The Best Life Yet

Thinking about it even further, right before sleep, I suddenly made the connection between all of this and what the therapist was saying about my procrastination.

I procrastinate to fill my time so that I avoid doing kind things for myself. I avoid doing kind things for myself because I have a complicated relationship with my self-worth, since it has been tied up in external societal measurements. Also because on some underlying level I believed that I didn’t deserve that kindness since I couldn’t bring myself to extend it to anyone else. And I couldn’t bring myself to extend it to anyone else because it meant that it would put them on equal footing with me, which I found terrifying since I needed hierarchy to validate myself.

But I don’t.

I don’t need to compare myself to other people or to look down on them or to be better and competitive. I can get my satisfaction from doing my best, and it doesn’t matter how much better or worse than anyone else’s that may be—I can’t beat myself up too much for not being the best (which is kind to myself), but I also can’t be smug and derive a false sense of worth and satisfaction when I actually AM the best (which is kind to others).

This is basic shit that you hear all around you in life from kindergarten on, but it’s mostly rung hollow to me as people trying to make “inferior” people feel better about themselves. I guess I lumped it in with “A for effort” culture and therefore discounted it completely. But no matter how poorly implemented in society the concept may be, it’s got wisdom at its core.

The flip side of this—and the difficult part—is that then I actually must do my best. There can be no skating by with the bare minimum just because it is easy for me to do that and keep pace with other people. But at the same time, I must be gentle with myself. Sometimes I really will need to rest and take it easy. And having done my best all the other times, when those times arrive, I will deserve it.

My entire life suddenly makes sense. It won’t be easy, but I know I am up to the task. If I got this far flying blind, I am eager to see what I can do with eyes.
 
Hi, Reverie. It sounds like you're making lots of progress :) I just wanted to share my thoughts on your comments about doing your personal best and being kind to yourself. One thing I've had to learn is that my personal best at any given time, can not be compared to my personal best at another time. It's fluid and will depend on on so many other forces, external and internal. Sometimes my personal best is not much better than what I'd consider 'skating by' at other times. And that's ok. Part of being kind to ourselves is not holding onto unrealistic or unattainable expectations of ourselves, just because we've performed at that level in the past. Understanding that has allowed me to be so much kinder to myself.
 
PinkPig said:
Hi, Reverie. It sounds like you're making lots of progress :) I just wanted to share my thoughts on your comments about doing your personal best and being kind to yourself. One thing I've had to learn is that my personal best at any given time, can not be compared to my personal best at another time. It's fluid and will depend on on so many other forces, external and internal. Sometimes my personal best is not much better than what I'd consider 'skating by' at other times. And that's ok. Part of being kind to ourselves is not holding onto unrealistic or unattainable expectations of ourselves, just because we've performed at that level in the past. Understanding that has allowed me to be so much kinder to myself.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the extra insight. That makes a lot of sense.
 
I spent the second half of my day putting out an Oona fire. Or at least trying to. Since she is the closest person to me besides Rider, she is the only other IRL person I shared my recent post contents with. For eons now, she has been trying to get me to see the things that I just figured out, so I felt sort of like a proud child showing its mom a drawing when I copy/pasted my posts into a Word doc with the names changed to IRL names and sent it to her. I have mentioned "my poly blog" to her in conversation before, but I didn't tell her where the post was from specifically. It didn't seem important. I titled the doc just "essay" and referenced it as "a journal post" in my IM to her.

My plan was to have her read it so that she would have the background information for the heartfelt, sure-to-be tearful thank you I planned to give her during our scheduled phone conversation tonight—much as I had apologized to Rider. She is more like a sister to me than my actual sister is, and she has supported me through much strife, and—I am certain—covered for me when I was being an ass. I wanted to thank her for standing by me even though I am imperfect at best, and for always trying so hard to make me see the things I just finally saw.

That backfired spectacularly.

Within a few hours, and well before our phone conversation, I received a very long and absolutely LIVID message from her, very hurt that I'd "thrown her under the bus." The message was so long that I could only skim it before she started saying more things, and so I only had the basic gist of it; I was on my lunch break from work on a business trip, and so was eating in a pub in an unfamiliar city when I got the message. It took me a moment to wrap my head around even half of what she was saying.

It turns out that she had assumed that this was a post to my LiveJournal, and that all of my friends had read the paragraph about how Oona and I have gossiped together. A bunch of friends and I had tried to revive LiveJournal last summer, but it had lasted less than three months before everyone fell off again. I had invited Oona to join us, but she'd never made time for it after making an account. I'd started blogging over here at the same time, more or less. But even though I haven't updated my LiveJournal in well over a year, I guess she'd assumed that every time I'd talked about "blogging" in terms of what I'd been doing such and such night, it had been that instead of this.

She was INCREDIBLY pissed that the only mention I'd made of her by name was in reference to catty gossiping rather than any of the myriad contributions she's made over the years to trying to get me to see things more clearly, and even, indeed, being the one to finally coax me into therapy.

She was also pissed that I mentioned other people as being part of the puzzle pieces that helped everything fall into place.

She went on at some length about how *I* am the judgmental one and any time she ever talked with me like that it was because she was humoring me. I asked her about a few specific times that she had initiated the conversation and it could have only been her, and she said OK, yes, she does do it sometimes but only when it's people who have wronged her in some way or she finds threatening.

I was really quite astonished by the whole thing. And quite hurt as well.

I cleared up the misunderstanding about the post location and reassured her that no one had seen the essay who knew who she is in real life—that I go above and beyond to make sure identities can't be connected with names, for multiple and varied reasons.

What was left was that she was still upset that I could see her as someone who could be as judgmental as I could be. She maintained that she never behaved that way in her other friendships. I have no idea how I was supposed to know how she behaved in her other friendships one on one. She said things that caused me to feel like I was a) a monster of the caliber that anyone would be ashamed to be publicly compared to me and b) like I really was clueless if I couldn't even figure out how to navigate the world with someone "humoring" me in conversations and merely stooping to my level. It really made me feel like dirt.

