All My Love

Good morning!

I really miss you. I have all these things I want to do with you, all these things I want to talk to you about. But it's hard. Sometimes I feel so separate from your life. I was laying here thinking about what I wished we could've done on the last trip, realizing that we might not always get to do everything we want together. That's part of being long distance. And it sucks.

I'm struggling with myself still. I'm not very good at talking about how I feel. I think I tend to go on and on about other people's relationships because it feels safer to let out my thoughts when I'm not talking about myself. That's not to say all of it applies to me. But I do the same kind of thinking about myself. And I don't always know how to share it.

I think one of the reasons I'm so interested in pain play these days is I'm really struggling to communicate during sex. I don't have the same kind of hang ups with pain that I do with sex, but it still requires active consent and good communication. I want to feel that intimacy without the baggage I'm working through around sex.

I was reading an entry on FL yesterday about referring to a partner as "mine" in the context of a poly relationship. It got me thinking about how we say that we give each other all our love. And for my part, I do. You have 100% of my love. And it doesn't depreciate it at all. Even if I love others, you still have all of my love.

I really love you!

What I Want

Hi love.

I'm trying to piece together what's been going on with me recently. And I realized something the other day. When I went looking for a therapist this summer, one of the things I wanted to look at was the fact that I couldn't see further than a few months ahead. It wasn't so much that I doubted I had a future, but my past had made it impossible for me to plan or even guess what it might look like. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but that's changed. I'm thinking more long term. Not definite plans per se. But I'm prioritizing differently. It feels significant.

While my current emotional state is annoyingly complex, it can ultimately be boiled down to one thing- I'm still learning that I don't have to do what I don't want to do, and that what I want matters. That's the common thread in my realizations about relationship roles or living together. It's not so much that I don't want to serve you or live with you. I'm just still learning that I can actually do what I want. I don't need to accommodate others unconditionally. I can choose to live my personal life to suit my own needs, even if those are the same needs that I'm ashamed and angry to have in the first place.

I'm still not entirely comfortable having needs. I've compromised my own desires relationally and even sexually in the past, and it's brought me to places I don't like. I feel obligated to give people what they want. I'm terrified of disappointing people, because ultimately I'm terrified of rejection. I've been working through a bunch of old stuff recently. It's exhausting and unsettling, but I already feel it's worth it. I hope that feeling continues, because I'm not really sure when this will resolve.

I love you so much.

Clarity

Good morning!

I woke up today with clarity. My mood has been slowly improving. But today's the first time in a little while I actually feel clear headed. It's a relief.

I get insecure sometimes. I'm not a simple person. I've got baggage. But unfortunately, the same baggage that underpins my insecurities, also makes it unbelievably difficult for me to talk about them sometimes.

When I feel insecure or stressed I often fall into old patterns, specifically, into feeling like I'm not supposed to have feelings or needs. Particularly when I know you're stressed as well, I struggle with myself, with the internalized message that my problems aren't so bad, that I need to stop whining and just handle them, that I shouldn't need help, and I definitely shouldn't bother anyone. I feel this weird pressure to have no needs, to just be this pristine helper and healer. I want to fix all your problems, and have none of my own. Because that's how life works, right?

I'm ashamed of not having it together. Not of the cutesy humorous stuff, but of the real, my-mistakes-and-shortcomings-affect-other-people's-lives-negatively shit. I hate owning up to stuff because all my life I've been made to feel like my mistakes made me a terrible person. I know I don't have to. But it's hard to break that kind of conditioning.

I want to ask that if you're dealing with something, you let me know. If you can't listen to me sometimes because of your own life stuff, just tell me. It would be comforting to know I'm not an imposition. But I don't want to put all that on you.

I want to be a positive influence in your life. I want to be the one you come to when you're hurting or scared or angry. I want to do the same with you, but sometimes the words catch in my throat, and I'm not sure why. So I just strangle on them quietly, preferring not to bother you, thinking that if I'm stupid enough to have problems I deserve to deal with them alone. Completely illogical, but still so fucking embedded in my mind.

I love you! Thank you for working on facing these uncomfortable emotions with me. I know you tend to keep things in sometimes, too, for your own reasons. But when I see you face them and address them and give them words, I feel encouraged and so intimate with you. So I keep trying, too.

