An entry in my Livejournal March 10, 2011:
keeping myself busy
Posted on 2011.03.10 at 16:26
I am having one of those rare days where projects > people.
Curiously I’m feeling intense waves of anger, an emotion I haven’t felt in years – blind, seething molten strands of hatred, outrage, frustration. I think unforgivably cruel things.
Also strange is that I’m often finding myself in terrific moods between these darker hateful periods. It’s like there is no halfway.
It’s really confusing.
—-
On IRC, a bit earlier:
(10:38:30 AM) skyspook: And you have my love, for what it’s worth *hugs*
…
(10:48:40 AM) page: you love me, huh?
(10:48:46 AM) ***page caught that
(10:48:50 AM) ***page wasn’t gonna say anything
(10:49:24 AM) page: so many different kinds, I know
(10:49:25 AM) skyspook: *nod* *blush* In a way yes, don’t know what kind of love it is yet, but it’s there. I’m usually very careful when saying it, cause a lot of people read into it…
…
(1:08:04 PM) page: how could he not love me?
(1:08:05 PM) skyspook: 🙂
(1:08:15 PM) page: most reasonable people love me 😛
(1:08:28 PM) page: you love me
(1:08:29 PM) page: and I love you
———————————————
I remember the day I wrote that LJ entry. It was the day Skyspook and I first started saying “I love you” to one another. At that point, we had a solid friendship and a mutual physical attraction we both acknowledged, but romantically that conversation was really the point at which things started to build momentum. I was moving to his city in about a month to live with two of my lovers, friends of his. We had so much in common and enjoyed talking to one another so much that we looked forward to grabbing dinner together once I was permanently in town, going on a real date, seeing what would develop.
Skyspook had been absolutely wonderful to me as a friend, attentive, validating, checking in on me at intervals to see how my life was going, always supportive and warm and interesting. Our friendship was an absolute joy – he was an absolute joy.
When I expressed regret that my February trip to Cleveland would JUST miss a highly anticipated house party he and J were having, one which my 2 in-town lovers would be attending as well, Skyspook rigged up his laptop with Skype and allowed me to “telecommute” to the festivities. It was so much fun. And indeed, a handful of people once I lived in town permanently recognized me as “the pretty girl on the computer.”
Meanwhile, Ex-Boyfriend in Cleveland, who was supposed to be my Dominant and my Owner, and I his pet, was difficult to get a hold of, even online (despite being unemployed for many months and often at home), rarely seemed happy to talk to me. The Skype session that Skyspook had set up at his house party was the sole instance I heard my Ex-Dom’s voice in the over 2 months between my February visit to Cleveland and my final relocation there (with the exception of a 1-minute recording he’d made me a few months earlier, at my insistence that I needed to hear his voice if he wasn’t going to call me for weeks on end, or that the distance would make me crazy).
Ex-Husband was at that point verbally abusive and prone to violent emotional swings in the basement studio apartment we were at that time sharing. He, too, was jobless. I spent my time with him trying not to trigger his anger.
When Skyspook told me that he loved me, something broke inside of me. It hurt, deeply. I burned with rage at the unfairness of it all. Here was a man who had been wonderful to me, while expecting nothing in return, who had treated me better than virtually anyone I’d ever met. Who deserved me far more than the people I was involved with – and what did I have left to give him? Far less than he deserved because I was monopolized by people who had simply gotten there first – and bound by my sense of honor, by wanting to be true to my word and stick by those who I’d committed to.
The day I wrote that entry, I kept swinging between bliss at my feelings of love for him and his in return and rage at the sense of how unfair it was, how he was far more deserving of my love than the ones I was with.
*
It’s a testament to my progress now that I am struck by a different sense of unfairness when examining that time, a different sense of “deserving.” My own. I deserved better than what I was being given.
When Skyspook and I first started dating, and Ex-Boyfriend and his wife started to freak out when our relationship took off, there was something we said to one another that centered us, took away a lot of the stress we felt, “We deserve one another.”
It’s true. We do.
*
At one point, being desired was enough for me. Being wanted.
These days, it’s occurred to me that I was selling myself short. I deserve much more than that. I deserve to be cared for, to be cherished, and I deserve to care for and cherish in turn.
Something tells me this is a lesson that I will not unlearn.
*
“If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh