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

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."

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

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 25^th 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.

In my moving-into-the-new-year post from the end of 2012, I wrote this:

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. 

She's in a daze, without a care.

Today is Tierney Cavanaugh Johnson's 41^st birthday.  Tierney and I share a lot of things—a dimple, really great hair—including a birthday. 

I had a talk with her last night about what the last year has been like for her.  She went into 40 with a new body and utterly revised outlook on life.  There have been substantial ups and downs:

She separated from her husband of now 19 years, working her way toward divorce.

She met Greg Dulli.

The story of the first 40 years of her life was released into the world in a very public way.

She finally saw Concrete Blonde live. 

She blew a disc in her neck again and spent another few months battling that chronic pain.

She had crazy adventures with her girls.

She went back to Wicker Park, where so much of her story began to change, and got her first tattoo.

She finally realized that she's pretty.

She fell in love again, albeit with another alcoholic. 

She literally laid both new and old ghosts to rest.

She's happily raising two amazing young men. 

She finally realized she's worth far, far more than even she ever knew. 

I checked in with her to wish her a happy birthday.  I told her that I understood fully what an incredible year this has been, and that I have a few hopes for her upcoming year:

I hope she can finally get finished with this divorce process.

I hope Junkture finally gets their new record out and that she loves it as much as the others.

I hope she finds the inspiration to create both new art and a new story.

I hope she steers clear of injury and pain.

I hope she and her girls laugh their way uproariously through their next year.

I hope she both gets back to Chicago.

I hope she's able to get that new tattoo she's considering.

I hope she sees her own beauty, inside and out, every single day.

I hope the next great love of her life is sober and emotionally aware and available.

I hope her ghosts stay dead.

I hope she continues to be the best mom possible to her amazing young men. 

I hope she is comfortable in who she is and that she is able to tap her own potential fully.

Tierney thanked me, giggling and grinning as we sat on my deck and chatted.  For me, she said, she wishes the same things.  And then she thanked me for lending her my strength, even when I thought there was no way in Hell that we would get through this year. 

In all seriousness, thank you to everyone who touches my life every single day.  You may be with me for a moment or a lifetime, but you are part of me.  Just being here to read my words is enough to make you matter to me.  Many of the successes of this last year have been wholly internal and haven't been shared in detail on Muchness and Light, or anywhere else.  But know that I am grateful for each person who offers me their time and their shoulder and their smile.  Your support has brought me this far, and it will help to propel me into what I hope is another unbelievable year. 

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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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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.

Pretty little girl, let your sweet thing sway.

I woke up a couple of days ago to a deep, painful, burgeoning zit... right above my eyebrows in the middle of my forehead. 

"I think my inner 17-year-old is about to burst through my third-eye chakra," I said to my therapist.

She looked at me pointedly.  "You might be right.  I think there's something there you need to explore."

We delved into my past, again, and talked about what was happening with me at that time, specifically about my sexual abuse, my teen sexuality, and my body image.  We talked for a while about what had been happening in my life the last couple of weeks—update on my divorce, update on Bounder, update on my adventures with the girls. 

"The more you're talking about this, the redder that's getting," she said gently.  "I really think you need to spend some time journaling or blogging about it.  You need to listen to what she has to say."

I've spent some time talking to her, the 17-year-old Stephanie, about what was bothering her then and what's bothering her now.  It doesn't feel like she's in control of my life, and she feels pretty calm and collected when she's looking through my eyes, but there's definitely some advice only she can provide. She knows nothing of having children or taking care of an adult life.  Her insights have to do with boys.  

Dating in my teens was non-traditional, as it was for most of my friends.  Our high school was small, and our circle of friends was sometimes smaller.  When I was interested in someone and they were interested back, it was almost always someone I already knew.  Our circle would shift to include that other person or the changing relationship, and we just hung out.  I never once had the pick-me-up-at-my-house-for-a-date experience with someone I hadn't already slept with. 

In the late 80s, that Stephanie was dealing with a lot of the things I wrote about in Persona Non Grata.  She had been raped at 16, was delving into a physically- and emotionally-abusive relationship with a dipshit, and she was a fat girl.  She never felt worth much, except when she was sexually precocious. 

