Do It For The Kids

I'm considering starting a new private blog for my kids.  All grown now, the youngest is nearly 30.  I have so many regrets as a parent, so many things I wish I would have done--done so many things I wish I wouldn't have.  Anyway, one of my newer intentions is to embrace my regrets.  I plan on making an altar to them and allowing, actually encouraging myself to grieve at this altar.  It is a way of loving my children through my grief.

I've been reading Stephen Jenkinson's book, Die Wise.  Well, I just started it and have only made it through the prelude.  My husband J and I just spent a weekend with him for a book reading/signing, showing of the documentary Griefwalker, which was about him, and then there was a 5 1/2 hour workshop, which really wasn't  a workshop so much as him talking at us. His lecture style was okay with me.  I like workshops, if they are well designed but I often get bored with group work.  I like sitting and listening to what a well learned person has to share about his knowledge, and I often grow impatient when members of the audience take up too much time listening to their own voices and requiring the rest of us to listen to them also.  Not that others don't sometimes have important and insightful things to say, it's just that I paid to hear the master, not them.  He wasn't so much into answering questions either and he made it clear that wasn't his thing.  He did take some questions and then mostly responded with whatever struck him,  rather than answering precisely if it didn't suit him. He was an interesting man, I like him and his style suited me okay.  He's also got me contemplating some deep issues and I appreciate that.

Tea in Bed

I recently read "Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you" and it really stuck with me.  All day yesterday it was my mantra and I just carried on carrying on.  The tears came later in the evening.  My eyes would well up and then overflow.  It happened several times before the meltdown came with her text to him "I missed you tonight".  That cut deep.  "Well at least someone was missed", I snarkily replied.  Then the meltdown.  I made myself sick.  Tears and snot and carrying on until my throat hurt.  You know how they go.  It wasn't pretty.  They never are.  And I woke up this morning still feeling like shit.  My sweetie made me tea in bed though and then crawled back in with me with his computer. Thank the lord for small blessings.

Jealousy Inducing Facebook Post

A polyamorous facebook friend posted about her boyfriend making breakfast and bringing it to her and her metamour--brunch in bed for the three of them on New Year's morning.  It made me jealous.  Here I am in the midst of a wonderful New Year's celebration with family and close friends in Santa Barbara.  Last night we eat out at a fun restaurant and then returned home for much music and merry making.  Ten of some of the people I love most in this world,  spent the night together and then woke late for coffee, mimosas and a delicious brunch.  Later we had a delightful time of the beach watching dolphins romping, while pelicans dive bombed for fish. Back home  I've enjoyed a sweet evening playing canasta while drinking delicious homemade pomegranate liquor with my best friend forever.  It's been a lovely welcoming in of the new year.

But that twinge of jealously has lingered and as grateful as I feel about the abundance of love in my life, I've noticed that I'm a bit unsettled.  Perturbed perhaps.   I don't have another lover in my life and neither does my husband.  Well, we both have each other of course and that's nothing to take for granted and we don't.  And we do love others and others love us too.  But we sure aren't living anything close to a polyamorous dream.  K dumbed me a year and a half ago and I'm still grieving that loss. I'm not looking for another lover.  I don't have the time or wherewithal.  And I've forbade (I'm embarrassed to say) my husband from taking another lover as he doesn't handle New Relationship Energy well, loses his balance and behaved in ways that eroded my trust and broke my heart.  I'm fed up with dealing with the drama it creates every time he falls in love with someone new.  

If new love arrived I suppose I wouldn't avoid it but I'm not seeking it out.  I have no desire to.  There are already so many people and opportunities in my life to share my love that I'm hardly lacking.  Not sexual love mind you, but love just the same.  And quite frankly, I'm overly busy as it is.  My life is full and abundant and love abounds.  I do miss not having more than one sexually loving relationship... actually, I still miss K, so when I yearn, I yearn for him.  And I miss my husband not having another lover, one that doesn't create undue jealously and contribute to my recurring post traumatic stress.  We are getting older rather than younger, obviously, and I sometimes wonder if this is it.  I'm thankful for the experiences we've had but to be truthful, I'm not really satisfied and ready to throw in the towel.

But I love my life, as stressful as it has been these last couple of years, and I'm sincerely grateful for this sweet man by my side, and the abundance and adventure we experience together.  I am ready to dive deep into 2013 and get soaking wet with whatever it has in store for me.

