Why didn't he call me back? In retrospect, that email was over the top. But those conversations had such a heavy weight. I had to interpret it cognitively. I had to make sense of it because what he said was so contrary. He told me I needed to love myself more but that I had to change or he wouldn't continue to love me. Maybe that wasn't how he worded what he said, but I am tired of repeating what people say verbatim, because I know in his case that for the first time in my life, the order of his words won't bring me any closer to his differential. This is different from every other person I have ever dealt with. I have always used peoples words to figure them out. Now I am changing his words and looking into his meanings instead of his words? When I start taking liberties like that, soon I will be making fiction.
So, tell me that it isn't a bit arrested to react to somebody handing you a loaded gun of their vulnerabilities and say "why did you wanna talk about this in person" and tell them that they found your final missing puzzle piece and oh, now they understand what was damaged about you, and oh, they are so perceptive, they are so damn perceptive. No, Snow, you would have been perceptive if you hadn't had to guess everything except the right guess. No, I didn't murder anybody you dimwit. And no, when I say that, I am not cussing you out the way you think I am. I care. So I am angry and frightened. And so yes, I was vulnerable when I told you that. Not because I have "not really dealt with it one hundred percent" but because I had to tell you something I knew might fuck up everything. And then you attributed me thinking that it might fuck up everything to some kind of arrested development on my behalf. Except what we mean by arrested development is so different it's like thinking teriyaki and the image you had of the dumpster with the soaking wet mattress were the same things. But the idea that somebody would see that image and think one of two things... and I forget what those two things were, because they were complicated- is not just brilliant, but beautiful.
So, you reacted. I guess in a way I am blaming you for letting me tell you over the phone and not understanding why this should be done in person.
Maybe it was better on the phone. Maybe it was horrible on the phone and would have been okay in person. I guess I am looking for answers in a place where it is irrelevant. At any rate, did I have to write back and talk more about relationships as if they were car trips and tell him that he got my baggage wrong, especially when he thought my stunt in hustling was something that is something I want to dwell on with HIM? I think I am afraid to say to myself, if he leaves me than I might go back to this because I will feel so crestfallen. And I won't have opiates the way I did with Burrow. But the truth is I am falling for him in a more real way than with Burrow. I can't compare the two because one must have been fucked up and this one must not be. But again, I am comparing. I don't understand. The only things I can compare are the quality and integrity of our phone conversations and our sex. And those things are better with him than anybody I have ever met. But maybe that is not everything because if it was, why would I feel so bad about the overall picture? Snow, I am trying to own up to things. But sometimes maybe you need to lie. I know you do Snow. You need to tell your best friend that my past is not my past. It sounds like you are ashamed, not me. You say it's because you know he will tell me to dump me. But can't you say to him "You are wrong." Can't you give him a chance to give me a chance to give you a chance to give us a chance? Why lie to your best friend you have known since five? I couldn't put my finger on it but it bothered me the first time you lied to him, and I usually, like I said on the phone, give my friends room to break whatever morals they want. You don't have a problem with a friend that lies to her wife about how she used to be a stripper. I would. I would have a problem. Maybe that should have given me the indication that I shouldn't have opened my mouth and told you about my past. But then again, I never thought I would have to deal with this issue at all, did I? I never thought anybody would give a damn why I did what I did.
You are making me break the pattern my life is in. Some would use the word rut instead of pattern. I believed you rescued me out of a rut. But now I don't know how to go back to my rut. I can't sleep through the night anymore, Snow. I wake up way too aware now. Too aware of the feelings I blocked, and blocked, and blocked, and blocked, and blocked.
