Whatever Is.
Oct. 11th, 2008 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormHere we go-- it's a new way of being. The transition was invisible, a little seamless ripple a few weeks ago during the party, and it spilled me still womb-wet into a new set of behaviours, into a new life. I am no human baby here, but some sort of prey animal, standing immediately and ready to graze and run before I am fully dry.
Tonight I am alone in a full house. The boys are scattered around-- Angus is working, there are people watching TV in one room and gaming in another --and I'm sitting in the near-dark listening to all the songs I listened to right after Angus broke up with me and letting the past slide into the past. Little hurts are being mended, scars shed, and I can feel peace in me like a balloon suddenly blown up in my belly. It might be a crying night in a washing-clean sort of way.
It may be so seamless a transition because, far from being an entirely new set of experiences, this is more a combination of things I've done before. It is most definitely poly just at the moment, and there's a lovely big-house-full-of-people aspect to it, and there's school layered over work. I have loved all these things in the past, and now they're fitting together well for me.
I have a laptop now (not an Eee) which I need a wireless card type thing for. I have an expecting mama rat. I have a 'lab partner' in school-- ironically, a red-haired gardener. I had looked for my red-haired gardener for years, and now here one appears and I'm happily engaged elsewhere, and so's he. We get along well, though. It's so important to have colleagues!
I want to talk about poly for a minute now, and my experience of it. I haven't done this in a long time.
I had been poly for a long time. It was hard. I broke from it hard, like you break from any relationship, and I'm still reasonably cynical about the whole idea. There are also new bits of green springing up though, and it's good. I am hopeful. It's still hard, and it's still the most ridiculously huge amount of work, right up front, for a payoff that is sometimes more of a future intangible in some ways, though for me in particular it is quite large. I like many boys, although I'm pretty settled into the fact that I like Angus above all others.
(A couple of years ago it would have been awful to say something like that. Now? It's just fact. I couldn't, before, do poly veto well because I didn't have that sense of prioritization. Now I can do it effortlessly-- for one person in particular).
It's a lot of talking, right up front, and a lot of jiggling things around and making sure you have the same meanings of words and double-checking your assumptions and your interpretations. It's a substantial amount of feeling bad sometimes and forgiveness for that. In addition, though, it's a lot of knowing there's so much love involved that everyone is willing to plough through that work and still have caring and gentleness for each other left over. It's knowing that people are willing to not just say what occurs to them, but also to work through what occurs to them and figure out if it's their truth, or just their fears talking.
It's respecting everyone else enough to say no if necessary, rather than merely 'I want-' and 'How can I get lots out of this'?
So, yeah. You can probably figure out, if you've done the poly thing before, exactly which stage we're at. You can probably picture, scene by scene, the smiling bits, the hurting bits, the serious talky bits, the inferno-hot make-up-sex bits and the gentle figured-it-out holding-each-other bits. You can imagine the trepidatious looks, the uncertainty sometimes, the miscommunications when you think you know where you stand, and the glowing loving pieces.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Life just keeps taking you along to a better place regardless. Life is a process; life is progress.
Tonight I am alone in a full house. The boys are scattered around-- Angus is working, there are people watching TV in one room and gaming in another --and I'm sitting in the near-dark listening to all the songs I listened to right after Angus broke up with me and letting the past slide into the past. Little hurts are being mended, scars shed, and I can feel peace in me like a balloon suddenly blown up in my belly. It might be a crying night in a washing-clean sort of way.
It may be so seamless a transition because, far from being an entirely new set of experiences, this is more a combination of things I've done before. It is most definitely poly just at the moment, and there's a lovely big-house-full-of-people aspect to it, and there's school layered over work. I have loved all these things in the past, and now they're fitting together well for me.
I have a laptop now (not an Eee) which I need a wireless card type thing for. I have an expecting mama rat. I have a 'lab partner' in school-- ironically, a red-haired gardener. I had looked for my red-haired gardener for years, and now here one appears and I'm happily engaged elsewhere, and so's he. We get along well, though. It's so important to have colleagues!
I want to talk about poly for a minute now, and my experience of it. I haven't done this in a long time.
I had been poly for a long time. It was hard. I broke from it hard, like you break from any relationship, and I'm still reasonably cynical about the whole idea. There are also new bits of green springing up though, and it's good. I am hopeful. It's still hard, and it's still the most ridiculously huge amount of work, right up front, for a payoff that is sometimes more of a future intangible in some ways, though for me in particular it is quite large. I like many boys, although I'm pretty settled into the fact that I like Angus above all others.
(A couple of years ago it would have been awful to say something like that. Now? It's just fact. I couldn't, before, do poly veto well because I didn't have that sense of prioritization. Now I can do it effortlessly-- for one person in particular).
It's a lot of talking, right up front, and a lot of jiggling things around and making sure you have the same meanings of words and double-checking your assumptions and your interpretations. It's a substantial amount of feeling bad sometimes and forgiveness for that. In addition, though, it's a lot of knowing there's so much love involved that everyone is willing to plough through that work and still have caring and gentleness for each other left over. It's knowing that people are willing to not just say what occurs to them, but also to work through what occurs to them and figure out if it's their truth, or just their fears talking.
It's respecting everyone else enough to say no if necessary, rather than merely 'I want-' and 'How can I get lots out of this'?
So, yeah. You can probably figure out, if you've done the poly thing before, exactly which stage we're at. You can probably picture, scene by scene, the smiling bits, the hurting bits, the serious talky bits, the inferno-hot make-up-sex bits and the gentle figured-it-out holding-each-other bits. You can imagine the trepidatious looks, the uncertainty sometimes, the miscommunications when you think you know where you stand, and the glowing loving pieces.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Life just keeps taking you along to a better place regardless. Life is a process; life is progress.
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Rat food
Date: 2008-10-13 01:44 am (UTC)Since there are no rats in the household, it is yours for the asking (although a little advice on the azalea? in the yard would be lovely).