I also couldn't understand how she seemed to read what I wrote as an awards acceptance speech with "shout outs" to people. All I did was be truthful about the little nuggets of interaction that had piled up to create a tipping point for me, in conjunction with therapy. I wasn't ACTUALLY THANKING Aurora and Kelly for being smart young people with whom I interacted, or Beckett for being in recovery and inspiring me, or Jerry for kissing me. They were just involved in events—facts—that shaped my view. And I actually WAS going to thank her later. I mean, she didn't know it, but I found it totally baffling how she flew into a rage at how she WASN'T thanked and acknowledged in the initial document.

She was specifically peeved that I didn't mention how some of her comments were what led to my original (2011 or 2012) reconsideration of my drinking habits, and angered that I was giving Beckett credit this time. I felt like a) I am concerned with now, not some failed attempt I made several years ago, and b) it's a lot different having conversations with another problem drinker succeeding at reform than it is a non-problem drinker who has made some incisive critiques about my behavior while drinking. It's a different perspective. I think it's worth something.

She also said things in her original message that I thought were weird and off-topic, but that we didn't get around to discussing, like how Rider and I post more selfies together than any of her 500 other friends do with their partners, and how all of my clothing for the past year looks like it could have come out of her closet, and how it was frustrating that my therapist had told me to care less of what other people think of my choices. I have no idea what selfies and fashion (she is quite fashionable, so that was kind of a compliment in a weird, unintended way) and what OTHER people (i.e., my therapist) say have to do with anything at all.

So she was freaking out, and then I was freaking out, and I totally cried at the pub and had to pull myself together to go back to work. I was messaging with her the entire walk back. She had asked me if I was trying to end our friendship. This after part of the reason I am even moving to Opposite Coast is to be closer to her.

And the weird thing is that, in my mind, I didn't even dis her. I just told the truth, which was that we have engaged in gossipy conversations that I was not proud of and wanted to stop having.

Compared with my putting in there a whole section about how Rider's drinking habits were less than ideal and I didn't know how he'd react to my quitting and confessing that I'd seen him as a person with poor taste in partners...there was a lot more there for him to be mad about, but when I read it to him, he was like, "Wow, such enlightenment! I am glad you are so committed to growth and I get to watch it happening."

Versus Oona's "How could you throw me under the bus and not acknowledge me and misunderstand me to be like you? Are you trying to destroy our friendship?"

I just...don't understand how any of what I wrote could have been taken to be really about her. It's like she did the class picture thing where you just look for yourself and care about what you look like in it.

The whole essay was about MY growth and MY progress and MY tough lessons, and I shared it with her because I love her and I thought she'd be happy for me that I was finally "getting it"—what she'd wanted for me for so long. How MY self-inquiry to my behavior around alcohol could inspire mostly anger that she thought of it first and I wasn't giving her due credit baffles me. I just don't see how any of this really has to do with her very much at all.

I love her dearly, and I know that she loves me, and I know that for most of our friendship everything she has done has come from a place of love—even the times she has been tough on me.

But I just don't know about this. I was already in an emotionally raw place, having shredded myself good to get to the bottom of all of this, literally meditating alone in the dark with tears standing in my eyes. And her response to my vulnerable disclosure is to see it as, at best, a critique and overlooking of her, and, at worst, an attack designed to make her look bad and torpedo our friendship.

I ended up deciding that it was important FOR ME to give her the original thanks I had planned to give her, but I'd do it in writing instead of over the phone. It became clear that we would not actually speak tonight. I wrote it out, two pages, and sent it, and then I began to write out another ten pages addressing her original message point by point and explaining how utterly confused and worried I was by her reaction. At the end, I asked her if she could identify for me, by percentages, where her anger was coming from, so that I could better understand it. Because right now, I am just totally perplexed. I think the worst feeling in the world is when you step into a hornet's nest with someone that you love when you feel like you were doing some kind of good.

The breaking things down into components (not necessarily percentages, but that's an idea I picked up from browsing posts here a while back) strategy is one I regularly practice with Rider to help scaffold us into understanding each other when we feel there is a roadblock. Hopefully she does not think it's too weird. She has complained before that I tend to put more work into my romantic relationships than into my friendships, so now she's getting what she's asking for: I'm going to pick this thing apart and get to the bottom of it just as though it were my relationship with Rider. I guess I'll find out probably tomorrow what she thinks of the whole thing.
 
Yeah she sounds a little narcissistic by wanting ALL the ccredit of your personal growth. I think she should have asked where it was posted before ASSuming it was LJ and while she doesn't want her image being sullied she could have simply asked you to remove that instead of going off on you. The selfies and you "copying" her style comment was weird and probably something she's been thinking about for awhile, she probably just mentioned those things because she was escalated. I definitely think she owes you a big apology
 
I think Oona sees herself as your caretaker in a very exaggerated way. I don't recall if you've posted much about your history with her so I'm not sure what your relationship was like in the past. In some of your prior arguments with her, she sounds personally threatened by Rider's increasing position of importance in your life. Now she sounds threatened by your personal growth as if you figuring it out for yourself means you aren't as dependent on her as she likes to believe. Like she's a parent struggling with her baby growing up. I can certainly understand why you would be confused and frustrated with her treating you that way but maybe you could consider this and try to have some compassion for how your relationship is changing for her. Hopefully she can adjust and progress to the proud stage.
 
The only thing I've heard back from Oona so far was one sentence thanking me for the "thank you portion" saying that it was stuff she probably needed to hear for a long time. I'm not entirely sure what she meant by that but she said she'd write more later. I am not on tenterhooks though—just continuing to live my life.

I got back from my business trip this afternoon. On the way, I had a layover in the city Beckett is staying in for the past month on business. We had a cute "looking at the same cloudy sky" picture exchange and a few text volleys before revaporating (if that word doesn't exist yet, I am coining it).

When Rider picked me up, he was soooo happy to see me. He couldn't keep his hands off me. I suddenly felt like I might be coming down with a cold, so I didn't really feel up to any hanky-panky, but he rubbed my feet and I promised him that we could do something later.

I also discovered that my cat had a tapeworm, so off we went to the pet store for a dewormer. We went to the grocery store next door and I got stuff for a stir fry, figuring that veggies, garlic, and ginger might fix me up. I also make sure to take my multivitamin, which I'd forgotten to pack on the trip.

Feeling tired from travel and maybe sick and having a lot of work to do, I decided to stay home instead of accompanying Rider to the football party. We've been instant messaging a bit.

