Borrowed Grief in the Fancy Garden

 

"It's too late to change your mind

you let loss

be your guide."--Broken Bells

By the Monday after Valentine's Day, the city had been frozen for weeks. Ice on top of snow on top of ice, and the temperature was seldom higher than 20 degrees. I've been through fifty-one Februaries, and most of them seemed like they would never, ever end. I'd been trapped here learning to love myself with varying success. My brain imagined Guy Next Door having the most lighthearted and casual adventures while I worked my steps and did my therapy sessions. It was time to thaw. It was time for colors and light and alive smells. 

So BFF-Formerly-Sweetie and I planned a day at the Fancy Gardens, almost as an emergency. We were both excited to look at colors and I planned to flood the entire internet with flower pictures.

But BFF's back was out! She had a brace on and was walking with two canes instead of two. It broke my heart the way it always did when she was hurting and it also made me remember times when she'd been hurting and I'd been unkind. When I'd been heartless and impatient. I don't think I could ever forgive myself for the ways I've let my BFF down. Here I am, lucky enough to have someone to stand by me, to be my Emergency Contact. It's been twenty-five years (That gum you like is back in style.) of the deepest and most meaningful relationship of my life, and I still couldn't figure out how to *save* her or to at least make up for all the pain and neglect.

Her version might just be that her back hurt and we had a really lovely thawing day looking at flowers. But OCD and codependency had different interpretations for me.

There was another memory of The Fancy Garden around the edges of my (Nonetheless taking SO many pictures of flowers, do not worry!) 

fraught-feeling soul: The Shy One. On February 6th it was three years since he broke up with me. The week before that, I'd taken myself to the garden for winter emergency reasons, yes, but also just to listen to myself.

Things had been off between us since he got back from his trip home. He was colder and more elusive and I was kinda going crazy because he came home with "a little malaria" and I couldn't come tend to him, couldn't help "fix" the situation. And I was scared, because I'd never encountered malaria outside of novels. My imagination ran wild and I thought he was going to die. I mean, everyone's going to, but I really was afraid I he was on his way out.

(One time he told me it was like I knew he was going away soon, like I was trying to have the whole relationship at once. I've wished for years I could go back and be more present, more patient, more accepting, but I was what I was, and so was he. I don't wish like I used to that I could turn back time and do right by him, but I am TERRIFIED of making the same mistakes.)

Anyway, back to 2023 Fancy Garden. Texting flowers had been our thing, Shy One and I, but though he had recovered he was still being snappish and uncommunicative. I remember looking at a shot I took, a semi-lewd close-up of a fiery orange amaryllis, with bitterness in my heart, like, if he's not going to say more than "good morning" with no emoji, I'm not sending him one more piece of art he doesn't care about.

Back in 2026, with the glass-warmed sun shining on me and so many different purples to look at,I was also in the middle of making third-date plans with Sweet Valentine and he was Not Texting Back. And OCD was telling me it was Shy One all over again, that I was making the same stupid mistake. I felt one of my deepest fears: What if I can ONLY be drawn to people who really aren't drawn to me,  who don't text me back, who don't need me for anything at all.

(They tell me in Codependents Anonymous that I can be loved without being needed, and I totally feel that sometimes! But not on this particular day.)

(I know from my OCD support groups that texting is one of the hardest things for those of us with Relationship OCD to handle. I'm definitely the only neurospicy hottie who regularly wants to fling her phone into the sea.)

(Back in 2001 when BFF-Formerly-Sweetie and I were getting together, it was the red light on the answering machine that used to vex me! But there weren't so many other things to check so the madness of it was less maddening.)

We had a beautiful day at the gardens. BFF was glad she came, if still hurty. I still very much wanted her hurt to stop. I've always been more emotionally fragile than she is, but her physical fragility is so hard to handle. I can't help but flash forward to a day when I'll be without her, when I'll SOMEHOW have to figure life out without her. I hope that's in a long, LONG time but sometimes, it seems like it's already here.

I cried a lot of the way home; good, productive tears.

It turns out I wasn't OCDing about Sweet Valentine's quiet, or not JUST OCDing. I was kinda reading the room. He'd been wondering if he couldn't live up to all his obligations and still be poly. He wanted us to slow down so he could listen to himself about what he really wants, what he's really capable of.

That is actually so lovely! But friends, I melted down. All the griefs of the day and of the years came out in a tangle to this already-overwhelmed-but-extremely lovely man with a life just as big and messy as mine. After two dates, I would like to have preserved more mystery, but he heard me about two-thirds of the way to my worst.

But he stayed in the conversation and had the conflict with me. I still felt a warm soul-connection to him and he SOMEHOW still liked me, even after I got so tangled. So that's why the month break, which has a little more than two weeks left. Most days, I feel carried and faithful about this, like I can trust both of us to listen to ourselves, to do what we really want. I trust, if he comes back to me, that it'll mean that's what he really wants. I think I already know what I really want, but who knows how two more weeks will change me?

That night when we were agreeing to the break, I told him I hope our respective Totoros will take us just where we need to go. He said he loves Totoro, because of course he does.

So if you want to know how this story will turn out, here's the only person who knows:

Southern Charmer Postscript

 

My oldest cat is sixteen and she's been sick. The first time I turned on the heater this fall, she abruptly left her perpetual spot next to me on the couch and fled for more hide-y places upstairs. She sleeps on the vent under the vanity or on a big suitcase I took out when I changed the clothes over for winter.

This plus the coming (impending) election was giving all of life a way-too-urgent feeling. It's a feeling I had all the time when I was younger and unmedicated and would contemplate the shortness of the lilac season. I knew they'd be gone soon and I worried I wasn't enjoying them enough while they were here.

The one thing that WASN'T making me feel that way was The Southern Charmer. After our lovely night together, he told me that, considering his recent breakup, he felt like he'd gone too fast into sex with me. I took that to mean that he wanted to slow down, not stop. We chatted every few days and I hoped we'd eventually make it back to smoochtown.

