A little over a year ago I asked my husband for a divorce, and he refused me.  At the time I couldn’t conceive of myself as being powerful enough to pursue it on my own, so nothing came of it, except that that moment silently triggered an internal unraveling that even I couldn’t sense at the time – a movement away from him and towards myself.  Not long after that I met Kyle, glowing like the Fates had lit him up with celestial spotlights.  I was immediately drawn to him, but I had no idea how important he would become to me – my lover, my teacher, my support and my best friend through the difficult year to come.

It’s a hard thing to wrap my head around how I let myself arrive at the place I was a year ago.  I firmly believe that no one makes the wrong choice, that we each make the best choice we can with the knowledge and strength that we have, but I certainly would have made different choices if I knew then what I know now.  Because I believed I wasn’t ever good enough, I learned to believe I was always wrong, and that kept me from fighting against the circumstances of my life.  As Kyle and I grew closer, he gently led me toward a different perspective, toward finding my internal truths and fighting the rule of anger that had kept me small and powerless.  I would love to say I did it myself, or even that I ran towards strength, but that’s not the case.  I cowered, I cried, I fought to stay in denial, and Kyle stayed with me through the darkest nights.  More voices joined, as Val, Jesse, Nate and M all tried to help me through my fears and ignorance.

What can I say for myself?  I believed I couldn’t be right, and, in that, I was wrong.

I can see now that an overabundance of humility did not serve me.  Believing other people over my own internal voices was a crime I committed against myself and my family.  Bending to be the good girl broke me completely.

But there are no monsters in this story, no villains, just two people who were incapable of seeing the truth.  My husband struggled with anger, jealousy, fear, and arrogance, but he was always so much more than just that.  He’s also a loving, giving man who loves his children and wants to do the right thing.  That we allowed ourselves to lose track of what that was is a mistake we will not make again, but, no matter what we do now, we can’t change the past.  The reality of what he did has hit him like a sucker punch as he sees that he may have lost the love of his life to his blindness.

Last month I found my strength and insisted, after many failed attempts, that he move out.  It was heart-wrenching for me, but, with a lot of help, I stood, if not strong, then at least still.  Although he’s technically living somewhere else, he still meets us at school in the mornings, and attends scout meetings and family gatherings.  There are occasional sleepovers, but our sex life died out over the summer as I let go of the last of my hopes for us.

That I had to let go completely before he could see what he had done will haunt me for the rest of my life.  That he couldn’t hear me beg him to change until I stopped asking…that will forever haunt us both.

I hope that we can forge a friendship, a partnership, and perhaps, in the future, even more.  I hope that my children will forgive me someday for what I’ve done, for disrupting their lives now, and for not having done it sooner.

As for me, I’m not just stronger, I’m becoming a completely different person.  A long time ago I put half of myself away because a group of people said I wasn’t gay enough to belong to the secret club.  It’s an ironic truth that the straight world, with it’s ignorance of anyone outside the box, easily accepts me as straight, but I’ve been told, time and time again, that I wasn’t queer enough to play with the rainbow kids.  But I can’t just live half my life…and Kyle has been joyfully reacquainting me with my other half.  I’m feeling more myself than I’ve felt in 20 years.  It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to look at the year I’ve had and recognize the ripples that pass through my sex life.  Lately I’ve found myself more attracted to women, distancing myself somewhat from men…but I know that will ebb and flow as I pass through and overcome the storms I’m facing now.

It’s hard to explain, but denial really does keep you safe in many ways.  But the pain, the regrets, the fears and the darkness doesn’t pass over – it waits.  And so, now, I’m working through decades of accumulated pain debt…and my emotions feel like they’ve been stretched over the rack.  There are days I cry for hours…and days when I feel better and hope to god it’s done.  I haven’t felt much anger, just terrible sadness for the tragedy that was unavoidable, the future that won’t come to pass, the uncertainty I’m feeling now, and the agony of growing a new spine as it passes right through flesh and bone.

I still love him, and I always will, and I am impressed with the steps he’s taken to begin to make things right.  I love Kyle and owe him more than I could ever express for staying with me through everything.  I am so thankful for friends and the notes of hope and support.  I’m not accustomed to feeling so out of control, but I am so lucky to have so many voices helping me find my way.  Thank you to everyone who has posted support here.  There were countless times when words on the screen were my only night light as I struggled against my demons in the darkness.

