and

“I can’t imagine my life without you in it”

and

“isn’t it great that all the things that made us strange – outcasts – have brought us closer together?”

and my heart burst open like Pop Rocks tossed into a soda can.

Casey and Kyle are made of magic and love and fierce playfulness, and we fit together like we were cut from the same sparkly quilt a very long time ago, the one we’ve hid under to tell each other secrets that could topple nations.

This is love, this is trust, this is everything I didn’t know I needed, but now I can’t live without.

They’ve taught me to stand still and be.

The person I most want to touch is also the one I want to share a tree house with, and the first person who knows my fears.  My comfy chair and favorite frog-jumping partner.  Bliss and chocolate, with rainbows and sunsets and a kiss in the back of the movie theater, the kind that lasts 3 hours and leaves your face crusty and chapped.

They said, “you’re my favorite love”

and my heart burst open again, supernova, burning my cheeks a deep red, and I said

“oh, my love, yes, yes.  You are mine.”

And we are 16 again,

but this time

without shame.

She was friendly and nice, although she has a habit of looking at me without blinking which was somewhat distracting, so I had to take breaks and look away every now and again to avoid getting into a non-blinking war (because you know those only end in heartache and bloodshed.)  She also has a habit of making me finish sentences I don’t want to finish which I suppose is a good thing, but left me struggling a bit yesterday.  Clearly not someone who’s gonna let me wiggle around anything, that much I can say for certain.

I told her everything that I could cram into 50 minutes – a lot of pain and truth and fear – and she listened with an empathy that surprised and disarmed me.  The area and culture I was raised in is very much a “get the prize” kinda place – eat your broccoli first, leave dessert for some vague time in the future, get over yourself and do what needs to be done – complaining just proves you’re not up to the task.  The results of this are clear to see – Stanford University, tech companies, Google, 200 hour work weeks (sure, laugh, but you’d be amazed at how many billable hours lawyers manage to work around here,) ridiculous wealth, flashy possessions and very little concern for “feelings,” as they usually just serve to get in the way.  She, much like Kyle, comes from a different path – one of understanding, nurturing, talking about feelings and letting the prize go if it’s gonna burn your hands.  I am Kung Fu, they are Touched by an Angel, so some of our conversation yesterday boiled down to trying to find common understanding (to be fair, I had a much harder time than she.)

The scary part was telling her that my husband had hit my son, and about everything that had happened before and since.  CPS, police, the court system, anger management classes, anti-anxiety meds for him, counseling for my kids…and me in the middle hating myself for not seeing that it would happen and prevent it.

I had a dream last night – in it *I* was the one who hit my son, and the meaning is pretty clear to me.  Pain fades into flashbacks and personality quirks, but guilt rages on long after it’s any use – condemning and tormenting me, and I punish myself over and over for something I didn’t do, but should have foreseen and prevented.

As I spoke, she didn’t flinch, she didn’t run away – she sat right there and let me talk and then asked me little questions that brought out big answers.  She asked me about my childhood without really asking – just guided us through the boulders of growing up in a bipolar household, past the signposts that were suddenly clear as day.  Of course I’d grow up desperate for a system of rules that were absolute, for a calm port in a sea of ups and downs, a place, like mathematics, where the truth didn’t depend on how someone in power feels.  It was humbling and yet wonderful to see how my odd little life fit into itself perfectly.

Ane, yet, the whole time, she didn’t tell me so much as guided me to tell her, and that was brilliant.  I stumbled onto someone who can challenge me and guide me to figure this out with her, and that is a wonderful gift.  Afterward I was jazzed and excited, but then the adrenaline crash hit me and I’m very thankful that Kyle was there to talk me through it.  It’s a hard thing to lay yourself out for inspection, but the two of them together made it really worthwhile.

So, yeah, next Monday, I’ll be back.  Can’t wait to hear what I’ll say then.

