Trauma Work Summer Part Seven: I Might Be a Villain

 

Last week, I had my last Trauma Work session! Now back to my regularly scheduled OCD! Since then, I've been having freaky dreams, but also bursts of back-to-school joy! There's a sadness hangover from all my Laura Palmer-ing,  but in general I've been feeling more empowered and proactive, a little more like an adult among adults. I'm really excited about that part, I want to live in today instead of finishing the story of Summer Princess, but here we go, back to the day of the Fire Prevention Play.

After my head-on-shoulder moment with Summer Princess, I felt brave enough to go back inside and finish my project, but I stayed overwhelmed. I ended up with my hand over my heart, gasping in front of the assembled cast. "I can't do it," I said. BossPal took over for me while I found a not-next-to-the-playground bench on which to sob. 

I called BFF Formerly Sweetie and cried it out to her. BossPal came out and checked on me too. I wanted and needed this moment of care, but I felt so embarrassed--I felt like I was letting camp and the friends down.

BossPal sent Summer Princess out to sit with me, and I'm not sure why, but I decided it was time to tell her about my crush. I thought she must know already! I'm about as subtle as The Substance! But this was part of what had made the morning so overwhelming, I felt like I "had" to tell her.

In the moment, it didn't feel fraught to tell her, it just felt like I was confiding in someone I trusted. In my love and panic, I lost track of all the power imbalances! Cis/Trans! Black/white! She's twenty-six and I'll be fifty-one next week! AND I'm longtime friends with our boss! Still, it really felt like we were just two friends talking, and I hope it felt like that a little for her as well.

Friends, I really ran my mouth that morning. I told her everything--how I was having feelings for her, how my last two crushes had been on Barbie doll beautiful transwomen so maybe I have a new/additional type. I told her how old I felt and that I was sure I would fuck it up if I someday have a chance with a nice trans lady. 

I said I was sorry that I was making her do this emotional labor, I know it wasn't her job! How do you know whether you're just having friendship or you're taking advantage of someone's kindness? That's what would obsess me out of my mind for the rest of the week and still a little bit, even weeks later.

"If ________ and I were still poly," Summer Princess said, "I'd date you--you're cute!"

That was so sweet, maybe definitely sweeter than I deserved. I don't know if she meant it or if she was just kind of managing me, but it helped.

Trauma Work Summer Part Six: Fire Prevention

IT'S A MAP!

Camp Overshare was supposed to create a Fire Prevention Play. There was a contest. It's one of my boss's most dreaded tasks. She assigned it to me, ostensibly because of my teaching artist background, but also maybe because nobody else wanted to deal with it. I tried to conscript Summer Princess to be my play buddy, but she demurred.

I was in a pretty scary house fire in the Nineties, but that was far from my mind as I helped kids create characters and compose a few lines for themselves. They already were pretty expert on fire safety, at least a few sentences worth! The table read went so smoothly! I was so proud.

When it came time to film the play, everything turned to chaos. Something about opening the Fire Prevention Play costume box made everybody a little nuts, and EVERYONE was coming to me for help. And YELLING.

And, horror of horrors, my Squishmallow had gone missing! Holly, the little purple owl with flowers on her head! I'd made her her own (Bi colors!) friendship bracelet at the beginning of camp. She was my comfort object and helped the kids sometimes, too! 

So in the midst of the swirling Fire Prevention Play chaos, Summer Princess and one of the campers were looking for Holly. I found this unbearably touching and ended up crying in Summer Princess's arms. About a misplaced toy! I was not okay.

Holly was eventually found, under a bookshelf. I asked my boss to cover me and went outside to sit on my favorite bench (OMG I loved that bench! I already miss it so!) and do some breathing. What I actually did was cry and be overwhelmed. Summer Princess came out to sit with me. I asked her if I could put my head on her shoulder, and she said I could.

<3 <3 <3

I just want to pause here and say I appreciate this connection so much. I know it was just a summer camp friendship that my own love and attraction blew wildly out of proportion, but it was also real and special.

For me, it was an affection as much as it was an obsession. There was wholesome love there, even as my desire for her made me want to dismantle the inner structures of myself. There was something beautiful between us, even as it descended into what a friend (obviously a friend around my age) described as a "Jerry Springer situation."

I did want to possess Summer Princess. I would have loved to live out my imagination's Ma'am scenarios with her. But also, I got to know her heart a little, and I hope, even amid the panic and OCD and misunderstandings, she knew my heart a little too.

 

Seventh Date Tears, Part One

 

As I picked up coffee and scones for our mini-road-trip date, I yammered through the pickup window to the barista about how nervous I was. (I had also been panicky for a day or so about unrelated things, I maybe should have scaled back or postponed this big-step date!) This Charming Man is already gone and I’d only just learned how he takes his coffee. I am absolutely devastated and having the HARDEST time not just calling him up and saying “PLEASE.” Please what, I don’t know. Just please.

When I picked him up, we happily kissed hello but it was a little like having one feral cat in the passenger seat and another in the driver’s seat. He had the energy of one of those Garfield toys they used to suction-cup to car windows in the Eighties, just absolutely ready to escape. I wish I would have paused and asked him why he was so jangled. He second-guessed my driving (he doesn’t drive) and kept listing off accidents he had seen around home. I gave him the AMAZING lemon poppyseed scones I’d brought because! Special occasion! And he said “I thought we were going to eat.” Right or wrong, my jangled brain registered that as food-shaming. Whatever it was, I would have liked it to be a “thank you.”

We were going to eat. When he asked me out for Friday-day, I’d gotten up the courage to invite him to have lunch with me at my favorite fancy garden, about an hour away. I wanted to hold hands with him, kiss against trees, and try not to take too many pictures so I could pay good attention to him. This garden is my happy place, and I’ve only ever taken one other date there. (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2015/09/in-which-i-realize-how-lucky-i-am-to.html?zx=fec1588cfc2887d4)

This Charming Man, with maybe the exception of this particular day, is PRESENT AS FUCK. It’s what made sex with him, most things with him, so dazzling, so seemingly almost loving, right from the start. Somewhere in ouroff-kilter start-of-the-trip conversation, he said a thing he’d said before, that hadn’t sounded so alarming before I’d fallen for him. In order to give his full attention to The Moment, he doesn’t think of people when they are not there. (“Have you heard of mindfulness?” was the start of this conversation.) I said it didn’t seem like he wasn’t thinking of me because of what an attentive texter her was, but he insisted. And I started to cry. And he second-guessed my driving some more.

I know my heart tends to go too fast, but I thought I was doing better this time!

I kind of wish I’d turned the car around at this point, just gotten us home from this already somehow painful day, but I didn’t want to let him go. I tried to tell him what was the matter, that I’d been going about my own life daydreaming about him. Part of me was with him when he was working or running his D&D games or just doing whatever, but he claimed not to think of me at all. Or, in fairness, anyone else when they weren’t around.

I don’t know why, after a brief break to cry in a Kohls’ parking lot, I still kept driving toward the flowers.

My White Supremacist Mom, The End

 

Seriously get this book!

 

“God.” She said defiantly.

 

Mom said that the reason the country was so far astray (besides, presumably, Socialism) was that we’re “no longer” a Christian nation. (I remember seeing this “One nation under God” idea in second-cousiny Facebook feeds before I blocked them, but the violence of the sentiment never truly hit me until I started writing this.) I wish I had said something coherent about the founders or the Liberty Bell or Catholicism under Hitler, but I did not. I wish I’d said that forcing everyone into the same religion was not only counter to the values of Christianity (well.) but part of the very definition of fascism.

 

So that was the conversation that finally propelled us out the door. On the way out, I told mom not to contact me, not to send cards or anything, a directive that she (vexingly and also sort of touchingly) has ignored. In the car, I horror-movie screamed. Back in the Nineties, I was in a housefire and the small comfort of that day was that I got the line “Screaming like a David Lynch movie” on the news. This wasn’t that, wasn’t any aesthetically tortured wail, it was full horror. It was a scream of a lifetime of religious oppression, of standing in front of police cars, of friends boxed into riots when the street-fires were starting. It was a scream for the then-200,000 dead and those who were vicious and scared and stupid enough to deny the loss. Because it was a scream, I’m embarrassed and ashamed, but I can’t actually think of a more rational response.

 

As Sweetie (Never, anymore, afraid of a panic) drove us down the country roads to my sister’s, I did that five senses thing to quell the panic: I see mailboxes, road, a sparrow, a yellow stripe, my purse. I hear the car, my voice, Sweetie’s voice, my breath. I can touch the door, my scarf, my jeans. I can smell coffee and peach-pear fizzy water. I can taste gum.

 

By some miracle of compartmentalization, a skill that has never come naturally to me, we spent a lovely day with the niece and nephews. Our regular comic shop was closed, but we did thoroughly enjoy our traditional thrift store run. I bought way too many random things.

 

By the time Sweetie and I were picking up road trip coffee in our nearby old hometown (SO many feelings of love and beauty and loss there) I was posting through my feelings and starting to make estrangement official. I told my sister, brother, and dad the next day that I would be avoiding all mom-related activities for the foreseeable future.

 

For now, it’s not so bad, except those nauseating prayer cards on which I need to remember to write “refused”. I run the family Zooms and the Liberal Cousins Side Convo has been great at keeping in touch. I’ll feel guilty adding extra logistics to the family routine, but I’ll figure it out as I go.

 

I’ve never understood how people with Trumpian relatives can feel safe around them, even pre-Covid. I don’t know how anyone avoids feeling the violence of their beliefs all the way in their bones. Do they think that the violence the seditionists marinate in won’t come for them? Do they interpret violent beliefs toward black and brown and queer bodies as somehow not a real threat?  Or are they just too scared to do something about it? At any rate, I’m glad of these miserable years of trying to do something about it, even when that something is only to try and get myself safe.

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh, Part Four

            Part of the reason the Kavanaugh hearings were so painful and traumatizing was that Dr. Ford’s testimony recalled my own teenage rape so clearly. I felt protective of Gilmore Guy as he helped me navigate those feelings, mostly by being wonderful and adorable and nice-smelling and superhot.

            But when, after several increasingly tense attempts at PIV sex, it started to slide into place, I could feel his focus on his penis’s performance. His determination and fixation made me feel like I wasn’t there, like he wasn’t there either. I slipped back from this safe, celebratory moment to that decades-ago drugged, mouth-covered, trapped, lost teenage feeling. I lost the battle against panic and told him so. He stopped, of course, looked scared and concerned. I felt all of my OWN pressure to get back to cheerful so we could fuck, my own increasingly futile determination to not be so scary with all of my feelings.

            “What do you need?” He asked again and again, in a voice that was at once scared, caring, and businesslike. I apologized for panicking and he said something understanding about “emotional labor” which struck me as a sad phrase to have to use on a second-or-third date. Nonetheless, he cared for me and treated me kindly, to the point where I wanted to return the good-listener favor. I asked him what was on his mind and he said:

“I miss (Gilmore Lady).” I just couldn’t help it, I started to cry. It wasn’t cute crying by any stretch—lonely, hurt, sad tears, empty and heartbreaking. It was a moment of inescapable honesty and I lost all attempts at being I-love-sharing-modern-open-relationships lady.

I cried and cried and confessed and confessed. I told him how much I want to be someone’s sun and moon and stars (“Not YOURS. Not on the second date. I’m not CRAZY.”) how what I really wanted was romance, how I’d already told him in the woods that I’m not a secondary.

“Do you want me to go?” He asked delicately.

“No. You can think I’m crazy tomorrow. Just… don’t go.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said forcefully, climbing back into bed and wrapping me up in his arms. As kind as he was, and even as he didn’t mind me playing a guided meditation to try and get to sleep, I couldn’t settle in next to him. I went downstairs to the couch and almost immediately, exhausted and scared (not of him) I fell asleep in my own personal space.

When I woke up in the morning and, after my morning writing, meditation, and Spanish practice, went upstairs to him, I saw all over again what a gift he was. He was just lying there on his belly checking his phone, locks in a grey bandanna and fanned out over his naked back and shoulders, looking like a perfect treasure of a man, and I told him so. I really didn’t want to let him go, and we made the VERY most of the morning until it was time for me to get ready for work.

We made plans for the weekend. We texted and texted and texted. I sent him long, fretful, feminist paragraphs and he sent kind and thoughtful responses back. I could send him fraught texts in the middle of the night without scaring him away, that does not go unappreciated. He was a champion. He really tried, and so did I.

When it came time for our third-or-fourth date, a NO rose up in me so strong and goddessy that it felt like it was coming from the center of the earth. I said rather more than I meant to about unicorn hunters and the treatment of secondary partners how I might LOOK less-than, but wasn’t.

He looked regretful and sad as he left, and I was sad too. But more than sad, I was SURE. I was brave. I could see and admit what I wanted, even though poly norms and society in general would tell me to expect and accept less. I was embarrassed that I’d said so much, but mostly I just felt proud.

A week or so after that, Gilmore Guy and I exchanged kind goodbye/thank you texts, and I’m glad. I couldn’t be more grateful for his visit to my life, and I’m glad I got to tell him so directly instead of just hoping that he reads this.

I feel like I am a new and different person in a post-Dr.-Ford world. Her bravery is a new resource that empowers me to stand up for myself in the screaming-at-the-Supreme-Court way but also in the smaller, more daily, even in the more snuggly ways. I can’t say enough about my gratitude for Dr. Ford and for all of the women who came before her and with her. My childhood self had Anita Hill, my present day self has Christine Blasey Ford, and we both have Murphy Brown, so I think everything might be okay.

            After I said goodbye to Gilmore Guy, I changed my “Relationship Type” in OK Cupid to monogamous. I’m not sure that’s exactly right either, but there’s no “sun and moon and stars” option. So far, it has the same trials and indignities as it did before, but also the same hope. Steven and Gilmore Guy kindled a good flame in me, and I’m going to take care of it.

Big Therapy Project, Week Four: Mini-Update

Well, the kids' interim reports are due tomorrow, so I'll just say it's been like this: panic, rest, write, repeat. As long as I keep the dishes up to date, keep writing reams, and! Outdoor recess! I think I can get where I'm going.

The Most Nothing I’ve Ever Been: The Last, Uh, Conversation? With the Mystery Family

On Thursday I woke up missing the Mystery Man a lot and feeling really sad about the choices I’d made with the Mystery Family, about having done the same self-erasing thing I’ve done so many times before. I felt like all of my efforts to take myself forward must be false if I keep doing this and maybe I would never be capable of loving people who actually want me. Though my Twitter account didn’t really feel like mine anymore, just a way to keep futile-ly reaching out to those unreachables, I wrote some sad Tweets before I went to work and I admit to hoping they’d get their attention.

It was a hard hard day at work. The kids were winter-frustrated and fighty and it was the second time I’ve felt so panicked there that it felt like my soul had actually left. A day in a classroom with 23 riled-up children when I’m feeling like I’m not really there was a very hard thing to get through. Credit our Gangnam Style Emergency Dance Party with the fact that we were able to (mostly) retain our sanity and make it to 3:09.

I know the panic was mostly an after-effect of processing the assault stuff and the Twitter-claustrophobia—I wouldn’t have made it a day in my job if riled-up kids were that upsetting. My therapist had warned me that there might be a delayed reaction to Sunday’s appointment, and I wasn’t giving myself the space to be kind to myself about it.

When I got home, the Mystery Lady I felt closest to (and the one who instigated my “relationship” with the Mystery Man) had said a bunch of nice things in response to my sadness, but she also said this:

“You’ve got a lot of people pulling for you, both here and IRL.”

She was still claiming to love me, and yet she was reiterating that we aren’t in the same life. They were real life loves to me and nothing I could do or say could convince them that we all live in the same world. She also told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, which is a bonkers thing to say to somebody whose heart you just broke over the weekend. Seriously, Lady, (I did not say) YOU get rejected by eight to twelve people at once and see how it feels! (Not that I would wish that on her or anybody. I wouldn’t.)

I very much wanted to go back to being friends, to them being comforting confidantes, people whose messages always propped me up during hard times, but I didn’t know how to do that since they were part of the Bad Thing now. I told them I missed them (the last message I got from the Mystery Man was an “I miss you too” tweet, which would prove by the end of the night to have been the worst, creepiest, most vile lie.) and then told her how I didn’t understand loving somebody she wouldn’t have over. I told her I felt betrayed because after all the paragraphs she’d read about my struggle with personhood, in the end she’d asked me to be a fragment of a person. (Less than a fragment, you’ll see at the end of the story.)

