Taking Shape

I hate looking stupid.

Too bad I’m a sucker.

Everyone else born that particular minute wasn’t, so I guess it had to be me, right? When it comes to the matter of trust, I tend to lose my usual many-shades-of-gray perspective, and things fall into stark contrast. Either I trust you, or I don’t.

And, truthfully, it is why past is littered with people who wonder why they suddenly got a cold shoulder, friends who have known my boundless loyalty, and those who have taken advantage of me.

And, in that last category, I now realize how my ex- sits in there. I can’t really call her my ex-wife yet, because legally, that’s not where it stands. It’s something I forget about often because I have purged her from my thoughts. I never think about her, or the excruciating wreckage of my former life with her. All those ties have been severed now, anyway, with precious few exceptions.

She called tonight to let me know she had quit her job. So far, her record for gainful employment in one place sits at six months. I have defended her so many times, from family, from friends, even from my lawyer, asking why she doesn’t like to work. Oh it was just bad luck, she doesn’t interview well…

I could spend hours reciting all the excuses I have made for all the different ways she took advantage of me. And part of it, deep down, is that I don’t think she’s a bad person, who set out to take advantage, as much as it was always just easier to live off of others, and she didn’t want to be on her own enough.

Didn’t want it enough…even that is a hedge, isn’t it?

I’ve been burned now a lot of times as a blogger because of my tendency to blindly trust. And, for the longest time, I protected my ex- from the assaults of others and defended her over and over, even from Mina. No more.

It’s done.

In a way, the saddest feeling of all is having the wool lifted from your eyes, and realizing what a fool you’ve been. Excuses, lies, what’s the difference? You were taking them to be operating in good faith, and they weren’t.

It’s hard to trust anyone now. But it has to start somewhere, right

Nothing has brought more pain into my life than my desire to see the best in people, and to believe that they are as good as I think they can be. Hard to tie so bad a concept to so good a concept, ain’t it? Life’s a bitch that way.

I don’t know what I think yet, but I know what I don’t think now, and I guess that’s enough for tonight.

“Make it happen.”

That sentence is the definition of my life nowadays. Since I moved Out West and taken my new job, that has become my mantra. Whatever it is, make it happen. I never, ever stop believing I can accomplish what is in front of me. I never ask if, merely how. This neverending can-do attitude has propelled me to dizzying heights in alarmingly short time. I doubled my salary in less than a year, and am angling to double it again in another. On paper, I have every reason to ooze confidence from every pore.

But, in a day, I have gotten a cold, steely reminder of what I can’t do as well. I can’t simply make Mina happy because I wish it so. I can’t simply shuck my past like an ear of corn. And then, today, I made a classic real estate mistake.

When I first bought a house, my agent was very careful to ask exactly how much I could afford. Over and over, and it constantly felt like I was being upsold. Finally, I asked her why, and she explained that she wanted to make sure that she never showed me a house I couldn’t afford, lest I get spoiled by what I see, and then not want anything I can afford.

Well, today, Mina and I were out looking for a new place to live, and we saw some signs for an open house, so we poked our heads in. And, of course, it was perfect. Not only beautifully designed, and beautifully built, but sensibly done, environmentally conscious. Every step of the tour it got better and better. And, finally, we found the guy who could tell us the price. It was so far out of my range I needed a telescope to see it.

We walked away raving about how great the place was. And, in my head, I was trying to figure out how, how I could do this. After all, this is what I do. I make things happen. I ground on it for over an hour in my head. HOW?

I can’t. Can’t!

As today has shoved at me…I am not quite what I think I am.

I am, in the end, only human.

Dammit.

Why do I say so little? Why do I choose not to engage people?

—

Throughout my life, I have been dominated by empathy. I feel the emotions of others strongly, often more than I feel my own, even if the others are just people I read or see on TV. It’s something I never could really control. Television was often exquisite torture for me. I found myself squirming in my chair with Brian Ross’s pedophile prey, crushed with morbid dread with a acid burn victim on ER, and tearful with joy with Olympic athletes. When I first discovered erotic writing, it was more powerful than a drug. I was breathless with arousal.

As I found sex blogs, the drug came at a price. It wasn’t just characters, it was people; lives, chaotic and epic, unfolding  before me. Without wanting to, I cared about these people. Unlike my first days online, people I met were real to me, and I had learned for whom bells toll. I got to know many, many of them.

And, they got to know me. Thin-skinned, authentic me.

And it went too far.

And this, “just the net,” but full of people I couldn’t help but care about, intruded itself into my “real”life. See, for some people, their synthetic life <b>is</b> their life, the only one worth living. Threaten that, you threaten them.

And they will defend their lives. Viciously.

And so, I lept into the fires, preferring immolation and holocaust.

And one day, much later, I started over. Thoughts needed voice.

And I burned that life as well.

And then I started again.