There are good days and bad days…with plenty to keep me busy, but not distracted.  I’ve become much more appreciative of the good moments, when I forget everything but the now, and much more careful to express my love as often as I can.

I’ve been listening to Secure Yourself by the Indigo Girls today and it’s resonated with what I’m facing – not the end of life, but the end of life as I’ve known it.  The night has come for me, I’m holding tight, and just waiting, hopefully, for morning.

1)  Shock

2)  Denial

3)  Pain

4)  Ice Cream (preferably B & J’s Phish Food or Baskin Robbins Pink Bubblegum)

5)  Goth  (For you kiddies out there, this is what we used to call Emo, back in the days before Target Brand Emo Gear, when we had to use sharpies to paint our nails black.)

6)  Bad Poetry (Look here if you don’t believe me – this stage follows closely on stage 5, and so you need to guard against the very real danger of kohl teardrops smearing all over your paper…)

7)  Cheesy Fries  (Go ahead – try and convince me that cheese doesn’t solve everything.)

8)  Annoyingly Chipper

9)  Randomly shagging Twitter pals  (This is a still-untested, but recommended stage suggested by Tmame, coincidentally a Twitter pal of mine…)

Thankfully, this is not a linear progression, and so, for at least 4 weeks following a breakup, there are ample excuses for both ice cream and cheesy fries at any hour of the day or night, for purely medicinal reasons, of course.

The amazing thing about all of this is that each of the committees operates completely independent of the others – I can feel awful or scared about one facet of my life and still be able to feel intense joy about another.   This has, for good and bad, led to a somewhat uneven blog – happy one moment, sad the next, then angry followed by scared and then joyful again.  The truth is that I’m not just feeling these things one at a time…all of those feelings and more are inside me always, begging for attention from the central committee, the executive board that I think of as me.

However, the Big Bad Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken has left that central committee feeling heartbroken and angry, and it’s starting to bleed into the other parts of my life.  As I tried to make it through my stretching routine at the gym today, tears welled up in my eyes and slid down my cheeks, as if the pain in my head could no longer be contained by sheer willpower alone.  Although I try to keep the horror show to myself, I find myself uncontrollably blurting out bits of it to people at random moments.  I feel lost and defeated, trapped and intensely angry, sad and guilty and I realize that I desperately need an ear to hear me with the training to help me navigate the hell that is my life.

This is a new thing for me.  Growing up, I never even thought twice about going to see a psychologist.  Then, a rough patch in college sent me to seek one out, and I found a graduate student who was willing to see me for free as he finished his doctorate.  Months of wonderful conversations ended abruptly when he skipped our appointment one day and left a love poem in his place as explanation.  My second try came in graduate school, a one-day meeting with a therapist assigned to keep the graduate students from working so hard they actually killed themselves.  After I answered her question as to what was bothering me, she looked at me, blinking, and said, “wow, that IS bad.”

Needless to say, I did not go back.

However, I have fallen far enough and am desperate enough that I have decided I need to try again…but I can’t.  For various reasons, I am barred from talking to an authority about my pain, and that makes me feel even more angry and trapped.  For years I could have gone, but chose not to, and now I want to, but I cannot.

My life must be damned entertaining for the gods.

And so I drink coffee and try to focus on Folsom or my kids or the hope that temperatures in the 40s and 50s might soon return to the Bay Area.  Today is the Autumnal Equinox, that moment that marks the beginning, in earnest, of the return of darkness, and, I hope, the cool winds and rains that will clear my mind and give me momentary peace.  I will keep talking – to friends, to lovers, to myself – and searching for a way to grab on to solutions before they wriggle through my fingers.  The thing about mathematicians is that we believe in answers, even if they’re hard to see.

You just have to keep trying.

The rules of the cave are simple – you are responsible for your own feelings and for never inflicting said feelings on anyone else. If you cannot keep composure, you must retreat into your cave, alone, until you are able to fix your internal error. Cave people do not share feelings or discuss revelations, unless they revolve around one of Fermat’s theorems or the best way to get a good look at what electrons are doing when no one’s watching. Cave living is simple, detached, clean, and, most of all, it’s what I’m used to.

However, in the past few years, I’ve suddenly and inexplicably been drawn to building relationships with sun worshipers, those folks who rip open their own hearts and dissect them out in the open for everyone to see. They cry and laugh and carry on in full view of other people, exuding emotions all over everything. The whole thing is fascinating and horrible, like some strange emo version of Halloween, except that Michael Myers is running around crying at sweet young coeds and holding them down while he makes them listen to his feelings until their half-ripped bikinis are dripping with understanding and shared experience.

