Past and Presents
We’ve ended up in his room after eating ourselves to death and I’ve laid on the bed with the lights shining down on me. He’s sitting in the chair in the corner, watching me and smiling. Earlier he had pulled me close and danced to Christmas music in the living room. Now his eyes were on me and it felt like heaven. I had his undivided attention.
We talked about holidays. How spending them together was such a big thing. How neither of us had spent them with anyone other than spouses. I’d never even dated anyone around the holidays, usually in a deep depression after Firemen’s. This is my first, and boy was I really going balls to the wall. Matt and I had been having discussions for years. Dreams, ideas. What I want to do for holidays versus what we could do. We’ve spent them largely isolated, just the two of us. They have been lovely, but he’s held my hand every year, given it a little squeeze and told me that some day we’d have the family I miss. He resents me nothing in my desire to find my home, he has only ever wanted to be a part of it.
So now here we are, and I’m amazed that indeed the holidays have begun. And aside from ironing out very minor practicalities, it’s been very smooth sailing. And we’re spending them all together. There is no other place I’d rather be than beside them. Beside T.
We discuss the past, how it had been done before with C. I recall now that he had been planning to move in with her, looking at houses. Perhaps I am not the first partner beyond his wife to inspire feelings of nesting, but it seems I am the first in this shared experience of holidays together. What does this mean? Does it mean anything at all?
He’s smiling at me while I’m talking about family. Everything else fades away in the light of that smile. I feel like I’d do anything for him to smile like that at me until the day my heart stops beating.
I try to assure him that this has all been considered before. That I have declared that when I find what I’m looking for, what I have truly been searching for, then I will pursue it in whatever form it appears. It has appeared, as him. As them. As this place. And it’s all there when he looks at me. That alone is more than I have ever asked for.
R has been asking about marriage, mostly because to a 4 year old, that makes sense. You hug someone, so you must want to get married. None of the social constructs or legalities apply. When I was 4 I thought I would marry my cousin David because we had the most fun at reunions. I didn’t understand what that meant, I just thought we’d live together as grown up and host the best parties and that was what it meant to be married.
But I haven’t exactly treated it as a foreign thought either. Obviously polygamy remains illegal, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be done in less formal ways. That was something Matt and I found we fully agreed on in the beginning of our poly journey. For the right people, anything was possible. I thought it would be him long before it would be me.
There may be a napkin floating around with hyphenated names on it, somewhere. Idle thoughts, possible dreams. Vague future ideas.
So I suppose I don’t see this as such a huge thing. Just the first of many. The first to begin a trend, a life. The first. Who knows where it ends up, but this is the first.
****
“I love you” I would type into the box on my computer screen after he logged off. “No such nick/channel” would auto reply. The text of our conversation hovering on my screen until I closed the window. Days, weeks, months and years this was our interaction.
I would wait until he logged off our game and then end the conversation for myself. I heard him explain that he liked me but didn’t love me. Loved me but wasn’t in love with me. Was in love but unsure we’d get married. Each step and progression agonizingly slow. And I never made it hard until I got fed up. Years, YEARS! Accepting that I would carry all of this, that I could love him enough for both of us. The abuse of my first had warped my world view. Matt wasn’t hitting me, he wasn’t calling me hideous. So this wasn’t that bad, right?
I look back now and I feel anger, something I’ve worked on for years in expressing and resolving. He’s not that same guy. He admits his mistakes and wishes he could have done everything different. “If I had known the damage I was doing, I would have stopped so fast.” Maybe I would have too. Maybe I just couldn’t see it because it was a land mine next to a nuclear crater.
“You didn’t deserve the things you dealt with in our early history.” It was like being released from a prison. No denial. No excuses. Just an apology and validation.
Earlier in the day, my phone had lit up while I was at work and when I pulled it from my pocket expecting my husband or boyfriend, my hands turned cold at the name on my screen. The name, like the word, short and terse. Bordering impolite. Curt.
Did he know I had been shutting another person out? That I had sent Dj through a door and slammed it closed behind him? Was it some sort of ex-boyfriend ESP? “I’m sorry I’ve been distant.” Distant? Dude you completely fell off the earth for 18 month. Distant?! I don’t think we’ve been in the same solar system!
“I knew you wouldn’t turn away from me though.” You knew? You knew that, did you? And then I had to stop and feel the icy veins reach my heart. He wasn’t wrong. I had never turned him away before. He could ignore me for weeks, months and the second he wrote to me I’d be nothing but accepting and warm. Forgiving and brushing off whatever he was giving as an excuse. I felt the hitch in my chest. I had made things so easy for him. For DJ. For Matt.
