mystic_savage

Went out with Allen yesterday -- the first former lover I've gone out with since deciding to be single and celibate for the next X months. One thing that became clear over our time together is that I haven't figured out where my boundaries are physically. There was flirtatious energy, mostly on his side, but I felt it. I was tired and cranky at the beginning of the socializing -- we went for coffee (at the place where the guy from Texas always calls me "spitfire" and called Allen "boss"). Then went to the Junction, ate at Taco del Mar, wandered the aisles at Bartell's and came back to my house to color and talk, or not talk, as we colored. It was a wonderful time and I was glad to have made the space in my weekend for Allen, although in general I'm feeling hostile at the idea of having any people around me. There was hugging and hand-holding and a kiss at the end of the night. It felt natural -- my love for Allen and Chuck and Andrew hasn't disappeared, it's as strong as ever -- but I want to be cautious.

One of the things I don't like about being in relationships is the built-in expectation of a certain kind of physical intimacy--not built in by my partners but just inherent in my idea of capital R relationships. I don't want to have transmuted those Relationships to friendships just to find that I've built for myself the same kinds of obligations and patterns and expectations in the friendships that I was feeling confounded and stressed by within the relationships. Don't know if this makes sense to anybody. What I want is authenticity from myself, in every moment. What I hope for is authenticity in every relationship. What I often find is--sliding into patterned ways of being. Hell, I'm still not clear exactly why I wanted to take a break from relationships and dating. I want time to myself, that's clear to me. It's also clear to me that the instant "dating" stops, other social obligations crowd in, eager to take their place. Not sure how to keep time for myself...nor how to be authentic in the time that is for me. Still figuring it out.

It's been long enough since I've had a full-blown stretch of fibro symptoms that I had forgotten what they were like.  A couple of weeks ago I was reminded what the pain was like -- body on fire from the inside out, all over achiness, feeling flu-ish and exhausted and crabby, getting IBS symptoms, the works.  I had it for 3-4 days and it got better each day and had mostly dissipated by the time I got to the doctor last week.  Then this weekend, I must have over done it again.  Little sleep plus lots of effort reorganizing my room.  Stayed home yesterday to try to sleep and recover, but the achiness continued into today.  Went to work, but the pain was so bad I was crying on and off for 3-4 hours this morning.  So:

I've got an appointment with Group Health's pain clinic -- April 10th;
I've downloaded music that's supposed to enhance delta state sleeping;
I'm keeping a pain journal;
I've canceled my dates for the next three nights;

I'm trying to calm down enough to sleep, but I'm wired from so much activity at home tonight -- helping Penny do homework; playing with Sar; helping pick up a game; helping Tera button and unbutton her jacket; watching the play Penny & Sam made up while the rest of us were finishing dinner; mining the ITunes store for songs with the kids' names in the title (we were especially delighted that there is a group called the Elessar Trio doing Latin music!); trying to get Sar settled.  Home was good tonight...and things still hurt.

Sar is waiting for me now to finish this and cuddle him down to sleep.

One last good note from today:  Mike gave me a ride home.  When he heard how bad I was hurting, he offered to pick me up & he arrived right at 5 with a bunch of roses for me on the front seat.   And he made me laugh during the right home.

So it wasn't a bad day.  Just a painful one.

So.  I've been intentionally, consciously polyamorous since I was in my late twenties.  With one notable exception--the first four years of my relationship with K, which, as it turned out, was not actually monogamous at all.  But I was monogamous within it, having adopted monogamy as a spiritual path to see where it led me.  Lots of good places, as it turned out.  I may not have actually been in a monogamous relationship, but I did discover that I am capable of monogamy and could find both peace and freedom in it.  Ironically, those years when I thought I was monogamous were the least lonely and the most emotionally stable years that I've had. 

 

However, I am now intentionally consciously polyamorous, and have been in three stable relationships for over a year and a half and have dated a lot more people.  I love the people I'm with.  I love breklor, with his joie de vivre and immense repertoire of wink-wink nudge-nudge and his spiritual perspective, often more zen than pagan, but certainly affirming of the moment to moment experience of life.  I love iguanahey, whom I burbled about earlier today.   And I love doctorturvy, who has turned out to be the mind-expanding, understanding and wise friend and brother that my real brother (nice and intelligent and bound by convention as he is) could never be.  doctorturvy often feels like a twin to me -- his mind is as dark as my own and we explore a lot of areas in conversation that I would not trust many other people with.  All three of these men are amazing, wonderful lovers, more beauty in human form than I could possibly have imagined two years ago.