After I tweeted her all the things (Jesus, may I never use the verb “tweet” again after this.) Gold Star Winggirl picked me up to go over to her house for a beer and then to the neighborhood music night hosted by the Cute Church Couple. (By now they’re much more friends than crush.)

GSW was the perfect antidote to the online mess: “Oh, you dyed your hair,” she said, “Because you’re real!” When I told her she seemed to be really stocked up on soap, she said “See, these are the things we’re supposed to be able to learn about each other. This is the way it’s supposed to be.”

My soul was still hiding, though, so I couldn’t quite connect with the nice music night, but it was the best possible place to be. All of the songs seemed to be about real, in person love, starting with my good old talismans, The Beatles.

When I got home, the Mystery Lady had said more things, mostly making me feel like she heard and understood me, so although my still-panicking guts were telling me to flee, I started to write back. While I was doing that, though, she wrote a post thanking another girl for playing online with him “just when he needed it most. #Compersion #Poly”

#Gross.

It was the most nothing I’ve ever been. While I’d been missing him and longing for all of them and feeling guilty for wrecking the friendships, he’d moved right on ahead to the next thing and replaced me. That was truly one of the most humiliating moments in all of my adventures, maybe THE most because of its non-corporeal quality. I blocked them all, but that wasn’t safe enough. I deleted the entire account. I took comfort in the idea of all of my messages disappearing from their Interactions, all at once. It was the only way I could take back some of what I’d so foolishly given.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what prompted them to reach out to me, what I could possibly have ever been to them, what need I could have possibly served. Maybe it’s just pure addictive behavior on all of our parts. Since I was the third time something like this had happened, GSW suggested that they need to “love” and then other other people, break hearts and get sad and band together over and over so that they can draw together against the outsider and keep telling themselves this story about getting stronger when they really are a house of cards. I used to do this to try and be close to Sweetie, choosing guys who would break me partly so she and I could bond against a common enemy. Whatever the Mystery Family’s motive was, I’m so ashamed that I got sucked into whatever ugly drama they needed to have, that I let myself get (even momentarily) flattened by it.

But the real ugly drama here is my own. In the interest of learning how to stop being one crazy story after another, I need to understand what draws me to situations that make me into nothing. Clearly, there is part of me that wants to keep experiencing that. It feels so good when I am not nothing again, when my feet are solidly under me and I can hear the birds singing and be all the way in the room with the crazy students I love so much. Maybe erasing and unerasing is a way to prove to myself that I’m still alive, but really, by now, that should be assumed.

As much as I’m grateful to be polyamorous, the way some people practice it makes me feel unethical for being part of it. Polyamory is toxic when it’s used as a way to avoid actual intimacy. When it’s used as a way to treat people as if they’re interchangeable, it takes away their agency and sexualizes them. And of course I continue to be disgusted and dismayed at the way that outside partners are routinely treated with casual cruelty and neglect.

Since I can’t and don’t want to un-poly myself, the best I can do is be mindful of those possibilities and be more careful about choosing partners who fit my standards of egalitarianism, openheartedness, and genuine face-to-face communication. Those who remain on my dance card do, so I’m off to a good start.

Once I deactivated my Twitter account, I felt back on track. The next steps are to refocus on self-love and the Big Therapy Project, keep treating myself kindly about the griefs, and keep in mind the year’s goal of close-to-home connections. I wish the Mystery Family have come along with me, but in the end it’s a blessing to let go of any love that isn’t real.

Birthday Spanks and Unicorn Snuggles Part One: I Almost Let a Conversation Wreck My Fun

I was excited and nervous getting ready for Cute Master and Pretty Slave’s party yesterday. I left church a little early, came home and shaved (Jeez I should do that more often, it was a thicket!) put on lacy black and white polka-dot underpants and new fancy pushup bra. Over that I wore a short flowered skirt and a white tank top with the black bra showing through and the lacy straps exposed. I wore comfy shoes for driving but packed up my black and white heels in my suitcase, along with pajamas and a comfy bra in case I needed it for aftercare and/or decided to stay over.

