What a turn my life has taken over the past six months. 

Exactly 6 months ago this Wednesday, AP and I split up. And while the end of any relationship should be something to mourn even if just a little bit, I felt relief. The day all of her stuff was out of our apartment, I finally felt like I could breathe again.

For almost 2 months I had to learn how to live by myself. I’ve never lived alone except for those two months. In October, my current roommate (SK) moved in (I had another one for awhile, but he was horrid and not worth mentioning), and I wasn’t alone anymore. He’s a bit younger than me, but one of my absolute best friends. He and I got drunk together, went out to bars together, hit on girls together, went to strip clubs together, played large amounts of Magic the Gathering together, played video games together… did virtually everything together until we both got jobs. In those two months where SK and I were out and about catting around, I felt like I was finally living the life that I had been denied. I never really partied all that much in college, well in my life with AP anyways. Before that, I have distinct fuzzy recollections of drunken spin the bottle, drinking games, making out with strangers, getting groped by my friend’s girlfriend, having a gay boy vampire give me a hickey and drink my blood (there were fangs involved)…. having a great time in other words! And then I met AP and that had all stopped. 

But this post isn’t about dwelling on the things I was denied, this post is about celebrating the new life I have been creating for myself.

Now, I’ve made a bunch of new friends who are really all awesome people, I’ve spent a lot more times with the friends I had from before, I’ve gone out dancing at gay bars, had a lot of fun experimenting with different things that I hadn’t tried before (like smoking a hookah, and cigars) and just figuring out what kinds of things I like to do! 

In the past month, I have barely watched any television. I used to watch HOURS every day, every week. I had shows I kept up with regularly… that I would count the hours until a new episode would be available online… and not only have I been so busy that I haven’t had time to watch tv, I haven’t really wanted to at all.

The other day when Amanda was at her working interview at one of the best fine dining restaurants here in St. Louis, and I was home by myself without a car (SK had it) for the first time in weeks, I had time to watch tv. So I procured an episode of one of my shows and began to watch it… it was an episode that I had missed because of being busy, and as I watched it, I found myself getting angry, like viscerally angry with the characters for being so stupid. I had to stop watching it. 

Now this has never happened to me before. I’ve been watching a lot of tv for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved being able to get sucked into a story and lose myself in the characters and just veg. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t shut off my brain and just enjoy the fluffy stupidness of the show. 

So apparently beyond wanting to dress up more and fit the part of my job more… I also now don’t really enjoy watching tv. I guess I really am growing up. Which is a thought that scares me a lot.  I’ve enjoyed always feeling like an overgrown teenager once I reached ‘adulthood’ and while I still go out, have fun, spend time with my friends, and even do crazy shit every once in a while, I’m feeling more and more like an adult. 

Okay lets run the ‘real adult’ check list shall we? 

– Real job 

– adult relationship

– adult wardrobe

-pays bills like an adult

-thinking about the future in a serious way

HOLY SHIT. I’m an adult. 

When did that happen?

Apparently it’s possible to live life and yet be an adult. I guess I had always sort of associated being an ‘adult’ with living a boring life. But that’s not the case, well my case anyways. 

(So do you guys like how kind of stream of consciousness my blog posts are usually? Or is this one just more Faulkner-ish than usual?)

So….

Yeah.

I think my brain needs a jump start.

Anyone got any brain cables?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

My inner robot is back. Or is at least making appearances.

When my emotions get too painful, my instinct is to shut it down. Sometimes the pain is more than I can handle, and feeling nothing at all is preferable. Except that it’s not. I can’t get better without feeling the pain. I also can’t feel the amazing things that I feel when I’m with Amanda. Its like I’m perceiving everything through a layer of diffusing gel. A nice Rosco 3027 probably. I can tell that it’s there, but its all fuzzy and not distinct at all.

She does this thing where she runs her hand over my cheek, a way of showing her love in a non sexual yet still tactile way. Normally I can feel the emotion that she is pouring into this little action, but yesterday, all I felt was her hand on my face. And while that felt nice, it wasn’t her intended effect. Most of yesterday evening I felt really off. I had put up my walls, I had hidden from the pain I was feeling. As soon as I felt it coming on, I had shut it down instinctively.