Rider had been a little down recently about not having gotten to see Pablo in a while. Apparently, Pablo is going through some sort of depressed wanting-to-be-alone period—nothing to do with his relationship with Rider, but still resulting in Rider being sad at the withdrawal. They haven't seen each other since before our road trip. In fact, Pablo was supposed to come out to my birthday party that preceding Friday and didn't feel up to it. He wasn't even answering texts for a few days. But tonight, he invited Rider out somewhere after the game.

Rider told me about it and of course I told him to go. Rider was on the fence because I just got back from a trip and I'll be leaving for another one on Thursday, but he hasn't seen Pablo in weeks, and he needs to be there for his boyfriend if he's not feeling emotionally well, in my opinion. Rider was all asking me if I was sure, and I could not be more sure—I insisted that he go. Then he was expressing how much he loved me for that. Rider and I have the rest of our lives together. He and Pablo get to live in the same geographic area for only three more months. That, coupled with the fact that Pablo currently has the greater need, made it a no-brainer to me. I'll just hang out with my sorely missed cat and get some work and laundry done.

So here I sit! And I am getting back to work right now—no more procrastination for me! :cracks whip:
 
Saturday night, Rider ended up bringing Pablo back to our place rather than going out. Rider had chosen not to drink at the football party—a first for him! The two of them came over and we sat on the couch watching music videos for a while and chatting. Pablo was clearly intoxicated on something, but I couldn't tell what. My guess from the way that he was moving his mouth was either coke or molly. Rider offered him a drink, and he began drinking scotch like it was his job while Rider and I remained sober. When I spoke to Rider later, he said he hadn't noticed Pablo's mouth thing, but I know drugs a lot better than Rider does.

Even so, we had fun. We all cuddled, and Pablo, who is new to poly, said that it was a strange experience for him being in love with two people at once. He has declared his love for me on multiple occasions, and he knows that I do not feel as strongly about him yet, but that I am open to things growing. I think that he is incredibly handsome and very sweet, but there is a certain degree to which we just do not "click" in that way yet on my side, so I am at the moment content to leave it as a V with Rider as the hinge (and having some occasional three-way sexy/cuddle times) rather than a triad.

Rider told me that he learned that Pablo had recently come off of some meds— the ones that were making it impossible for him to orgasm—and that is why he has been hiding recently. Saturday was the first day that he felt well enough to be social. Rider is hopeful that, without the meds, Pablo will now be able to achieve orgasm with him, which hasn't happened yet.

At one point, Pablo was outside smoking a cigarette, and he called to us to come outside and look at the sky. It was incredibly clear for being in the middle of the city, and we stood outside and stared in awe at how many stars were visible. We decided to go down to the beach to get the full effect. On the beach, we laid out a blanket and all three lay down, with Rider in the middle. Pablo and I cuddled up on Rider and also stroked each other's arms. I do like being cuddly and affectionate with him, at least. It is nice having the variety of limbs to touch at once.

Pablo had continued to drink scotch at the beach from a travel mug, and he had become quite drunk. I eventually made the executive decision that it was time to go home. Rider and I wanted to stay up for a little while and eat something, even though it was nearly dawn, so we put Pablo to sleep on the futon. He passed right out after Rider fed him some water.

After we ate, I had been up for nearly 24 hours, so I needed to go to sleep even though I know Rider was disappointed that we wouldn't be having sex. I had planned on having sex with him, but he brought Pablo home and then it just got too late. I know he'd been hoping to play with me or Pablo or, even better, both, but I still hadn't even showered from my trip home, and there was just no way. I promised to make it up to him the next day.

The next day, we woke up late, and Pablo had to run out the door to get to his brother's birthday party. Rider and I were a bit disappointed that he couldn't stick around. We went to diner breakfast and then to Target because I needed to get some shopping for business clothes done. It was my plan to use a big chunk of my royalty check to buy new work clothes, since mine were all from 2012 and starting to look well worn. I bought a heap of new stuff, and even got myself a few new non-work things: two pairs of jeans, a pair of floral boots, and a new flannel. I also got a bunch of new panties, including some sexy lacy ones to titillate Rider. Shopping exhausted Rider, and I felt a little guilty for keeping him in the store so long, so I made it up to him by ordering Chinese delivery for dinner with some of the money I had left over, and promising to do fun things with the panties later.

The rest of the evening was very relaxing, even though I spent a few hours of it working. Rider watched a wrestling show, and then when I finished with my work we watched some zombie episodes. We finished the night up with some phenomenal kinky sex.

Today Rider found out more about his work's downsizing thing. It happens that they are offering every employee a "buyout" option where they can choose to leave for a set amount of severance and then be eligible for unemployment after that. The aim is to not have to actually lay people off—people who want to jump ship can, and people who want to stay can stick around and see whether or not their heads will roll. The deadline is at the end of the month to apply for that, and Rider is not sure how long they would let him work after the deadline.

It's kind of perfect timing, though. If he can continue to work even a month after the deadline (and he probably can, as his boss has assured him that his job is one of the safe ones), then we will be breaking even savings-wise, plus he'd be getting time off to prepare for the move. If he can continue to work until the winter holidays, he'll actually be profiting compared to our original plan, because his severance would cover weeks that he originally would not have had any income at all. Getting unemployment for a couple of months on Opposite Coast is a big deal as well, because he wouldn't have if this opportunity hadn't come up and he'd just plain quit. The stroke of luck is almost unbelievable.

Oona had previously told me she wanted to be apprised of any further info we got on that whole thing, so I decided to message her with that info, completely unrelated to any of the drama we've been going through. My hope was that we could just smooth the whole thing over and talk about other shit for a while and get things back to normal. It seems to have worked, as she wrote back and we talked about that and her dog having gotten sick over the weekend, and we also had an exchange about tattoos. She said she'll write me back soon about the other stuff and I just told her no rush.

I did some reading on narcissism at the suggestion of some of the posters here, and I don't really think she fits the profile in general. Generally, she is a very empathetic and tuned in person. It's just that something is really weird about her LATELY in which she seems really invested in my life path taking a certain course and then getting credit for improvements that she may have had a hand in influencing.

