i've been somewhat frustrated lately with blogging - or rather frustrated by not blogging. i have 2-3 entries (maybe more actually) written down on paper, but when i get to the laptop either i go blank & my anxiety peaks, or i avoid it & get drawn in by crackbook & twitter. When i do type a post directly into blogger, i end up re-reading & editing the post for an hour or more after. it's a real struggle to resist the correcting compulsion.

so i've determined that the best way for me to continue with this whole process is to keep writing in long-hand, then type it up later. Sure, it doesn't mean you'll see my updates in "real time," but is anyone demanding that besides me? i think not. i was reading the Daily Coyote the other day, & found it's author Shreve Stockton saying the exact same thing. Since the whole point of this blog is to document my recovery & to share my struggles & triumphs with others - not to be an exposure exercise in and of itself, that's how i intend to proceed. please bear with me, k?

i'm also reworking the tags/labels to do away with the lolspeak. sure it's fun, but it's somewhat geek elitist, and not terribly helpful in search engines. hurrah for progress!

it's been a productive day, but i am fill of emo

or perhaps it's because it's been such a productive day that i'm feeling emo. i got a huge pile of dishes washed, and sorted through most of the stuff on the kitchen floor. finished a load of laundry, and got a bunch of reading done in one of my compulsive hoarding texts. even more than that, i finished a few exercises and sent out a note to a few friends, asking them to complete the other half of the questions. basically there were five questions to ask myself, then the same questions to be answered about me. i sent the questions to four friends and my muse, and got a response back so far from just one. i almost didn't send it to one of the friends, because she can be a bit...impatient... i dunno. she's awesome people, and known me a really long time, but i realise i frustrate her at times. she's also one of a group of friends who did a big house clean up for me a couple of years ago when i got really overwhelmed, but i think before i realised that hoarding was the actual issue.

anyways, she brought up the cleanup in her answer, and just the way she phrased things leads me to believe she's cranky with me. i suppose not just that, but i got to feeling really anxious about her disappoint in me, and that just started that spiral of self-loathing i'm so familiar with...

the writing of this post was interrupted by a call from my Muse, and after a few minutes of chatting i realised i was far to upset to have a normal conversation. he was busy doing other things while we spoke, and i was feeling really needy. i explained to him that i was feeling fragile, and that i couldn't cope with not having his undivided attention. i didn't - and don't - blame him for checking email while we spoke, since that's something both of us are normally totally okay with. i knew i was feeling really upset & that it's my responsibility to deal with that, so i left him to do his work and proceeded to work through my anxiety.

i realised that what i was doing to myself at that moment was focusing on all of my failures: ways i had disappointed friends, ways i had hurt people in the past, how long i have been struggling with hoarding, how many therapies have not worked... i was also conscious that i was holding a whole lot of tension in my body that was causing physical pain in addition to the mental anguish i was in. so i prescribed myself an accomplishment list & a few yoga poses, and once completed i felt pretty awesome actually. after writing a list of all my recent accomplishments with purging, resisting accumulating, and organising (which filled a page!) i gave myself a foot and leg massage with moisturiser, then went through a series of poses that focus on the legs, hips and back. i ended in Shavasana (Corpse Pose) and truly felt the surrender overtake me. i sent my Muse a text message letting him know i was much better, and fell into a deep sleep. :)

phew, purging is hard work sometimes

today the universe, or rather the university, gave me a deadline that forces me to pick up my feet about something i've let drag over the last year or so. since i dropped out of university (perhaps permanently this time) i've been aware that sooner or later my university email account would be deactivated. as i've mentioned before, i have a bit of a hoarding challenge associated with my ocd. one of the biggest challenges for me is to part with information, or potential sources thereof. i'm constantly battling the obsession with knowing everything that's offered to me, and the compulsion or ritual that i feel i need to carry out is to intently read & understand (& if possible remember)every piece of information that comes my way. as you can imagine, this means there are many piles of newspapers & magazines, and unread books & lecture notes, and all kinds of physical repositories of information scattered throughout everywhere i frequent. it pains me to part with anything that i may need to consult later, or that represents information i may need to come back to at any point. how this translates to email is that correspondence contains information, and i have a hard time parting with messages.

so this impending deadline. it's tuesday. that's right, i basically have today and tomorrow to go through the entirety of the last 11 years of inbox messages & folders, and make decisions about what to forward, redirect, and delete. it's a process i've been avoiding for years. literally.