I was lying on the floor next to Oldest Cat's ersatz suitcase bed, holding her paw, when I decided to check in with SC. His update was that he had made a new friend, a platonic one, and they'd hung out a couple times lately.

I thought he'd been laying low because of his breakup grief, but here he was making a lovely new confidante. I started to cry, realizing he'd left me behind a few weeks ago without me realizing. People will say literally anything when they mean "We're not a match" and no matter how many times it happens or how many paragraphs I've paragraphed, I still miss getting it sometimes. It's a thing that makes me feel every one of the seventeen points of my Autism Spectrum Quotient. https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/

I asked him why he hadn't spent some of that time with me. He said again the thing about having gone too fast, how he couldn't handle the emotional intimacy right now. I didn't even know we were DOING emotional intimacy! A true first. I heard it now, a break-off, not a slowdown. 

Making Out In Front of a Romcom (ala) and Other Perfect Things: Part Four

 This series is taking forever to write, what with the whole triumph-of-evil thing un-hottening life most of the time. (Not last night though, I had a really nice date! But that's a story for another day.) Whatever stage of grief today finds you in, I'm with you. I love you. And I'm here to provide cuteness whenever I can bear it.

Back to being splayed out on the beach-day of my bed, with my beautiful sweet Southern Charmer smiling down at me.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

His finger slipped down into my absolute sopping wetness and he said:

"I'd like to be inside you."

*****Welcome***** is the emotion I felt as he slid inside me. I felt so filled and fulfilled, happy and free, He was SO PRETTY and so good at kissing and so beautifully and easily part of me.

After what seemed like a good long time, he started apologizing and I didn't really know why. 

"It's been a hard time, I've been going through a breakup, I'll have to owe you."

I think he felt like he was coming too fast, but even if he had been, I wouldn't have seen it as a problem. I always feel gratified by a quick come, like, oh good, this guy is willing to give me what he has.

"I need it," I said, as I always say, when he came. (Or fake-came? Maybe he just needed to stop? Maybe this is the moment when the breakup grief washed back in for him? Oh I wish I could have known and soothed him, that I could have taken care of whatever had brought out all those sorries.

I switched the Donald Glover to lofi as we cuddled up. He asked if it was okay to fall asleep and I said sure, I just have to get up and have my night cereal. After Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I climbed over him to the inside spot and (Just like that, says the part of my brain that thinks only of Sex and the City) I was falling asleep (trying to) with a guy for the first time since The Shy One.

I haven't gotten any better at it in the intervening years. Though we cuddled up sweetly, I felt so alert. I thought about what had just happened. I thought about whether he would stay for breakfast, if he would drink coffee on my couch.

But he woke me up at six AM, same cursed hour whenTSO always left, and seemed a little distant, like he was already out the door. His voice had the cadence of a Barack Obama, if Barack Obama was late for a school presentation.

At least I was able to fully sleep then, warm and content but already a little lonesome for him. And I kind of still am, all these weeks later.

Mr. Long Distance is a Dear, Part Two

 

Since The Shy One, I’ve been kind of frozen as to whether or not to have texting preferences. I’d rather a within-a-couple-hours reaction than a left-on-read. I’d rather know what time a date is than wing it. I think those wants are okay, but I still have TSO haunting me with his “How long am I allowed to go without texting? I’m not trying to be mean, I just want to know what’s going through your mind.”

(There was a lot that had been going through my mind, but most of all it was the fact that he’d recently endured “a little bit of malaria” and I hadn’t heard from him much for a few days.)

(It had been about eight hours that day in late January 2023, for the record, which isn’t long and also is. If I hadn’t been honest about being worried that day, would we have somehow made it? Still bargaining I guess.)

(Made what?)

(I’ve started going to Codependents’ Anonymous meetings, they’re helping with this particular spiral. And others!)

The day, Tuesday-before-last, when I was supposed to have my sexy video date with Mr. Long Distance, he got busy with work stuff and didn’t confirm the time, so I wasn’t sure if we were still on. In the meantime, I was working on a poster for our city’s Trans Visibility Day tribute to Nex Benedict. I’s also listened to one too many episodes of Talking Backwards, a Twin Peaks recap podcast. Now that I’m typing this, I realize I was just too vulnerable and sad to try such a new adventure that evening. It’s maybe just as simple as I wasn’t in the mood.

Which, whoa, I could have just said!

Instead, when the not-confirmed time arrived, I found myself sobbing into my thousand-piece puzzle, just stuck in a loop. Should I tell him I just like clearer communication, especially since we’re so far apart? Do I wait til we know each other better to mention it? Do I just say goodbye now so I don’t find myself later in love with someone who’d hiss “Why? Why are you crying?” at me in the middle of the night.

To be clear, aside from a similarly cute accent, Mr. Long Distance is not like The Shy One at all. He’s bolder and more transparent, more grounded in his life, in his creativity, and in his skin.  He definitely didn’t have anything to do with the grief that was bubbling up.

When the time came to chat, I guess I just was the mess that I am. I told him I was confused about whether we were on for our date or not. I let the feelings leak out in some pretty embarrassing texts, but bless him, oh BLESS YOU Mr. Long Distance, he hung in there.

 

Proud Graduate of Summer Therapy!

 

“It really pisses me off that in like six months, I’ll be like oh, poor us, just a bad match. I hate magnanimous.”

--Me, a Little Over Six Months Ago

The last session I had with Summer Therapist, Tuesday before last, I’d given myself the assignment of telling her the whole fortune-cookie-Thursday-to “It’s Monday morning” Shy One breakup story without turning the frustration back on myself. I had the feeling she’d wanted me to get a little better at blaming him for what happened, and it seemed like a good experiment! It was!

I liked not stopping the story to empathize with TSO’s perspective, blame myself, or say for the millionth time “How did I let this happen?” or “Why couldn’t I have just made it til Tuesday?” (Or made it til our trip, or not sent so many needy texts, etc) Bargaining is a really powerful destination on the Billy Map of Grief!