Over the course of our friendship, she's gotten mad at me a lot more often than I have at her. I don't get mad really easily in general, though. Most of the times that she's gotten mad at me, it's been because I've made a legitimately bad decision and she's gotten frustrated at being the ear that has to hear about it. Her recent behavior is pretty out of character, and I am just going to keep a watchful eye on it and see what happens. I'll report back here whatever she ends up saying in reply; maybe it'll clear up some of the mystery.

In other news, my sporadic texting with Beckett has continued. Yesterday he posted on his Instagram the cover of my absolute favorite book in middle school and early high school, and my heart stopped when I scrolled past it. I hadn't seen that beloved cover in so long! I had to text him about it. We had a nice little exchange.

Also, the shift in my thinking is having real results! I feel different moving through the world, and yesterday at Target was the first time I didn't hate myself after seeing myself in a dressing room mirror—and I am even at a heavier weight than I usually am, due to overindulging on vacation. Realizing that judging and criticizing others for their appearance is a flaw led me to understand that if people look at me and think negative things, that is their problem, not mine, and I can love myself for exactly the way that I am. It doesn't mean I will give up on trying to be healthier and keep to my own ideal for my own reasons, but I can love myself no matter what I look like on any given day. It is a truly freeing and pleasant feeling.

A couple of times, a negative remark about someone has crossed my mind, but instead of believing it, I examined it and recognized it for what it was, and it floated away. Feeling it float away made me feel happier and filled with love for humanity. I don't know if I am just having NRE with my new mindset, or if it is always going to feel this way—this palpable sensation of replacing negativity with love.

I'm still not scoring 100% on the procrastination thing, but I feel like it will come about as things shift into place. Mostly I feel so peaceful and happy and prepared for anything. I had no idea how much a simple change of perspective could change the way my entire life feels.
 
Oona says she is mostly done writing a response to the last thing I sent her, and that she prefers that we don't speak on the phone until I have read it. Apparently she had some computer problem that prevented her from sending it to herself at work where she ws planning to finish it. She said we can talk tomorrow.

In a flash of inspiraton, I realized earlier that her accusation about me and my selfies was actually quantifiable using her as a control. I looked at each of our "X's Photos" section on Facebook bewteen July 1 and now and counted the total number of images and the percentage of images that were selfies and selfies with partners.

My total photos were 260, with 33 selfies, 18 of those being with Rider. This means that roughly 13% of my photos were selfies, and 7% were with Rider.

Her total photos were 76, with 29 selfies, 17 of those being with Toby. This means that 38% of her photos were selfies, and 22% were with Toby. So, percentage-wise, she actually posts selfies (with or without a partner) at a rate about three times what I do.

Pot, meet kettle.

All I see is that I am a more prolific photographer than her in general, which makes sense, as it was a major hobby of mine in high school to the point where I took multiple independent study classes on it.

Anyway, it is not a huge deal, and I'm not even going to trot these facts out unless she brings it up; at this point, I am more interested in keeping the peace than in rubbing her face in the fact that I'm right. Still, it is helpful to me to see that it is not just my PERCEPTION that she has been really off on some of this stuff—the numbers back me up. And if she decided to push back at me again on this, I have a solid retort. But the main thing is knowing that I'm not crazy.

In other news, I think Man is Kelly's official boyfriend now. Apparently, he is into all of the same kinky stuff that she is into. She said he is "the most fun" in bed, for which I was very happy for her, but had a tiny pang of sadness for Rider. Oh, well. *I* think that Rider is "the most fun" and that is what matters. <3

She's going to bring Man to our little birthday celebration that we are having for her at Jerry's this weekend. I leave for the business portion of the trip Thursday, then Rider will be driving up to meet me at the hotel Fridday night, and Kelly and Man will be joining us Saturday evening. There will be football and dinner and I am baking Kelly an apple pie because she said she prefers that to cake. I got her a cool present, too: a little cocktail kit with a fancy hammered-copper martini shaker, a book on the history of gin with recipes, and a couple of artisanal flavored simple syrups. I also got a cool little keepsake treasure-box to put it all in. It's Rider's job to furnish the gin.

I had asked Kelly whether she planned to be nonmonogamous with Man, and she said she didn't know yet. She said that opportunities in their town were limited, which I took to mean that she probably wouldn't deny him monogamy if he wanted it, because there was him to gain and very little else to lose. I was wondering if Rider had any hard feelings about that—whether it felt like a breakup to him—and he said not really. He said that since he didn't think there would have been other opportunities to have sex with her anyway, it didn't really matter. He is just really happy for her that she's found someone. I guess he'd already mourned that part of their relationship back when he looked at the schedule and realized there wasn't time for more sex and had a little sad about it. I'm glad that he's happy and that he isn't suffering any bad feelings about the whole thing at all.

I guess I should probably update my list of characters soon to reflect shifts and changes. Not today—too much to do. But soon.
 
Cast of Characters 10/2015

Here's my updated cast of characters for this month:

Ada: 32f/bi/mono/partnered. The friend that R&R originally met through. Former best friends with The Ex. Has a penchant for pot stirring and drama.

Alex: 34m/bi/poly/married. An early Reverie date (6/2014) that quickly turned platonic due to no spark and jealousy on his partner’s part, and then fizzled to nothing. Still FB friends.

Al: 36m/straight/mono/partnered. One of R&R's platonic music buddies. Partnered with Shana.

Allie: 33f/bi/single. R&R’s FWB since 10/2014. The sweetest girl.

Anna: 29f/bi/mono/partnered. Reverie’s former roommate (10/2014–9/2015) and Rider’s former fling (3/2013).

Arturo: 30m/straight/polyflexible/partnered. An early Reverie date (7/2014) who was a nice guy but there was no spark. Since then, we have become friends, and he has become the cat-sitter.

Aurora: 24f/bi. Reverie's questionably too-young girlcrush.

Beckett: 35m/heteroflexible/mono/single. Reverie's megacrush since 5/2015. Connection recently ended (by him) after a month of dating (7/2015–8/2015) but remain friends. Bandmates with Caleb.

Brandon: 33m/straight/cheater. An early Reverie date (7/2014–9/2014) who was charming but turned out to be cheating on his girlfriend. Hooked up a few times but was ultimately too flaky and then discovered to be cheating. Still FB friends.

Caleb: 37m/straight/partnered. Reverie’s former FWB (9/2014 to 11/2014)—good sex, not so great personality, as it turned out. Bandmates with Beckett.