generally the way my ocd compels me to sort through this kind of stuff is to thoroughly read most of it, before feeling safe deleting it. because of the time crunch, however, i risk losing everything if i proceed in this way. combine that with the genuine desire to avoid giving in to my compulsions, i've been ruthlessly sorting through email the last few hours. i've taken breaks for sure, but mostly i've been just deleting, unsubscribing, canceling accounts, redirecting mail, etc. so far i've updated okcupid account, unsubscribed from some list-serves, and closed my eHarmony account (that one was particularly satisfying, since i closed it by saying, 'thanks, but i've already found someone who really understands me, just like the people on your commercials'). i've also forwarded, then deleted my birth family messages, and deleted a junky mail folder without even reading it.

now comes the difficult parts. i have three folders full of messages from three very important ex-lovers. one is from a best friend who evolved into a lover who left me... we were unable to stay friends and i sometimes feel those messages were all i had left of him. my Muse reminds me of him - only without the angst & self-loathing he embodied - so i know that there will be all kinds of awesome contained in those letters. i'm very tempted to read them before i delete them, or even just forward a copy to my active email account. i need to leave that decision for a bit and come back to it. the second is from my former common-law spouse, someone i hand-fasted with, planned children with... and i kept every single email we ever sent each other. that huge folder of messages contains an entire story arc of our complete relationship - right through to the bitter end. i'm pretty sure i can delete it now. i'm tempted to go back and read a few of the cutesy pre-dating flirtation emails, but i think that would ultimately just lead to emo. in fact, i'm going to delete them right now before continuing this post.

and it's done. wow. i'm going to dance and laugh and just take this moment in before i come back to do more. and there's more to do. the last difficult folder contains years worth of emails between myself & a friend/lover who had a non-relationship spanning about four years - my longest actual relationship, though we never officially dated, whatever the fuck that means :P i think i'm still holding on to that one because we have some unfinished business, or at least i do. i'll let you know what the hell i do with that one. but first, food.

we're back from hell <3

yesterday was intense. beyond intense. as my previous post clearly shows, i went to some very dark places. i got swept up in waves of emotions that pulled me far from centre, far from my grounded happy place - a place i generally manage to stay in, even when i'm utterly depressed. there is always hope. except when it feels like there isn't.

i wrote yesterday's post while my Muse was out with a friend, and i realise i needed to get the words out to process the emotions. i also realise that sometimes i do that - here particularly - and then i don't go back and rewrite the ending. i don't add to the story with how it was resolved. in paper journals there are some entries that are so raw, so painful, that i rip them out and burn them, releasing all the pain & anger & hurt... realising that the process of writing allowed those emotions to be worked through, but that to re-read them would only serve to re-injure myself. i've decided to not delete posts here, no matter how dark they may get, because part of writing a recovery blog, in my opinion, is allowing others to see just how low i can get. it's more honest, but more importantly, i hope it allows others who struggle with mental & emotional health issues to relate, and to see that even in the darkest hours there is some hope of light. even with those dark moments i'm continuing to become healthier and happier. they're part of the recovery process.

putting my philosophies of recovery blogging aside for a moment, an update on where i'm at this morning.

i am deeply grateful for the beautiful relationship i'm in right now. beyond that, i feel very blessed to be in this beautiful relationship with someone equally committed to self discovery & self challenge. i felt incredibly supported, in what could only have been an emotionally difficult moment. my Muse was able - and more importantly willing - to step back a bit, put on the friend hat, and help me work through all of my insecurities, my self-doubt, my fears... i'll go into detail in a another post, with his consent, but in short i'm reminded that listening to my Muse's words, rather than my ocd mind, is always the way to go. i'm still getting used to the fact that when he says how he's feeling, that that is how he's feeling. there is no deceit here, not even sub-text. yesterday i took his words, saw in them the chance he was doubting our relationship, and then let my ocd convince me a break-up was imminent. worse yet, i then concluded that i should cut my losses and run. i know that all was about me, and my own views, my own expectations of relationships, of people, and of men in particular... it feels really good to have those unhealthy core beliefs challenged (even torn down and replaced), especially when they're being replaced with more joy & wonder than i ever thought possible in my life <3