So today I’ll be going to see a therapist – not my first, although it’s been nearly two decades since I’ve seen one.   The rest of my family has their own, and it seemed like time for me to get on with healing myself.  I found her online, and she looks like a good fit, at least on the screen.  I really like what she wrote about her approach to therapy – she appeals to my head and my heart, and that’s not easy to do.  We’ve exchanged a few emails and I’ve outlined the mess that I call a life and she hasn’t run away screaming, and that’s definitely a good sign.  She’s open to poly, which was important to me because Kyle is married, so no matter how my life goes, I plan to be in a poly relationship for a very long time.

This afternoon I’ll be going for the first visit, and we’ll decide whether it’s as good a fit in person as it is online.  It’s taken a lot for me to get to this point, so I’m very hopeful that it does work out…starting out again to find another therapist doesn’t seem like that much fun right now.

However it turns out, though, I’m still pretty proud of myself for taking this step.  Meeting a stranger for perverted sex is easy as candy compared to meeting a stranger to talk about myself, and it’s taken a lot of encouragement for me to get here.

I’ll let y’all know how it goes tomorrow.  Fingers crossed for me, k?  Thanks.

And so it horrified my mother when I started going to church, on my own, at 9.  I had gone once with a friend after a sleep over, and I loved it so much that I begged my parents to let me go again.  I was ridiculed, yelled at and resented for it, but still I walked there by myself every week.  I arranged for my own baptism (Lutheran, which, for the record, is very different here in California than anything I’ve ever heard on Prairie Home Companion) and I continued on, studying and memorizing the catechism, and then made it through another two hard years of work to get confirmed.  I read the Bible cover to cover and debated the pastor whenever he would let me (I had a bad habit of asking awkward questions that he wasn’t prepared to answer.  Later I would find out he had slept with most of the parish, and, to this day, I feel a twinge of sick, twisted jealousy that I was one of the few he didn’t take advantage of.)  I joined the choir and participated in the Christmas pageant, all to the disgust of my parents, who, to their credit, came to every concert and appearance, even as they muttered under their breath about the evils of organized religion.

As a teenager, I started to question a lot about Christianity.  It seemed to me that the image of God I was being taught seemed angrier and less loving than I imagined he should be.  I had hard questions about a woman’s place in the world, and about the whole killing people righteously bits that were strewn through the Old and New Testaments.  I imagine that in the hands of a skilled pastor (or one who could take his mind off diddling for a few moments,) my life may have turned out differently, but I eventually strayed from the Church at the ripe old age of 15, and sought out other answers to the questions that never seemed to run out.

In my search, I read books, talked to friends, attended countless temples, services and meetings, and finally stumbled upon Wicca (in the mid-eighties, when information was hard to find) and that was the beginning of my path through paganism – a path that continues today.  However, because of my early foundation in Christianity, I’ve always felt kindred to Christians – sure, some would have liked to see me drawn and quartered with a rusty butter knife for my beliefs, but I always figured we had a lot of the same general ideas about the world:  be good to each other, look out for each other, stop judging one another, and try to remember that we’re here to care for one another as we all struggle through what is often a very difficult life.  In fact, I’ve always held tightly to the elephant model of religion, where we’ve each got a hold of a different part, but the elephant is so big that we can’t see we’re all talking about the same creature.  You’ve got a trunk and I’ve got a tail, but we’re still holding tight to the same god(s.)

Even after I officially left the church, I continued to attend many times a year, because my grandmother was the choir master/organist for her parish, and I would go whenever I visited her.  I’ve always loved the singing, and the sermons, which, when separated from the trappings of religion, are just as true for a pagan as they are for a christian (again, here I’ve benefited from attending services in the Bay Area, where they don’t openly encourage wholesale slaughter or voting Republican.)  I love the community, and the joy of being with a group of people who all believe in something greater than themselves, even if it doesn’t make any logical, scientific sense (and, no, it doesn’t have to conflict with being a scientist, but that’s a post for another day.)

So I was looking forward to attending Easter services yesterday – I even wore a skirt and a respectable sweater.  But as I sat in the pew, singing some of my favorite songs with the congregation to celebrate the resurrection of the Son, (which is really not that much different from my celebration of the rebirth of the sun,) I suddenly felt out of place.  Horribly out of place.  Suddenly I wanted to run away, which confused me, because I didn’t remember getting any internal “church is bad” memos.  My feet wanted to run, my heart wanted to run, and my brain was left holding the “but I thought we were having a good time” bag.