I knew I wanted to play with the hosts, but I wasn’t sure how much. I know I haven’t fallen in love with everyone I’ve had PIV sex with (Only two out of all these recent adventures, I’m realizing…) but I know the risk is there and I didn’t want to end up wrecking/postponing any more friendships. Although they’re very affectionate, I know there aren’t lovey-dovey possibilities—they’re more on the swinger side of things than poly—so I hoped there were ways I could enjoy them without setting off the chemicals that make romantic fantasies happen. Spoiler alert! There were.

For the first few hours of the party I wasn’t sure if I’d end up feeling like playing at all. There was more of a laid back barbecue with friends feeling to it, delightful in its own way. There were a few pervy touches here and there, like Mardi Gras beads which yes, I did earn in the traditional way, adding to my I’m An Awesome Slut Checklist.

A conversation kept starting nearby that I was already in without joining it. A big, tall, dreamy Dom guy (He definitely earns a nickname in the next installment—please welcome the Huge-Handed Fireman.) was having online trouble with the leadership of the Scary Party, specifically with the same woman who’d “resolved” my issue by informing the internet that I was crazy. HHF kept talking about improvements that he thought should be made with security and the DMs because of incidents that had happened there.

By the third time I heard the conversation come around, I stopped resisting the temptation to join in. I went over to thank him and confess the role I’d played. Most of the people standing around agreed with HHF and seemed sympathetic, but there’s always one. Fucking. Mean. Girl.

I think every kind of community has versions of this Ratfaced Bitch Girl. She’s rotten all the way through, dead-to-malevolent behind the eyes, and graduated right from high school hallway bullying to running down outsiders as an adult.

She got her hackles up and started to lay into me about my method of reporting the incident with The Man, getting EVERY SINGLE FACT WRONG and saying there’s still no way to know the truth. I wish I’d been a reality show contestant with a drink to throw in her fucking face.

Since the HHF was talking about starting his own dungeon, I suggested that it would be helpful to have submissives as part of the leadership. Ratface Bitch Girl said that was a contradiction in terms, with in the same crazymaking rock-stupid voice that The Man used to tell me that “higher level” Doms are allowed to bypass consent.

I didn’t say this, but what the fuck does she think I’m doing in my daily life, sitting around waiting for some fucking Sir to tell me how to run my classroom? The assumption that submissives can’t lead just seems like an extension of good old fashioned sexism. If you’re saying that someone is incapable of leading, you’re on some level taking their agency away, and if you’re performing sexual acts on someone you’ve taken agency away from, that’s coercion at the very least. It’s the crux of the whole problem.

Ratface Bitch Girl added that besides, most of the Scary Party leadership are switches, so of course they could sympathize.she said it in the worst condescending snotrag voice.

Rage boiled up all the way from my belly and I expressed in with frosty controlled force:

“No. They. Couldn’t. And I HOPE it never happens to you.”

(Of course it WOULDN’T happen to her because she seems to be part of the Scary Party’s in-crowd and therefore would probably be deemed a person by them.)

Another girl, wonderfully ignorant and self-assured as only a 21-year-old can be, said she’d never had a bad experience there because she is “not a dumbass.”

“I’m not a dumbass. I was handcuffed. And if all the victims are dismissed as dumbasses, how is anything ever going to change?”

She backpedaled after that but I knew I was past-due to leave the conversation. I’d only had a couple of drinks and one hit of some really good weed, more than an hour ago so I figured I’d be okay to drive before too long. I went into the nice cool house and found a quiet spot and a blanket, pissed off that I was panicking and unable to believe that I was probably going to cry at another party. It felt like the goddamned Man was never going to stop taking away my fun.

Scary Party, if you were a person I would punch you in your ugly, rapey face. The inhumanity and stupidity of every gaslighting host and victim-blaming poster from March and April came rushing back. I was so angry at them, and at every adorable Scary Party regular I’ve met who’s said “Oh, that was you?” when it felt like what they meant was “Oh, that was a person?” Because how could you watch anybody go through that and still want to be part of the event unless on some level you didn’t think of her as a fellow human? When I’m in that panicky state, it feels like otherwise kind and wonderful people cosign my violation every time they pay their 10$ at the door, and I am sick to fucking death of being hurt and confused about it. I spent the summer trying to be forgiving, but you know what, I’m not. Fuck them. Fuck the Scary Party forever.