It is so easy to hide and not feel anything. It is so much harder to let that wall back down and let the pain in. Before I started consciously bringing it down, I would just leave it up until I didn’t feel the pain any more and it would come down on it’s own. But when I was trying to take it down last night, it took a long time, it took much encouragement from Amanda, it took focus and pain to actually get myself to feel a different level of pain. It HURT to try to get it down. But I am finding something that is helping, when I feel like I need to cry but I’ve shut myself off, thinking about my grandpa helps bring the tears. It might be completely unrelated to whatever it is that hurting me, but if I think about him too long, I can cry, no matter what. Shit. Just writing this is making me cry.

So apparently in addition to having to deal with all of the shit from my relationship with AP, I have to deal with the fact that I don’t think I properly grieved his death. I was right smack dab in the middle of robot mode because of AP, so I shut down the grief I felt after his funeral. Don’t get me wrong, I felt his death, I felt his loss. I think it was so intense that even my robot mode and my toughest walls couldn’t hold back all of the pain. I remember biting my tongue until it bled to keep from sobbing during his funeral. I know my voice cracked and broke during my eulogy. I know I walked into that church with tears streaming down my face. I know I sobbed at the graveside. I KNOW I felt his death and loss. But then I seemed to bounce back. I still got sad, but nothing like what I felt at the funeral and when he died.

And that just hijacked this post.

I know that Amanda doesn’t think I’m broken, but I can only believe that when she tells me it. I can’t feel it for myself. Not when I’m consciously keeping my walls down so I can feel. With my walls down I feel broken. Not to the point that I can’t fix myself, but broken none the less.

I don’t like feeling like I’m broken, even if Amanda insists I’m not. I don’t like feeling so emotionally raw constantly. I don’t like the battle I’m constantly having to fight to keep my walls from clamping back down on my emotions. Hiding my emotions is so dishonest, not only to me, but to Amanda as well. And we’ve promised that we would be honest with each other. As much as she is mine, I am hers, and therefore the emotions I feel are just as much hers to share as they are mine. So I’m fighting with myself, fighting my instinct to hide my pain, to remain strong for her. Because it is dishonest, and being dishonest is more hurtful than feeling the hurt myself, because I’m hurting her with my dishonesty. And as she reminds me constantly, it’s not weak to cry, it’s not weak to show emotion, it is one of the strongest things I can do. But I’m not doing all of this just for her. I’m doing it because there is absolutely no way for me to heal myself if I keep hiding from what I’m feeling.

One of the hardest things I’m having accepting is the idea that AP isn’t a good person who did horrible things to me repeatedly; she can’t be a good person if she abused me like she did. So rectifying the vision I have in my head of her as a good person with the things she did to me is really hard, and part of the problem I’m having moving on. I still sometimes find myself craving her approval. As much as I know I don’t need her approval, I sometimes still find myself wanting it. And then when I realize what it is I want, I want to flash my happiness and my new relationship and my new job and my new and improved life in her face. And then I realize that none of that will actually help me feel better. In those moments, I understand why Amanda gets so incredibly mad at AP.

Last night even after I shut down my walls on my emotions, they were so strong that I could feel them shoving, pushing, hitting, doing whatever they could to make me feel like I was. going to burst open from the inside out. In moments like that (in retrospect anyways), I know I’m not broken, I know I’m just fighting myself on this. I know AP can’t hurt me anymore. I know that I am safe with Amanda. I know that the people in my life love me. I know that they all have my back and most of them would fight an army of Uruk-hai with me, or help me hide a dead body if I needed it. I know I have people in my corner who want me to get better. I know I have cheerleaders rooting me on as I fight with myself and tackle the shit that AP left behind.

Actus Me Invito Factus Non Est Meus Actus – a latin phrase with the literal meaning of ‘the act done by me against my will is not my act’ – it has some legal implications, but in my sense, it means that the things I did to make AP happy, the things I did to survive her abuse, as distasteful as I find most of them now, aren’t me. They aren’t anything I (as I am now) would do, so I have no need to feel ashamed or embarrassed or disgusted with myself about performing them. I can’t hold myself accountable for things I did under her control, so making myself feel guilty about them does me no good and is unnecessary. Nobody would blame me for them, so I shouldn’t blame myself.

I am thankful that my parents can help me pay for my therapy. I couldn’t see my therapist as much as I clearly need to if they weren’t helping. So I thank the universe for generous parents who are in a situation where they can help. I thank the universe for a girlfriend who loves me even when I’m not at my best. And I thank the universe for the strength I am finding that I have to fight my way through this shit so that I can be the happy and healthy person that I deserve to be.

“We have to talk” –

A four word phrase that has drilled fear into the hearts of many an individual in a relationship.

I’ve heard it, I’ve read it in texts, and it has caused me great amounts of anxiety.