I stuck it out through the entire service, about an hour and a half, and tried to participate as best I could, even though my stomach was sure that it was the end of the world.  After a life of belonging, I suddenly had the very distinct feeling that these were not my people, and this was not my place – as if my polarity had shifted overnight and I no longer fit in.  I kept hoping that horrible feeling would go away, that it was just a result of the malaise I’d been feeling for months…but it’s gotten stronger the more I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s left me feeling like someone who’s lost their home.

More than that, I feel as if I’ve lost my soul.  It’s not in the hands of some cosmic police officer or slipping down towards the fires of endless torment – it’s just lost, gone missing.  I’d put up “Lost Soul – please return to owner” flyers if I knew where to look.  Perhaps my soul is exactly where it should be, and I’m the one who’s lost.  There’s an empty space where part of me used to be, like a door closed on the past and I can’t ever get back in, and it frustrates me because I can’t work out why it happened today.  Why not at 15?  Why not when I left the church?  Why not years ago when I became poly?  The first time I whipped a man just to make him come?  The exquisite moment last year when I fell in love with a woman and made ecstatic love to her over and over in a Washington hotel room?  When I saw my life fall apart last summer and noticed that no god bothered to raise so much as a little pinkie finger to help as I lay on the floor screaming out desperate prayers to an empty universe?

Why am I different today when I wasn’t different any of those other times?  When did the clock start ticking on my membership, and why didn’t I feel it change?

Today I’m an outsider, but not because anyone says I am.  There’s always been someone around to tell me I didn’t fit in, but I’ve never felt it like this.  Today is different because today I’m the one saying it.

And it hurts like dying without being dead, like I’m a shell without a middle.  I can’t go back, and I don’t know where to go forward because everything is suddenly different.  Even “here” has changed, so I can’t even work out how to stand still.  I’m sitting here with my arms wrapped around my belly, trying to keep the rest of me from falling out, too, wondering how much more can change before I don’t even recognize myself.

Caterpillar: Who… are… you?
Alice: Why, I hardly know, sir. I’ve changed so much since this morning, you see…
Caterpillar: No, I do not C, explain yourself.
Alice: I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, you see, because I’m not myself, you know.
Caterpillar: I do not know.
Alice: I can’t put it any more clearly, sir, because it isn’t clear to me.

–Alice In Wonderland

Sometimes when things get rough, you just gotta cry uncle.  I’m gonna be taking a vacation from my online life – maybe a day, maybe a week – to give me some time to get my head screwed on straight (gayly forward.)

Be seeing you…

(* I actually think fishing is barbaric, so it would mostly be throwing vegetarian** fish snacks into the water and enjoying the yummy noises they*** all make.)

(**By which I do NOT mean eggplant, because it’s related to deadly nightshade, and therefore clearly poisonous, nor squash, whose Latin name is lagenaria, which translates as, “warning – do not eat, these are bitter, squishy and gross.  I’m serious.  Don’t eat these.  You’ll regret it.”  Sadly, my mother’s Latin was a bit rusty, and so she served them up frequently, and you can see how I turned out.  Please, for the love of all that is good, stop forcing these so-called foods on your vegetarian friends.  Take your anger out at a shooting range or in a tell-all memoir like other normal people do.  Remember, vegetarians are your friends and chocolate and cheese are both vegetarian, if you use the right sources.  And, no, hiding squash under a lot of cheese isn’t fooling anyone.  If you’re desperate, take that squash out and serve it to your vegan friends – as far as I can tell, they don’t have taste buds anyway.)

(***The fish, not the snacks.)

I hope you will forgive my secrecy, and understand my caution.