Dear Young People Who Probably Don't Remember The Family Circus: This is what I mean by the Billy Map of Grief! He goes all over the place!

But when the experiment was over, there was something I had to admit to myself about my (dear!) Summer Therapist—she was really into the idea that TSO hadn’t really loved me! She even, in the midst of some advice about taking it slow heartwise, suggested that maybe I hadn’t really loved him either!

This seemed crazy to me, because I’d started therapy with the goal of taking the TSO experience on board, letting myself believe it had really happened so I could let it go! I was hanging on to him in my head and heart because I wasn’t sure it had happened, because maybe I thought he was the only one who could witness the fact that I’d been loved by a man. Of course, there was another witness there, the only one I’ll ever really need to check with: me.

I kindly typed this all into the therapy app and said a gracious and grateful goodbye to the Summer Therapist. Then I called BFF and sobbed. It was the kind of sobbing (I just mistyped it as “subbing”) that scrubs out my insides, that came up from my soul in a wail and a gust. And then I felt better.

I could see why ST wanted to downplay the relationship—it was a way of trying to make me be kinder to myself, to get me to expect more. But in wanting to assure me I deserve better, she ended up seeming dismissive of this experience that had meant a lot to me. I didn’t need it not to be love in order to let it go. I didn’t need to (as ST did) dismiss the realities of poly happiness in order to envision a partner all my own.

It made me realize that no matter how monogamous I get, and I think it might be quite monogamous indeed, I’ll never subscribe to the narrow, heteropatriarchal definition of love that my ST was (probably unintentionally) leading me towards. That’s because, no matter who or how I love, I’ll always be queer, I’ll always be silly, I’ll always be curious and expansive and wholehearted. I’ve never been more grateful for my adventures, for my weird heart, for the messy and ill-advised and beautiful alchemy I’ve always been able to lead myself into. And out of!

I realized a thing that maybe shouldn’t have been new at almost 49: I’m the only one I need to check with about what’s happened to me. I know when I’ve loved and been loved. I don’t have to run it by anyone. I don’t have to prove it.

Friends, it’s still a Billy map. Though I don’t visit the Hidden Folder much any more, there are days when my heart is full of him, of them, of bitterness, of what ifs. But there are also days when the banter is going well on the apps, or I get turned on by myself, or I start to picture what Boyfriend Life would be like, and I’m so, so grateful for all of it, for everything ever. Magnanimous is my heart’s default setting, mostly, and I hope that never changes.

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

 

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

I want to try and remember, the way our bodies loved each other so easily, traversed all the very real distances between us and bridged the gap. Together. The most possible together.

The warmth of him. The way he gave himself to me wholly and (almost) without reservation. When he held my hand, my hand felt home, it felt made to be there, folded into infinity, across ages, across universes, folded into whatever divine thing made him. The best possible hands, the best possible me, glowing with light and safety and hope and wholeness.

And the kisses, slipped together and seamless.

Last time I quoted Lottie, this time it’s Lettie. In the bonkers treasure that is Fast X, Michelle Rodrigues says to Vin Diesel something like “If you spend too much time looking in that rearview, there’s things you might miss…like eternity.” But eternity doesn’t work that way, Lettie! Eternity is everywhere and everything and always, you can’t face toward it or away from it, it wraps you up and winds you into the solidness of being, grounds you to the center of the universe and doesn’t let go. Eternity holds your hand. Is this the purple-est prose ever inspired by a The cars..they drift! Movie? I don’t know. All those big, big explosions.

The Shy One only slept over a handful of times, and each time, no matter how many times I’d gotten off (SO MANY) it was so hard to sleep next to him. I was wound up tight with excitement and wonder, not wanting to miss any chance to feel him breathing next to me. Mostly, I slept after he left in the early morning, exhausted and glowing. The sadness of him leaving so quick only occurred to me after I woke up. There should have been a way for him to stay and make me pancakes, but there was always the beautiful pull of home.

It wasn’t all a starfield of bliss. Once, he grabbed my hand to show me how he wanted his penis stroked, impatience and contempt glimmering through him in a way that made me wonder if I’d been doing it all wrong all along, if there was only one meant-for-him person in the world who knew how to do it right.

When I wrote the first draft of these paragraphs, my heart just melted and filled with peace: My darling just wanted to go home. I wish I’d found a way to be kinder about it, and kinder to myself about it. I wish, wish, wish I could have been a kind of home for him, that someday I’ll be that kind of home for somebody new. Somebody mine.

I got self-conscious sometimes about my blowjob skills. I worried aloud once that I was bad at it and I think he actually agreed. He could have meant “Yes, I know you’re self-conscious about it.” Or “Yes, you’re bad at sex.”

Given time, and maybe less judgement, I could have learned. I want to have that part of intimacy, where you take your time learning somebody’s body, letting him learn yours. Every pairing or constellation is a new beginning, and I hope for many more chances to learn.

This morning, I can see myself there in the middle of my biggest dream, maybe being bad at blowjobs, definitely fucking it up in other ways, and feel peace. Today, just for a little while, I’m tuned into my eternity wavelength, past present and future and never and nowhere all at once. Stillness and peace and ungrasping love. Something like acceptance.

A Beautiful In-Between Time

 

“We are still somehow bound together in a giant conspiracy of love, mutual care, and ongoing life. As we are not lost to creation, we are not lost to one another.”

-Martha W. Hickman, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief

The past few months have been a prolific untangling of griefs. For a while, I had a list of eight main griefs and I rolled a D8 each morning to see which one to think about. I only wrote about a page and a half on them each morning for a while, but they really helped my sorrows get less crowded and easier to think though. Then I found Ms. Hickman’s cute book in the Little Free Library and now I prompt myself by opening to random pages—that made the grief writing more floaty and free, more sourced from the divine.