Let’s be honest – for a native-born cave person, talking about emotions is hardcore edge play.

Two years ago, Catherine coaxed me out of my cave and, through months of epic emails, slowly taught me the beginnings of how to express what I was feeling inside. The blogs that I’ve kept have been testaments to my sometimes haphazard journey towards being able to expose myself, although I still find it much easier to write it out than to ever speak the truth. From early on, I was taught that I don’t have a right to my feelings, that they are shameful and awkward, and it’s best to hide them and not admit to such horrible internal errors, so the path is very difficult. I admire people who can be so open and honest, and I do hope to get there someday.

However, I frequently find myself in conversations or situations that are far beyond my feeble tools, and so I have to retreat. Sometimes I’ll use an excuse – thank goodness for kids who seem to constantly need my attention – or sometimes I’ll honestly explain that it’s just too much for me. Sometimes I even just yell, “CAVE!” and then run away to do some gardening or take a shower or pound some weights so I have time to regroup. For someone who has spent a lifetime denying my feelings, actually experiencing them – on purpose – is more intense than trying to stand on the sun.

The difficulty I’m experiencing of late is that the sun worshipers do not know the rules of the cave. They see me run in and they RUN IN AFTER ME. You see, sun worshipers believe that everything is best solved by talking. To other people. Out loud. Where they will hear you…. This is incomprehensible to cave people – how would telling someone about your feelings ever help to make those feelings go away? And the sun worshipers are wondering, well, how do you express your feelings if you’re just trying to deny them?

From the beginning, the two groups are destined to frustration because they’re not even aiming for the same goals. The cave people want to get rid of their feelings and the sun worshipers want to celebrate them. So what hope is there?

Well, I’m making small inroads with my own beloved sun worshipers. First, I had to explain about the cave and remember to explicitly tell them when I’ve gone inside. (Apparently sun worshipers think a momentary lack of communication is just an oversight, and they can be very persistent with the doorbell at the mouth of the cave.) Second, when they come back repeatedly to bring flowers and chocolates and a new lamp and a rug for the cave, and to tell you that they saw a rose that made them think of you, or that their cat has started doing that thing again with its tail…I am learning to thank them and gently walk them back out to the door, and close it firmly behind them. The trick is to forget some of my formal WASP training and let myself have a little space without trying to entertain unwanted visitors, while also making sure to see that all that attention is the way sun worshipers show you they care. For a sun worshiper, walking away is tantamount to leaving you to die in a desert, bereft of emotion.

And so it continues, the education of the cave people and the sun worshipers as we try to find a common language and some common ground. It’s certainly not easy, but it is worth it, because we have so much to learn from one another. I still speak fluent cave, but I’m getting better at speaking sun worshiper, even if I do have a funny accent. I’m coming closer to a balance where emotions can be acknowledged, felt and then embraced or discarded, depending on what’s best for me in the moment and in my life. I still suck at crying in public and tend to look angry when I’m scared, but I’m getting there, slowly, thanks to the lovers and friends who have been so patient with me.

Thank you, my beloved sun worshipers, you dazzle me with your brilliance and humble me with your patience. I love you like the crow loves the midday sun.

1)  The man who hired me 14 years ago, a wonderful, beautiful man, passed away this week after a lingering illness.  Not only did he refuse to see anyone after his diagnosis, but one of his last requests was that no memorial be held in his honor.  Goddammit.  Godfuckingdammit.  Friends, regardless of what excellent reasons you have for stupidly refusing a memorial service, please remember that they are not held for you, but for the loved ones you’ve left behind.  Dude, you’re gonna be dead, you won’t fucking care, but denying friends that last opportunity to touch you and be close to you and each other is just fucking selfish.

2)  High Schools continue to send me students who were told they “didn’t need math.”  Fuck you, Mr. and Mrs. School Board, for deciding that your students don’t need to get advanced degrees or go to law school or get an MBA or become doctors.  Fuck you for denying them a future because you can’t be bothered to come up with a creative way to interest them in math.  And dammit, students, wake the fuck up and stop thinking they were doing you a fucking favor.  They were screwing you hard in the ass without lube and you just smiled and took it AND said thank you.  Dammit, people, get up off your asses and demand an education and a voice in your future.

