6AM musings

Things have definitely changed since we last wrote. D and I got married in June. It was magical. Hands down the best day of my life. So I can now proudly say that he is my husband. Still makes me smile to say :)

We have moved on from being students and both got jobs in our field, yay! D is working part-time at a college and I have a long-term sub position for intermediate reading. We are going to be moving next month (I hope!) because we found a beautiful 3BR townhouse closer to where we both work. I'm stoked, but so not looking forward to packing UUUGGHHH.

So lately, I feel like I've been in a fog. I don't know if it's the weather or what. I just feel down, blah, whatever, lazy, bored, meh. I'm sure it's annoying the shit out of D. He's been doing so well, I'm very proud of him. He's been dieting and he has been finding opportunities to exercise throughout the day. I can't bring myself to do anything. Most nights I bitch about making dinner. I just feel trapped somehow. I look around and see so much stuff that needs to be done that I'm incapacitated. Like when you open too many files on an old computer at once. Can. Not. Compute. Shut Dowwwnnnn. And I don't have the energy. I always complain that I don't have time, but really I have too much time and no motivation.

I need some sort of inspiration. I overall want to be a goddamn adult instead of a lazy teenager feeling. I want to do the things that need to be done and then reward myself by sitting down on the couch and watching a show before bed. I also want to do the things I LOVE to do. I can't even bring myself to do stuff I love to do anymore. The other day I was so bored because D was watching football, so I went into the office to start organizing my desk so I could do some crafts. I always feel better when I create. It wasn't even that messy, but I just sat there for 20 minutes LOOKING at it. I just looked at my messy desk. Then i got up and went back to the living room to bug D.


I'm really excited about the prospect of moving soon. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. We don't have the property yet, but we should know within the next few days if we can get it, and I think we have a pretty good shot. But I'm not happy. I feel overjoyed to have found a wonderful man that supports and loves me. I'm so glad we're married and moving on in our lives. I don't have anything to complain about, really. I'm hoping that when we know for sure we're moving it will kick me into gear and I will be motivated to start packing and organizing. I just always feel like I'm waiting for some sort of inspiration or catalyst to change and it comes and goes and I stay the same. I don't know why I'm in this fog. I just want to get out of it and start living my life.

Desire or Capacity?

As laerie and I continue to struggle to fully integrate the d/s dynamic into our lives, I find myself spending inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out why we've struggled so mightily. I discovered that one of the reasons we do so is because we often confuse our desire to do (or not to do) something with our capacity to undertake the same action.

Neither laerie, nor myself, are particularly adept at pushing ourselves. Truth be told, we're both creatures of comfort and fall victim to the siren song of the couch far too often It doesn't help matters that she's going to school full time while managing five part time jobs, or that I'm plodding through a doctoral dissertation while trying to master the domestic arts. Reality aside though, both of us would be well served to remember the distinct differences between these two words.

Desire is, I think, inherently selfish. Philosophically, I don't believe that any desire can be truly selfless. When we get caught up in how we feel about a particular action, we're essentially saying "I am more important than us" in that given moment. And we cannot have a functioning, successful d/s relationship if such situations persist, on behalf of either party.

Capacity, on the other hand, is where I believe our focus should be. This change may actually be vital to our very survival. As creatures of comfort we've gotten fat, but not happy. Neither of us is satisfied with our lives as we currently know them, yet for years, we've been unable to make any lasting changes.

Though this may seem like a simplistic idea, it is one that I am going to attempt to embrace in my daily life, and strongly suggest that laerie do the same. When I pass our sink full of dirty dishes, I'm going to ask myself "do I have time to do them?" rather than be upset or frustrated they've been allowed to build up so high without someone else taking care of them. When I'm struggling to sleep and my habit of midnight snacking kicks in, I'll remind myself that I'm strong enough to get a glass of water instead of a cookie.

Hopefully by acknowledging such basic concepts and relearning behaviors, we can begin to make strides, both in this dynamic, as well as with a healthy lifestyle.

What do I stand for?

Most nights I don't know...

I've been really depressed lately. I'm pretty sure it's a combination of school pressure, wedding pressure, and SADD. I always thought that my abnormal abhorrence of autumn, when everyone in the world seems to love it, was awkward. I never fully understood everyone's awe of everything dying. And I always felt that I was using the cold weather as an excuse as to why I feel so down all the time.

I figured out I have a hard time admitting things to myself and seeing things that are staring me right in the face.

My father has SADD, and the fact that my father and I are basically the same person, makes me believe I have it too. And the fact that I had A DREAM last night about warm weather and I woke up feeling as though I had a dream about my dead brother. It's fucking insane how much it affects me.

D put a bunch of daylight bulbs in all the lamps, turned them all on, and cranked the heat for me. It made me feel a little better. But I still feel like there's a hole inside of me.

I've always felt very connected with nature. It really is a very spiritual thing to me. I find peace in the sound of raindrops; serenity in the warm breeze on my skin. I ache when I smell the sweet summer air and could cry at the beauty of the stars. I have never felt such immense happiness, such tranquility in anything else in my life. There are many things in life that I enjoy...many things. But my absolute favorite thing in the entire world is sitting on the beach, hearing the waves crash to shore, feeling the warm sun, and just being.