Earlier I had noticed T pushing for socialness. At the time I’d been happy to see it, but now my head was spinning. Was I making it too easy for him too? I looked back over the last couple of months and tried to find anything that didn’t feel like he knew I wouldn’t turn away from him. Anything that didn’t feel as though it was all “in the bag” and effort could fade.
When was the last time he’d looked at me and said “Let me take you out.” The last time had been me taking him to pizza. There was the beach but that was a double date and at my insistence. There was shopping and Greek food, did that count? My fucking god, was I just incapable of seeing indifference? Was I always so caught up in what I felt that I couldn’t see when interest was lost or when men felt so comfortable that I stopped being a girlfriend/wife and started being a permanent fixture that you always say you’ll get around to paying attention to but then it never happens because where in the fuck is it gonna go? Lighthouses don’t leave, they just stay here and glow until they burn out.
Suddenly, as it always has been when broken piece of myself float to the front because a catalyst sparked it, I questioned everything about myself. I saw only a desperate woman willing to take whatever was given. A woman so desperate to make the men in her life feel secure that she never stopped to think about whether or not she felt wanted.
Ice froze my heart, my mind, pouring into all of me. Stupidly I had spoken to both Matt and T in text about my fears without thinking of them. Knee-jerk. Neither took it well. I asked T if our dating was done. If that part Was over. I told Matt I was angry to discover I was still making the same childish mistakes I had made in our beginning. That for all my hard work I was still as emotionally crippled and forgettable as I had always feared.
I said nothing to Curt.
I was bitter with myself, berating myself in my mind. Curt wasn’t wrong. How could I ever think I had improved in anything? It wasn’t until I was driving home later that I gripped my steering wheel and chewed my lip. One text had unraveled me. I had given him that power again. And he was the one I should have been talking to, letting him know that I was done. Letting him know it was unacceptable.
I tried to sort my mind in the night. I could find nothing for peace and decided to sleep on it. When I woke, it was clear. I wish him well, but I wish him well away from me. I am not a lighthouse for him any longer, the light is out where he’s concerned. move on or wreck on the shoals, but I’m done with how easily I could be left.
And now I see the wound as it is. The bleeding that has seeped into all these parts of me. The damage done. And there’s nothing for it but to begin cleaning it up, treating it gently, and allowing it to heal.
Gone with those who would cut me so easily out. Gone with those who leave me to peruse everything alone and carry it alone. Gone with those who can live without me. Let them.
Gone too with painful memories. Gone with just accepting that this is a thing that happens. In with healing words and actions.
In with the warmth on these damaged places. Onward. Upward. These men are in the past where they belong. Lessons fully learned.
We talked about holidays. How spending them together was such a big thing. How neither of us had spent them with anyone other than spouses. I’d never even dated anyone around the holidays, usually in a deep depression after Firemen’s. This is my first, and boy was I really going balls to the wall. Matt and I had been having discussions for years. Dreams, ideas. What I want to do for holidays versus what we could do. We’ve spent them largely isolated, just the two of us. They have been lovely, but he’s held my hand every year, given it a little squeeze and told me that some day we’d have the family I miss. He resents me nothing in my desire to find my home, he has only ever wanted to be a part of it.
So now here we are, and I’m amazed that indeed the holidays have begun. And aside from ironing out very minor practicalities, it’s been very smooth sailing. And we’re spending them all together. There is no other place I’d rather be than beside them. Beside T.
We discuss the past, how it had been done before with C. I recall now that he had been planning to move in with her, looking at houses. Perhaps I am not the first partner beyond his wife to inspire feelings of nesting, but it seems I am the first in this shared experience of holidays together. What does this mean? Does it mean anything at all?
He’s smiling at me while I’m talking about family. Everything else fades away in the light of that smile. I feel like I’d do anything for him to smile like that at me until the day my heart stops beating.
I try to assure him that this has all been considered before. That I have declared that when I find what I’m looking for, what I have truly been searching for, then I will pursue it in whatever form it appears. It has appeared, as him. As them. As this place. And it’s all there when he looks at me. That alone is more than I have ever asked for.
R has been asking about marriage, mostly because to a 4 year old, that makes sense. You hug someone, so you must want to get married. None of the social constructs or legalities apply. When I was 4 I thought I would marry my cousin David because we had the most fun at reunions. I didn’t understand what that meant, I just thought we’d live together as grown up and host the best parties and that was what it meant to be married.
But I haven’t exactly treated it as a foreign thought either. Obviously polygamy remains illegal, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be done in less formal ways. That was something Matt and I found we fully agreed on in the beginning of our poly journey. For the right people, anything was possible. I thought it would be him long before it would be me.
There may be a napkin floating around with hyphenated names on it, somewhere. Idle thoughts, possible dreams. Vague future ideas.