Candace: 29f/bi/single. R&R’s elusive crush-girl who is impossible to pin down for plans.

Claire: 28f/bi/poly. Rider's ex-girlfriend (2007–2009, 2013–2015) and the person who introduced him to poly in 2013. They have not remained friends except for on FB.

Desiree: 38f/straight/single. Rider’s former longtime crush (2011–2015) who he was just on the verge of hooking up with when she viciously bullied Reverie one night while blackout drunk, which changed his mind about her.

Emily: 27f/bi/OPP/partnered. Reverie’s brief girl crush and now platonic friend. The crush part lasted only like a week.

Erica: 35f/bi/single. R&R’s friend who was married but had a falling out with her husband over a threesome-lite she had with us and all hell broke loose.

Evan: 39m/straight/single. Rider's friend from childhood and Kelly's current roommate. Lives in Football Town, about 4.5 hours away.

The Ex: 36m/straight/mono/single. Reverie's last relationship before Rider (2010–2014). Convinced Reverie to give mono/OPP another try after she tried to be poly in 2010. Relationship ended, in part, because Reverie-initiated talks of opening further made him paranoid, controlling, and convinced he was being cheated on. Recently re-friended on FB after a year and a half of no contact. Now lives on Opposite Coast.

Georgia: 35f/straight/married: Reverie’s platonic friend—sister-in-law to The Ex.

Gray: 30m. An early Reverie date that was the most boring date ever. Reverie’s avowed last internet date in this town.

Jake: 34m/heteroflexible/poly. Reverie's high school crush and hometown lover, living about 1,000 miles away. Hooking up on and off since 7/2014, with lots of visits between 10/2014 and 3/2015. This has cooled off considerably due to distance and sexual incompatibility, but the love and friendship is still there.

Jerry: 35m/straight/single. Rider's longtime friend and Reverie's new friend. Lives about 3 hours away.

Kelly: 26f/bi/poly. Rider's former FWB+ (LDR, 10/2014–9/2015) and current good friend. Reverie’s friend since 1/2015. Has had threesome with R&R. Lives in Football Town about 4.5 hours away. Dating Man, tentatively monogamously.

Kitty: 34f/bi/polycurious/partnered. Rider's "one that got away" ex. They dated for 9 months in 2012 but she moved away to go to law school and their LDR didn't work out. He was still hung up on her when I met him, and they are still friends. She lives less than two hours from my Hometown.

Laura: 29f/bi/single. Hippie painter girl that Rider is crushing on and Reverie is "maybe" about.

Man: 45m. Kelly's boyfriend since 9/2015. They have not yet had the exclusivity talk, but are probably leaning mono.

Molly: 36f/bi/single. R&R had a threesome with her once (7/2014) and hung out platonically a few more times. She’s fun but a little crazy and we tend to keep our options open with her but not get too close. Rider is more into her than Reverie is.

Moss: 40m/straight/mono/single. Reverie's ex-husband (together 2007–2010) and recent ex-boyfriend (2014–2015). Lives on Opposite Coast. Reconnected in a long-distance fashion until he decided he wanted to try to go monogamous with someone else. When that ended, this did not resume.

Oona: 38f/bi/monogamish/partnered. Reverie's BFF. Friends since 1999, on and off FWB since 2002. Has hooked up with R&R in a threesome before. Currently lives in on Opposite Coast, in the city where R&R will be moving come January. Has been dating Toby monogamously since 9/2014 but is currently trying to negotiate OPP.

Pablo: 35m/bi/single. Rider's boyfriend and Reverie's sometime FWB. Rider’s first M/M sexual experience, and they ended up falling in love. Has confessed being in love with Reverie as well, but the strength of feeling is not mutual, so the relationship remains as a V with Rider as the hinge.

Ramsey: Reina’s husband, and an old friend of Rider’s.

Reina: 38f/bi/OPP/married. An old friend of Rider’s and a long-distance FWB of Reverie’s since 11/2013. Married to Ramsey. Lives in a far corner of Opposite Coast so we don’t get to see her much.

Reverie: 34f/bi/poly. Me! Currently engaged to Rider and crushing hard on Beckett even though that's over. Additional loose connections of varying places on the FWB-to-romance spectrum with Sam, Jake, Allie, Oona, and Pablo.

Rider: 39m/bi/poly. Reverie's fiancé, together since 2/2014, friends since 6/2013. Also dating Pablo, is FWB with Allie, and has a seemingly infinite constellation of crushes and sparks with people.

Shana: 33f/heteroflexible/mono/partnered: One of R&R's platonic music buddies. Partnered with Al.

Shane: An early Reverie date (11/2014) that went nowhere.

Sherry: 44f/mono. A former FWB (very long distance) of Rider’s (5/2013–5/2014), whose expectations that their relationship would eventually turn exclusive ended up breaking her heart.

Sam: 39m/straight/polyflexible/single. Rider's BFF since college in 1994. Reverie's sometime lover since 7/2014—a loose “it happens when it happens” connection that is mostly affectionate with some sex thrown in there every once in a while. He lives in College Town about 3.5 hours away, so it’s all long distance.

Tasha: 33f/bi/open/engaged. Reverie’s FWB (since 2011) on Opposite Coast.

Toby: 38m/straight/mono/partnered. Oona’s boyfriend since 9/2014. Has been in a poly relationship before but is mono now.
 
My work life just ate my entire non-work life. My boss just came up with a crazy deadline that will have me working an additional 3–7 hours each day, including weekends, from my normal hours. This on top of traveling for another conference this week. I am not sure when I will have time to sleep, much less update here. It may be that I do not update until after the 19th, when the deadline is finally behind me. Maybe I'll scratch out some time though. At the very least, I should probably try to find a few minutes to update on the Oona situation once I finally get to talk to her. We'll see.
 
Ugh, work. I managed to negotiate the deadline to be extended until the 31st instead of the 19th, so it'll be closer to 3 hours of work each night instead of 6 or 7. But then...I discovered that my boss messed up my flight time for my conference today. The window to set stuff up ends at 5:45 p.m., and he had me arriving in the city at 10:30 p.m. So there was scrambling and rescheduling, and my new flight made it so that I had to wake up at super early this morning. I'm a night owl, so, of course, I had trouble falling asleep at an earlier time, and I am therefore very tired right now.