Words mean things

Good morning love!

I'm in a weird emotional state this morning. I've been struggling the last few weeks, trying to figure out what I want. This post may ramble some, but I'm feeling quite jumbled today.

Words mean things. This simple sentence explains huge portions of the fights I've had with you. When you used to engage with women online in a way where they behaved like your sub or slave, even if you felt ambivalent, even if there was almost no chance of you ever meeting, it hurt. Because words mean things to me. Those felt like relationships to me, even if they didn't to you.

I tend to fantasize quite a bit. I live a lot of my life in my head. When we make plans, even half-hearted ones, I can latch on and get very attached. It's not your fault. But when things fall through, like movies, or road trips, even if there are very good reasons and I cognitively understand, it still hurts me.

You've said before that you can see this being a forever relationship. As terrifying as it is to me, I can too. To me, this means I want to be mentioned to potential other partners. I've never had a conversation with someone and not mentioned you, or at least the fact that I'm in a committed long-distance relationship. If that's not a place you're at right now, I do understand. Distance is hard, and it's only been a year. I know I've been struggling recently, and talking about the different ways I see us. I wonder if maybe living together for you is part of the forever relationship. I know the assumptions I make aren't necessarily the only way to do things, or even the best way. I want to really talk about all of this with you, but I'm scared.

I'm noticing a hesitation to talk to you about emotional stuff right now. I'm really struggling with the vulnerability of being intimate with someone so far away. I'm learning to accept the fact that you might mean more to me than I do to you. Or maybe not, I don't really know.

I know I love you, and I know you love me too. Those words mean things, too.

Worthless, pt.2

Ugh, this word is still bouncing around my head.

I'm a lot more damaged that I realized. I'm starting to see that my diminished interest in sex and kink is directly tied to my struggle with feeling worthless and my lack of trust in general. I am feeling very uncomfortable with vulnerability. Sex can feel very vulnerable. With you it doesn't; or at least I'm comfortable enough with you that I don't mind feeling vulnerable. But submission really does.

The close of 2015 is making me think back over the year. And back further to 2014. I have made a lot of changes, mostly positive this year. But I started out in a very bad place. I had dropped out of grad school. I was emotionally unstable. I was broke, and technically homeless. I think one of the reasons I attached so strongly to you was that you genuinely wanted to know me, and liked me at a time when I didn't know or like myself. I had unrealistic expectations of you because for those first weeks and months you were like a savior to me. I worshipped you. Now that I've seen your flaws, I don't necessarily worship you anymore. But I know you, and I like you, and I love you more than anyone else in the world, flaws and all. I really want you to be happy.

I have no idea what my life or our relationship will look like in the future. My strong attachment to my own definitions of consent is very much tied to what I'm currently working through and trying to make sense of. I have ignored other people's opinions for much of my life because I know how easily swayed I can be by them. When I let someone get close to me, their opinion often starts to matter to me more than my own. I want to not need you, so that when I choose to love and serve you in whatever way I do, it will be truly consensual. I don't want to submit to please you so that I can feel validated. I want to be secure in myself so that however I'm showing my love to you is about who you actually are.

To summarize, I'm a mess but I love you.

Anniversary

I really miss you.

I'm not usually super into anniversaries. I like to remember them, to spend time focusing on the relationship, past, present, and future. But I'm not looking for gifts or fanfare.

This one highlights the fact that we're not together. And it really hurts. I really miss you.

We've been so stressed recently. And I just want to be there for you.

I love you.

1072 Miles

I couldn't fall asleep again after we talked last night. I felt so far away from you. We've been doing so very well, but I knew there would be difficult days. This is one of them.

I miss you. I'm anxious and I worry. I feel like everyone breaks up eventually and I wonder if that will happen to us. It's hard for me to believe there's a chance it won't. I know it seems like I have all the company here, but they really don't help when I miss you. And that's disappointing because I'm realizing on some level that's why I have them. Which maybe isn't the best for them, either.

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing so well, but then I wonder if that's just in contrast to how I used to be. Which isn't to say it's not valuable. But I still have a way to go towards feeling healthy and well.

I love you. I'm feeling each of the 67,921,920 inches separating us right now. And it really hurts.