So I suppose I don’t see this as such a huge thing. Just the first of many. The first to begin a trend, a life. The first. Who knows where it ends up, but this is the first.
****
“I love you” I would type into the box on my computer screen after he logged off. “No such nick/channel” would auto reply. The text of our conversation hovering on my screen until I closed the window. Days, weeks, months and years this was our interaction.
I would wait until he logged off our game and then end the conversation for myself. I heard him explain that he liked me but didn’t love me. Loved me but wasn’t in love with me. Was in love but unsure we’d get married. Each step and progression agonizingly slow. And I never made it hard until I got fed up. Years, YEARS! Accepting that I would carry all of this, that I could love him enough for both of us. The abuse of my first had warped my world view. Matt wasn’t hitting me, he wasn’t calling me hideous. So this wasn’t that bad, right?
I look back now and I feel anger, something I’ve worked on for years in expressing and resolving. He’s not that same guy. He admits his mistakes and wishes he could have done everything different. “If I had known the damage I was doing, I would have stopped so fast.” Maybe I would have too. Maybe I just couldn’t see it because it was a land mine next to a nuclear crater.
“You didn’t deserve the things you dealt with in our early history.” It was like being released from a prison. No denial. No excuses. Just an apology and validation.
Earlier in the day, my phone had lit up while I was at work and when I pulled it from my pocket expecting my husband or boyfriend, my hands turned cold at the name on my screen. The name, like the word, short and terse. Bordering impolite. Curt.
Did he know I had been shutting another person out? That I had sent Dj through a door and slammed it closed behind him? Was it some sort of ex-boyfriend ESP? “I’m sorry I’ve been distant.” Distant? Dude you completely fell off the earth for 18 month. Distant?! I don’t think we’ve been in the same solar system!
“I knew you wouldn’t turn away from me though.” You knew? You knew that, did you? And then I had to stop and feel the icy veins reach my heart. He wasn’t wrong. I had never turned him away before. He could ignore me for weeks, months and the second he wrote to me I’d be nothing but accepting and warm. Forgiving and brushing off whatever he was giving as an excuse. I felt the hitch in my chest. I had made things so easy for him. For DJ. For Matt.
Earlier I had noticed T pushing for socialness. At the time I’d been happy to see it, but now my head was spinning. Was I making it too easy for him too? I looked back over the last couple of months and tried to find anything that didn’t feel like he knew I wouldn’t turn away from him. Anything that didn’t feel as though it was all “in the bag” and effort could fade.
When was the last time he’d looked at me and said “Let me take you out.” The last time had been me taking him to pizza. There was the beach but that was a double date and at my insistence. There was shopping and Greek food, did that count? My fucking god, was I just incapable of seeing indifference? Was I always so caught up in what I felt that I couldn’t see when interest was lost or when men felt so comfortable that I stopped being a girlfriend/wife and started being a permanent fixture that you always say you’ll get around to paying attention to but then it never happens because where in the fuck is it gonna go? Lighthouses don’t leave, they just stay here and glow until they burn out.
Suddenly, as it always has been when broken piece of myself float to the front because a catalyst sparked it, I questioned everything about myself. I saw only a desperate woman willing to take whatever was given. A woman so desperate to make the men in her life feel secure that she never stopped to think about whether or not she felt wanted.
Ice froze my heart, my mind, pouring into all of me. Stupidly I had spoken to both Matt and T in text about my fears without thinking of them. Knee-jerk. Neither took it well. I asked T if our dating was done. If that part Was over. I told Matt I was angry to discover I was still making the same childish mistakes I had made in our beginning. That for all my hard work I was still as emotionally crippled and forgettable as I had always feared.
I said nothing to Curt.
I was bitter with myself, berating myself in my mind. Curt wasn’t wrong. How could I ever think I had improved in anything? It wasn’t until I was driving home later that I gripped my steering wheel and chewed my lip. One text had unraveled me. I had given him that power again. And he was the one I should have been talking to, letting him know that I was done. Letting him know it was unacceptable.
I tried to sort my mind in the night. I could find nothing for peace and decided to sleep on it. When I woke, it was clear. I wish him well, but I wish him well away from me. I am not a lighthouse for him any longer, the light is out where he’s concerned. move on or wreck on the shoals, but I’m done with how easily I could be left.
And now I see the wound as it is. The bleeding that has seeped into all these parts of me. The damage done. And there’s nothing for it but to begin cleaning it up, treating it gently, and allowing it to heal.
Gone with those who would cut me so easily out. Gone with those who leave me to peruse everything alone and carry it alone. Gone with those who can live without me. Let them.
Gone too with painful memories. Gone with just accepting that this is a thing that happens. In with healing words and actions.
In with the warmth on these damaged places. Onward. Upward. These men are in the past where they belong. Lessons fully learned.
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