The Long and Short

I've been handed some empathy recently for what it's like to be with me. I can be standoffish, unclear about what I'm feeling, depressive, non-communicative, and inflexible with my priorities. I require someone else to break the ice and offer me a safe space before I'll open up about myself.

When someone else acts this way with me it drives me nuts, and I find myself saying things like, "I don't understand why this person is acting that way!" In fact, I think I understand quite well, and it's so close to my face I can't focus on it. The ugliest revelation to accept is self-reflection. I'm looking in a mirror and not liking what I see. I was proud of myself for having opened up so thoroughly in my relationship with Aiden and expressed everything I was thinking and feeling, but now I'm realizing that the whole process required for that to happen was unique to that relationship and doesn't translate to any other locale.

In the interest of bettering myself and not being a hypocrite, here's some clarity, because I wish I had some more access to clarity myself:

Aiden, when you decided not to come with me, I was completely crushed. Had you changed your mind the next day, I would've taken you back and been on top of the world; I was too blinded by pain to understand the problems with that situation. Once I had some time to realize I was going to survive, I also realized that the way you made that decision illustrated exactly why we shouldn't be partners. Since we got together, I spent a lot of effort trying to help you bust out; my role in life is to be the X factor, to fly into others' lives and shake them up and add a wild card. You always talked big and said that you were interested in the adventures I craved, but when it came right down to it, eight times out of ten I was left disappointed when you chose safety over freedom and the known quantity over the unknown one. In offering you a new start, I gave you one last chance to jump off the cliff and fly; and you turned it down.

I can't say there isn't a second chance, because in fact there have been many. However, I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't another one. Jerking me around because you're too much of a coward to take an opportunity when it's offered is not fair to me, and you won't get another chance to do it. I'm sick of waiting for you. I'll find someone else who's not afraid of their own shadow, or I'll go on my own damn adventure. Either option is better than waiting indefinitely for change where there isn't any.

You asked why I act like I hate you, and my answer to that is: give me one reason I should like you right now. 

I answer your messages because there isn't any particular reason to be rude to you. You've never been rude to me, and out of respect for that fact I will return the courtesy. I also want to keep a civil relationship with you for practical reasons, as we belong to the same league and need to be able to work together for everyone's sake. However, I don't have much interest in spending time with you or chatting for the sake of chatting. The energy you want from me is energy that I need to put toward other activities and other relationships. You had your chance with me, and you chose to end our relationship. If you regret that choice, it's not my problem. I deserve the space to find what I want and need in life.

There's a subset of things I know about myself that I'm willing to share, and another subset that I'm not; and that second set is really what's required to be able to say that I'm open and honest with someone. I still default to just flashing the shiny side and hiding all my emotions until they're invited. That's really not a helpful habit. It's fear that keeps me from changing. I'm afraid to bust out with "this is how I feel" and have it belittled, not accepted, or unreciprocated.

Maybe a little of it is PTSD; I ripped my heart out trying to save my last relationship and got it stepped on. If that were to happen again so soon I'm not sure I could take it.

On the other hand, I didn't think I could take the end of that relationship either, and I was wrong. If there's one thing I've learned from all this it's that I'll be okay no matter what happens.

Returning to the first hand, though, if I destroy enough of my support mechanisms even I will have to crumble eventually, when there's nothing left to hold me up. Maybe waiting for the table to grow a few more legs before doing surgery on one of them is the better plan.

There's that fear thing again. "Can't let the table collapse, I might fucking die." I won't fucking die. I walked out on the bridge, and then I walked back again. I have a lot of new scars but I'm still here.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

My heroes: Tyler Durden, Harley Quinn, and Deadpool.

Strength

June 2017

My new apartment was under renovation. It belonged to my friend Zoe, who had made me a deal - I could live in it in exchange for working on it. It sounded good to me.

It was a mess, though. No one was supposed to be living there. There was no furniture and no fridge, and everything was covered in a thick layer of golden dust that had been sanded off the wood floors. Zoe's boyfriend and cousin wrestled an old fridge up to the second floor for me, and then she and her daughter and another cousin came up and cleaned it out and made sure it was working.

Ninja had joined the moving crew on its way from A to B, and she stayed late and went out shopping with me. I was setting up a new home from scratch; I bought a bed, some sheets, and some curtains. The walls in my room were lime green with patches of white spackle, and the ceiling was a lumpy mess that needed sanding.

The next morning I set about making the kitchen functional. I cleaned everything, from the tops of the cupboards to the cracks in the baseboards. At least once I collapsed in the middle of the floor and just cried. I wasn't supposed to be there. Everything had gone so wrong. I kept hoping that Aiden would call and say he had made a terrible mistake and wanted me back, but my phone stayed silent. I wondered what he was doing. Probably crying on Shelby's shoulder about how bad his life was.