The idea of my inner tanglings being part of all creation, being part of a “giant conspiracy of love” feels so freeing, so hopeful. I can feel the invisible string between me and The Shy One healing, transcending, becoming more of a spider web than a boat anchor chain. He’s starting to feel more like a wished-well and beloved but not-my-business stranger than a permanent gaping hole of want in my soul. Most of the time.

That progress is bittersweet. I’m gradually making room in my heart for myself and for whoever is next. I’m spending less energy spiritually reaching out. It feels like the pain of being without him won’t last forever. Sometimes. But that means that someday he’ll really be gone. He’s really been gone for two-and-a-half moons, I know, but the pain is still a way to claim him, a magical-thinking way to keep staying in touch.

A better way to keep the love alive is to appreciate the ways that he changed me. The goddessness he helped me to tap into seems to be sticking around. I do still worry that I’m not lovable, not family-able, but I’m convinced down in my bones that I’m beautiful and worthy. The hotness I felt with and from him extends beyond the sparkly box of frilly things, beyond ALL the gorgeous pictures of both of us saved in my Hidden folder. It’s starting to feel like a permanent part of me.

It's deeper, somehow, than the brazen sexiness that has buoyed me through these ten years of adventures. A soul-shimmer, a glint of mischief that sparkles out whenever I meet a stranger’s eye. Even on a bad phone date, it’s there, playfully jollying everyone through.

And there’s this thing that happened the other day! An app guy asked me what I’m looking for and instead of doing a bunch of poly/hookup culture-equivocating, I wrote back “Boyfriend material!!!” with three Care emojis. Such an ordinary thing to be looking for, but it made me feel like a QUEEN. Like a Crystal Gem tapping into her powers, Rose Quartz but maybe less problematic. Or not!

I hope I changed him too, in some beautiful way, though I thought he was perfect. I hope I somehow lightened the load of the world for him, the way he did for me. I hope I’m living in The Shy One’s bones telling him that he’s beautiful, worthy, and free, that he’s not here on earth for duty or punishment. I hope I’m in his ear when he’s writing fiction, nagging him to maybe let his protagonists win once in a while.

I hope, like me sometimes, his soul gets lit up by all these profligate Ramadan flowers and he feels buoyant, playful and, I’ll keep saying it, free.

 

Two Moons Later

January 3rd moon--we were free and in love.

I wasn’t going to type this one up, but there, last night, was the full moon looking down from a halo in the sky when I went to take the trash out. Moving on is a labyrinth. It’s the cycles of the moon. Grief is an unpredictable tide.

Last week, I had that lovely burst of horny healthy moving-on inspiration, and it was real. But then, just as quickly as the happy, hopeful vibes had come: a wall. A panic. The vulnerability, hopefulness, and mostly-real self-assurance it takes to be dating is A LOT, and I just sort of crashed.

It helped to tell the lukewarmly interested new guy that I heard his lukewarmness, that I was glad I’d gotten to meet him but we weren’t a match. But the feeling of exposure kept coming until I deactivated Feeld and took it off my homescreen along with Hinge and Bumble. I turned off all the notifications.

I felt the panic recede after that but, close to the end of my workday last Friday, a new tide of missing The Shy One came in. The way I deal with that grief is finite: I sing along to Frank Ocean’s Moon River. I screech along to Robyn’s Dancin’ on My Own. Sometimes when I really want to twist the heartbreak knife a little, I put on Virgo’s Groove. (I didn’t realize that Beyoncé sings about “You’re the love of my life” in that song-aaaaaaalllll the times I heard it when he and I were snuggling, I never noticed. At least I know my life doesn’t have just one love.)

I wanted, when I parked at home Friday night and the blaring speakers went quiet, to find out if The Shy One had really loved me. It had been an unspoken agreement with myself for a few weeks that his love wasn’t real, it was a way to be less mad at him for going away, less mad at myself for not finding a way to feel okay in that relationship. I knew where to look, that his second-to last letter was probably right there in my “sent” folder.

It had to be finite. I do NOT go down heartbreak rabbit holes, my depressive brain can only confront these things a little at a time. So I set a timer for 20 minutes. I got into child’s pose and said a prayer for him, for me, for moving on, for new love. I sang the loving kindness meditation I wrote myself right after the breakup:

May I bloom and expand.

May I remain curious.

May I honor the longing.

May I thank and let go.

May I put it away til it feels
easier.

May I hear my heart, my body, and my mind.

May I internalize the love.

May I leave scarcity behind.

May I live in faith.

The Shy One’s second-to-last letter was from after our second-to-last fight. It was full of paragraphs and plans, apologies and ideas for how we could get closer, how he hoped to help me feel more secure. It was a lovely letter, hopeful, kind, and attentive.

Rereading it, I felt my body calm down and my heart quiet: He’d loved me. The knowledge was like a warm internal blanket, soft, solid, dependable, secure. I knew I had that love with me, that it was going to be a resource for whatever comes next.

Then I read through the WhatsApp messages from his Sierra Leone trip—no struggle. Just hotness, kindness, and future plans. And one video I definitely was not ready to look at, maybe never will be. My soul aches to think of the couple who wrote those texts, who selected those GIFs, so full of hopes, so briefly free.

I was done before the timer went off, full and secure. I worked on my puzzle and lay down for a peaceful sleep.

It definitely doesn’t feel like that all the time. They say (or used to say in, like, the Eighties when I was little?) that it takes at least half the time you were with someone to get over them. If I count from our first date, which I do, we were together ten months, so that’s five. Two down, three to go?

I don’t know how long it will take til my body stops missing him, stops wanting him only. Dear moon, dear universe, dear Christmas box of pretty lingerie (a completely reasonable thing to pray to!) please let him not have been my last love. Yes, give me time to honor him and heal, but don’t take too long sending the next sweetheart. Please.

Knotty Thursday: Figure 8 Knot and Tiny Steps Forward

 

(Note: the first draft of this post was a little more chill, but I’m in the middle of watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so, yeah.)