I am writing this from my hotel room where thankfully they let me check in early so I can catch a nap in a minute.

So Oona and I have made up. She sent me a long message with kind of an apology. At least she said she felt bad for coming at me with her gripes the way that she did. She said her hormones have been all crazy from medication changes and going back on hormonal BC and it contributed to her reacting emotionally rather than rationally. She said a bunch of stuff about the topics at hand, but none of it is really worth going into here. I exercised my self-control and did not bring up the selfie issue.

One thing that she said that stuck in my brain was this:

But I don’t know that not having made these new self-discoveries first won’t spell big changes or the end of [your relationship with Rider]. That’s a risk you took [getting involved with him so quickly instead of remaining single like you said you would], and if the outcome is that, you’ll have deserved it by trying to “cheat” they system of learning self-love and emotional independence before finding someone worthy of your love. I hope that doesn’t have to happen, but I know if it were ME, the world would sure make sure I learned that one the hard way.
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And what I wrote back on that part was this:

It was troubling me because it sounds like you think that there is only one path to getting all the "good stuff" out of life—like there are certain things that are like prerequisites for college courses that you need to pass before moving on to the next thing. And that I'm somehow cheating because I'm skipping steps.

I really don't believe that it is like that. Life is messy, and life events happen in all kinds of orders. What works best for one person might not work at all for another, and vice versa.

Hopefully, self-improvement and evolution is a thread that runs throughout all of the other experiences, as long as a person is committed to not stagnating. I don't really think that it matters which things happen when, as long as all the ingredients are there. I believe that I have all the ingredients for a happy life lined up right now; it's just a matter of continuing to improve so that I'm always satisfied with my progress.

My newfound perspective is already paying dividends in terms of self-love. I marveled over the weekend that for the first time, I was able to brave the Target dressing room (and at a higher weight than usual, no less!) and come out of it with only more clothes, not shattered self-esteem for hours in the wake. I remember thinking about the criticism/judgment thing, and how it was a BAD thing that I was doing, and having the realization that if someone looks at me and thinks or says something catty or critical, it is actually reflecting poorly on them, rather than on me—I only have the body that I have, and while I can make it better or worse with work (or lack thereof) and time, I should love it as it is in the moment. I left feeling relaxed and happy, even though I had to send Rider to fetch a larger size of pants.

And as for Rider and me, I don't see how any of my improving myself could possibly be a detriment to our relationship. If anything, the changes so far have made us stronger. I now understand him a little better, and I can respect that he sees beauty in places that I have not.

Also, knowing that I am better than I was makes me (I tried to explain this in the original essay) somehow less caught up in anything to do with anyone else—jealousy or over-curiosity and stuff like that. It's not the same as NOT CARING; it's not indifference. It's...just more mellow. And that hasn't really had a chance to play out yet, but I can only imagine it having positive effects, especially in terms of poly.
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OK, naptime!
 
Kelly's birthday thing that I planned ended up not being what I expected it to be. She and Man drove the hour and a half to Jerry's, and I gave her her gifts, and we watched football and ate the pie. Then we went out for tacos after the game was over and all fell asleep watching a movie. I was thinking we'd hang out more during the day, but she and Man split before I was even awake. I'd been shorting myself on sleep for work, and so I slept in until the late morning.

She had told me that she and Man had planned to do some outlet shopping and then prepare their week's lunches in advance, but I didn't realize that she meant they were going to get a super-early start and not even stick around for brunch.

It was fine—I'm not upset or anything—but it feels weird how little time she wanted to spend here. They were here for only 14 hours, most of it spent sleeping, with a 90-minute drive on either side. It makes me feel like maybe she didn't even really want to hang out with us now that she has Man, and like she only came after all out of a sense of obligation because she knew I'd bought/planned things. I'm sure she's caught up in NRE, and I'm happy for her. It's just kind of astonishing how quickly things change sometimes.

It makes me hyper-aware of how fast the time is going by and how little time left we have in this state. When I planned this thing for her at the end of July, I did it mostly because I wanted to make her and Rider happy. Now it seems like neither of them actually care—the plan outlived its usefulness. Less than three months gone by, so fast, and everything is different. Time is strange.
 
Caution: this post is not poly related and kind of depressing.

So shortly after I wrote my last post, I was chilling on the couch at Jerry's watching a movie with him and Rider while also sporadically messing around on Facebook. Through Facebook, I learned that an old friend of mine just died. We hadn't spoken in years, not out of any animosity but because we just kind of fell out of touch after I moved away from my hometown. But he was part of my group of friends who were there for some of the very significant events of my teenage years.

Oona and I have a running dark-humored joke that I have a death curse. This is the fourth of my friends who has died, and, other than my mother, every person I lived with who was an adult while I was a child has died as well (while a great many of their contemporaries remain among the living).

When I was small, my father's Uncle Bobby lived with us for a while. He was an interesting older man with long hair that he braided feathers into and fading tattoos on his forearms. He had a penchant for Symphony chocolate bars and used to share them with me. He was the first of my father's aunts or uncles to die.

Shortly after Uncle Bobby moved out of that room, my father's Aunt Becky came to stay a while. She wore wigs the color of iced tea and taught me how to play Uno. She was the second of my father's aunts or uncles to die. Several of them now remain, getting on into their 80s, but the two that I had special memories of were the first to go.

When my parents were splitting up and my mother needed to be hospitalized for mental issues, my siblings and I stayed with my closest aunt for a while, my mother's oldest sister. She favored me specially and had offered to be my godmother when I was a baby if my mom had decided to have me baptized. She was killed by her heroin-addicted daughter while I was in high school.

When my parents divorced, my mom moved us into my grandmother's house, and my uncle was also living there for a time. My uncle used to take me fishing and sing television jingles for which he would swap out words so they'd be about me. My grandmother would make me cookies and soup and let me dress up in her glittery shoes and rhinestone-bedazzled old dresses. My uncle died of a heart attack in his 40s and my grandmother died of a stroke in her 70s.

Shortly before my 12th birthday, my mother started dating a man who I would come to think of as my stepfather, even though he never wanted to marry a second time. He coached my baseball team and taught me how to play guitar and sometimes, rarely, let me play hooky so that we could go to the beach together on weekdays when it wasn't so crowded. He accompanied me on my flight to Opposite Coast to learn what areas of the city were safe to live in when I was about to move for college. He died of a drug overdose about a month later, and I was in the house alone when I found him.