By the afternoon the kitchen was sparkling. Zoe invited me to go ride motorcycles with some friends, and I jumped on the distraction.

I spent a lot of time with her, and it became obvious that I was very lucky to have her as a friend. She was supportive and helpful and adult, but also badass and crude enough that I felt like we might be related. She was understanding when I shared pieces of what had happened with Aiden and Shelby. She made it clear that I was to go to her if I needed help, without being an intrusive asshole about it. She fed me protein shakes when anxiety wouldn't let me eat.

She came to me for help too, when things weren't going well with her boyfriend or her daughter. She knocked on my door one night and said she just couldn't take it and needed to escape. I brought her into my room and we shared a bottle of wine and commiserated about life. Some mornings I brought her lattes, and some evenings she made me margaritas. We watched movies and I braided her hair.

A few days into my new arrangement, my friend Hawk messaged me to check in. He realized immediately that I was a disaster and invited me to go along on his upcoming motorcycle trip across the country. What the hell, I thought. I'm free. Might as well act like it. Ninja encouraged me to go, even after I came clean to her about the details of my involvement with Hawk years earlier.

"I knew," she scolded me, like a mother hen. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Please. I know you, and I know Hawk." We had a good laugh.

Hawk and I spent ten days on the road, and it was a blast. He egged me into doing 1,000 miles on the bike in a day, and I did it because I have a chip on my shoulder. I hit it off with his friends. I introduced him to my cousins. I dumped his bike twice, and to his credit he was completely chill about it. We drove through hours of rain, soaked and freezing, and we baked ourselves senseless under the blazing Midwestern sun. I realized I was better off without someone who held me down and refused to adventure with me.

The day after I returned, Aiden showed up on my doorstep. He had made a terrible mistake. He wanted me back.

I told him to go to hell.

The End

June 2017

I never did explain what happened after June of 2016. I was hurting too much to go over it again.

I did what I said I was going to do; I found a place to go by myself. The night before I moved, Aiden told me he had made his decision, and that he'd be staying with Shelby. This after he had already told me he was coming with me.

I lost my fucking mind. That's not how it was supposed to go. I did exactly what I'd been trying so hard not to do and I begged. I never beg, for anything, but I did. I was more desperate than I think I've ever been.

He told me no.

I walked out of the house, crossed the road, and headed for the bridge. I had no shoes, no wallet, no phone; I wouldn't need them where I was going. On my way up the north side I spotted something shiny on the ground - the tip of a fishing knife, broken off to the size of an arrowhead. I picked it up and started digging it into my palm as I walked.

At the center of the bridge I stopped and stood at the railing, just me and the drop and the rushing water in the middle of the night. I squeezed the knife tip until blood welled up around it, then squeezed it again, and again. I drew it across my palm, chasing the life lines around my hand until they were crimson.

After some time I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and realized Aiden was walking toward me. Baffled, I didn't run. I wanted to know what he could possibly say, what right he thought he had to be out there with me.

He told me stop doing what I was doing with the knife. I snatched it away from him, refused, continued trying to let the pain out through my skin. He told me come home. Home? Where the fuck was that, exactly? At least back to the house. No, I never want to be there ever again. I don't want to be anywhere. That place is poison, what the fuck have I been telling you.

Eventually he walked away. I jumped over the railing as soon as he turned his back. There was a ledge on the open side, and I sat with my back against the metal bars and my feet dangling into the blackness over the river. A patch of cracked concrete rose from the water below me.

It's not high enough.

Oh come on, people die from falls off smaller things.

By chance. People have also survived multi-story falls by that same chance.

I'll just go head-first.

You can't even dive into a pool, you idiot. You'll land on your back and end up paralyzed and stuck.

Hours later I walked back into the house. There was nowhere else I could go without a wallet, a phone, and some car keys. I snuck into the spare room and lay down on the futon.

It had been years since I made myself bleed like that. Seven years, almost to the day. I couldn't stop cutting, and I couldn't stop crying.

At some point he came in and laid down next to me. He talked for a long time; I can't remember a word of it now. None of it mattered. All I remember is asking him to stay one last night with me, and him telling me no. I told him it was the last night that would ever happen, and he could spend all the rest of the nights of his life with Shelby, but he walked away and spent it with her instead.

The next morning he came back, apparently to give me a third blow: I tried to take his pants off and he told me no and backed away. I rewound the tape. It's the last time. Then you can be rid of me forever. No, I won't. Don't touch me.