It’s hard to find any hope about love. I’m impatient for the grief to be over, but about once a day, it sirens out. If it’s too close to work time, I just talk it through—I call BFF-Formerly-Sweetie and have Ten Minutes of Sadness. She listens to me loop though the whys and what ifs and whats nexts.

But if there’s enough time before work, I wail. Wail and drive or wail from under the weighted blanket or next to my In Full Bloom flowers-of-the-world thousand piece puzzle. The sadness wails out from my guts, harsh but self-loving, excruciating but productive.

It comes from my guts because that’s where my soul lives, and my soul has lost one of its dearest mates. The Shy One sent me off in search of My Person, but that’s just not how I’m built. I belong to him, as much as I belong to the rest of the characters in this story. As much as I belong to the spring azaleas or the Hope Diamond or the cats.

Someday, with distance and time that belonging-to-him will feel safe again, and I’ll love things for the way they were, not for how we wished they could be. Grace. Forward motion. Lavish and abundant and loud and beautifully vexing love with someone or someones who fit. But my soul says not yet. My soul whispers “come back” like a prayer.

Maybe The Shy One’s soul was only meant for one mate. Maybe that’s the unbridgeable ocean between us. It’s not for me to know.

For now, tiny steps toward the brazen and sexy person I was when he met me. One knot a week, and then back to my puzzle and my soothing movie podcasts. I’m proud of this knot, little and ordinary but infinite.

 

Pagan Boy Visits in a Dream

 

A few weeks ago, there was this dream. I’ve had variations of this one lots of times--Pagan Boy and I were getting back together. We had a whole sexy thing brainstormed, but then I stepped out of his apartment for a moment. We lived in an art installation, the way you sometimes do in dreams. I spent the whole rest of the dream (I think it’s Prozac that makes my dreams so long and Byzantine…) trying to get back to his place. There was an electricity map where you could check to see who was home. I thought I’d find him back there, but there was someone else.

I woke up so sad. We’d finally made a date, we were finally on-again, but I realized all over again that he’s gone. Passed away from Covid last year while we were planning a remote friend-date to watch The Apple. We’ll never get back together. We’ll never meet for coffee and flirt. He’s just gone.

The griefs of Covid and its attendant tragedies take a long time to sift though sometimes. Everyone knows the stages of grief don’t come like a ladder, step by step.

Like any other lover, he… visits? during self-love times, and that happened the other night. It was a real memory, a real day in the summer of 1994. He was moody and I was crampy, but we went to the local naked swimming waterfall anyway. We sat on the margins of the fun, barely stitched together in our own misery.

I was self-conscious then about my tampon string, but my present day remembers one moment with great warmth and shimmer. Pagan Boy watched me from the shore or on a stone in the middle of the stream while I crouched down in the shallow water and opened my legs to him. The cold water and his half attention lit up my clit in 1994 and in 2022. He couldn’t really see me and I couldn’t feel much besides the cramps, but still, an opening up, a fresh opening-up.

We re-broke-up not long after that sunny sad day, but we shared a bed as friends after club nights a few more times. His monumental snores drove my roommates crazy, and I was smushed into the wall by our two monumental bodies in the bed. The smush of him felt good to me, made me feel real and loved.

We’d overhear the roommates fucking in the next room and the air between us would get tense and frustrated, but still, he stayed. Still, we slept.

By the time, in the twenty-teens, we were having coffee in the same town where my sister lives, we were both poly and kinky. He was an oasis of being myself in the midst of any family weekend. Without that oasis, I really don’t know what to do.

 

Unicorn Stuff, Part Two: New Hearts, Old Grief

 

As I’ve been going through some old unicorn and/or metamour stories (What a very nice assignment I gave myself!) two things became clear: 1. I’ve been a little reluctant to admit the kinds of closeness I wanted because 2. My early adventures are steeped in the confusion and grief of my divorce from BFF-Formerly-Sweetie.

Looking back at the story of The Steampunks (This gold-star breakup that didn’t really take is a good example: https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-girl-crush-wall-of-grief-and-gold.html?zx=592a17ae48503cbd ) I had forgotten I was drawn to both of them. I only pursued him, though, partly because I was hankering for dudes after all my time on Lesbian Island trying to fight the bi-ness, but partly because it’s easier for me to learn one person, at least at first.

But I also had this imagined binary in my head, a loyalty-like-thing to BFF-Formerly Sweetie—I felt like an attraction to a woman was extra-betraying her. Since I’d given attraction to men as my main reason for divorce, it didn’t feel fair to still be attracted to women too. Embarrassingly, I still sort of feel this way sometimes, like liking a woman would be the ultimate betrayal of Sweetie. Being a divorced bi lady who mostly likes men is really weird sometimes.

The couples aspect of being bi still feels too big and too out of reach, too outside the boundaries of what I’m allowed. This isn’t because of anything BFF-Formerly-Sweetie said then or now. Playing with a couple, the possibility of belonging to a couple, through any combination of romance and friendship, seems like asking for too much. Even boyfriend-and-beloved-friend-metamour(s) seems too much to hope for, but I hope to learn to let myself own that wish.

In my gratitude for The Steampunks and the perspective that’s come from the last nine years I forgot how painful the breakups from them (There were four different breakups from Steampunk Guy, I just couldn’t stay away. This is part of why I’ve gotten good at staying away now.) were, how much it hurt to be told I couldn’t play with him after I divorced--“We only play with partnered people.” is truly one of the cruelest poly rules I’ve encountered.

I can see why the tears poured out when I was worried about Mrs. Shy One vetoing me, about not truly fitting into The Shy One’s life—those fears were mixed up with divorce grief and shame at wanting so badly to be approved of and the losses and indignities that came from past couples.

But every dater, every human, is walking around with past griefs and indignities. Though I’ve been journaling about past constellations privately, I don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the losses of the past, on the bitternesses that bloom out of couple privilege and my own mistakes and garden-variety thoughtlessness. If I did that, I would truly never make it to the next snuggle.