 

And I date other people, some more significant than others, some short relationships more troubled than others, some just hedonistic play partners, some who become good friends over time.  Right now, I'm cautiously excited about a new relationship.  He lives within a mile of my house & we can see each other weekly, although he, too, has kids and a full time job.  He is very, very devoted to his wife and very new to poly (thus the caution), but honest and open-minded, and, it turns out, fun.    I have a couple of phone sex friends, and sometime I'm going to have to write about phone sex, because it is its own thing, isn't it.  And those calls aren't limited to sex; they're all over the map, more relating and perspective and processing and perspective.   So:  I'm busy; I love my partners; I have this great full platter at a huge and bountiful feast, and yet…

 
You know--there is this whole other side to my life:  what I call my real life, the part where I work and go home, am greeted at the door by four kids, eat dinner with my housemates, supervise homework, snuggle into bed between my two kids, am asleep by 9, and get up to do it again.  That's the Dragonhouse, my house, with K & J, two lovely monogamously married people who have been my friends for a long time.  We are a community of sorts.  We manage food and housework and yard work together.  We talk late at night sometimes when the kids are asleep.  We share history in the same cohousing community and we share our joy about not being there anymore.  In this side of my life, I am sex-less.  I am unpartnered.  I have work, and responsibility, and lots of parenting woes and financial struggles.    And yet --

And there's my work life, where I am a receptionist and secretary, supporting a handful of people every day, greeting and being greeted by several dozen.  I am liked.  I am reliable.  The atmosphere is positive.  and yet --

There's something missing.  I don’t know if it's something as simple as a piece of perspective, or if it is the true and unfettered intimacy that comes with people who are both in love *and* living together and raising kids together, but there is a disconnect between my love life and my real life.  No matter how much I love my partners and how much I share the details of my life with them and learn the details of their lives, it feels very different from having real economic sharing-the-walls and raising-the-kids partners.  And I realize that for me being polyamorous has never been about having lots of sex or dating a lot or being loved by lots of people.  That's all very nice, but no.  For me, being poly as always been about the hope of being part of a tribe.  Creating a community.  Being part of a damn S-group family a la Robert Heinlein.  Sharing walls with my lovers, and raising kids with them, and growing old with them.  And here's the disconnect:  even though my lovers may share some part of that dream, they're each already living the center of it with somebody else.  There is no one in my life to move in with.  No one to marry.  No one to put a yurt up with in a circle of other people's yurts.  And that, my dears, is the essence of my discontent and the reason that -- in the middle of this huge banquet, surrounded by luscious and tempting dishes of all kinds -- I am hungry.

Spent the weekend in Everson/Nooksack and had a relaxing time. Enjoyed L and C's company, hanging out with them & their kids, getting a bit of a break from my kids (who were fairly reasonable this weekend what with the other kids and the good weather to distract them). Got the car clean and received a bunch of clothes. All is goodness there. This is the G-rated version of the weekend; if you want the "adult themes" version, well...there is one, but I don't have the time to write about it as tactfully as this part of my journal requires or as juicily as it felt for the erotic filter. So let's just say "yum" and leave it at that. Oh and maybe leave a cryptic "she bites!" and "oh wow" for myself so I know that the yum was with J. as well as C. Shoot. This isn't G-rated anymore, is it.

Didn't get on the computer for a couple of days and probably won't have much time to in the next couple of days. I'm tempting that is temping as a receptionist at a construction company in Bellevue  for at least Monday and Tuesday.  It only pays $14 an hour, but I'm glad I took it (in spite of the l-0-o-n-g ass bus commute) because I just got my last paycheck deposited from the UW, and it's just for one day instead of for six days.  Long story, and my mistake, but it means that I've got $89 shiny new dollars in my bank account instead of the $600 or so I suspected.  DOH! Quite ok and casual about it now, but that was a tearful panic attack for a few minutes let me tell you.  I have really, really good friends like breklor and wandawonka though, and they talked me down. I'm fine now.

Owe some people on facebook some messages and contact and so on -- word game plays and what not.  Won't get on at work, so may not catch up with everything until after this assignment ends.  Now:  to pack my lunch for tomorrow, to get ready for bed, to sleep.  Good wishes to all of you.

I just wrote 3600 words and got caught up and even a little ahead on my wordcount for nanowrimo.
I had a wonderful day with breklor yesterday, and nine hours of sleep between the two kids.  Which I needed.  To recover from the wonderful day.  Discovered the world's best coffee-flavored cookies at the M Street Grocery on 8th & Madison. 
I found a good cheesecake recipe that I'm going to adapt to make sugarfree oreo cheesecake for thanksgiving weekend with wandawonka and iguanahey.
I'm mostly caught up on work stuff and I don't have a cold anymore.
I get three more writing nights and a writing weekend this week.