I found my sub collar in a drawer and gave it back. The look on his face told me I'd hit the pay dirt I was looking for. Three good headshots deserve at least one in return.

Then my friends arrived and there was a whirlwind of boxes. When everything was packed into vehicles and I'd gotten behind the wheel of the moving van, I dropped my head into the steering wheel and sobbed. Bruce, riding shotgun, held my hand until I could drive again. I'd been wearing socks on my arms, but as we idled through traffic I pulled them down and showed Bruce my new marks.

"I had a feeling," he said. I knew that he knew, and that he wouldn't judge me. "Please call me if you're going to do that again."

I promised I would, but I knew it wasn't going to happen again. It wouldn't help.

What I Need

I had dinner with Eben last night, and as I was talking through some of the things that are bothering me, I noticed him taking notes on a napkin. He was writing down personal needs that he heard me expressing, and the list he came up with and his explanations really helped me sort out some of my thoughts.

In no particular order...

Asking me where I want to be in five years is unfair. I have no idea and I don't need to. I think Aiden's asking me to provide a false sense of stability with that question. Even if I could give an answer, by a year from now it would probably be wrong.

Do I expect him to pretend, if he comes with me, that Shelby doesn't exist? No, that's warping reality in a really weird way. No one just pretends that their exes don't exist. What I would expect is for him to be loyal to me.

I need to be treated as an expert on myself. I've put several years of my life into learning and accepting this lesson that I am not into poly relationships, and asking me to try it again with a slightly different spin is just insulting. It makes me feel like I'm being dressed up in someone else's clothes when I've expressly stated that I will only wear my own clothes. I don't want someone in my life who tries to force me into the shape they want, particularly when I've made it clear that that shape is very painful for me.

I've reached my breaking point. I am out of patience, out of willpower, and I was really proud of myself when I finally found the courage to stand up and say that. Now that the end is in sight, I'm impatient that it isn't here already. I've spent the last two and a half years trying to be someone I wasn't, and hoping for a way out; Aiden has spent those years in relative contentment, and thus can't really see my viewpoint. That's half the reason I'm so itchy for him to make a decision.

The other half is that I realized I was associating reluctance to make a decision with reluctance to be in a relationship with me; I've been unconsciously assuming that if he has a hard time with this decision, it means he'll never be fully engaged with me. Under the light of logic, I think that's untrue. Before a decision and after it are very different head spaces.

I need to feel connected to the people I love. As backward as it may sound at first, that's why I don't want someone who just wants to do what I want to do all the time. Firstly, it puts pressure on me to always have a thing to do and always come up with the activities and the entertainment, and that's exhausting. Secondly, Aiden having things that he does gives me a way to connect to him. I found him interesting in the first place because he was different from myself. I already know me; why would I want to date me? If neither of us ever brought new experiences back home, we'd run out of things to talk about, and reasons to be interested in each other. This difference is where having a crush is centered.

Now that I've sorted some of that out, I'm regretting taking away the deadline. I regretted making it, and then I regretted unmaking it; what's happening here? I'm looking for an end to the uncertainty. I need to know when I'll know. I found a place to go physically, which allowed me to relax the deadline a little bit, but I'd like Aiden to suggest one. Not knowing how to go forward is driving me nuts, partly because leaving my life up in the air indefinitely is unfair and impractical and partly because The Vacation is still looming.

Option C

What Aiden is looking for is not actually option C...it's option "D-all-of-the-above," which I should have picked up on earlier, because that's been one of his favorite phrases as long as I've known him. I told him yesterday that option C is that I leave and tell him to fuck off.

I was wrong. That's not my option C. I've been feeling so guilty about dragging him along, and he's been asking for more time, but I can't doodle around waiting for a decision he won't make...so here's how those things work together. I apply the deadline only to myself, and leave Aiden to do what he wants.

He cannot have option D; that requires me to want it too, and it's near the bottom of the list of things I want. I don't feel bad about that. I've spent enough time and energy trying to force myself to be part of someone else's paradigm that I really cannot muster an apology for having figured out what I don't want.

So I'm leaving. I need my out and I will have it, and I will have it soon. But Aiden doesn't have to come with me. As long as I don't get locked into a minimum-length lease agreement, there's no reason for me not to go off on my own and see what happens. If he decides in a month that I'm where he wants to be, he can come join me.