As I sat watching the clock and wondering how long I should give myself before driving, people came and visited my self-aftercare spot. One lady about my age said she’d been through something similar—I wonder how much of the dismissiveness does have to do with being over 35.

Cute Master and Pretty Slave come in and showered me with hugs and sympathy. Snuggled up between them was when the tears started to come, but I was crying and laughing at the same time—indignant as I was about the mean girls, I saw the absurdity of crying at parties two weekends in a row.

Cute Master left Pretty Slave and me in an embrace. She petted my hair and spoke softly, telling me that it was okay, that it was rare.

During this exchange, Cutest Boy at the Party (lady-liking bear!!!) noticed what was happening and asked if I was okay. I felt so silly for having a panic even before the play had started. After Pretty Slave went off to tend to her guests, CBATP came in again to check on me. I said I was fine but would certainly take a hug. He had that amazing sweaty-dude smell and I told him so. We talked about all kinds of things, museums and music and munches.  Just from sitting down next to him and yammering, I started to simmer down and opened back up to the evening’s possibilities. It seems to happen that way—whenever I think I’ll never get past the hurt and fear, god sends a cute boy as an incentive to power through. And it always, always works.

Next: My quest to get spanked by everyone.

Various Happy Things: You Are What You Love

They don’t really fit the traditional mold of happy poly moments, but some things converged last week to make me feel like I am back on track:

1. Since I’ve known for a while that some (not all) of the troubles between us could be solved with, like, a half-hour conversation and I was having a hankering to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and be excellently fucked, I asked the Mayor of Kittentown for some snuggles. He was happy to be asked but says his new relationship doesn’t allow for extracurricular snuggles. It’s hard to let him go for real, but I’m glad to know that there’s at least one guy that I still trust enough to ask for what I want. And! I get a gold star for asking. I hope that MKT and I can keep a friendship going, even if being on his couch isn’t appropriate anymore. And! I’m really happy that his relationship is getting closer, even if it means no snuggles for me.
2. This one won’t seem happy at first, but bear with me: I’m still really sad that my therapist is on maternity leave, and the interim lady didn’t work out—I felt frustrated, confused, and panicky to the point where the interim lady asked her supervisor to intercede. The supervisor lady gave me two very nice gifts: First, she helped me understand that my bond with my regular therapist is really deep and it’s okay to not want to do therapy with anyone else. Supervisor lady asked me to imagine that my real therapist was sitting next to me and to find that sensation in my body—it was in my heart, and that made me cry my eyes out some more.

I think that experience was really important because what I’m really learning here is how to not be freaked out by attachment. Often when I try to fight attachment, it comes out as anger, resentment, fear, a real feeling of being trapped. Once I realized it was okay to have a bond, the pressure was released and I could happily take the summer off from therapy.

The other cool thing that that the supervisor lady told me was to get a pretty notebook and write letters to my therapist while she’s gone. While it makes me feel like a genuine crazy person, it really works—in fact, I decided to use it to write to other people I can’t currently talk to—it’s a relief to be able to parse out all of the emotions instead of being overwhelmed by them. Most of the letters, I won’t share or send, but it makes me feel better and like it is safer to be connected to people. It helps me to experience some of the attachments I have been fighting in a way that doesn’t force me to confront or disrupt anything—it’s another way to help myself learn love.

3. Over the weekend, I went to a couple of talks that were really helpful and inspiring. The first one was a talk on seeing kink through the lens of feminism. I looked forward to it so much that it kind of made my week. I don’t think that there’s anything inherently anti-feminist about kink, but I have wished for a while to have more friends who see BDSM from a feminist perspective. On the way there, I got caught in a romantic-comedy-level downpour—I was soaked down to my underwear and laughing my head off—I felt like I was on a very good date with myself. (Thank goodness Sweetie and I had a date for afterwards so she could bring me a change of clothes.)

