Bubbles

Bubbles

When I was young and believed that Santa would be coming to my house that night I remember my sister walking in the room and announcing to the family that it was time she burst the bubble. My father yelled at her but Stephanie was Stephanie and was determined. Sadly, it's one of the few sister type memories I have.

When you meet someone for the first time its normal to have some first impressions and cling to that impression a bit. Based on the persons clothes, speech and even your conversation. The truth of it is that we hold those first impressions for a while. They may get shaped, edited slightly but the general direction is pretty well set. In order for that to change I think you need a bubble burst- a moment when something drastic is said or done that doesn't fit with your earlier version, when you notice something about the other person that mandates you change your old ideas. Something you'd be hard press to be able to ignore in the future.

I have that with a few people. For the most part it’s unfortunate when it happens because I typically start off thinking people are amazing and then slowly things change. Not always though. Dave is a great example. I thought he was dumb. I thought he was single minded. And a few other things that I will leave out. But, I turned out to be wrong about nearly all. It sometimes makes things difficult. Its happened with almost everyone to some degree and it is usually irreversible. It would take another bubble burst to change it. For instance, I subsequently thought Dave was horribly smart and just so far above me. There were some more bubble incidents. Now we have good days and bad. He’s really smart at some things and others aren’t strong suits. For most people though you get a first impression and that is what sticks. If something occurs to change my opinion then you are stuck with your bubble version.

There is one friend for instance that I know has a hard time being responsible and against my better judgment I occasionally feel myself pulling out of him more examples where he acted irresponsibly. Almost to separate myself from him. Not entirely sure. Recently, I noticed that Eduardo (you’ll understand shortly) has bubble bursted me. I have become this child to him that he sees as an annoyance and that is how he will continue to see me until another bubble burst occurs.

Its funny how we stick to things. If you’ve committed to something its so hard to change your mind. I can only imagine some brain chemistry stuff explaining how once pathways have been set then your brain continues to take the route that it has already found. If you had to make a decision about something like whether something was red or pink and you went with pink and were then shown evidence that clearly put the color at red, my guess is that your brain actually would continue to process the color as pink since we know that even assigning something a color with a word makes us see the color. If, for instance, someone came up to you and said that it was red at the beginning of the conversation instead of asking, my guess is that your brain would only ever see it as red. Would be curious to back this up with research but nonetheless... it relates in the following way. someone (if you really cant figure it out, ask me) asked me to refer to him as Eduardo going forward because I had mentioned him in here before. I knew I had talked about him but thought I had remembered being relatively careful about using his name so I did a search. In this blog, I actually don’t have a record of his name. But I know he remembers seeing it.

A long time ago someone told me that before you have a baby you should have a dog. Before you have a dog you should have a plant. I think it follows the same line of thought. I would like to change this a bit but will start with my flaw. I cannot take care of a plant. Evan and Scott always did it for me. I couldn’t ever master it. I would over water and underwater and never knew what to do. The next step for me would be a dog. Id probably be awful. I don’t give max anywhere near enough attention because he is always filthy and shedding and smells and well I guess that’s not entirely true. Now I don’t feel as comfortable for a few reasons. But nonetheless. So lets call it as it is, I would kill a relationship. Now to go back to my thoughts on expanding this.

I think that before you get married you need to go over a few things. Lets start with what prompted everything this entire past week. The fights, the loneliness, the conversations. Eduardo has temporarily inherited a cat named Thor whom I adore. (I know I know) I worry about something’s and always wanted to make sure thor was happy. Eduardo mentioned that thors owner was looking for someone to give Thor away to. I was most unhappy with this for a variety of reasons. The main being that everyone should get to feel loved, no one should ever feel abandon. I will never be ok and that sucks but Thor shouldn’t have to feel that way. Ever. And it’s my job to protect him and everyone else. I became rather upset by the entire scenario and it started an argument. Not just with Eduardo. In my mind once you have made a commitment you need to stand by it. Not until it ceases to become convenient but forever. There is no such thing as 'ill try to keep the promise.' oxymoron. I couldn’t get past everything with Thor and to be honest it still hurts me.

I was abandon. I deserved it but I still was and it still effects me. I don’t blame my father for being a bad parent and not going to enough swim meets. I don’t blame my mother for being crazy. In fact, as some of you know, I refuse to acknowledge that they in any way affected me. Evan abandoned me because I didn’t deserve him. God tried to give me something amazing but I ruined that. I caused myself to be abandoned but it still terrifies me. Last night I tried the whole 'imagine a safe place' and came back to the same 'stone bunker with small windows looking out at the ocean on a small island.' hopefully you all are intelligent enough to understand that’s not safety. That’s fear. I don’t want Thor or anyone else to ever, ever have to feel that.

Recently someone told me that one of the benefits of poly is that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. I nearly died. That is in fact my great hope. I want to trust and love someone enough that I am willing to do that. I personally think that is most people's goal. Least most women. I think the men that prefer poly are being irresponsible but ill come back to that. I think it is greedy and selfish. The point of the relationship is not to have constant praise and sex; it’s to have a commitment. To have love. Lets go back to our expanded checklist shall we?

