growler finally confided that BC never quite thought Bounder was the right match for me.  I trust BC's instincts for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he's a Fragile Cat.  Like Bounder.  And like me. 

"I don't date by committee," I said to him, meaning the girls (a.k.a. The Castration Committee), "but I'm not dating anyone from now on until they get your stamp of approval."

He laughed and agreed.

And then it hit me: BC is the Lion King.  We are part of his pride.

Let me be very, very clear that there is absolutely nothing untoward or lascivious in my relationship with BC.  He and Growler and I all know this.  Where she is part of my girlie heart, he is an extension of that and has become a very good friend to me over the last few months.  I can only hope I am responsibly reciprocal in that friendship.

Growler laughed when I called him Mufasa, but we talked at length about this concept of his protecting the women (and even some of the men) in his life and how they all care for him in return. 

I need that in my ideal mate, I thought.  Those are the traits I'm seeking.

But then it hit me again: I have those traits. 

Even though I wasn't always cultivating or fully utilizing them, they're part of my make-up. 

And then I wrote on a piece of paper, which I showed to Growler:

I am an Alpha Female looking for an Alpha Male.

"Of course you're looking for an alpha male," she laughed.  "Did you not know this?"

I shook my head, eyes wide.  "I knew that.  I didn't know—"

"You didn't know you're an Alpha female??  Honey, do you hear this?"

BC and Growler laughed and laughed, watching me enveloped by this epiphany.  I called Hot Pocket that afternoon and told her; she laughed uproariously.

"Tank [her husband] and I have talked about that a hundred times.  Did you really not know?"

Nope.

It all suddenly made sense, the ways in which I am strangely not like other girls. 

1)      incredibly loyal but sometimes self-sacrificing

2)      well-aware of my abilities but sometimes disabled by my weaknesses

3)      knowing I had damn good hair but absolutely no concept that I was pretty

4)      proud of my accomplishments though I rarely see that they amount to anything

5)      jokingly self-deprecating, sometimes to the point of dire self-criticism

6)      intensely interested in people and how they work but incredibly impatient

7)      dogged and obsessive but only about the things that are important to me

I am loud and boisterous and full-on energy, most of the time.  I am relentless but with dimples instead of a grimace.  I am a glittery ball of blond batshit who can be so insecure that she ends up fetal and crying on her own floor because no one would talk to her when she went out.  I complain that men don't talk to me in public but know damn well that I can be aloof.  They tell me I'm intimidating, but I never really understood why. 

Now I get it. 

In that competition of love and sex, it's all about who's better than whom.  Who's stronger, prettier, sexier, smarter, blahblahblah.  Women compete against each other and themselves, just as men do.  The genders also compete against each other for placement in the immediate pack.  It's not always this way, certainly, but watch what happens in a crowded bar on any given weekend night. 

I am an Alpha.

I tend to attract strong personalities.  Even Bounder once said that any man who was going to even try to approach me had better bring the big stones.  When I am approached, I tend to shoot men down pretty quickly.  It doesn't take me long to size them up and know which ones could never be enough for me and my exacting standards. 

All of my talk this year of what I wanted in a relationship points to this über-Alpha male.  All of my work for the last three years has brought me the realization that I am looking for the biggest of the Cats.  My insecurities have source in my not seeing the plain truth of myself, yet again. 

All of the monument-worthy men in my past have been Fragile Cats, certainly.  They were possibly higher ranked than I was at some point.  The moment when that shifted is the tension point that ultimately led to the demise of those relationships.  When there was no other option but subjugating my own power to please them, the relationships fell the fuck apart. 

And the ones who said they didn't deserve me, that I was too good for them, they were right.  I lowered myself to their standards in order to compete with them, hence the turmoil.  (It really was you and not me.)

Being who I am, I could see their potential.  Even if they weren't living up to what I saw, I would remind them that they could be better and more special and that I would support that in any way I could, sometimes to my own detriment.  What I realize now is that I don't just need huge potential in a partner; I need a partner who is achieving his potential.