And once again, I have met a new, chaotic cast of characters.

And once again, my heart aches for them, and they chaos they are plunging into, the hurt they are experiencing. Only now, I have learned a lesson:

Shut the fuck up. No one asked you.

You can’t help them anyway.

Enjoy.

I have spent a lot of time in my own head of late. There is something hard about staring off the cliff into the promised land, knowing you cannot enter, and that you don’t even own the ground on which you stand. This spring, I was, in many ways, in desperate straits, trying to emotionally survive, getting by any way I could. When you are just trying to get your head above water, there are a lot of things that you will let slide, just trying to prove that you CAN make it, because you don’t really know. And, there’s a lot you can do when you have nothing to lose. 

–

 It is not that time any more. I have a lot of the pieces of the life I want, finally. But, right now, I simply can’t seem to tear myself free of my tortured life from before. Every day, I feel the financial pinch, even though I make fantastic money. Every day, some other memory from my past inserts itself into the fore of my consciousness, and I feel another of the many chains weighing me down. It seems like I’ll never get it all away, that they will always lurk over my heart. I feel…damaged.But more has changed than the season. I have something to lose…I have someone to lose. Someone I would very much rather keep. Every day I wonder if I am good enough for her. Every misstep feels catastrophic. Women like her don’t happen to men like me.  She has to realize that eventually, doesn’t she?

–

Inevitably, I come to that simple, pain-in-the-ass question:  ”So, what are you going to do about it?” The problem is that for so long, it was always “Well, once ____ happens, think I can _____, and then I can _____” But somehow, that first thing never has happened. It’s not my fault, really. But, I can’t simply let that be, either. I need to start making things happen. I need to. 

i crave a kiss. A real kiss.

Lips parting before mine. A welcome.

A tongue carressing my own. A dialogue.

Her soul, melting into mine. A connection.

That’s all. A “simple” kiss.

There is a really dangerous place for me that I have been in. I am back in my old town, visiting family, and walking back in the wreckage of my old life, which was my only life not so long ago. So many wasted years, so many hopes that failed. In a way, this is the hardest time for me, having to confront the disaster of my first try at life like this. Here I feel the loss of what I had most acutely.

I am really struggling here. I am distraught a lot of the time, and there are many times that I find find myself reopening old, unhealed wounds and actually sobbing. I like such a failure here, as a man, as a human. Yet, inevitably I come back. I have to come back. And this time I came back alone, like I always have, like I hope not to do again. I want to bring mina here soon, not jsut to show her things I loved about this place, but also, just because I want her with me.

 This is where it gets hard. I’m a good guy, or at least I want to be. Things haven’t always worked out that way, but it is what I try to be. I am good at “supportive.” I am not so hot at being supported, but now my situation has done too much to me, and it is more than I can bear, and the only thing I can do is turn to my lover, my dear, dear mina.

There has always been a limit to how unstable I am willing to appear to someone, but right now I don’t have the strength. I need help, and it has to be her. I do the good times well, but not all times are good, so, she had to get the unfiltered me at my worst. And, to make it harder, we have to confront the darkest shadow that looms over our relationship, my past, and its impact on my will.

Caveat emptor, pal.

I deplore how she has to suffer for my failures now, and how the thicket I am trying to extract myself from now affects another. But I have no choice. And really, why should she take this from me? Chasing some childish notion of what love could be? Come on…

But she does.

And I am comforted, because she is there.

This is the emotional equivalent of leaping off a building, and the relief of a net you didn’t know was there cradling your body.

We can be found together here:

http://longingsend.wordpress.com

We’re still moving in, so there are a few things to figure out here and there, but we started writing already, so go ahead and enjoy while we work the look out.

So, I guess I should update on some things.

My lover, Helena, blogs under the name mina, and I have indicated her home on the web in the links on the right. When we began our relationship, it was something quiet, we would write about obliquely, always respecting the other’s privacy. As our lives unexpectedly merged in the real world, so did many other things. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, we were thrust into a real relationship, finding that there was far more between us than being of similar sexual mind and both blogging.

Over the last few weeks, a genuine bond as formed between us, as we have become more open in our pursuit of each other. Suddenly, to our delight, so many things that had been struggles in our past relationships were almost startlingly natural and easy. As we spent more time together, and began to have more experiences together, sexual and otherwise, we found we had a lot in common, and rather liked that.

So, we have also begun to realize that the quiet secrecy that we began with is no longer suited to what we have. Step by step, we are becoming more public about our relationship, and more comfortable sharing our happiness with the world. We have decided that we should start a blog, together. When that is up and running I will be sure to share the link. While I am certain that we will both feel the need to keep up our respective sites as well, I plan to devote most of my energy to our site together. mina is a beautiful person, in every sense of the word, I feel tremendously lucky to call her mine.

I look forward to, step by step, getting to share our amazing story as it continues to unfold.