Knocked For A Loop

So much sadness I can't sleep.  Yesterday it oppressed me like a heavy blanket.  I attempted to just be with it without attaching stories.  The tears kept running down my face as I moved throughout my day.  The reasons are obvious.  My son.  My mother.  My granddaughter.  K.  It's been over a year since K. told me he wasn't sexually attracted to me and didn't want to be my lover and I still haven't gotten over it.  And yet I'm not really depressed over that.  The disconnect I experience with him sometimes just knocks me for a loop.

Skinned Knees

I wore a dress to work today that shows my skinned knees.

I've made up a pausable lie just in case someone asks.

"I tripped jogging up those darn concrete stairs!"

Lover who is my lover felt bad

but I told him it's okay,

that all new sexual relationships

deserve the initiation of rug burn.

They really hurt too.

But the pain brings a sweet memory.

Love and Death Require it of Me

I woke this morning thinking that the reason I stay in difficult relationships is because it is the perfect practice for dying.  I'm clear that I also stay for the love.  I'm not talking about receiving love from another although that's a part of it.  I'm talking about staying in the flow of love, keeping myself in love--not "in love" with another, although that's part of it too.  But I'm intent on keeping myself in the truth of love, the reality that love is everywhere, permeates everything, whatever the circumstance and to know love in this way. But I second guess myself always.  I chastise myself over my inability to let go, to swim ashore and walk away.  But the truth is, I'm letting go constantly as I grapple with the influx of consistently mixed messages and the lack of being met, that keep me off balance.  I struggle to keep my head above water, to breath, and relax into what is.  And to realize that it's about meeting the other where they are also, and that is very tricky...meeting and being met when two people are in different places.

I see this vision of myself as being in a boat with LWINMLT, floating along on calm waters with my foot hanging over the side, dangling in the cool wetness.  I'm enjoying his company but also, I'm just enjoying life.  Enjoying his love, while being connected to the big love that permeates all of life.  The next thing I know, a storm has hit, the water is rough and I'm thrown from the boat.  I'm struggling to swim, to keep my head above the water and he doesn't even acknowledge my predicament.  He offers no hand to pull me back into the boat, he's preoccupied with something else and is looking the other way.  I'm on my own.  So I do whatever it takes to survive and get myself back into the boat.  I pull myself back in, I'm soaking wet and half drowned and then he turns toward me and offers me a towel, seemingly surprised that I was even overboard--as if I had jumped in the water of my own accord.   The next thing I know the storm has passed and the sun is shining again as we continue floating along on calm waters.

This same scenario plays out again and again in my relationship with him.  And every time I'm in the water, struggling to get back into the boat I look over at the shore and wonder if it's not more prudent to swim ashore and walk away.  Why don't I just abandon ship and let him float away...oblivious of me and my struggle?  Would he even notice, or care, that I was gone?  Why do I care for someone so much, that at times, seems to care so little about me?  But there are so many mixed messages.  There is no doubt that there is a lot of love available in that boat, when the water is calm and the sun is shining and it's so obvious that he cares. But the pain and struggle when I'm thrown overboard and his back is turned is excruciatingly painful.  I attempt, but it's so difficult, not to take these things personally.

This is my dilemma.  I know I have deep abandonment issues rooted in my father's choice to not be a part of my life.  He turned his back on me.  He ignored me.  He never offered me a helping hand.  He was unavailable.  I'm vulnerable to a man's attention in this regard.  I have a thing for unavailable men.  Men who open their hearts wide and invite me in and in the flick of a switch, become unavailable...and then available again.  The love is obviously there but something is missing.  The commitment I suppose.  I don't fall in love lightly, and when I do,  when I allow these men into my heart,  I get very attached.  At the same time, I'm a big girl and fairly emotionally mature.  I do my utmost to take responsibility for myself, feeling my emotions,  understanding the truth of my stories, and experiencing my pain.  I try my very best to not hold others responsible when I'm working through my stuff.  At the same time, human life is about connecting with others, we affect one another in big ways and love asks us, love requires us, to show up.  So to the very best of my ability, I keep showing up.  I don't swim to the shore and walk away.  Sometimes I think this is most foolish of me.  But that's my "father" in that boat.

Besides that,  my father is on the shore too.  It doesn't matter if I crawl back into the boat or swim to the shore.  My issues with abandonment will greet me wherever I go.  So I keep showing up for love.  It requires this of me.  And I know that this showing up for love, is preparing me to show up for death.

Over the Edge

The picture sent me over the edge.
What the fuck is it that I'm trying to hang on to?
The emotional investment is just not equitable.