This feels right. I can't speak for him, but it feels to me like a reasonable compromise. The only concern it leaves me with is the upcoming vacation. The small Aiden is going to be away at camp for four weeks, and that's our only chance during the entire year to take a vacation. If he comes back to me after taking the vacation with Shelby, I'm going to be pissed at missing out. The possibility of time with him and no one else gets me unreasonably excited, and when I miss out on something that gets me that excited, in turn I get unreasonably disappointed. To be honest, that's probably part of the reason for my giving him a deadline in the first place. Firstly, it was for my general sanity; I can't indefinitely put my life on hold to wait for something that may not even happen. But secondly, it was to get things sorted before The Vacation, so I know what to plan for and just how much to worry.

A Blurry Future

Aiden asked me yesterday where I see myself in five years. I couldn't figure out how to answer because I have no idea. I'm more of a pantser than a planner when it comes down to it. I'm capable of planning but I only do it when and to the extent that I absolutely have to.

That question also enters the foggy territory I've been trying to avoid of making promises about the future. I don't want to try to sell myself as the better option; I am who I am, and he should pretty much know by now who that is, and what kind of accessories come with the package. I'm already fighting the feeling that I'm dragging him into something, and I don't want it on my conscience later that I tried to convince him to come with me. It's his decision, not mine, and honestly I'm considering just walking so that I don't have to deal with the guilt in the future. I'm starting to fear that the structural damage caused by taking him with me might be worse than the pain of leaving him behind. Neither will be any fun. I don't know if there are any good options left. And of course there's the indignant voice in my head saying, "You don't even have a two-week plan...how can you expect me to have a five-year one?"

On the other hand (to return from a tangent; there are a lot of things on the first hand, apparently), I can't blame him for wanting to know what the bike looks like before driving it home. I'll try to answer the question, but I admit that I'm finding more reasons that I can't answer it than potential answers.

Let's say for the sake of argument that we move to the place we looked at last week, over the bicycle shop. I change my work schedule to Wednesday-Thursday-Friday temporarily to make some more cash, likely spending one of those nights at home and one at work. I keep attending practice Sunday and coaching on Tuesday. I finish my personal trainer certification and get a job at one of the local gyms, not necessarily in that order (there are two immediately in town and plenty more in the surrounding area), then cut my previous work back as I get more work closer to home. Eventually I probably get tired of working for someone else and start my own personal training business; maybe that involves teaching people to skate. I take two to four weeks every summer to bomb around the world on a motorcycle. I write a book. Someday I will make time to put music back into my life, either by composing on my computer or joining a band or both. Ideally I get my financial shit together enough to retire early, or at least take regular work sabbaticals.

That's all me, of course, but I can't really construct an "us" without some input from the other half. To make some assumptions: he gets some work close by or starts some kind of internet business, keeps skating and reffing, goes with me on summer and weekend adventures, and plays epic kinky games with me. We brew mead and cook food and fix bikes. We go on a lot of night walks and do a lot of camping.

Doubts

I'm starting to doubt myself. Putting my life in limbo to wait for Aiden to make a choice, combined with his worries that our relationship won't work out, have illuminated some concerns for me.

He's a terrible decision maker. It doesn't matter where on the scale of seriousness the decision lies, whether it's whom to date or which brand of toothbrush to purchase. Watching him struggle to decide has always driven me a little nuts; it usually ends with me making the decision after he's taken too damn long. And I went and put my own future on his options shelf...what the hell was I thinking?

Anyone on the outside would tell me I'm an idiot for even offering him the chance. He's a jobless dad with a troubled teenager, whose only income is state aid, who demonstrates no drive to accomplish anything outside the house. I brought up that concern to him and he said getting a job wouldn't be a problem...but didn't specify beyond that, choosing instead to avoid discussing the topic any further. People have told me I can do better, and I've studiously ignored them, but maybe I should be listening. The kicker is, he could erase these doubts so easily by just taking some initiative. I'm no leader, but I've learned to take charge when it needs to be done, and honestly it's not that hard. I've told him what needs to be done (many times, in many ways, on many subjects) and he just...doesn't. It's a mystery to me, and a huge frustration.

So I'm keeping him why then - for the sex? He lets any obstacle that comes up get in the way of us getting that time together, then claims that the outside circumstances aren't something he can control. Of course they're not; but he can choose not to let them control him. He just doesn't. He complains that he wants Option C (finding a way out of the false dichotomy) but doesn't actually come up with it. A few weeks ago when I wanted to talk to him alone and Sheila was home, I told him I was at the library. He insisted I come home even though I made it clear that wasn't an option for me. I waited for him to suggest meeting me at the library...but he didn't. I finally had to tell him to come find me. Was that really all that hard? Why is it down to me to come up with every damn solution to everything?

I wonder if, in trying to set myself free, I'm just taking on another burden.