Flaunting my sexuality in rebellion of my past, I'd found comfort in the back seats of cars and the dark corners of parks—places that didn't require me to be naked.  That didn't mean I wasn't constantly self-conscious about hiding my numerous physical flaws. 

[Tierney to Tessa] "Look, even at my fattest I knew I was a great fuck.  Maybe it was because of that.  I learned early on to work my body and use my sexuality to my advantage before anyone else could use it to theirs."

Maybe more importantly, she never really felt pretty.  She could see the pretty on the surface sometimes, but there was almost nothing there to give that insecure girl any kind of external encouragement or reinforcement that 1) she was indeed pretty, or 2) that it didn't matter because she was inherently worth more than that.

While I can quietly argue with that Stephanie that her beauty never came from how she looked, there is still something in every teenage girl that wants to know that she's physically appealing to other people.  Even on a biological level, physical beauty often plays a role in the attraction of potential sexual partners for procreation.  Feeling attractive to another person—whether physically, emotionally, or intellectually—bolsters your self-confidence, no matter how unvain or centered you are.  For a fat teenage girl who felt emotionally dismissed, abandoned, or even neglected for much of her life, having someone else see her as lovely could make or break her self-image and her self-worth at any given time. 

While I don't really remember feeling pretty until the last couple of years, I also don't remember being told I was beautiful until just over a year ago.  If I heard those words from my family or an ex-boyfriend or even my ex-husband before I lost the weight, it's not in my immediate recollection.  In fact, I told Bounder that he was the first non-stranger man to ever say those words to me without prompting or ulterior motive. 

"Well then I consider that to be both privilege and honor," he replied, a little surprised. 

As hard as this is for me to write, I've been able to see myself as pretty for the first time in recent weeks.  There had always been moments (no matter how fleeting or rare) when I would think I looked good or sexy or whatever, but it's when I'm most plainly me—no makeup, hair down, utterly comfortable in myself—that I can see it most clearly.  Seeing my attractiveness for myself, and saying it out loud, feels precariously comfortable.  It seems vain and arrogant to both think it and to say it; to put it in writing in such a public way feels shameful and likely to open me to attack. 

Within that realization, though, is the understanding of how and why my 17-year-old lighted under the attention of men.  With all of my issues of feeling dismissed or ignored, to garner even a little affection from an outsider was astonishing and felt desperately needed.  If it was received, reciprocity seemed mandatory, even if that ultimately led to unhealthy sexual and emotional couplings.  And if the attention was withdrawn, it could feel like the end of the world and that I was ultimately worth nothing. 

Uncharacteristically quietly, she has been reminding me of late that my sexuality is not all of who I am.  Because a man flirts with me or tells me I'm beautiful or hot or whatever, I am not worth more or less; my value as a sexual being is not determined by others.  I have the right and the responsibility to myself to say only thank you and to move on.  I am not required to be actively accepting of attention.  I am allowed to ignore it or decline it, just as I am allowed to encourage it if it's something I want. 

She's reminding me that I am in charge of my body and my heart, to accept the truth of me just the way I expect others to accept it.  She's also reminding me that I can say no and that having sex on my terms, being in charge of when and where and how and with whom, doesn't have to be retaliatory toward the past.  There's no need for my choices to bring me to a place of power; it's about finding healthy balance between attraction and desire and choice, coming to the place of sexual coupling on even terms with my partner and with myself.  With her. 

So now the zit is almost gone.  There's just a red mark that will fade completely in a few days.  (It sits, in fact, just below the forehead wrinkle that came with the weight loss and the stress and 40.)  But even now, no make-up and hair in a clip and in some slouchy clothes, I don't care.  I don't choose to ignore the mar; it just doesn't matter.  It doesn't change my beauty, inside or out. 

More importantly, that Stephanie sees it, too.

I lost your honesty. You lost the life in you.

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. 

I can't stand myself. I'm being held up by invisible men.

Sassafras O'Malley has double-blind confirmation of a new superpower: the unmitigated ability to attract alcoholic men. 

She's not especially thrilled to have this talent, though I suppose it's an equal and opposite reaction to her ability to dazzle small animals and children (and stupid people) into submission with her disco ballness. 

All joking aside, it's shocking to my system, just how well I can not see the addiction sometimes, how I can have come so far toward self-awareness and integration and still be so willing to ignore the flashing red signs when my heart is on the line. 