Instead, if I should encounter another couple I’m wildly drawn to, I’d like to give myself the compassion and space to absorb those emotions, to acknowledge the monumental size and power of that particular want. I’d like to learn to believe that a loving couple or boyfriend-and-metamour(s) romance is something I deserve to hope for. Of course, that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll get it, but if I do, I’ll do my best to welcome it in with kindness and an expansive heart, and most of all, a deep and boundless care for my tender self.

Rest in Snuggles, Pagan Boy

 

I so, so wish I’d written him his High Fidelity paragraphs before he passed away from Covid-19 two weekends ago. I think he’d have liked them, especially the smutty parts. More than anything, he deserved to know how important he was to me, how he has built and structured my life since I was 19. I miss him so, SO much. I’m having a rare moment of not knowing what to say.

 

Pagan Boy and I dated (though I don’t know if we’d have called it that) on and off from roughly (ha) 1993 to 1995. I think? I met him during the Perfectly 1993 Guy months and he gorgeously helped me to pick up the pieces after Perfectly 1993 Guy was gone. (Well not all the way gone. They seldom are.)

 

Some decade-plus amount of time later, Pagan Boy moved to the same town as my sister, so he and I sometimes got to have flirty coffee when Sweetie and I were visiting the family. I was delighted to learn we had both grown up to be poly, though I think it stuck a little better for him. He was always the same, so giant, so warm, such a twinkle in his eye—it’s no wonder his pagan friends called him “Pan.” He was like a walking Tom Robbins novel but without all the pesky gender essentialism. Or something like that.

 

I love(d) him so, so much, that slightly sparky friend-love that has run through so many of my friendships with guys.  When we dated, the connection was undressing-each-other-on-the-way-up-the-stairs-to-his-apartment passionate, but the connection between us could never quite gel, could never really decide what it was. I realized years later that we’d both been navigating depression brains, without the words or resources to deal with depression that we would both eventually find. We were both so sad and so in love with life at the same time—what if we’d found a way to lean on each other? I guess we sort of did.

 

Anyway back then, we’d spend lighthearted hours having sex or watching Mystery Science Theater, but also so much time in a semi-stupor wrapped in blankets on the living room floor in front of the TV. The curtains were so often drawn against some sunny day I felt like we should be out in. We were the living enactment of what The Smiths meant when they sang about “spending warm summer days indoors,” and you know I’ve been known to commit some frightening verse.

 

As lovers (sorry, there’s not a better word) we were (comet) Pluto-a slanted orbit out off kilter with each other, emotionally and physically in the same solar system but also not. I wanted to be a real girlfriend, I did try, but something always held us both back. He broke things off with me the same day I painted him The Moon Card. We were The Moon Card. When I’m done writing this I’ll Google and remind myself what that means.

 

It’s weird (or not, see also: Sweetie) to begin with such a sense of naked, confusing turmoil and end in such a place of certainty and grace. Here in 2021, we were texting through bad movies together. I was wondering if I could also ask if he’d like to sext. (A fellow switch, I know he’d have been GOOD at it.) The last thing he sent me, after rescheduling a movie plan during his Covid treatment, was one of those Messenger heart things that explodes into a bunch of floaty hearts when you open it. It was exactly perfect, exactly him.

 

I have this picture, a selfie of him and me at my mom’s Christmas party in 2014. You can see the warmth and softness pouring off of him, the calm happiness in both of our faces, maybe partly because we were both full of my mom’s Christmas toffee. (It’s a lot of loss in one selfie, a lot that the last six years have taken away.) Toffee or no, you can see the warmth in his eyes, a love that wasn’t just for me or my family but for everyone and everything in the world. Outside our mopey post-teenage years, I’ve never seen him look at me any other way.

 

He is SO handsome in the picture that I wonder a little what kept me from being with him. We weren’t good for each other, but also, we were. I love and miss him so, so much and I know I’ll have a lot more to say.

 

 

I Miss My White Supremacist Mom Part Two

I want to try and piece together the beginning of Covid, familywise. Just before the quar hit, I would have said I was close with my mom and aunts. In February, Sweetie and I spent a day at my late Grandmom’s house, trying to help sort her stuff, which really just boiled down to mom and aunts convincing us to take home a bunch of stuff to ease the burden. I took home many spools of ribbon, a ratty but retro pink towel, trash bags’ worth of silk flowers for art projects, and a random little business card holder that I now use every day for my work Zoomings.

 

Despite Catholicism/conservative politics’ lifelong irking of my soul, I loved my Grandmom so, so much. I felt united in grief with my mom’s generation, intensely aware that I might be doing this sorting in my own mom’s house before too long. That night that we sat around Grandmom’s old table, Favorite Aunt, Beach Aunt, Mom, Sweetie and me, I felt closer with them than I ever had before. I don’t always allow myself family attachment easily, but that night, I was all in. I felt powerfully purposeful and secure, buoyed by these women who’d shaped me all my life. It wasn’t like I forgot politics, but love did let me forgive and transcend.

 

When quarantine came, when I wasn’t taking trauma naps or crying into Zoom, I shifted mightily into tend-and-befriend mode. I checked in daily with family members to make sure everyone was okay, sending (I hope) undemanding good cheer in the form of cats-and-flowers pictures and bird-sightings updates. The first inkling that they were tapped into the disinformation machine was subtle, but it heaved me into reality and a lifetime of stored hurt.

 

My mom was sewing me a gorgeous set of masks, as was Favorite Aunt. While Favorite Aunt griped along about some nebulous “they” forcing us to wear the masks, I thought my mom was mostly in sciencetown with me.

 

But then, in a Messenger thread, I expressed worry about my mom (68) visiting the post office to mail the masks.

 

“Oh, I’m not worried,” she said “I have a really strong immune system, and besides, it’s not like this is the city.”

