I have been tasked with writing/posting here three times a week. It is not an onerous task (in fact it is one I am quite grateful for and delighted to be tasked with) but it does challenge me. I’m trying to remember how I used to write so much when I was with W. It seemed there were hours and hours a day to compose, edit and polish my posts.
I don’t see K quite as much as I did W – as he and Ad used to joke, they each had 50% custody of me – but the times that we do spend together are intensely focused. Oh, we go shopping, or do yardwork, or go bowling or play board games and go out to eat and spend time with Ad – all time that is punctuated by hours of play and sex and kink and just generally loving and touching on each other – but we haven’t yet built in the kind of side-by-side downtime that I used to have with W, time that used to be for writing (me) or working on his now-defunct website, Bondage Demons (him.) Also, to be fair, my 9-5 job was a LOT less demanding, so much of the pre-writing that typically happens before I actually polish and publish a blog post happened during work hours, and, generally, that’s just not possible in my current position.
BUT – I am loving having things I want to write about again! I am loving feeling free to write, to express myself, and not feeling afraid of censure, of garnering someone’s displeasure, of not having yet more holes punched in the boat of a relationship that was always on the verge of sinking. I lived so much of my life in that space in that relationship. How did I survive six years that way? Feeling my light dimmed, my self diminished every day; living on eggshells; desperately trying to please and knowing it was never enough. I am not talking about V or my relationship with him in particular. There was a lot of good in that (if frenetic at times.) It was the relationship structure that was so damaging.
Perhaps this is just me, finally healing from W’s loss. Perhaps those 6 years were so…so raw, so tormented…at times because I was still so broken. I was a gaping wound of exposed nerves and suffering that no amount of love, sex, alcohol, kink or pills could assuage. There were times in those years when I could feel myself beginning to open up again, beginning to struggle out of the chrysalis I had been bound in, but I was weakened by all that had come before, both in the aftermath of W’s death and within the relationship that came after, that my struggles to emerge were feeble, and soon abandoned.
And then there was the rage. So much rage.
I hadn’t known I had the capacity for that much anger, that much bitterness. I didn’t (don’t) know where it came from, or where it had been before. Yes, circumstances were, of course. But, looking back, I am still bewildered by the depth and breadth of it. So much pain, so much anger. I drowned in it and it consumed me: perhaps that relationship never stood a chance. In any case, my writing suffered, right along with my heart. I couldn’t find the words, and even when things were exciting and I wanted to share them, I was usually too traumatized and fearful of reprisal to do so.
And yet, now, here I am. It helps to have an appreciative audience. When I started writing my first blog, when Pieces of Jade was born – this space, ironically – I quite literally wrote for an audience of one: W. Or maybe two: the both of us. Blogging was as much a kink for me as photography was for him. He remembered with pictures, I remembered with words, and then when we got to combine the two: boom! We got to live and share the experiences several times over. Of course there was (and is) so much more to it than just remembering things. I used (and use) this space to memorialize, but also to understand my world, both the internal one and external one I inhabit. (I recently read a wonderful article in the Paris Review, “Why Write?” that spoke to a lot of that. Go on, read it, it’s worth the time.) I used it to communicate with W, and I use it now, if not to communicate with, at least to share, my thoughts with K. He seems interested in the thoughts in my head, and that makes me want to share them. He’s also shown an interest in helping me to create content, in the form of the Tree Hugger (and other) posts recently, and possibly in other ways in the future. Our blossoming relationship has certainly been fodder for a lot of my musings – both salacious and philisophical.
And now here we are, me sitting in front of a blank screen, wondering how I will find the time to write all the words that my life generates. Well, at least three days a week’s worth.
Somehow I think I might just figure it out.