This also means that I have to work toward my own potential.  It may not be what anyone else sees in me, but I have to be very honest with myself about both what I want to do and what I really can do.  The last year of life on my own has shown me an enormous amount of untapped possibility, and now it's time to work that. 

But I won't do it to make anyone else happy or comfortable.  I won't spend my time fighting with someone else about why and how it could be better.  I will be who I am, who I can be in my own, huge heart, and that will be exactly right for me.  If it also happens to be right for them, so be it. 

Either way, it's not my problem.

 

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I don't want good, and I don't want good enough. I want "can't sleep, can't breathe without your love."

Are you An Alpha Female...

A case for the "Alpha Female"

I don't want good, and I don't want good enough. I want "can't sleep, can't breathe without your love."

A few months ago, while discussing my ongoing list of things I'd want in a man and/or a relationship, Growler said, "You might have to settle.  You may have to be willing to accept 85% of what you want, if everything else is worth it."

I talked to Absolem about it a couple of weeks later.  "Oh, she's right," he said, complete seriousness on his face.  "You'll probably have to take less than what you want, if you want to be in a relationship.  Though I don't get why you'd want one, when you can have so many."

I reactivated my online dating account this week.  After I reviewed a few dozen potential new matches, the site told me I was too picky and should loosen up as far as my standards were concerned.

Even Queen Frostine urged me to go into my next relationship without such high expectations.  Her point, she stresses, is that I should be able to learn to be happy within the confines of who I'm with, for who they are, rather than constantly comparing them to the past or to my ideal.

"I love living in Chicago," said my well-traveled friend, "but I also really love San Francisco and London.  I could totally live in either of those cities just as easily as I live here."

"Sure, but you'd always miss some things about Chicago," I pointed out. 

And then there's Bounder.  He says he knows he can never be 100% of what I want or need, 100% of the time.  He wants to, has the desire, but not the capacity.

Well who the fuck can?

It's romantic to imagine a man could love me so much that he strived every day to be everything for me, especially one who could see me and reach me and touch me inside and out the way Bounder (and even sometimes Absolem) could.  I'd like to think that DH tried, but right now I'm still too caught up in the aftermath to really see it clearly. 

But romantic or not, it's fucking ludicrous.

No man will ever be able to be 100% of anything for me and certainly not all the time.  That's an unreasonable expectation to place on another individual.  We are beautifully flawed humans, and to demand perfection from someone is asking to be disappointed or worse. 

All I ever expected from the men I loved was that they be there how and when they could, and that they do it fully and openly and honestly.  By the time I really loved them, I knew who and what they were.  I knew their histories and their fears and their double-edged swords.  I knew the potential of their hearts, and I just wanted them to work toward that, both for me and for themselves. 

I never thought that was an unreasonable expectation.  Apparently I was wrong. 

Don't tell me I'm wonderful and deserve more.  Don't tell me you wish you were able to do these things, to be what I deserve, because I am special enough to be worth that.  If I have that value to you, then honor that.  If you love me and I am so deserving, then make the attempt to live up to the potential I see in you, that you say you see in yourself.  When you err—hell, even when you fail—if there's still potential and value, then keep working. 

My heart would not have seen yours if it weren't so very special, nor would it have loved you if you weren't worth my own hard work and effort. 

So it might be nice to imagine that prince among men, who would care for me and fill in the gaps I can never quite seem to fill.  The one who could kiss me like no other and love me no matter how hard the day was.  Who could be there at night when I both need and want him.  Who understands my sense of humor and appreciates my intensity, who loves me not in spite of my batshit but because of it.  The one who could love me for me and not for what I can do for him. 

That is the ideal I have to relinquish.  That's where I have to settle. 

I can find a playmate, a great lover, an outstanding kisser, someone who's sober, and maybe even an Irish guy who is bigger than I am.  But all of that in a man who can really love me for me?  That'll never happen.

I've met a lot of guys this year who were great, cute, and very nice.  But the kiss just wasn't there, for a variety of reasons.  Maybe they were too soft or too messy or too whatever. 

"Can you live with it?" Basket Case asked when I lamented recently about one in particular.

No.

