Money, money, money

We went to Portland last week, and it was a relief. I think we needed a break.

On the way back, R and I started talking about money. I think it came out of a discussion about a couple friends of his (now married), who had difficulty coming to an agreement about how much money they made, how it was spent and the way it was split. This started turning into a conversation about splitting money in committed relationships, specifically, ours.

It kind of devolved. I found myself telling him that yeah, if we were married, I kind of figured it was all the same pot, except what we came in with. And then immediately, something of a response like "So it'd just be Tough Luck Rob then, would it?". And angry, resentful. He gets like that when he talks about Angi claiming 40% of the house in the divorce.

He pointed out that if he made more than me, and we paid for our separate mortgages out of the same pot, then he'd essentially be contributing to my mortgage more than I contributed to his. And that in the case of divorce, that'd be unfair.

I don't know who's right, but I think it wasn't unfair of Angi to get a part. I wish he wasn't so resentful about it. I think he's channelling shame into resentment, and putting that resentment on me.

Angi-Ang-A-Decade-In-The-Life

Dear Rob,

It is 1:01am and we went to bed three hours ago. Today has been a strange day and I feel very distant. You told me that everything is OK but I don't know if it is. Today, I thought to myself, what if this never gets any easier?

I know that there are always tough spots and I know that all relationships will need to weather these tough spots. It feels like there have been quite a few lately, and it also feels like this one doesn't seem to have much of an expiry date - at least, not in the foreseeable future.

I have been trying to think about my feelings about Angi, Rob's Ex-Wife. I have been trying to separate them from my feelings about Angi, Rob's Close Friend. I used to think I was OK at it but maybe I am not that good. I think this is because I think Angi, Rob's Close Friend is a little closer than any regular close friend ever will be, and because a decade (plus) in the life colours everything.

I think it would be hard for any woman in my shoes, but I am not dealing very well.


I made an appointment with my GP and I think I am going to ask for a referral to a therapist.

Love,
Susan

Curious George

there's a fissure we have to fix between me and R.


it's been there a little while. maybe it's not having as much sex anymore, maybe it's that notion that he doesn't understand *why* things make me feel a particular way, or maybe it's something to do with me.

either way, when Curious George at work flirted with me, there was a part of me that fantasised about it. about what it would be like to sleep with him - an undeniably attractive man.

Really fucking happy.

R.

you can't make homes out of human beings.

(someone should have already told you that.)

reading back on my previous posts, I can't help but feel like I've been trying to censor myself, even if it's just to my future self. I'll write out what I feel here, today, in all my wildness and weirdness.

1) my number is ten right now. I can have sex, and not have it mean very much - with the tenth boy, it was just because it wasn't a big deal and I was curious and hungry. it was really very bad, and I did not enjoy it. he held me afterwards without being asked, and I found myself tucked against him, not sure what I should be feeling. 

2) the A situation. I had a grown-up conversation where I tried to ask the things I want to know, and he put a lid on monogamy. I can feel myself tumbling into something that scares me. I see a future where I fall in love and I can't resolve the feelings of inadequacy and failure associated with a partner that has sex with other people. maybe it would be OK if he only had sex with casual randoms, I reason with myself. maybe it would be a fluid thing where we had rules and boundaries and sometimes it closed up. maybe it would be OK if he gave me the emotional support I needed. maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. 

I wonder if I can give all of myself if I am sleeping with other people?

he brought me back a book from his travels. I am making ice-cream from it; silky and tender and sweet. I need to watch it; I need to be careful.  

3) D comes up more and more. we've been emailing, very briefly.

time to deal, I guess. have a coffee, have the chat. 

I know what I want and I'm desperately afraid I'll never find it. 

A Song of A

Six times in three weeks. We fuck ravenously, delightfully. The heft of him in my hands, in my mouth, in my pussy, in my ass - delicious. To look at him is to want him. We have been outside the house precisely twice; both to the bar across the street from me. I don't even know if it really matters. I want to see his house, want to fuck him there and wear a shirt of his home. His smell is arousing; when I lie in the sheets of our distant fuck it sends something through me, something raw and filthy and fresh. His skin is strangely sweet, with a hint of bitter musk and salt.

He's this close to fucking me and coming in me, the bastard. It's pretty much the last barrier. I would let him, if we were dating exclusively. I don't know what the deal is there, but I don't think he wants that, really. I should just ask; people are not all like me. Sarah thinks I have a particularly vivid inner life; maybe A does not.

His dick is the greatest thing I have ever had, lets just leave it at that.

He holds me indelicately and it feels like I might break in his arms. Such arms, too. Mmmm. He's just big all over. I want to fuck him sweetly sometime, but I don't even know if that's something I'm good at.

I do not think he wants to date me and that makes me sad. If I found that out for sure - I would have to stop, wouldn't I? Because I would catch feelings, eventually. I might already have done so.

a letter to my (old) lover

Dear D,

You're back in the country, and you're seeping into my life. Slowly, slowly, your name comes up in conversation, and your face appears in digital colour. You sent me a request to be friends over six months ago. I wonder if you did it while you were drunk. H said she left you alone in a bar; maybe that was what it took. Maybe you thought, well, it's time we unfroze the Cold War. Maybe you didn't think at all. I fear the latter more.

Sometimes I fantasise about rejecting you, of seeing you at T's wedding and just leaving you cold. I don't think that will happen. This is what will happen, I think.