through the storm we reach the shore, you give it all but I want more...*

i'm feeling rather devastated... maybe that's too strong of a word... i don't know. today for brunch Muse & i were out eating at a busy restaurant and got into a discussion about polyamory, about what our relationship is, about where this all is going... he admitted that he's felt from the beginning that this is a relationship that may end, because of who i am - specifically that i'm poly. he told me he's aware that he's always holding some part of himself back because of this, and that when we talk poly he can feel himself shrinking back, withdrawing. he just doesn't know if he'll be able to handle it, how he'll react, if i express desire of being with someone else. i spoke with Effie (an ex-girlfriend turned really good friend) this morning and she related her feelings about her current relationship with a monogamous man, and the similarities she sees in our current partners. her advice was to consider if i would be happy being in a monogamous relationship; if i thought i was able to just pretend for the entirety of my relationship with my Muse that i wanted nothing else, noone else, ever. she feels that if i'm unable to do that, i should make sure he never forgets i'm poly, so that if the desire to be with someone else comes up for me, it won't be a shock again, like ripping off a bandage off a freshly scabbed wound.

in theory anyways, i agree with her. the reality of the situation, however, is that the thought of me with other people - even past partners - is really hard for my Muse. he lives with the constant thought that at some point he may not be able to handle being with me, and we'll need to split. i love him far too much to be willing to cause him this much suffering. i know he says he's open. i know he says he's willing to explore. i just can't help feeling that he's only willing because he feels that he has to in order to be with me. that because of who i am he's being forced to confront some of his worst fears. he keeps saying he knows these are lessons he knows he has to face right now, and that he knew these things would be issues when he made the decision to let himself fall in love with me. i'm just not sure i want to be the one to make him work so hard.

i'm probably being unfair. he knows i've had to confront some huge emotions to be with him: my fears of being totally intimate with a man; my combined fear & discomfort around fellatio, my terror at letting someone into my ocd mind-world and seeing my hoarding behaviours... i guess i just feel like the stuff he's had to confront is waaay bigger: the reality that i'm waaaaay closer to gay than totally bi, the reality of many very intense past love affairs - and around fifty past sexual parters, the reality that his physical & emotional love may never be able to meet all of my needs...


i feel like i've been pulled back in time almost, to the same place i was almost a decade ago, falling deeper and deeper in love with Jellybean (not her real name, obviously). When we first got together i was seeing someone else, and she said though she was monogamous, she was okay with the fact that i was seeing someone else. five months later when i was breaking up with him i could feel myself pulling away from her... though she had never admitted it, i knew that she had been putting her own desires on hold for the previous 8 months, in the hopes that one day i would be single, that it could be just us, that someday she would be "enough" for me. i knew watching me grieve for my broken heart was going to be difficult for her, and that when i was ready to date other people again it would be almost unbearable for her. i felt like she deserved far, far better than to compromise what she really longed for in a partner, so i broke it off.

it was horribly painful. i went through a series of rapid rebound hook-ups, pretending how unaffected i was by what i had lost, who i had hurt, and that only confused and hurt her more. i understand her anger, her indignity at my decision to protect her from hurt. she felt i was deeming her weak; that i was patronising her by deciding how much she could handle. i don't know that she ever has - or ever will - really understand that i just loved her too much... perhaps it wasn't a reflection of how strong i felt she was, but rather a fear of how weak i am... of what i am unable to bear... of my limited capacity to see the ones i love in such pain...

i'm finding it pretty unbearable to consider just how much i may be hurting my Muse. i really can't bear the thought of being with anyone else, for fear of his heart breaking. this huge part of me feels like i should just bury any desires i may have for other people, to just pretend this isn't who i am. i want to live in that place where it feels like we're totally vulnerable to each other, like we complete each other... in that place it's easy to just see this man whom i truly want to spend the rest of my life with. this is a man i almost desperately want to have children with; to raise a family with.

i really thought i'd never be in this place again. i had given up any hope of ever loving someone this much. it seemed outside the realm of possibility to fall this in love, unlikely that i would ever find someone i seriously wanted to parent with. even a few months ago i would have been in total disbelief had someone told me i would ever trust a man this much again. i feel like i've been given some giant do-over by the universe, yet i'm being told i can everything i want, except for everything i want. i can have total love and trust and devotion and total partnership, but i can never again run my tongue over a woman's vulva. i can have a stable loving family, but then i can never again experience a first kiss, a budding romance. i can have the best, most fulfilling, orgasmic sex of my life, but i'll never again put on my harness & slide my cock into a warm wet pussy and bring a woman to pinnacle of ecstasy. that i'm even considering the compromise tells you just how wonderful my Muse is, how totally happy i am with him. and yet i find myself wondering not, 'do i deserve more than this?', but rather, 'do i even deserve what i already have, let alone the risk of more?'

* words: Bono (from With or Without You, The Joshua Tree, 1987.)