When I was 14, I fell in love with a boy. He was two years older, wore a leather jacket, and dyed his hair the color of cherries. He wore a cologne that clung to my sweaters long after I was home for curfew. We broke up because we were young and didn't know anything yet, but a year later we hooked up for a little while again before he dropped off the face of the planet. Three days before I moved to Opposite Coast, he called me, saying that he found the original scrap of paper my phone number was on. He told me he'd moved to the state adjacent to the one I was moving to. Immediately we began plotting to see each other again. His mother intercepted the last letter I sent him, less than two months before the planned trip, and buried it with him. He'd been born with an invisible heart defect. He was 21. I went on the trip anyway and cried with his mother and sister.

I made a friend when I got to Opposite Coast. I found him wandering on the beach. He approached me, friendly, and we spent an afternoon together. My boyfriend also met him, separately, two weeks later. We had a great laugh when we discovered it was the same dude. We started hanging out constantly, and I met Oona through him a short time later. We were all new to Opposite Coast and all looking for friends, and we found each other. He died in a car accident four years ago.

When I was 23, I had a dream that my father turned into a bird and flew away. I woke excited to tell him about it because he was into totem animals and Native American spirituality. I spent all morning researching what kind of bird it was before deciding it was a magpie. I was about to pick up the phone to call him when it rang and I learned that he had died in the night. I hadn't even known he was in the hospital because I am terrible about checking voicemails.

When I was a senior in high school, I made a friend who was my coworker at the hardware store. She was a little older—20 to my 17. She had gone to the other high school in my town and had a group of friends whom I'd never met before. I was quickly assimilated into this group. There were 8 of us at the core of it, 3 boys and 5 girls, including me, with wide constellation of other comers and goers. After one of the boys and I moved away to Opposite Coast, another of the boys came to visit us. He was the only friend who made that trip, and we had a total blast. After my relationship ended with the other boy, and his relationship with one of the other girls ended, we were each other's ears, having late-night phone conversations that would last three hours or more. The phone conversations were not enough, and he killed himself at 21.

The remaining of the three boys, the one I didn't date and who didn't kill himself, was my friend Tom. I was not quite as close to Tom as I was to the others, but we were good friends nonetheless. He gave me a nickname that he called me every time he saw me: Plumpkin. A LOT of my very formative experiences happened at his house, since we all spent a lot of time there. It is not an exaggeration to say that the course of my life would have been very different for not having known him. They're saying it was a heart attack, but he was only two years older than me. I know he gained a lot of weight in recent years, and his love of breakfast meats was legendary, but I still would never have expected that. R.I.P., buddy.

The culture tells you that the phenomenon of everyone you know dying off is supposed to happen when you're old, but for me it has been happening since I was 15. I wonder if it is tied into being from a very poor area. People have drug problems and alcohol problems and eat unhealthily. People struggle to deal with their mental health issues and sometimes lose the battle—perhaps they wouldn't if they had the means for more support.

Maybe it isn't MY death curse. Maybe it's a plague on society, and I am just a bystander. Either way, I sometimes feel like I am living in this song.
 
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I'm sorry, Reverie :( Not that it means anything, but I think it's what you've said: poverty & addiction, not a curse that's to blame. Not that it's any consolation or comfort when you're grieving. ((Hugs))
 
PinkPig said:
I'm sorry, Reverie :( Not that it means anything, but I think it's what you've said: poverty & addiction, not a curse that's to blame. Not that it's any consolation or comfort when you're grieving. ((Hugs))
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Thanks. I'm more broken up about it than I expected to be. I'm sure part of it is hormones (it's redweek), but also part of it is the cumulative effect of so damned many. Plus, I got an "on this day" notification in FB from 5 years ago from the friend who died in the car accident. So I'm just thinking about all of in in total as well as specific to this one friend.
 
Rider and I just planned our path across the country to Opposite Coast. We've decided to whittle our possessions down to fit in a 5' x 8' Uhaul trailer and leave directly from Sam's yearly New Year's party in College Town, since it's about three hours closer to our final destination than where we have been living is.

Rider got a little more information about his work buyout, and it's looking likely that his last day will be 11/25. Since he'll probably have the entire month of December totally off work, we've decided to leave for College Town a couple days earlier than we otherwise would have. We'll do the rest of our stuff-shedding Christmas weekend, then pack the trailer and clean the apartment on Monday and leave for Sam's on Tuesday. We'll spend nearly a week there with Sam, saying our goodbyes.

The first stop we'll make will be in Rider's hometown, where we will be staying with his dad or brother. After that, we have plans to have sex in every state that we drive through, and so we will be buying a quick pop-up tent to that purpose, and reserving cheap camping spots to briefly occupy in the states that we won't have motel reservations. After Rider's hometown, we will stay in motels in four cities and briefly in parks for a picnic-and-quickie in three additional places. On the sixth day of travel, we will be rolling into our new town.

I am super excited! Exactly 11 weeks to go! I can't wait to explore Rider's hometown and four additional stopover cities with him! And I think that aiming to make progress toward our goal of having sex in every state is a very exciting and romantic thing. :D

Another thing we did recently was start a Wunderlist for things we want to do in Europe on our honeymoon. So far, there's a museum in Amsterdam that we want to check out, and we want to drive through the south of France. I also want to visit Jim Morrison's grave, to see castles, and to see a small bit of as many countries as is feasible.

There are so many big changes and exciting adventures ahead of us. Our move, my starting working on location again, Rider's finding a new job, getting married, traveling through Europe, beginning to date again in a new city...almost literally everything about our lives is going to change in the next couple of years. It's a thrilling time. Since we are not planning on having children, and since we plan to begin saving for a home after our honeymoon (which will limit the amount of pleasure traveling we will be able to do until we reach that number), this period of moving, planning, and adventuring—great change and deviation from stasis—is sure to stand out as a hallmark period in our lives. I'm savoring every minute of it because I'm so busy all the time that it goes so fast.