There is so much in a kiss, so much truth of a person in how they move their mouth against yours.  Floppy, wet, forceful?  Too slow or too fast?  Chronic bad breath?  Do they touch your face or bend you into their kiss, rather than meeting you halfway?  Do they ever let you take the lead?  Eyes open or tightly closed?

In my life, the ones who've done it right, right for me, are the ones who've been least able to meet my expectations, even when I've lowered them in compromise.  If they can make me breathless with their kiss, they will eventually knock the breath out of me completely. 

It's not about kissing frogs to find my prince.  He doesn't exist.  And even if he did, I'd be too busy with the frog in the crown, just because his kiss could fool me. 

Someday when my crying is done, I'm gonna wear a smile and walk in the sun.

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. 

Day after day after day, I called out Fate.

Once again, I have let my arrogant, trusting heart bite me in the ass.

In the course of a few days, I dealt with my wedding anniversary—19th, but the first since DH and I separated—as well as the demise of my relationship with Bounder. Again.

I have been over it with him, with the girls, and in my own noisy head about a hundred times. Here was a man who said, “I am done being afraid. I love you. I am committed to you and to this. I want to be with you and not just so I don’t have to be without you. You are wonderful, though you deserve more than I can offer in my damaged, fragile state, but I am willing to try fully to meet you in this, with the goal of moving forward in our life wherever that may lead.”

But when it got real, when I got real and challenged his excuses for being suddenly and irrationally unsupportive and distant, I was told it was my fault—that I was just too much.

At every turn, I was blatantly honest with him. I told him from the very beginning that he would always know where he stood with me, because I would be sure to tell him. I was just as quick to remind him that I loved him and supported him and cared about him as I was to tell him I was upset or unhappy about something. Because of his own damage and his past, it was sometimes hard for him to understand how someone could actively love him, how they could do it not in spite of his plethora of issues but openly and accepting of those as what made him into this enigmatic mix of strength and vulnerability, of hurt and hope, of love and loathing.

Bounder and I met at an incredibly emotional time in our respective lives. We were each in process of divorce, which included the unmitigated difficulty of examining what in each of us had led to the unexpected death of dreams and plans and intentions. But we understood each other like no one else and were instantly, constantly connected. We could often seem to read each other’s thoughts.

When he came to me in June, he asked me if I really wanted this, meaning him and his baggage and the hardships that might come from that. I told him yes, that I loved him and that I was willing to take the risk of being hurt again because the potential for good far outweighed the potential for the bad. I asked him, again, if he was ready to really be in this with me and accept my own flaws and baggage and logistics. He was adamant that he was. But

there was always the issue of his sobriety. I wrote after our initial breakup in the spring that I was pretty sure he was an alcoholic. He denied it then and later. Truthfully, alcoholism can be tricky to determine. There is a difference between having a high tolerance, being a problem drinker, and being an alcoholic. Even when some people drink heavily or regularly, that doesn’t mean they’re alcoholic. It’s the impetus behind the drinking that determines whether it’s a problem or an addiction. There are alcoholics who’ve been dry for long periods of time but who make the same choices, perpetuating the addictive behavior, even without the use of substance. I’ve often heard it referred to as being a “dry drunk”.

Like so many others, he functions well and lives an active, productive life.

“You have to be sober for me,” I said.

“What does that mean to you?”

“You can’t let alcohol or any substance be the thing that allows you to create and maintain emotional distance between us. It can’t be the tool to drive me away.”

But when I needed him, and needed him most, he did just that; he let a drink become the excuse behind why he couldn’t be there for me. He let that be the place to escape his own tormented head and to drive the cycle of self-flagellation.

I know his history intimately and fully understand like almost no one else how and why he came to this place in his life. So much of our respective pasts is mirrored plainly in the other’s. We have always been openly cognizant of the pitfalls and respectful of the fact that we each had to tread very carefully and consciously in that minefield. But he assured me, time and again, that he was willing and able and ready to do that. He told me he loved me, that he supported me, and that he appreciated me.

In the end, the breakup happened over an email while I was 200 miles from home.