I remember seeing Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time in the early 90s.  I can’t remember if it was at a theater, or on video, but I do remember falling in love.  I had had a crush on Mary Stuart Masterson for just about ever, and she was her strong, beautiful, somewhat sullen self again, and I loved it.  The movie was sad, to be sure, but I can remember thinking it was beautiful, and romantic, and sexy as hell, even though it refused to show any of the scenes I knew were hiding just out of sight.  The first time I saw the movie, it was a happy memory for me – a future wish for love and romance of a flavor I’d never tasted before.

The next time I remember seeing the movie, it was over a decade later.  I had met – and been spurned by – Catherine, and the movie was suddenly poignant in ways I hadn’t seen before.  The movie was thick with the theme of loving and not being loved in return, and I cried.  I cried for Idgie and I cried for myself, and for everyone who loves in vain.

I saw the movie again last night and I cried again.  For Idgie and Ruth, and for everyone who comes close to paradise but can’t get it to stick.  Suddenly the movie wasn’t just about beauty and romance, and it wasn’t just about unrequited love…it was about anyone who’s ever had to face the truth of what they’d never have and still wake up in the morning to live through the rest.  Idgie was so close to her heart’s desire, but dreamed of love…and I have love, but dream of being close.  The people around them worked so hard for a place in the world, only to be denied it.  Everyone in the movie was holding tightly to the hope for something better, just around the corner.  And, it’s true, you know – the wanting makes the getting so much sweeter, even if it’s just for a brief moment here and there.

So here’s to honey-sweet memories and sweat-soaked hopes.  This isn’t a movie I can bear very often, but it’s one I keep tucked away to rediscover again and again, and it makes me wonder – when I pull it out again in a few years…I wonder now what I’ll be able to see then.

The reasoning is sound – it’s just too easy for today’s fantasy to become tomorrow’s obsession.  If you let yourself want, you may fall into wanting too much, and that same fantasy that gives you pleasure now will leave you cursing with heartache later.  Humans are built for it, evolved for it, and it’s hard to break that pattern.  We were born to escalate, to want more and more, and that just doesn’t work in a polyamorous setting, where there are careful rules and regulations for each person’s share of love.

Primary partners have the luxury of uninhibited daydreams – future plans for vacations, hopes and fantasies – things that may never come to pass, but could.  For secondaries, though, there’s no chance of a vacation together, no possibility of that little house on the beach, that week spent under the covers with a tropical breeze blowing right outside.  Fantasies are dangerous because there’s always a voice inside reminding you of what you can’t have – somehow it doesn’t really matter what will happen, just what could.  And, for secondaries, “could” is a very small word.

After a year of being very good, though, Kyle and I were beginning to find that the ghosts of what wasn’t being said were starting to gnaw at us too much, and so we’ve been slowly speaking the truth.  It feels good, the truth – there’s something about sunshine that kills the little resentments and doubts that grow like mildew in the darkness.  Out of this new-found courage we decided to dedicate a day to speaking the truth, no matter how dangerous, and we christened it “Brave Monday.”

Yesterday was our first attempt at it, and I have to agree that it went very well.  We talked about that trip to Hawaii, about the little house on the beach where the kids could all go shelling together.  We fantasized a life together without airplanes and goodbyes.  We spoke the “what ifs” out loud and reveled in the joy of letting go, not holding back.  What if we could go back, carefully unbraiding our lives, and then start again with new strands to create new braids with different circumstances?  What would that look like?  Who would we be?

The truth is that we both adore our families and neither of us would give them up.  The circumstances in our lives that keep us apart are exactly the ones that brought us together, and the truth is that, had we been in a position to be together, we probably never would have met.  But the chance to live out other lives, even just online, in words on a screen…it felt really good.  Kyle and I, we’ve lived a thousand fantastic lives together in our heads, and it was nice to create our own real life out loud, and share it together.

Today we’re back to Girl Scout cookie sales and Little League, jobs and families and lives lived hundreds of miles apart, and that’s good, too.  It feels solid and real, unlike our fantasies of little beach huts that miraculously have internet connections and room enough to sleep 8, and together they make up two sides of our truth.  What is, and what may never be.  Live in either one too long and you miss out on the other.

And I don’t wanna miss out on anything.  Life is good.  Kyle is good.  And I am damn lucky.