3)  I hate the phrase, “let’s be friends” because of the silent second part “and no longer lovers.”  Fuck fuck fucking fuckity fuck I hate the end of relationships.

4)  And, if it wasn’t already clear, no one else I know better die right now because I will come dig up your fucking body, bring you back to fucking life and then kill you with my fucking bare hands.  Remember – you staying alive is all about me and my happiness.  Don’t go getting so fucking selfish on me.

5)  California is too fucking hot.  I demand an end to temperatures above 69 degrees F.  (That’s 20.55 degrees Celsius for those of you who couldn’t be bothered to learn real temperatures.)  I especially object to days that are so fucking hot that ice cream melts before you can eat it.  That’s just plain fucking wrong.

6)  If I were god, republicans would suddenly wake up tomorrow strapped to the rack in 16^th century Spain, naked with a raging hard-on for their inquisitor, who just happens to have a predilection for watching men die slowly by way of red-hot sounding rods and razor blades.

7)  Goddammit, if you try to open that fucking door for me again I will fucking break your arm.

8)  And while we’re on that subject, Mr. Big Sweaty Palms, when I introduce myself to you, listen carefully.  I will tell you my name.  What the fuck is wrong with your ears that you somehow mishear and decide to call me by a nickfuckingname?  I know you’re a jerk, and a sweaty one at that – please don’t try so hard to convince me you’re an imbecile, too.

9)  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Book Publishers:  My students are poor.  You are not.  If you raise prices to try to gouge any more money out of my beloved students, I will fucking ram your fucking textbook up so far people will be able to read the table of fucking contents in the whites of your fucking eyes.

10)  Are you there, god?  It’s me, Roxy.  I would like to return my heart for repairs or replacement.  I’m pretty sure I paid for the extended warranty…I’ve got the receipt here somewhere…

11)  Speaking of hearts, god, what the fuck is up with the weird wiring?  Why is my heart always getting involved in matters of lust?  Can’t I just have one fucking superficial relationship without falling in fucking love? Do you really hate us humans so much that you repeatedly, heartlessly, condemn us to love?  Or is it just so entertaining to watch us cry until our seas are dry and our faces are salty with heartache?

Yeah, I’ll keep trying, but dammit, god.  Sometimes…sometimes, it’s just so damn hard to be human.

Tagged: Becoming Roxy, Control, jealousy, Kyle, M, Monday Rant, Nate, poly, Real life, Secrets, Truth ]]> http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2009/08/31/monday-rant/feed/ 16 sroxy http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2009/08/30/becoming/ http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2009/08/30/becoming/#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:46:14 +0000 sroxy http://uncommoncuriosity.com/?p=125 ]]> Yesterday morning, I woke up with my head full of poetry.  In my dream, someone had told it to me, and I was trying to remember it so I could write it down when I woke up (lately I’ve been so tired I can only dream half-lucidly – I know I’m dreaming but I don’t have much control over what happens.)  I jumped out of bed and typed it out onto the computer screen and then the rest of the poem quickly tumbled out of me.  The feeling of being ripe with words is indescribable, but it’s a little like the feeling of writing with your favorite pen onto your favorite paper – smooth and wet and full and perfect.  I have the distinct feeling this poem came from somewhere outside of me, through me, and that is a feeling of ecstasy like no other.

This poem is about evolution, about returning to the source, but it’s also about longing to be real and getting the strength to come out – as bi or pagan or poly or, in the case of lovers, as trans or genderqueer.  And I’m going to say something dangerous – I really like it.  It expresses itself exactly the way I hoped it would when I started writing it down, and there’s never a guarantee that that will happen.  Writing, and then sharing, poetry is, in itself, a very dangerous, transgressive act…somewhere along the line we’re all taught that poetry is far beyond our reach, and that’s a terrible injustice because poetry is the voice of the soul.  So, if you find something inspiring in these words, please write down a little poetry of your own.  And then share it.  Return to your source and revel in it…the water’s fine.

Becoming

Since the day we were named
we have yearned to return to the fierce, wide blue
Wet dreams of tumbling and floating in ecstasy
before we dragged our ragged selves
up into the sun.

We were fish once, you and I,
slick scales and sharp teeth,
sleek with purpose,
motion bound…
Through nights so black the stars stayed in
and the sky cried out in inky tears,
we’ve imagined ourselves free of these arms and legs
that lie limply at our sides.
At the edge of our ocean, afraid to swim,
we gaze into the deep coolness and think

That is my birthright

But we have forgotten how to dive.
Forgotten to put arms up and chin tucked in
because the impact is hard, it knocks the wind out of you –

it.  will.  hurt.