Every other time I've moved across the country with someone (and there have been four of them) things have fallen apart within the first year after the move. Meeting exciting new people, being isolated from everything that we knew—these things put my past relationships under a microscope and magnified the flaws and cracks. But I think that poly has already done that for Rider and me. We've already had to learn how to deal with exciting new people that we each have met, and how to face our innermost demons and help each other break down emotional obstacles. We've come out of it stronger every time. I've never in my life had more faith in something, and in the way of informed faith instead of blind faith. Knowledge leading to trust. Love leading to willingness.

11 weeks. I'll be ready when it comes.
 
Oooh, Rider just heard from Pablo, who wants to come see him tonight after Rider gets done watching wrestling at his buddy's house. I am going to go finish my work from the coffee shop, to give them some time alone. It's been a while since they've had any sexytimes together. Just the idea of it is turning me on, but I definitely want them to get their one-on-one time since I know they need some reconnection. I'm sure I'll get an opportunity to jump in with them at a later date. I'm really trying to be supportive of their dyad relationship right now.

Rider had been bummed out recently that he hadn't been hearing from Pablo as often as he'd like to. Pablo was taking 4 or 5 days to respond to texts. Rider said he knows it's Pablo's health issues that are causing the problem—he knows that he loves him and it's nothing personal—but it still has been making him sad.

I am really happy that Pablo finally took the initiative to message Rider and ask to come hang out! So much compersion. I am going to pack up and get the hell out of their way, hehehe. ;)
 
I'm so glad that I left and gave Rider and Pablo some time and space last night. I stayed at the coffee shop for about three hours, just getting some work done. Rider messaged me when they were done having their sexytimes and I went home a little while later to hang out with them a bit before Pablo needed to split.

They seemed so happy! Both of them seemed so relaxed and affectionate, and it just filled me with incredible amounts of compersion. Also, totally coincidentally, we'd all worn shirts with bones on them. Pablo was wearing a skull shirt, Rider was wearing a ribcage shirt, and I was wearing my new shirt with a skeletal hand on it. We took a picture together and laughed about it.

I was exhausted after working so much and so late, and I knew that Rider had gotten off with Pablo, so I did not feel bad preferring just to go to sleep. I'm still bleeding and it was late and I just didn't feel like it anymore. I'm happy that Rider did get to have some outlet, thought.

Next weekend I am leaving on a business trip again for five days. I hope that Rider can make plans with Pablo and/or Allie. I feel bad leaving him alone so much, but I am glad that he has other people to spend time with. The problem with those two is that they are both really hard to pin down for plans.

There's also a concert coming up the day after Thanksgiving where one of Pablo's favorite bands is opening for one of Kelly's favorite bands, and I told Rider that I wouldn't mind if he wanted to invite Kelly down and go to it with one or both of them. I probably won't go—it's the same band I saw with Rider and Kelly back in December last year, and while I enjoyed myself, I don't think I'd spend the money to do it two years in a row. I doubt Kelly will take him up on it (she's super busy with grad school and now Man), but I wanted him to know I'd be happy for him if she did.

Sunday is Aurora's birthday, and she said she doesn't know if she's doing anything for it, but if she is, she'll let me know. We've been in sporadic contact. She got a new job at a coffeeshop downtown, and she told me she's had some trouble transitioning to the new job, as well as some personal issues she'll catch me up on in person. We've been sluggish about replying to each other's texts, but only out of being busy. She says she misses me! :D

Oona's been having some problems with Toby. Apparently the same hormonal issues she's having that caused her to get so upset with me have also increased tension between the two of them, and the thought of leaving him has crossed her mind. Toby has retreated into what Oona calls "acting like a subservient automaton," which she says is making her feel like she is an evil witch who he has to walk on eggshells around. I suggested that maybe she just ride it out and be patient—that he is probably trying to stay out of trouble and give himself a buffer of space, and that it will likely get better. I definitely think that she should not break up with the man she calls "the first man [she's] truly felt is right for [her] in more than a decade" during a period of hormonal flux.

Beckett has been interacting more with me online than usual. "Liking" FB photos, commenting on my posts, etc. I rarely think of him anymore besides when the internet reminds me of him, but the minute I do, the crush comes roaring back for an hour or so. I have no idea if I'll see him ever again, but there is a five-week period of time that I will be in town that starts next month, and I *think* I am going to try to push for seeing him at least once. If he's not into it, he's not into it. But it couldn't hurt to ask. If before he was worrying about ever-deepening feelings and things turning into a relationship, surely a one-off hookup before I leave town forever holds no danger of those things. I don't think he ever ended up resuming a relationship with his ex—at least, she hasn't "checked in" with him anywhere since the time it appeared that she was visiting him on his business trip, and he has appeared in many party photos dateless. A girl can dream...

My not drinking has been going very well so far. It's been two and a half weeks and I am noticing significant changes. Much of it is in my level of motivation and interest in self-care. Those things have ALWAYS increased when I've taken breaks from drinking in the past. I've been waking up a bit earlier and doing stuff like remembering to take my vitamins, remembering to floss more often, and incorporating some crunches into my morning routine while my coffee brews. I've been drinking a shit-ton of coffee and flavored seltzer. The seltzer generates a million cans, but so does beer, and it's cheaper and better for me.

The one downside so far is that I find myself turning down events that I would otherwise have been gung-ho about. Like there is this Halloween street party that happens every year, and I am thinking about just staying in. There are multiple factors for that—I leave early in the morning for a business trip the next day; I have very little time to put a costume together this year; etc.—but normally, if drinking, I'd probably be content to just put some cat ears on and go people-watch. Without the booze, it doesn't sound super-appealing to me. And tomorrow Rider and I were invited to the recurring music jam at the brewery that we go to with Shana and Al, and I just opted to sit this one out. I have so much work to do, and we don't have any left-handed acoustic instruments, and it just seems like without an instrument and without drinking beer, I'll be participating so little that getting work done seems the wiser option.

All of that is well and good, I suppose, but I do wonder if I am going to start defaulting to eremitism. For now, I will just chalk it up to having too much work to do. Maybe it's a good thing—maybe I was too tempted before to play when I should have been working instead, and my priorities have simply straightened themselves out. Maybe I'll be perfectly capable of working up the enthusiasm to be social once I am no longer treading water in this sea of work.
 
Allie just posted the most adorable FB sticker with the most adorable comment directed at Rider and me. Squee!

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I wish we had more time to all spend together. <3
 
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