Morning Has Broken

...and I slept through it! In fact I got something like eight full hours of sleep last night. It's really beautiful to sleep like that through this clear, sunny, still-cool morning with the knowledge that someone's coming home to you and then that someone is there, right there.

I haven't been giving my relationship with the SO enough credit lately. I tend to think of him as wildly different from me but there are definitely spots where we get along really really well. We -do- have a similar view on some stuff, be it through long association or nature.

Just not video games.

Today I get to see my garden in full light for the first time since I left, see how that clematis cutting and the transplanted passiflora are doing, see how everything is doing...

My ground cherries really missed me. They need to be potted up before I leave again because they aren't retaining enough water as is.

I also need to plant some sunflowers (courtesy of the juggler, Titan, supposed to get to three meters) and some stir-fry stuff.

Apparently my free-write last night provoked a number of responses from people. Responses are great but in this case it seems to have provoked some misunderstanding, maybe? Or at least some worried inquiries about some of the people and things I mentioned. I need to put disclaimers on those things.

Hm. It's hard to reliably keep the cupboards full with this sort of schedule. I had better get shopping today.

And what else? Nothing, for now. More forthcoming when I've got some handle on what's happened in the garden.

Devourer of Stories

I realise that, in addition to being a backrub slut and a garden slut, I am also a story slut. Fiction, nonfiction, it doesn't matter -- if someone can tell me a story about their life, about someone else's life, any story at all, they've got me. Completely indiscriminant in my story-listening habits, that's me. It's why I'm caught up in online fiction-writing/roleplaying a la Otherspace/Chiaroscuro.

Watered the garden but no time to talk about it yet. Mom's coming in a couple of minutes to go running (for the first time in gack! way too long) and so I'll have a nice runner's high to do more writing.

Cheers for now.

With Blushes

Okay. This is kind of embarrassing. It's also really funny.

I don't know what combination of movement, sunlight, and spandex it was, but running in this beautiful sunny 28 celsius weather was an enormous turn-on. Seriously. Talk about strange, but yes, very true. *sigh* So what do you do? Stop and say, mom, I need a walk break. Not, I need a walk break because if I don't take a little break I'm going to come, but just, I need a walk break.

Between this and the powertool/loud noise fetish I'm starting to feel somewhat unusual.

But it was a wonderful run, I've figured out the time for my brother's grad ceremony Friday and mom's going to grab me tickets, I think I'll be able to make it to the Vancouver polyamoury group meeting Friday evening, and I'm back to running which is good in and of itself.

The SO's mom is taking me to a nursery tomorrow as a general fun outing. I'm really blessed in my parents-kind-of-in-law. The SO's birthday is coming up, so I need to decide whether I want to sit around with his entire social group (the coolest of whom will be my brother, The Other Woman, Estrellada, and possibly The Juggler, and the least cool of whom will predominate) watching movies I'm not interested in or go kick around by myself for an evening. I'm leaning towards a nice random walk at this point.

Hmm. A lot of planning-type stuff going on just in the last couple of hours, as you can probably tell. I'll need to hit the Van Deusen plant show for at least a day the weekend after this, the VanPoly retreat is coming up the weekend at the end of this month...

I think that's about planned up, more spontaneous things will have to fill themselves in with no advance help.

The Exotic and I are settling into some form of understanding about what we like doing together, even if we can't settle on a longterm framework of expectations. We seem to be doing pretty well in a practical sense so far, which is really good. He'll be out in August and everyone in the Group seems to be thinking about that -- I think it'll go well as long as we keep communicating and as long ... well, neh. No need for predictions here. We'll keep communicating and anything that needs to be resolved will be resolved how it needs to be.

With this gorgeous weather (twenty five to twenty eight seems to be my ideal range) I'm starting to think about frequenting Wreck Beach again. It takes a pretty hot day to go in the water there with the drop in temperature that sea breeze offers, but the place really is lovely. There's something about trying on clothing without a changing room, too... :D

But, off to shower. Keep well.

Nothing So Deep...

Oh, it's bitter. Oh, it hurts.

With over six years of intimate contact behind us no one can hurt me more deeply or reject me more thoroughly than the SO when he wants to. It's a familiar sort of hurt, I suppose, something I've built up a tolerance to over the years as part and parcel of the whole deal. Like everything else with him, though, it does go so deep.

Even were it a wise relationship decision it would be no good to pour the whole thing out in text to some innumerable crowd of faceless hangers-on who, no matter what they might say, can't care as strongly about it as I myself do. It would only widen the disconnect I feel right now between myself and everyone else.

It is interesting, though, and very sad, that while my ability to be open and honest with almost everyone else has been increasing over time it does seem to me to be decreasing with him. It may well be only in my own mind, it may be reality, it may be the shifting of signals that is halfway between perception and reality, it may be a lot of things. In the end, though, I feel uninteresting to him. I feel that this internal stuff which fascinates so many people is not important to him, and indeed that the whole thing is to the rest of you a passing entertainment. Soon enough it fades and another comes up, and there you go.

I admit that I still don't understand the concept of lifetime binding, of a 'marriage' or a something similar, a permanent relationship. I understand the ideas, I understand it in all the ways one can without actually experiencing it, but that's not enough and it's not the same. When it comes right down to it I still don't honestly believe that such a thing can be; I don't think that anyone else shares the desires that drive me to want it, and so I can't see how anyone else would want it.

It's a concept that fascinates me, that holds me dazzled like a fly in a jewelled spiderweb. Or maybe it's banging my head against the glass to getr to the illusory flowers within? Or maybe it's learning to fly, and fearing falling?

At times like this there is so much dread associated with my future, or perhaps meaninglessness. The people will pass like they always pass and new ones will come and it will always be the process of courtship and enamouring them over and over again. Depth comes and it will fade, then, the brightness of something new and the attraction of strangeness replaced by misunderstanding and anger.

Is this the truth of what will happen? There's no telling, nor I suppose would it be so desperately awful if it did happen as it feels now. There are a lot of things to be said for freedom. Yet in this moment that is the shape of my despair and it's the only truth I can feel.

So what, now? I have gone to him, twice, and been rebuffed. He has come to me, once, and to his own mind been rebuffed. Now I suppose it is my turn again to play the supplicant, to break the constraints of ego and to say, please, I need this from you, will you give it?

There isn't time to get what I need before he goes, but perhaps a little reassurance so that I might sleep...