And no one - no one - can save you from it.
But then -
oh, thank you, Sedna,
You’re in, and the water loves you
like a long-lost skin
The sun sparkles through ripples in the surface -
it isn’t harsh here, swimming in the blue.

And you’ve found your place,
your origin, your birthland.
Tears of joy slip sideways into the sea
as strong fins surge
and you think

I am home.

To my surprise, though, spending time with so many deeply beautiful people made me love my guys even more, and made me wish they could be there with me, celebrating and sharing.  And it made me want to share them with you, because, well… I haven’t been.  I’ve been wanting to keep them special and precious and sheltered, but I realize they’re too important for me to keep quiet any longer.

By now you know Kyle, who’s given me love, support, revelation and inspiration for 9 months now.  He is brave and strong and wise and I fall in love with him again every day.  As we’ve gotten closer, we’ve had to overcome the challenges of poly jealousy and work together towards a more perfect trust and a clearer vision of each other, but that has served to bring us closer together.  I love him like the ocean loves the shore, like night loves the dawn.

Recently M came into the picture.  I’d known M for awhile on Twitter as a friend, but a few months ago I had the opportunity to meet him in person.  I was taking a much-needed road trip that just happened to wind around near where he lives with his partner, Amber, and we all decided that dinner together could be fun.  After dinner and a lot of good conversation, M and I got to wrestling and I spent a lot of time flying through the air and slamming, back-first, into walls and sliding slowly to the floor in a big, upside-down, giggling crumpled mess.  I can’t remember ever having such fun in a pillow fight – he was more than willing, and able, to toss me around like a rag doll, and I ate it up like a big bowl of Sugar-Frosted Bruisios (now with extra pummeling!)  After he knocked the fight out of me, repeatedly, we lay on the bed together, panting, and slowly found our way towards one another.  When we came together, I felt a deep connection with him, and, in the time since, we’ve discovered a great deal with have in common, not the least of which is the way our brains are filled with pictures, rather than words, and I adore having someone who understands what that feels like from the inside.  He is fiercely loyal and very sexy and loves me with a strength that nearly overwhelms me.  When he smiles, it’s poetry, and his courage is amazing to witness.

The wrinkle in my relationship with M is his partner, Amber’s, relationship with Kyle.  It’s taught me a lot about jealousy and trust, and I have to admit I haven’t handled myself well or with much dignity, but together we’re trying to find our way through it in fits and starts.  I love Kyle and I want him to be happy, and I admire Amber and think she’s a wonderful partner for him because she is smart and funny and sexy and they are so very similar.  I also want M and Amber to be happy and strong together because they are, as they were to begin with, good friends.  So sometimes it all gets a bit complicated.

I met Nate one night while trolling on Fetlife, ironically enough because I was fighting off a bout of jealousy and looking for a good distraction.  I saw a stunning picture of him and left a flirtatious comment and figured that would be the end of it, as these things frequently are.  To my surprise, he messaged me back, and we continued to flirt the entire night, moving to IM and talking about just about everything.  He lives far away, so meeting isn’t a possibility right now, but we talk on the phone and by IM, and make occasional, but excellent, use of the web cam.  He’s a parent, as I am, and in that small-world sort of way friends with a friend of mine from way back.  He’s a Dom, and wonderfully aggressive and sexy when we imagine violently sexy scenarios together.  He has a sweet, romantic side that he keeps guarded, but it’s wonderful to see when he lets it out.  The way he likes to play with his tongue piercing makes me weak in the knees imagining what else that little knob of metal could do.

So, these are the new guys in my life.  They excite me, thrill me, teach me and complicate me and I love them dearly, and I plan to start writing more about them soon.  They live life on their terms and face a world that isn’t always sure how to respond, but they keep reaching for a more perfect expression of who they are and that courage makes me adore them all the more.

Finally, as she handed me the bag with the collar nestled inside, she looked up at me with a hopeful, somewhat nervous, expression and asked, “so, you have a dog?”

I smiled at her with a wink and said,

“no.”

Oh I want to thank you for so many gifts
You gave me love and tenderness
I want to thank you
I want to thank you for your generosity,
The love, and the honesty that you gave to me
I want to thank you, show my gratitude,
My love and my respect for you

I want to thank you