- Hello
- Hello, how have you been 
- Great, and you? I hear you've done ____
- Oh, yes, I'm fantastic - really loving the _____
- And your family are well?
- Oh yes, very well

Ad nauseum.

I miss - something. The feeling he gave me. The feeling that I was with exactly the right person. But he wasn't, was he? Not then, not there.

Maybe love,
SL

the ghost ship that didn't carry us

Earlier today, I read a few lines that struck something within me, from the Dear Sugar advice column at The Rumpus.

I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

As I approach 26, I am more and more aware of my own capabilities and weaknesses. I fundamentally tend towards laziness, am a little too critical and often become bogged in minutiae - seeing the forest only for individual trees. But I'm also generous, and loving, and good at being good to a person - really, genuinely, all-my-heart good. 

I spent six, almost seven months across 2015-2016 with a boy who loved me but wasn't enough. Who roused tender feelings, and sparked to life yearnings that I had not experienced before. But - it was not enough. I did not respect him as I need to respect my partner in life. I did not feel that bone-deep knowledge that I did not need anybody else, that he was IT. I cheated on him, once, and did not feel significant remorse. 

I read the things that Dimitri and I used to write to each other, to say to each other that I recorded faithfully - and I wonder about my ghost ship; the spectre of what could of been, and mourned it once more. I am twenty five and eight months. I am trying to be better, every day. I want to know that someday, I will feel like I did at twenty-one again. 

"Friend since March"

In about two months, we have seen each other seven times, exchanged approximately 13,000 FaceBook messages, had sex an appropriately mind-blowing number of times, and broken up once. Can you even call it a breakup?

I don't even know what to term the other it. Fling? Relationship? Love-type thing?

Tonight at dinner, Will told me that he thought we should just be friends, and stop sleeping together. Because he was leaving, and he'd just realised, and he needed - needed - to go. And that maybe this was something was going to stick around town for. Apparently the fact that I'd always been supportive of LA made it worse.

I don't want to cheapen how I felt. I was so embarrassed sitting there outside that gelato shop, watching my Bacio soften into soup, telling myself not to cry. Because love and affection are valid feelings, and I had them for him. Not a full-blown forever-relationship kind of love - but the kind that made me happy, all the same. Maybe he cared for me, maybe he was even falling in love a little. But y'know, he still made the call. And there ain't much I can do about that except comply.

I hate being left.

(It does - disappoint me that he wasn't brave enough to see it through. Not that it's cowardly to stop it now. It's just - I guess when I saw it was a good thing, I was determined to see it through to the end. And it's sad that it can't.)

And because I will forget otherwise, here is some of the last two months:

- Sweet days and hot nights at HB. Waking up in happiness. Awash in delight. Not leaving the house. Napping in a golden-lit tangle of limbs and contrasts and fresh skin. Looking up at him, after orgasm, through heavy eyes and tucking into his arms. The way he would lay a kiss on the top of my head, and hug tight. The slight floral scent of him, cut with clean sweat.

- His hands on my neck and my backside and my face and my hips and absolutely - absolutely taking.

- Stroking the inside of his forearm, with truth and measure.

- Conversations about everything and nothing. Music for days. Download sites that have everything. Waking up to a new song, or an email, or something that said, hey, I have been thinking about you, and what we talked about. Conversations where he remembered how much you liked something. and it made you feel nice that he cared.

- Walking blindfolded down George Street, in a silk kitty sleep mask. Eating so many cookies that you didn't want cookies for days after. Judging each cookie on three criteria, and writing them down at Papa E's office, in the shrieking room.

- The left-hand wall of the Parro apartment.

- Decaf English Breakfast, now stocked at Lenno.

- Well-cooked steak.

- Long drives with casual touching, and wearing his sweater.

How do I coin the phrase to set my soul apart? I don't know. I was happy - a simple, uncomplicated kind of happiness - one where I figured that if it worked, I'd try my hardest to make it work - long distance be damned - but now I am not. And that is a little bit of a heartbreak, I think.

One fleeting Monday

I had sex last Saturday with someone who I wasn't in a relationship with, and don't think I'd ever love.

I am dating and/or not dating two dudes at the same time.

I am concerned by whether the above will make me a worse person.

Someday I'd like to be in love again. Just not anytime soon.

no choice in the matter

…unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter 


-Charles Yu, How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe


This year's goals:
- Be a better person (read 1 x book per week, go to the gym 3-4 x per week)
- Figure out what I love to do in life

- Stay single

y por amor seré, serás, seremos

I want to write this down before it becomes a memory.

Two nights ago we made love again.


I was fine until he did something stupid. Can I take Bohnanza to [friend's] house tonight? I felt sick to my stomach. I went into my room and cried and cried. Heard him leaving, and couldn't hold it in any more.

You sank your teeth into my shoulder on New Year's Eve and told me I was yours. You told me from the beginning that you wanted forever, that you loved me. Before we came here, you said you would be good to me. Are you being good to me, now?

I don't know how to feel now. I still hate him for leaving me the way he did, for not caring enough to talk to me one last time, to love me enough to trust in it. He thought I'd marry him and then take him for everything after six months. He thought I was horrible.

He is so wrong and I don't know if I can love him again.

I tried so hard, so hard - and he left me like this and thinks so badly of me.


(oh god, I loved you so much - what was a few bad months in a lifetime, right? remember the good, Dimitri. remember the brilliant, shining thing we had, if only for awhile)

there is a bruise

on my shoulder where he bit me the last time we fucked and it hurts just a little when I press down

I do not remember the last time we made love