But for me, the words that have created the most amount of anxiety –

“Oh that’s fine.” or “I’m okay.” or some variety of those.

Usually following me doing or saying something that can cause anger or upset.

These words used to make me feel like I had an elephant sitting on my torso, my stomach trying to climb out of my throat, and I would go so pale that people thought I was going to pass out.

Because they were always a lie.

EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME.

It was never ‘fine’ she wasn’t ‘okay’ we weren’t ‘all right’. She loved  playing head games with me. She loved fucking with me. And in her mind, it was all right because I should have known better. I should have intuitively known that it wasn’t fine, okay, or all right. I should have been able to read her mind and just KNOW. It wasn’t acceptable for me to not be able to instantly know that whatever it was I did wasn’t okay.

Like my sometimes instinctual desire to ‘behave’ this is another instinct that has stuck around in my life post – AP. But while I’m able to shake off the ‘behave’ easier on my own, this one requires outside intervention.

Today I called my mom and told her about the whole complicated nature of mine and Amanda’s relationship… sparing her the nitty gritty details that she didn’t need to know of course, but giving her more of a better picture of what my life is looking like now.  I didn’t use the words poly and kink, though those are true, but only because she probably wouldn’t understand them.  But I filled her in, and I told her that I had been nervous to tell her, which of course (like my ‘coming out when I was 17) she told me was silly since she would love me no matter what.

And now you’re all wondering why I just gave you this lovely tangent… it’s connected I promise.

So after I hung up with my mom, I told Amanda that I had told my parents everything. (Which I might add that she had already told me a couple weeks ago was all right.) She was slightly concerned how they took it, but after I told her it went well, she seemed all right. And once again she said she was okay. And once again, I felt that rush of panic, that instinct to start apologizing for anything and everything that I could come up with, that ‘I have to fight right now to prove that I love her and that she still does love me despite whatever it is I just did to fuck things up’ instinct came up. But instead of acting that way, I managed to send Amanda a text that said, “I know you said yes it’s okay, and I know that you mean that. But there’s still a part of me that’s wondering if I should have told you first and gotten the ok.’

She knows what the issue is here. She knows that its not intentional that I don’t believe her. Because in my head, I do. In my head, I know she’s not lying, but my adrenal glands haven’t caught up, and once they get going, my brain reverts.

And it pisses me off.

It pisses me off that the shadow of AP still is present in my life now. Especially when it hurts Amanda. Its not a big hurt, but it doesn’t matter if its big or not, anything that is AP’s fault that hurts Amanda at all pisses me off a lot. In a sense, it feels like AP is hurting Amanda directly through me. And its bad enough that AP hurt me, and that I’m still hurting because of things that are her fault. But hurt MY GIRLFRIEND? And USE ME TO DO IT? Oh FUCKING HELL it makes me FUCKING FURIOUS. Because NO ONE HURTS MY GIRLFRIEND AND GETS AWAY WITH IT. Not even me (indirectly).

So that’s what’s coming up at therapy on Tuesday.

Because I won’t hurt Amanda, even a little. Not if I can help it.

I had started to wonder where my tortured writer’s soul had gone. Now I know. It never left, it just took a nap.

And yet, I am not mad at myself for what happened. I know it’s something that I’m going to need some professional help getting over and getting past. I know that Amanda doesn’t blame me for it. She doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t blame it. Same way she doesn’t like it when I’m hurting over something that happened with AP. But she doesn’t blame me for hurting then either. So I know she doesn’t blame me for this today. And I know she won’t blame me if it happens again.

Because I know that I will blame myself, but I know that blaming myself will make Amanda hurt, I will try to not blame myself for causing her even the slightest sliver of pain.

Of course my tortured writer’s soul isn’t helpful in that regard at all, but it can take another nap.

Amanda and I have an incredibly open and honest relationship.

Neither of us has lied to the other one. Yes, I realize it’s only been a month, but we’ve both seen the terror and horror that dishonesty can bring about in a relationship. (Yes, I know those are really harsh words, but I use them deliberately.)

I told her that she is the only person which I hadn’t told a single lie (except when it comes to surprises, but those don’t count- which she agrees). And that I haven’t felt that desire or need or anything to keep anything from her. I’ve said that if there’s something about me that she doesn’t know already because I haven’t told her, its not that I was keeping it from her, it was literally only that I forgot she didn’t already know.

We both know the importance of honesty. We’d both prefer a hard truth than a comforting lie told to ‘protect’ us. And we talk about literally everything. It’s pretty amazing.