 

Pretty innocuous, but to me what she said had the bitter sting of racism. It reminded me of back in 2016 when she’d told me that “Rural people are just better with guns than city people are.”

“Sometimes,” I typed as gently as possible, “It comes across as racist when you say things like that.”

 

That concern went unresolved as mom pivoted into her fave form of gaslighting, medical magical thinking that ranges from the victim-blamey to the Eugenic.

 

“I think fear is what’s causing the disease. I wish you weren’t so fearful.”

 

I wasn’t going through my days in fear, at least I didn’t think so. I was listening to poetry from far away, I was taking walks, I was working when I could, I was checking on the neighbors. I was proud of how well I was taking care of myself and Sweetie in such a horrifying month. But all my mom could see in me was weakness and cowardice and self-fulfilling dread. The grief-chasm between who I am and who she thinks I am made me panic and flail like Wile E. Coyote realizing belatedly that he has just walked off a cliff.

A Conference with Myself, Part Three: Hugging Heartbreak, Embracing Joy

“Even if you feel overcome with nihilistic thoughts, your body is still alive with an optimism of its own.  Join the thoughts of your body.” –Yoko Ono

            When I first started adventuring way back when, I decided to use cuddle parties as a benchmark for how far I’ve come in inhabiting my body and letting go of grief. The first one, way back in 2012, I spent crying over my struggling marriage and unexpressed bisexuality. The second one, I spent mostly on my own despite the puddle of people, enjoying all of the lovey vibes in a very surprising new self-contained way. This time, I dove all the way in, tapped into my body’s optimism as Yoko suggests, and was blessedly immersed in the easy, soft connections with and among my fellow lovey-dovey souls.

            Still, sadness did need to have its moment. As I lay curled up and relaxed in the afterglow of The Kind Ma’am’s sweet/hurty attention, the loss I’d been trying to deny for months crept in and I just ached for Mr. Makeout Music, for all of the November grief. Since one of my New Year’s resolutions is to ask for help when I need it, I asked the Cuddle Facilitator to disentangle herself from a beautiful-looking embrace so we could talk for a minute. (I’m not a monster, it’s part of her role. But I still feel bad for interrupting snuggles!)

            I told her the story, the story my friends and I are all sick of, and she had an idea: “Let’s try this. I’m going to hold you, and you’re going to just feel it all. Feel it as deeply as you can, and then we’ll see if you’re ready to go back to playing.”

            So she put her arms around me, and as she held me, her heart against mine felt like MM’s heart, from those twice-a-day hugs that I missed so much. The connection I still felt to him was keen and wrenching and real, and I loved it so much. (I still do, though thankfully it feels much less claustrophobic/painful now.)

            I almost cried, but didn’t. I thanked her mistily and went back to the party, joining a cuddle pile with a few nice strangers who’d seemed fun during consent practice.

            I was blissed out and petting the hip of a nice woman from Colorado when (Hooray!) The Professor appeared above me and asked if he could join us. I was spooned in behind the nice woman, and he spooned in behind me, a friendly wall of warmth. I asked if he would pull my hair (or he asked me, I don’t remember) and he was such the perfect balance of gentle and forceful that I whooshed down into subspace, for the first real time in years. The weightless, beatific feeling of being relieved from control, turns out I’d missed it so much. I feel like I’m using the word “blessed” too many times in this story, but it keeps being necessary.

            I asked if I could turn over to face him, and the resulting embrace was one of the most comforting places I’ve ever been. I’m trying superhard not to get carried away here, of course he’s maybe just really good at hugging, but the way he fit with me had a teensy bit of destiny to it.

            At cuddle parties, you’re supposed to look for specific permission every step of the way, and for every request he made, I gave an emphatic “Yes!” especially the “May I kiss you?’ part—the Professor is really, really good at kissing. Just like with the hair pulling, soft and urgent, emphatic and sweet. There’s nothing like being really just thoroughly kissed.

            “Will you put your leg between mine?” He asked and oh yes, I just wanted to find a cuddle party loophole and just give him permission to do every. Single. Thing.

            “May I put my hand of your chest?” He asked, and that meant heart, not boob, and yesyes, it’s time to go ahead and believe in Energy, because this guy has ALL OF IT.

While I was lying there in The Professor’s arms, Mr. Shiny Eyes crawled over and asked for a kiss and I was happy to give it. The three of us chatted until it was time for The Professor to go have a late supper with The Kind Ma’am. I kissed him goodbye and settled into a new cuddle configuration with Mr. Shiny Eyes and the interesting strangers.

Next: More cuddles, more kisses, and saying goodbye lying down.

The Generosity of Love

            I’m having trouble lately with staying mad. Mr. Makeout Music and I have (I’m almost sure) moved on from being in a fight to just taking space from each other. We’ve communicated this to each other in the most adorable way ever:

            Last Wednesday during Lego Day, he stopped in to reprimand some kids in such a protective and manly way, telling them (in his dreamy a-little-bit-mad voice) to be respectful of me and each other. I looked up from my coloring, smiled, and offered him a high five. He took it and I felt just a little more whole.

            The kids and I have been working on a kindness chain—a paper chain where each link is something kind you could do or something kind someone has done for you. He hung around and wrote like five links, the last one being “Giving people gold stars for existing.” Which is a thing that I do, so I knew he still felt friendly toward me, still thought of me as the person I was before November’s storm of grief and drama. Just that little visit was enough to start up the daydream machine again, so I’m still keeping my distance.

Saturday, though, used to be our main hang-out-and-make-art-while-he’s-supposed-to-be-working day. There may still be a stack of his art in my middle desk drawer as souvenirs. While I was getting ready for work last Saturday, I accidentally listened to the wrong toward-the-end-of Hamilton song so I went in with the achingest of hearts.

I was able to pour a lot of that love into the Thankfulness Christmas Tree I made with the kids, but I wanted to reach out to Mr. Makeout Music a little, so I made him a card with a pretty, delicate blue paper snowflake glued on and wrote:

“Space is awesome.