Winter takes every piece of it away from me, and I feel disconnected. All of the happiness gets sucked out of me like the warmth from the air. It seems so petty....like, "get the fuck over it, summer will be back"...but I can't just get over it. It's so hard for me to just be happy.

So it's affected many parts of my life as of late. Every time I've written in the past month or so it's been depressing as fuck. I want happiness...I ache for it. But I think I can find it if I stop looking.

D and I are actively working again toward a 24/7 dynamic. If it doesn't work this time, we're done.

So this is what I've learned in the past few days discussing this stuff:

I am irrationally worried about how others perceive me and often hide parts of myself so I don't come off as (place negative adjective here). Because of this, I feel like I don't know who I am. I don't know which laerie to embrace. I know who I want to be...but I need to find the strength inside myself to stand up and be that person, damn what anyone else thinks. I also put my own desires, needs, fears, gripes on the back burner to keep others happy. This builds resentment and in turn makes me unhappy because I feel under-appreciated for whatever reason.

I guess it all boils back down to communication. Sometimes I wish we could leave some wonder in our relationship, a little bit of mystery to keep it exciting. Other times I know that this is what we need to help me find myself. I thought I knew, but I am the most confusing person in the world. I can't even make sense of my own thoughts, how the hell am I supposed to let someone else?

Shit D says

So, things are better. It really is amazing how writing can really center us both. It brought the issues to the front so we could solve the problem together. This is a long road. The longest road, it seems. Anyways, I wanted to share this thing that D said to me:

"We are a perfect match if we cut out all the social norms crap. You are a dreamer and wonderfully impulsive, but you need someone to rein you in and keep you pointed in the right direction. You're a kite and I'm the guy terrified of heights marveling at the beauty of you flying."

He just has such a way with words. It made me happy.

The Power of Perception

Standing here, looking at the smoldering ash of our d/s dynamic, and wondering if the core of the relationship can be saved, it's easy to wonder how things got so out of hand.

The answer to that is, quite simply, perception. laerie and I used to pride ourselves on being effective and efficient communicators, though in retrospect it appears that we are anything but. Over the last six months, as stress has mounted from graduate school and wedding planning, things have gone from bad to worse and then some. I've tried everything I can think of to keep the peace, but my results have yielded nothing but abject failure and our relationship is on the rocks for it.

I suppose I might as well tell my side of the tale, though I'm not sure it will be to any avail. Things were great at the beginning of summer when we were fresh out of classes. They faded to good and ok as laerie's summer classes came and went and we started wedding planning in earnest with the fall semester looming on the horizon. The ok period only lasted about a month, before we started to head into bad territory.

Graduate school quickly overwhelmed laerie and she spent most of her time stressed about schoolwork or working at her three part time jobs. Despite being swamped with my own dissertation work, I did my best to pick up the pieces behind her and soldier on. Over time, I found myself doing more and more of the work around the house, until it was all on my shoulders. I largely stayed out of her schoolwork unless she needed help, but as her panic mounted, assignments took longer and longer to do, leaving us with even less time to spend together at night. Eventually, it got the point that she would be nearly catatonic with stress due to the pressures of work and school, so any time that we could salvage to spend together, she didn't want to do anything but stare at the idiot box or idly browse the internet.

I tried to step in and take the reins a few times over the last few months, but perhaps it was too little, too late. I thought she'd be appreciative of everything I was doing at home and realize that I was trying to step up to the plate and handle more and more, to ease the burden off of her. Admittedly, I did at times encourage her to cheat on her diet or stray from her goals in order to get her to do something fun and put some life back in her eyes. I thought that if I could get her to follow my orders and do something fun, then she'd be willing to follow me when it came time to doing the hard things as well. I had grand plans to train her to handle pressure better and develop a sense of grace under fire, but first, I thought I had best get her out of the depression.

Unfortunately, that never materialized. After reading laerie's recent blog post and discussing it with her, all she saw were failures on my part. Rather than appreciating my efforts to clean as taking pressure off of her, all she saw was an inept man "half-assing" things. I have to say I found this personally insulting. While I do take many shortcuts through life, I have never done anything but my best as far as laerie is concerned. Any failings on my part were a result of ineptitude and idiocy rather than a lack of purpose. Sadly, all that she saw were the apparently piss poor results of my efforts instead of seeing the value that I thought I was putting into the actions.

So here we stand today, at the edge of a precipice. Our very relationship hangs in the balance and I'm honestly not sure if we'll be able to get past the bitter resentment and frustration, coupled with the continued pressures of work and school for both of us, to do what is needed to save this relationship. I have no idea if truly embracing the d/s relationship, for better and worse, which we've never been able to do, would help us. Or maybe we're better off shelving it for now and existing as two separate entities for the next few weeks until the semester ends and we can better assess our future. Personally, I believe that a strict d/s dynamic might be the only hope we have of beginning to make ourselves functional, but until we can find a way to address (and from my perspective, correct) the fundamental misperceptions that have run rampant through our relationship, that road holds nothing but more problems.

I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish by writing this. On some level it's cathartic to let out the emotions. On another, I'm hoping that laerie can take more from my written words than she has my impassioned pleas to help make our reality different. At the very least, this will stand as a testament that hope remains for a better future if we can change the way we see the past.

I wish I had some wise words to end this post with, but I'm tired inside and out. I'm struggling to keep the fight alive.

And it's time for pizza.