I didn’t go into this blindly or easily. I didn’t forget what had happened before. I did choose, consciously, to put those things aside and do everything I could to healthily support him and our relationship. I refused to constantly be waiting for him to fuck up, because that is no way to love or to live. Even when I was afraid during the last few days that this might be happening, I told him, asked him again to face me and talk to me, to tell me if it was more than he could handle. He reiterated again that he was in it, no matter how scared he was of disappointing me.

But his excuses won out over his intent. He let it be easier to push me away than to face himself and do the work needed to mend his own soul; he let it be easier to be overwhelmed by the fear of the difficulty than to actually make the attempt. His refusal to believe that he could ever be healthy or deserving of good things fueled his fears, and he bailed. Again. Rather, he pushed me to the point of saying I’m done.

It hurts, make no mistake. I loved him deeply and passionately and honestly in a way I’d never been with anyone else. All of the lessons of the preceding years, all of the work I’ve had to do to deal with my own past and mistakes, allowed me to go into this thing with him with my eyes open. I always knew I could get hurt. I had no specific expectation that I would be with him for the rest of my life—if it happened, so be it. I also wasn’t interested in being in a relationship with this man if I knew there was expiration date. There was no way I was willing or able to go into this without accepting the potential of something long term. Regardless, we agreed to see it through to the end.

Instead what I got was a man who wasn’t brave enough to face his own demons and who used excuses to justify running.

“I appreciate you and everything you’ve done in my life. I wouldn’t have come so far if I hadn’t met you when I did. I love you so much more than I can really express, and I’m afraid I will disappoint you.”

You disappointed me not because you decided this wasn’t right. Even if it was that I wasn’t right for you, that would have smarted but I get how that happens. It’s that you yet again chose to let your fear stop you from accepting what you want most: to be loved for who you are rather than who you should be or what you can do for the people you care about.

You did it knowingly and decidedly and didn’t try not to hurt me in that. You made excuses for refusing to move any direction in your life, and you intentionally misled me to your place of stagnation and then had the balls to both blame me and say that you’d always warned me it might happen.

It’s childish and toxic and cowardly, and you had no right to drag me down with you.

So now I’m back the place of grasping for stability. Eventually I will have to start the process of regaining ground, but right now I just want to ground to stop spinning beneath me.

Before, I wished him healing and peace and hoped that he would find his way to a healthy place, whether or not it led him to me again. Now, I just don’t care. I refuse to do it. When I did care, it brought me this. Again.

My heart hurts, undeniably. My head comprehends the how and why, really, but my heart is unlikely to ever grasp how this could happen again, given the intricacies of intimacy that occurred between us every single day. I wasn’t delusional about any of it, I am confident in that.

But maybe I shouldn’t have been, and I probably won’t be again. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to trust someone again, let alone love them. If you’re not in my inner circle now, don’t expect ever to be. I worked so hard to come to a place where I could even be willing to love another person again, and it got me this. Again.

Hot Pocket says I will meet someone one day who can love me like I deserve and want and need. She says I am a generous, light, and shining spirit who deserves someone who appreciates that.

I may be, but I feel pretty sure that person doesn’t exist. Every time I’ve come close to that, when I have someone who looks me in the eye and says, “I see you for who and how you are, and I love you for that,” they back the fuck away and let their own baggage drag me down. I feel stupid and humiliated. I don’t trust my own judgment, let alone my heart or my head or my gut. And I don’t want another person ever to touch me if it means they might have the power to hurt me.

So for me, it’s not worth it. It makes me question my own worth, undoubtedly, and whether I was right two years ago when I suggested that my lifetime value was bankrupted when I gave birth to my sons. Was my purpose in life fulfilled when I procreated? Did I really have everything I deserved at 32?

Life is complicated, and love is hard. I was willing to take on that challenge, for me and for him and for others before him. Now? No. So even if Fate herself appears before me and says, “Sass, you gotta do this. You gotta see this person and go this way. I’m going to make you,” I will tell her very clearly to fuck off.

I would rather incur the wrath of the gods than ever let my heart be open to another person again.