Its also pretty incredible that we can have those hard conversations without fighting, or raising our voices, or someone stopping listening, or calling each other names.  But like civilized human beings. I think I’ve told you all that before, but it still needs to be marveled over because of how incredible it is.

We both like the direction our relationship is heading, and the method by which we are getting there. Honesty, open communication, no head games, genuine appreciation and affection, and of course love. Always love.

It’s crazy what having a healthy relationship will do for you.

Other things that are all good that I love about Amanda:

(Because I’ve depressed you all enough today)

I can make a reference about margaritas in a pint glass and she says, “Its supposed to be a pina colada.” (Bonus points to anyone else that knows that’s a Gaelic Storm reference.)

I didn’t have to introduce her to Gaelic Storm, she was already a fan. In fact, we were at the same Gaelic Storm concert a few years ago at the Old Rock House.

I think she might give me a run for my money at Trivial Pursuit (we’d have to buy the new version, she’s already memorized all of the questions and answers to the old version).

She makes a wicked Eggs Benedict despite her distaste of Hollandaise sauce and poached eggs. Just because she knows I love it.

She has a great eye for what pair of jeans makes my ass look awesome.

She bought me cologne, with a nose for both what she likes, and what I like. (And it drives her crazy).

She likes to occasionally wear the button up that I wore the day before to work. Like today. I think it looks better on her than it does on me. 😉

She’s a superhero.

Her cape is in the mail.

A self esteem boost.

I didn’t know I was the kind of person who needed my self esteem boosted. I don’t necessarily think I’m as awesome as some people, but I know I’m a fairly interesting individual with some cool attributes. But I didn’t think I was all that awesome.

I definitely didn’t know that I have some self esteem issues due to how I’ve been treated in my past relationships.

With B, I didn’t realize it at the time, but later I discovered that really the only thing I could do for her that would make her happy was sex. That was the only thing about me she really liked.

With AP, I know I made her happy with sex, or rather she enjoyed my body with sex, and the things I could do for her. There were probably other things that I did that made her happy, or instances that were happy and unrelated to sex, but I can’t really think of what they were.

And with a fuck buddy I had before I met Amanda, I know I made her happy with sex since that was the entirety  of our relationship.

So I’ve never been too shy about my skills in the bedroom. I know I’ve got them, I know I can make women happy in the bedroom.

So while consciously I knew that I was (and am) making Amanda happy, I was associating it subconsciously with only what I was doing to her in bed.

When she would give me a huge grin after sex and tell me how happy she was, I knew why.

But yesterday, we were just out and about running some errands, buying Absinthe for dinner with my friend Scott, buying me some new jeans that actually fit… stuff like that. And I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled, but there was a bit of sadness in her eyes. So I commented on it. Her response? “I’m sad because I can’t adequately describe how completely and utterly happy I am, and how much I love you. I’m sad because there aren’t words that work.”

I know that I blushed, because effusive exultations of praise and love always make me blush. Well they do now anyways, I’m hard pressed to think of someone else who’s said things like that to me BESIDES Amanda…

But the point is, there was a part of me that didn’t feel like I deserved this indescribable amount of love and happiness. Especially not at that minute when I wasn’t giving her sex, cause after all, that’s what makes women happy, isn’t it?

And after a large amount of rumination on the subject, I’ve figured it out. I figured out about the whole thing about my idea of my worth for women being mostly due to my sexual abilities.

Now I KNOW that I have way more than that to offer. I know that in my head, I know it logically and rationally, but somewhere in my heart I’ve had that voice of doubt.

That voice that tells me that happiness is transient. That as soon as the sexual allure wears off I won’t be worth as much.

And I didn’t know this voice was there. I didn’t know these issues existed for me. Once I realized they did, it was like I had fallen through a trap door. The floor was gone and I was in free fall… Or I was until Amanda grabbed my hand and pulled me back to firm ground.

So I still sometimes feel unworthy of the amount of love and the level of happiness I foster in her, but I’m working on feeling the appropriate level of awesomeness that I apparently am working with.

All I know for sure is that I love Amanda beyond the definition of the word. And that she loves me beyond the definition. And that we both make each other happier than the word can adequately describe. And I will strive every day to be the person who makes her so happy that she can’t use words to explain it. Because she does the same for me.

And my issues will go away eventually. Enough love and recognizing problems as they occur will do wonders for those hidden trap doors.

The longer Amanda and I are together (and its only been a month), the more I’m becoming who I am meant to be.

I’m more confident. I walk taller, talk brighter, flirt more obviously, whip out my cockiest smile, and take what I want (within reason of course).