My truth is getting in the way. Or what I think of are my truths. Or maybe I should be upset he didn't call me back. The truth is I am feeling so much I don't know what I am feeling anymore. The only feeling I recognize is the insane desire for him to call me. And then when we are on the phone I often feel skirmish and want to get off. He didn't believe me when I said I didn't know what I was feeling. It's something that is part of me, and it won't go away. But if he can't get over the fact that I freak out and call at 3 am he can't deal with me. He is so fucking proud of how he has been dealing with it already I don't know if I should say choice one, give him a metal. Choice be say "Okay, just go already, break up with me, we can already see how this is going to play out," or choice C, try to learn some fucking self control. I don't know how. Maybe he is wrong about me not loving myself enough. Maybe I started loving the wrong parts. The parts that could hurt myself more. But why didn't he call back when he opened all those cans of worms? To be truthful, I opened it. I didn't have to tell him anything. And I probably shouldn't have. He is probably wishing I told him nothing. But I didn't tell him nothing. But instead of saying I don't know how to have a relationship maybe I should say I don't know how to have THIS relationship. But I don't know how telling him that will help. He already knows that. But it doesn't matter. But shouldn't it matter? I have never, ever, fell the way I just fell and the falling leaves me feeling sad because I am afraid he is going to abandon be over and over and over again. That is all I know. It's scary that he didn't run away. Now it's getting scary every time he promises to call me back and doesn't. Why does he do that? If I say "I'm going call me back" and he says "okay" isn't the idea that he means it when he says okay? I keep my promises to him. Since he doesn't keep these kind of promises to me, does it mean I should stop? I have thought about trying to get some space, but what I really mean isn't space, it's pace. I am bulldozing through this trying to get through the good parts as fast as possible, I want to devour every moment as fast as possible and why? He said he wants peace. But I am a cliff-hanger. Maybe it involves the parallel between the way he likes to ride in bikes and the way he also has to take care of two children. Maybe I should have just listened to the feelings behind his lecture instead of intellectualizing the words. Maybe I shouldn't have sent him my response. Maybe it doesn't matter what I do, I am going to lose.
I know that part of me wants to run I have nothing left to find escape in. That is what scares me so bad. Nothing else. I am not scared of anything else.
I should never have started using words like relationship. They put so much space into the conversation that soon, everything else was smothered. There was so much attachment to ideas like relationship. But I feel like you are testing me right now and grilling me, and you saw the how badly I reacted to being grilled, remember? I give you way more when you don't try to get anything from me. I am resisting the urge to run with every fiber of my being because there is no place to go, I am caged. The cage is now made of my own doing. But I feel like I am going crazy in here.
Why can't it just be as simple as, yesterday was a bad day for us, and that doesn't need to mean so much right now? I feel like you understand things in your head but not in your heart. And how can I even say that? Maybe I am getting the two backwards. It happens with me a lot.
If I tell myself I am sorry in the corner where you think I should "pet my own kitty" (!!!) then where will that get me? Self-pity. Instead I am trying to say "I am proud of my scar, so stop telling me to apologize to myself for them." But I don't know who is right, you or me. Maybe it doesn't matter. All that matters is I learn to chill out. But when you do things like don't call me back after you you say you will, especially after my request was to read that email and call me back and tell me what you thought of my email, and there is nothing in my inbox- (I knew there wouldn't be anything in my inbox), maybe there is a tiny bit of you that is playing games here. Because isn't it easy enough to put A and B together and say, well, if she panicked about me never talking to her again every time we hang up and she tells me something I might not like, what is she going to DO right now?
What is she going to do right now indeed.
Why I want to write instead of going into music: writing is therapy
writing is beautiful
I could spend the rest of my life inside books and words and never play notes again and maybe not look back so much. But I won't. Because I don't want to be an idiot. I don't know. I don't know.
I hope we make up. I hope we make up so much it is awful. Why do I have to hope so much.
My opera is what is unfinished business. It is about the people who hurt me the most. It is about depraved heart syndrome. And that is what is hanging over me. The escorting really didn't hurt me, but when you insisted on the phone that it was a puzzle piece, I didn't have the energy to convince you otherwise. There weren't enough words in all of the world anymore.
You think that if I was confident, it would be easier for me to take this slower, or less intensely. To care any less about you because, in theory, I would care more about myself. It makes me sad that you think this because it shows that you don't understand me after all. Not at all. Not at all.
After I handed you that loaded gun of a weapon... you should have told me you trusted me more, not less. Especially since you apparently know a lot of people who lie about their life.
But that did not suddenly make you right to say my friends were fuck-ups. I did not invite you to say I was messed up because I am still friends with the people in my past. I am doing things my way, not the way you think it should be done!! You didn't have a problem with that until yesterday, when I handed you something so loaded your need to control issues began to balloon. And I understand that it is normal. It is normal when I do something so passive and trusting to feel you must take control. But you also need to realize that all those things you thought were right, that lecture that stormed out of you right then... well, those things were informed by your feelings. They were things you want to believe because it means you have figured things out. But you would be wrong. You would be discharging somebody with the wrong diagnosis and they would take the wrong meds and die.
But maybe I should understand that guys don't deal well with these things. Maybe I should never have trusted you with the gun in the first place. How was I supposed to know until I tried?
Maybe it is a build up thing. You can only take so much. And I told you so much. I told you so much already and then told you more.
I want to say something like, if you don't trust me with the gun, you don't deserve to be with me. Maybe it is even true. But it doesn't change how much I feel for you. I almost wish it did because then I could go back to my "normal life."