The thing about addicts is that they are selfish: self-centered, self-aggrandizing, self-deprecating, self-loathing, self-mutilating, and self-destructive.  As Bounder said to me recently, quite ironically, it's not that they don't want good things in their lives—they aren't trying not to love or feel or be available to those that seem to matter most to them—it's that they can't; they are so selfish in their addiction that they are unable to see past themselves to the secondary and tertiary damage they inflict on those around them. 

It's one of the hallmarks of addicts, to deny themselves the things and people who are truly good for them, to push out anyone and everyone who might be able to serve as a lifeline to reality and healthfulness.  They will instinctively surround themselves with people who support and facilitate their patterns of addictive behavior, who tolerate and even sometimes encourage their excuses and their inconsideration and their lies—enablers.

My refusal to enable the addiction of men I loved was, in part, responsible for the demise of previous relationships.  It's always more complicated than that, but addiction has played an important and sometimes torturous role in more than the last twenty years of my life.  When I wrote at the end of the year about what I didn't want going forward in my life or a new relationship, addiction was part of that list—mine or anyone else's. 

And yet, here I went again. 

I don't get it, either.  In my head I can understand how the addiction, especially alcoholism, works and impacts the addict's entire life, including the people closest to them.  But deep in my soul, I cannot fathom how a person could be in such desperate need for something, or someone, and flatly refuse it when it's presented to them on a shiny, silver platter.  When you most need it, you're given a gift from the universe of exactly what you both need and want, and you are openly thankful for that—until you realize it won't follow you to the bottom of a bottle.  Then you turn your back on the good in exchange for the bad, like an ungrateful, petulant bastard?

I don't fucking get it. 

What I do understand is the other side of it—the heartbreak and the rejection and the feelings of being worth less than a fucking bottle to that person who says they care about you.  The dismissal and the isolation that come when they start drinking.  And it's dramatically juxtaposed to the attention and the connection that's there when they're sober, when you let yourself think for just a moment that just maybe this time you will be enough, be special enough, to help them see the light and to give them the goal and the strength to break out of those patterns.  But those moments become more and more fleeting as time goes on with the addict, until it's a constant daze of distance and excuses and emotional neglect that borders on malice. 

Hot Pocket says it's not that I'm worth less than that bottle; it's that he feels he deserves the bottle more than he deserves me. 

Growler says she understands why it feels like I will never find another person to love, who loves me back in a healthy way, but that it's just not true, no matter how hard that may be to see right now.  (I'm not looking, but I wasn't looking this time, either.)

Queen Frostine listens patiently while I rage about how I'm done with men, about how I hate the catch-22 of being myself and attracting damaged men or going back into my own box just to make a man comfortable in the hopes he loves what is ultimately a shadow of Stephanie. 

And I'm pretty positive I don't want a romantic relationship with a woman.  Women are crazy.

Yet again I find myself spinning, trying desperately to touch solid ground and calm the nausea, to stop the sickness that is surrounding me and invading every fiber of my being.  I'm trying again to catch my breath, the wind knocked out of me simultaneously by love and heartache.  As much as I may want to fix this, to use my incredibly unrelenting resourcefulness to make this okay, I can't.  This is not my battle, no matter how hard I fight.

Maybe it's not about me, but it sure as hell still feels like it's me that's taking the brunt of the damage.

So I'm pulling back again, shunning men and shunning that sector of my heart.  I was pretty sure I was ready this time, pretty sure I was healthy, but I feel like I missed something.  My trusting, naive, hopelessly-romantic nature let me, encouraged me, to believe the unintentional whispers of another alcoholic.  I can't do this again.  I really would rather be alone that to go through this another time.

 

There was that smell in the air of an old place that hadn't seen much daylight in years.

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the things I don't want to take with me into 2013.   I've thinking about this a lot today as I'm packing away the Christmas decorations and cleaning out some miscellaneous stuff from the house.  There was something I left off that list.

I don't want secrets. 

Mine or anyone else's. 

When I was writing Persona Non Grata, converting from the non-fiction Point A to Point Me to the substantially fictionalized story—and I can promise you that two years didn't all play out as depicted in that book—Absolem suggested I title the work Secret Keeper, or something similar.