And Amanda loves it. She fell for a more broken version of me, but the more ME me I become, I can see her love for me growing. Its an incredibly liberating feeling to be able to expand myself, to grow so quickly as a person, and to not have my evolution stunted by external forces, but instead fostered into growth and well being. I can confidently say that I both am and am not the same person that Amanda went on a date with a month ago. I’m not even the same person I was LAST week. The change in my personality is dramatic, and yet completely in line with who I know I should have been all along.

AP suppressed my personality, she kept me repressed, kept me obedient (as much as I am able to obey-which isn’t as much as she wanted). AP wanted me passive so that she could control everything, so that she could have the life she wanted. And yet she would get angry that I didn’t have a thought of my own, that I would do what she wanted. But she wouldn’t allow me to try to grow. Growth would have meant giving up her control, and that she couldn’t allow. So I remained resigned to be the same person who had very little personality or say in anything. But now… oh gods, now… my heart constantly feels like it’s going to expand or explode with how much it’s grown, with how much my sense of SELF has established itself. I’m still learning who I am, I’m still learning what I like and don’t like… but all signs point to the more I learn and explore and expand… the more Amanda falls for me. The more she loves me. The more perfect for her I am becoming. And although it’s only been a month, nothing really feels all that rushed.

Like I said last time. I’m done waiting for that other shoe to drop. If it drops, it drops… but waiting for it is a waste of time.

And one thing that I don’t particularly like… is wasting time.

Okay, I hate it.

But I know that I’m the one who hates it. I know it’s not a feeling that I’ve been told to have. I know that my hatred of wasting time is mine.

And that’s a fabulous feeling all in itself.

Not nearly as fabulous as love beyond the definition. But then again… what is?

So those bad things that are supposed to come in threes? Try sixes when you’re part of a couple.

Things 1 and 2 – Both myself and Amanda are super stressed with our work situations. They’re both jobs that we enjoyed when we started and are just upping our stress levels and frustration levels even more.

Thing 3 – My roommate. As much as I love him, he’s a bit irresponsible some times. He borrows my car on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday nights when he works as a bouncer for the night shift. Normally this is just annoying, but when I found out that he wrecked his grandma’s car this last weekend, it makes me far less interested in letting him borrow my car anymore. He also went off the grid this weekend, causing his mom to call me and freak me out about him being missing and then nobody ever thought to let me know that he wasn’t in fact missing or dead and that everything was all right. Also in terms of letting him borrow my car, I was hoping I’d be able to pick Amanda up from her interview tomorrow night when she got done around 11pm. (It’s a working interview to be a line cook at a fine dining restaurant). But of course without my car, I can’t do that. So she’s going to have to find a place to park her car for what might be a decent amount of money that she really shouldn’t have to spend just to park her car.

Thing 4 – Amanda’s job interview tomorrow (Tuesday) is stressing her out even more, and there’s nothing I can do to help. The interview itself isn’t a bad thing, but the accompanying stress is, as is my inability to do anything to make it better for her, to calm her down or assuage her fears… I hate feeling helpless. I hate feeling like there’s nothing I can do. I know, I know, I know… just being there helps, just being myself… and I’m more than happy to do that, but I feel like I need to actually DO SOMETHING too. And beating the shit out of the people who’ve caused her this stress isn’t something that would be actually helpful.

Thing 5 – She just told me that she has a hole in the suede of a pair of shoes she bought back in December. Like two months ago December.

Thing 6 – Charter, my internet provider is trying to fuck me over on billing. I spent over an hour talking to two different customer service reps, being calm but forceful, trying to understand why I’m being charged for January twice. Still don’t quite understand it, but I came to an agreement with them on what I’m actually going to pay them.

And add on all of this just the average stresses of all the shit going on with me trying to deal with my past relationship demons and ghosts, Amanda and I still working on meshing two lives together (and all of the talking-good talking, but a lot of it- that goes along with that). And just a general lack of sleep that accompanies a new relationship… and we’re both pretty frazzled and fried.

It also appears that spending so much time on my computer for work, and possibly just sleeping on it funny, has done something to my neck. It hurts like a lot and I can’t pop it to make it feel better. Here’s hoping the aspirin I just took will help with that at least somewhat.

And here’s also hoping that when I get home from work to pick up the roommate before going to hang out at the cafe where Amanda is working tonight, that the roommate is actually ready to go. This is doubtful, but I can still hope. Because I really need a hug from my incredible girlfriend, and I know she needs one from me too.