I am worried that this intense manic thing with you will prevent me from getting my work done. I am so carried away with you that I can't think straight, and for the first time in a long time my thoughts were getting brighter and sharper.
It's going to be okay. I wish I could know it was going to be okay with us. Again, I will have to accept dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing. I wish you knew how hard that was for me. I wish you understood that was the real root of the problem.
PS. Here is the email. And for the record, his last name has snow in it, and I call him Snow.
Subj: letter
To: Snow
From: Ivy
Sent: May 3, 2009
Why you can't bring it up again:
You dont guilt somebody about their past
I am being totally honest and open but when we agree the topic is over it's done
why cant you bring it up is particularily strong.. it's a power play and there are enough of them anyway. I just handed you a loaded weapon if you wants to use if and if you care you will give it back to me and say you won't use it against me ever. And do you really want to have any of this in your mind when you spend time with me? No, for your own sanity it needs to be put behind. WHy should it be in person? Body language matters. Think about it as a road trip from seattle to miami. We go on a road trip. We each want to bring something from our house. Who drives? Who decides where to eat? Sleep? What do we listen to? All those different decisions are a metaphor for a relationship, and if one person is always determining what to do or where to go and controlling what to do then that is not a good thing . I relinquished control by telling you so it is natural to automatically resume control.
Im going to move out of my apartment so I take all my baggage with me. But there are two different kinds of baggage. First kind is one is that I'm not going to open, I'll just bring it with me. The other kind is something I plan to use and dwell on. Me being a piano player is baggage from my past too but I plan to make use of it. And part of being a composer is being moody and wierd and being a million miles a way and I can't just turn that off because it's something that is important to me and I can't not do that, and it's not fair to attribute it to the other bag. Drug addiction is something I have to deal with for now on a daily basis but I don't want to have that bag. There is conceivably a place from the future where I won't have it but
Then totally separate from that is issues from my treatment from my mom. Totally different is baggage from my sister. And we all deal with families for the rest of my life so it is NOT going to go away!!! Ever. It's part of who we are forever.
But here is the thing. There are three diff. reasons for my going into escorting. Money.. But me going into it wasn't because of my family or my mom. It had to DO with previous negative sexual experiences I had in the past and I was looking for the meaning of love, the meaning of sex, and what they had to do with each other. It might not have been the healthiest way to find these answers but one of the reasons I went there is that I KNEW i did not understand these things. I looked in a weird place for answers. I did choose to push boundaries. And no it didn't give me a well-rounded view but it helped me deal. Even though I got a microcosm of what men are like but I understand that all of them are not really like that. And part of it was trying to discover what my sexuality was in that kind of environment. On one level, these guys can ask me to do anything and I get to choose what I am comfortable with. I had to figure out what my boundaries were and make those decisions... and they DID NOT carry the same kind of emotional baggage that they do in an emotional relationship. So... I openly have the decision to decide what I am going to do or not going to do but I could explore it if I chose to and I was able to learn about myself and I don't think those things happen normally. And they might have made me broader or narrower... I know the answer to that.. but I was able to explore what my boundaries were.
Closely related to that were some moral and boundary issues. I was given some moral boundary issues as a kid that didn't really resonate with my heart so doing that was part of finding that. So I did it for ALL those reasons. And I don't know which was the most important but I know those had a lot to do with it.
Stigma against these things are other peoples issues not mine.
But please... don't attribute everything to the loaded gun I handed you today.
Bride Wars movie quote
"I don't want to be perfect anymore. I wanted to be perfect for you."
"I didn't want a perfect women anyway. Besides, they are too hard to blow up anyway."
Three kinds of hope in this world.
1) spirituality, God
2) your reason, your logical faculties, your way to parce through the world
3) your dreams and aspirations, the kind of ideal world that you want to live in, what you want your future to be, dreams of maturity.
I want to be in a relationship that points towards hope, not perfection. A progression of suffering leading to perseverance, perseverance leading to character, character leading to hope.
Yeah. The dirt, the crap, the shit, the "torment" they have created character. But I want to focus on hope. What I want to be. I DO NOT want to focus on what I have been. I didn't want to DENY IT. That is why I TOLD YOU ON THE PHONE. You can look at the dirt or the flower. It's up to you. Dwell on the muck, fertilizer, and shit, but I'm more interested in the growth of the plant. not growing every two weeks, but thinking about growing therefore GROWING ALL THE TIME, becoming a better person.
My past was something I HAD TO DO to get to where I are. And the very things you may like about me are informed by being through hell.
-One is a bag that I own but don't need to open.