"That's what you've been, Steph.  You've kept everyone else's secrets, plus your own.  That's who you are."

But secrets just suck.  They can seem alluring, shared or created in intimate moments.  They can seem seductive in their intimacy.  When someone else gives you their deepest, darkest secrets, it can feel like there's a certain level of trust they have with you, like you're the only person who knows them well enough or is strong enough to help them carry this burden. 

When you are the secret, though, that's perhaps the most double-edged of the covert swords.  You're special enough to be hidden away, to be a covert truth to be shielded from prying eyes.  But at the heart of that bond, at the heart of all secrets, is someone's shame.

There are things you keep to yourself or between you and a select number of people.  The privilege of intimacy is sacred and beautiful.  Surprises are wondrous moments sprung unexpectedly with utter delight. 

But secrets are the things that hurt, whether yourself or other people.  Secrets are the things that can only be whispered in the dark, because they are damaging to someone.  Maybe several someones.  To ask another person to keep a secret is to request that they carry the burden of your own shame—whether at your action or inaction or reaction. 

In the process of cleaning out the house since DH unceremoniously left, I have been blindsided by twenty years' worth of secrets.  Things were squirreled away that should've been brought to my attention.  I hid my own shameful truths from him.  Sometimes we hid them from ourselves, which meant we couldn't help but hide them from the other.  And I always find the evidence of those hidden truths in the most unexpected places, at the most inopportune times.  It never fails to knock the breath out of me and to make me cry. 

Had I known the truth of these things in the appropriate time, I probably wouldn't have felt so hurt about their specifics.  But now, when they're coming to light sometimes twenty years later and only through accidental discovery, I am cut more deeply by the surreptitious nature of non-disclosure.  I am appalled in specific and in general that somehow I wasn't worth the truth.  I only know now because things have gone so horribly wrong, and I am stumbling upon the facts of things no one else has had the fortitude or the guts or the fucking balls to face.  I am left to deal with them on my own and to clean up the mess of revelation like so much clutter in the basement. 

It's all right there, along with the mud-caked yard shoes he left by the back door. 

What it's made me believe more than ever—looking at his secrets, the ones I kept from him, the ones I kept for other people, and most especially the ones I became—is that secrets devalue a relationship.  They are detrimental to esteem and the trust that is at the core of any kind of love.  They make that relationship worth less than the shame of the secret.

To him and to so many others, I have been worth less than their shame. 

I also know that I have been on the other side of that.  I have damaged trust and love and honesty, in general and in specific, by keeping my own secrets.  One damage doesn't negate the other, though; there's no tit-for-tat in that kind of emotional warfare.  It just creates a mounting pile of broken promises and broken hearts that block everyone's path forward. 

But maybe that's the hardest part of all of this, the trying to see around the damage and toward the future.  It's hard not to get caught up in the vulnerable moments when all I want to do is cave into the crying and the heartache and the blame and hope to Hell that he feels it, too.  Someone told me that eventually he will realize what he's lost, that he will eventually feel the hurt and pain that I'm feeling now.  Whether or not that's even likely is moot—it simply won't matter.  The damage is done, and I hope I will have moved past it by that time, if it ever comes.  There would be no vindication in knowing there are more tears and screaming and sorrow later.  If I'm not worth the grieving and the sorrow now, just like I wasn't worth it six months and a year and two years ago, why will it matter if he feels it then?  In his world, I will never be worth more than the secrets he fought so hard to keep from me, and that definitely makes me feel like I never, ever had a fighting chance at the life I was told we were building.

I have worked hard to feel my own inherent value, to feel not worthless to the world and to myself.  But it's reeling to feel like the person who supposedly loved you the most in the world maybe never saw the value in you at all. 

I don't know what I was worth to DH.  I don't know if he even knows.  I will likely never know, because he will likely never face me to have that conversation.  That's a secret he'll keep to himself, despite both me and himself, perpetuating the cycle of damage that's gone on for so damn long now. 

So, to all of the unavailable men who may cross my path going forward, offering me their addictions and secrets that will passive-aggressively stall my own journey, stay the fuck out of my way.  Take your damage and your destruction elsewhere.  I don't want it.  I have enough of my own tears and burdens to carry, and I just don't have the strength to carry yours, too.