I think that moving on to the next stage on the baby ladder should be more about that questions you ask in the previous ones. So lets start at the beginning. . You have your plant and you noticed that it is dying. How do you proceed? Is your first thought to throw it away and dust the ledge? Do you throw it away and go buy another? Do you try to water it more and bring it back to life? Go to a nursery and get another opinion? (I’m the last by the way). Here’s the trick. If you stop at the first or second question, stick with a plant. If you made it to three, go head and try a pet. Now lets imagine that your pet needs a grooming for his nails but you want to go to the bar instead. Do you ignore that he even has nails and have no idea what I’m talking about? Do you go to the bar and figure you’ll get back to the nails sometime next month or whenever he scratches you again? Do you make an appointment for the next week and go out? Do you skip the bar, save money and go to the groomers as soon as you can eating only canned tuna to save up? Or do you scrap all plans and run to the store, get the needed tools and spend your night fixing the problem. If you are the last one, we need to talk about your life. But no, if it’s the first two maybe let’s stick with Fido. If its the others, lets get your a relationship! So you have a brand new girlfriend, lucky you she's fucking hot too. Now then you have been nauseatingly attached for four days spending virtually every second making out or screwing. You haven’t seen or talked to any friends since you two got serious except on your lunch breaks when she is working and cant call you so you send out a few broken texts about the new feature on your cellphone your girlfriend bought you. You get a text later saying that she wants to go to a movie on Thursday with you but you know that your group of friends is going to a concert that night. Do you blow off everything and stick with your girlfriend as she is now the priority and every ounce of energy should be devoted to the relationship? Do you go to the movie and figure you’ll hang out with your friends sometime when her work schedule and yours don’t align? Do you invite your friend to hang out with you before you pick up the girlfriend for the movie and text your girlfriend while with them? Do you invite the girlfriend to the concert with your friends instead? Or do you take a night off from the girlfriend and remember you had friends that were there for you long before you met this slot? If you’re going with one of the first three please don’t be terribly offended if I laugh like hell when you tell me you’re engaged and laugh even harder when you tell me your divorced. Learn loyalty. Get better at reality. It is one of my biggest pet peeves that most the men I know (and many women but not nearly the same amount) cannot for the life of them juggle friends and relationships. It’s easy. Who have you known longer? Are you engaged or married? If you have a girlfriend of less than a month, she should be the LOWEST priority. If you have been dating six months, she gets a heftier say but still not as much as a five-year friend. Engaged? Story change. She starts moving up. Married? Guess what, you have now chosen your family. She should matter more than your mother because this is who you are choosing.

If you decide to move in with your new girlfriend and she hates Fido so you decide to give him away, you decide this girl is worth so much that Fido should go- you wont keep her. And you shouldn’t. Nothing you say or do can have worth because look what you’ve done. You’ve given up someone counting on you. You’ve broken your commitment. You’ll do again with her. You’ll do it the next time a pretty face walks by. You’ll go through the motions, do all the same crap everyone does with all the same BS excuses for why it didn’t work.

I had a guy tell me recently that I wanted to submit to him. He kept asking, "You want to serve me? Open doors for me?" etc. pissed me off. Being a Dom in my mind doesn’t mean being lazy, doesn’t mean not having manners, and doesn’t mean not being a man. It means helping me by taking control of me, as I don’t feel I am capable of doing that as well as he can. It means me trusting someone so much that I am letting them decide things for me. It means wanting him to be happy and hoping that some part of me is able to provide that. It doesn’t mean him holding me down and handcuffing me during sex. Its part of why I am surprised when people say they don’t know what they want and yet not bothered by it. I don’t think being a Dom is something you randomly decide upon just for kink. That’s topping. Being a Dom, it’s why someone being new to the scene doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s why I don’t think ill find the person I want in the community. A dominant man, he'll walk me to my car and make sure I make it home safely. The yelling at girl to get on her knees and suck you sounds a bit easier huh? Yea that’s the part I'm not attracted to. That’s the part that annoys me. That feels fake. That feels like you just want a pretty, bushy decoration.

I don’t want more than one person who doesn’t have to try to be everything. I want one person who is willing to try, who is that brave and responsible and capable. I don’t want to fall asleep listening for a break in the waves outside my fort that will warn of an encroaching vessel; I want to fall asleep in his arms knowing he is looking after me-I don’t want to wonder who he is looking after, I don’t want to think about the other plants he trying. I don’t want to be Thor. I don’t want someone’s bubble of me to burst and have him look at me the way Eduardo does.

I want a collar. I want a ring. I want to believe that he will come to my house every night.

There are some nights when it amazes me no one loves me. I think about how devoted I am for some and how much I love them and it amazes me that no one feels that for me in the least. There are times I stay awake worrying about so many I love and it’s strange to think Evan has never once done that. Three nights ago I stayed awake crying, I felt so alone so terrified of things I couldn’t even see and yet all I wanted to do was pray that Thor wouldn’t ever know what it was like to feel abandoned. I'd love someone like me. Although I would look at me and my own heart would break. I'm ok with that though. The love of tragedy and all.

A number of people have told me lately that I deserve better than the situations I have been putting myself in. The dangerous, stupid positions. People who meet me always tell me not to compromise but I never listen because it's not how I see myself. That's not part of my bubble. My devil. But then I know that I need to change my willingness to compromise, my boundaries. I need to have far more clear boundaries especially in regards to play and relationships. I just hope and have faith that other people have the same bubbles. Have the same thoughts about connections. And I wait for my bubble burst moment and watch it all from the shores of my deteriorating beach.

The thing of it is, that even with there being some things about me that I think are good, I still see myself as someone who was abandoned, someone who deserves that. I still see my world as scary. I still want to feel submissive. I still want to love someone. And I still see all of the things I’ve always seen because bursting my own bubble of me, that would take an event as remarkable as falling in love: I still wait by the train I build, under the red glow of the Christmas tree every year.