But/and I miss you a whole bunch.

I hope your life is full of awesome.

<3,

(me)”

Poor editing that I used the word “awesome” twice, but after I gave it to him and he was sweet and thank you-y about it, I felt a million times better and much closer to the part of myself that feels missing while I’m missing him.

It reminded me of the brave day I let myself fall for him. He gave me a paper of his to read, a paper about rising to the occasion of fatherhood. I liked it so much and felt so grateful that he’d let me read it that I COVERED the margins in gold stars, intricate pink flowers, vines, and tiny purple asterisks. (No hearts, but those would come soon enough.)

I did all this in full view of my boss and everybody. One of the kids asked what I was doing and I (only a little bit sheepishly) said “My friend let me read his homework and I really liked it.”

It’s part of my routine to sit around work and doodle while waiting for my programs to start, but I knew this time I was being a little ridiculous, a little carried away, but something just unlatched and a light shined out of my heart, golden yellow like the million stars I was drawing. Something inside me said “Give, it’s safe.” So I did. I folded it up in a #10 envelope with the library’s return address on it, like an envelope could contain the ridiculousness.

That was the first day we really talked, the first time I stood next to him and really felt next to him. I don’t’ want to reduce him to just a Muse, though he certainly IS one, but there was something about our connection, something in his generosity of spirit that made me want to give him and the world every loving thing I had. While I miss his companionship very much, I also miss being able to give and give and give—to sing out his name, to lavish him with praise (and accept his), to unabashedly hand him every piece of art I felt like making him, without feeling the need to ask (as I did with the card on Saturday) “Is this okay?” I miss and value so much the flow of it, of him, of us.

I wonder sometimes, in the midst of that glitter-storm of generosity, why it was so important that he didn’t love me back in the same ready, open way. But it is, and I know every day that I take care of myself with space and grieving is a day closer to the next love, the next unlatching.

It’s hard not knowing whether he and I will end up friends or if our whole thing is just beautiful and done, but if I can love him in little ways, if I can visit the selflessness, softness, risk and vulnerability of those first margin-doodles, maybe I can stay in touch with the me that he was drawn to, maybe even become more like her. I have a lot of thinking to do about service, submissiveness, and unconditional love, and I’m so proud of how I got to these realizations. I’ll never stop loving him for it, even as I learn to let him go.

What A Community Can’t Do

Last month, I made the painful decision to leave the Unitarian church that has been my spiritual home for seven years. It was over a philosophical difference that really snuck up on me, a lightning-strike realization that we (the church and I) weren’t on the same page. I try to see it the way it’s best to see dating deal-breakers, that saying no to what doesn’t work makes room for what does, but leaving was a huge loss. I’m struggling with a mix of shame, disappointment, and sadness that is very familiar to be because I seem to hit a wall of it at least every few years.

In her wonderful new book Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, and The Revolution Brené Brown says that in order to get out from under disappointment, you have to be brave and really examine the expectations for the situation. So I’ve really given a lot of thought to the conscious and unconscious expectations that keep leading me to be damagingly disappointed by groups, scenes, and communities.

1. A community can’t be a correction for a hurtful family. Just the way I’ve sometimes gone to doms for approval, I go to communities hoping that they can love me into realness, approve me into existence. There’s an underlying hope of “Now that   I’ve found/become/befriended ___________, I will finally be okay, will finally be welcomed into the world and find unconditional love. It’s sad to realize that I didn’t have that with my original family as a child, but I can’t expect healing and wholeness to come from anywhere but within.

2. A community can’t replace my own family, flawed though they may be. I live too far away from my family of origin and I don’t have a family to share a household with right now, and that leaves a hole that nothing can fill.

3. A community can’t fix rape culture, because rape culture is in all of us. It is always easier for groups to be angry at the person pointing out the problem than to face the problem itself. I’ll always have to speak up against it, but I’d love to learn to feel safe doing so.

4. A community can’t erase heartbreak. I’ve realized that, though there were other factors, I left the BDSM scene because I couldn’t process the rejections I’d experienced there. I tried to patch each loss with another person, (and the whole thing was an attempt to patch divorce grief) but the grief kept walking me down the same path. After three years, I’m to the point where I can see the loss for what it is, and I desperately want to stop sponging that pain onto other people. It’s hard not to try and numb the loss of Sweetie and the life we created together.

5. A community can’t stay the same forever, and it can’t change as I change. Just the way that, in dating, I have to walk away from a bad match instead of trying to torture the person into changing for you, I have to let go of situations that aren’t a good fit. It doesn’t mean that I have to fear or fight forever, just that I need to constantly let things come and go.

6. A community can’t replace love. I am sick of being single, but I still have some inner work (and a whole lot of book-editing!) to do before I’m ready to start a life with another person, but I have to look loneliness in the eye, to honor it. I have to realize how much I want my own family and stop trying to shoehorn other things into that space.

7. A community can’t come to my rescue. If I ignore my instincts and walk into something that doesn’t work, no principal, no dom, no friend can be expected to “save” me. I am a grown woman, and I want to train myself to hear and respect my inner voice so that I can stop reliving abandonment or having childlike expectations of “loyalty.” We’re all adults being ourselves, and it’s up to me to find out what actually works, and do it.

8. A community can’t define me, erase me, or absorb me. It can’t give me an identity, and any identity it DOES give will feel constraining. The only thing I know I am is me, and I have to find out a way to be solid within myself, so I can stop expecting others to create me.

This has been a harsh, lonely time. The double loss of J. and the church has made for a very sad couple of months. It’s hard to have faith in anything right now, so I’m just trying little things as they come along, letting joy and connection in whatever little windows they can find. I’m also still trying to find help with the walls and wounds I keep running into. I don’t like being back in this Groundhog’s Day of sadness, this most vexing part of the labyrinth, but I’m doing my best to learn as much as I can while I’m here.