While I sat there shivering, I was so happy to hear people’s questions and stories, and it was wonderful to feel safe to tell my story without fear of being seen as a bad girl. (At least, not a bad girl in a bad way!) I realized that the key to making more safety for myself in the local BDSM community is to spend more time forming friendships, so I won’t end up in the power-imbalance that automatically comes with being an outsider. So I offered to be folks’ munch-going pal, and I am so proud that the workshop’s facilitator took me up on it—she’s accomplished so many of the things that I dream about and she’s a fellow badass feminist bottom, so I think she’ll be a good influence. Wonder what her cute nickname will be!

The other talk that I liked so much was a talk on beginning polyamory. I love the way that my body relaxes itself when I am in poly company—my shoulders get warm and my heart floods with well-being—I really should do this more often.

My favorite thing that I heard in that talk was from a gentleman friend of mine, one of the most romantic souls I know. He said that one of the ways he knew that he was poly is that he just doesn’t get over people—they just stay in his heart. He knew he had room for more that one person in his heart because people just stay in there. I love that idea. It’s certainly a more positive way to look at my own never-getting–over-people, even if I do get frustrated from time to time with who takes up my heart real estate.

4. And speaking of heart real estate, in my letters-I-probably-won’t-send notebook, I sat down and wrote a letter to Fireguy. It made me realize something that will probably seem obvious to everyone else, (it sure wasn’t a surprise to Sweetie)—I loved Fireguy. I even loved Varga Girl in an aspiring-to-be-a-metamour kind of way. Though there isn’t much I can do with that love, acknowledging it is a relief and a release.

There was a moment during our public fire scene where he looked down at my face with such a look of approval that I felt like a perfect little angel. I had never felt that from a male authority figure before, and it struck me so deep. That’s why it’s so hard to stay away from him, even though we weren’t a good match. I forgive myself for the compromises I made, for all the hurt we all went through, I forgive myself for the fact that that feeling was so powerful that I couldn’t resist it. I hope to feel it again some day, in a healthier way.

We’re having a Charlie Kaufman movie marathon over here lately, and this scene from Adaptation has really been sticking with me. “I can love whoever I want.”

Little Panics, But Also Some Poly Happy Tonight

Because I have trauma in my past, I sometimes have little panics. They usually result from something invasive happening that I can’t control. When they come, I feel cut off from the progress I’ve made and my body feels closed off and defensive. I usually can quiet them by finding some time to lie under a blanket and watch sitcoms with Sweetie.

Yesterday was a panicky day, for three reasons.

The first reason is that I’ve been pushing myself really hard, and it’s left me feeling exposed, and not in the nice way. Yesterday’s story was fun to write, but it was the most explicit thing I’ve ever written, and so it felt a little scary. I’ve been making a lot of wonderful connections, but I’m having trouble finding space for myself. Old fears about being dirty, pathetic, and slutty have crept in despite my best efforts. I don’t know if it’s safe to keep writing about Bill, even though I think that part of the story is important.

Another (legitimate!) reason to panic is that we have been watching Gasland in Environmental Conservation class.  Watching it makes me feel like this project is hopeless, that it’s foolish to try to be body positive in a country where water and air (and there fore bodies) are so poisonously abused. I felt the same way after I saw Food, Inc. How is it possible for bodies to ever feel free and loved in a system that values them so little, where money trumps health and sustainability? At least with food I could change where I shop, but what can you do about fracking? Give up electricity?

After that, the third reason may seem trivial, but it still has to do with invasion and space. For a month or so, some construction guys have been working in the lot behind our yard, directly across from our bedroom where I sit and do schoolwork. They have the radio on, tuned to an endless stream of aggressive misogyny. Sometimes earplugs don’t make a difference. When I asked the guys to turn it down, they were dismissive and threatening, calling me fat and stupid. There’s really nothing I can do about it, and it feels like I’ve lost my privacy. We’re talking about getting a new apartment this summer, but for now, I can’t get away. When I’m under stress, it’s hard to get away from my deep-rooted fear that no place is safe, that men will always be threats.

Tonight, though, Sweetie and the Mayor of Kittentown have both agreed to come to Poly Karaoke with me. I imagine they’ll be to shy to sing, but maybe my two favorite introverts will both hold my hand at the same time. Their bodies are safe places for me, and so are songs. I’ve been practicing my song all month.

For now, I’m going to stop pushing myself. This three day weekend has Sweetie’s name written all over it, and maybe we’ll go for a nature walk.