Deranged, Moronic or Merely Naive?

Journal spun's Journal: Deranged, Moronic or Merely Naive? 4

Journal by spun on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @12:08AM

Jenny put my ring back on my finger today. It's her thirty second birthday today. She begged me not to get her anything so I got her a card that plays a clip from "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)." She loved it. Her real present, and the reason for the title of this JE: she and Mr. Y. are giving it a go as friends with privileges.

He's redeemed himself quite a bit, and restored my faith in my ability to asses character. He admitted that he'd sabotaged things with Jenny out of hurt and fear. He admitted to projecting about the alcoholism issue. He apologized for treating her poorly and acknowledged that he was not ready for a partnership. He agreed that it would be better if we all could be friends and hang out, and said he would try. He said he was comfortable with the fact that I would come first, and he and Jenny would see each other a couple times a week.

Now that's what I wanted from the get go. And he lives in the same apartment complex, but all the way over at the other side. In a much better apartment. With air conditioning. And he hasn't had time to bachelorize the place yet. So it's a place Jenny feels comfortable being and she can get there and back on her own, an issue as she doesn't drive. We could all hang out there and not have to shift piles of bachelor crap to sit.

He got some side work and can in theory almost double his income, which would put him in my income bracket. I do not mention this out of crass materialism, but because of the self esteem issue. And it helps Jenny too, again, not because she is a gold digger, but because she wants the people in her life to live up to their potential.

We paid for the moving, renting a truck and paying Malcolm's brothers $90 to help. We ate the cost of the first two weeks' rent on this apartment. We ate the deposit on his apartment. We gave him $200 for the inconvenience of luring him out of his rat hole, upturning his life, and then dumping him.

So, he gets a better apartment and better, more fulfilling work to pay for it, he makes out like a bandit, and gets a fuck buddy with no strings attached. Hell, she's pulling for him to get an actual girlfriend and won't be too sad if the sex has to stop. In fact, he's on a bit of thin ice in that department anyway. He may have redeemed himself, but he still has some work to do if he wants to stay in our lives as more than just a friend.

Really all he has to do is be the guy he fronted as in the first month of this whole cartoon train wreck. You know the train wreck where the train careens off of a broken track, barrel rolls, and ends up right back on the tracks again? That's the one I mean.

The Beatles "Because" just came up on my Winamp random shuffle. The line "love is old, love is new" played right as I wrote that last bit. I love my life. I just need to learn to trust a little more, and have a little, teeny-tiny bit more patience.

Now, lest you, dear reader, think we are deranged, moronic, or merely naive, I should explain that Jenny and I have a plan. We got a hotel room Wednesday night, I took Thursday off, and we hashed shit out. And had a lot of sex, but that's beside the point. We really analyzed where our relationship had gone off track. We apologized for old crap we really had never come completely clean about. We stated shit clearly, and listened without defensiveness.

We're going into couple's and individual therapy. Well, Jenny already is in therapy, though she hasn't been since we broke up as she didn't have the money to pay for it herself, and wouldn't put that onto Mr. Y. We both know our issues, both individually and what we have to work on together, and we both can open up to a paid therapist easily, so therapy should be very productive. We're basically going in with the attitude, this is what we think we have to work on, what do you think? And what are some concrete, productive behavior modification techniques we can use here?

She needs to work on forgiving and letting go. We both have some family issues to deal with, nothing horrendous, but neither of our families were the Cleavers. Hell, I haven't talked to my dad in several years. Neither of us can be bothered to try any more, I guess. I've got anger issues. It's something I was just starting to work on in re-evaluation counseling and with Meg when she broke up with me. Then Mark swept me off my feet and carried me off just to dump me in LA five moths later, and I never got back into RC. It's a bit cultish for my tastes, despite it's potent techniques and old school class war slant.

You know? I think four years without Rainbow Gatherings had something to do with my retreat from my self. A contributory influence, anyway. I still feel so good, so clear, focused, and in touch with myself. Looking back, I contributed a lot to the final jumping of the track. I became needy and demanding. Bitchy, even. It was harder for me than I let on. I knew better! I've been through infatuations. We talked about "New Relationship Energy" at Poly Paths in Hawaii all the time. I didn't give them enough space. Not that I blame myself completely.

Blame is a lame game, anyway. Four Agreements theory, developed millenia ago in the Americas by Smoky Mirror: a three part mental virus has invaded our minds through our childhood belief acceptance mechanisms. The Judge piece places judgment on every moment based on the Book of Law piece, and the Victim is punished whenever the universe, including the self (and vice versa, it's semantically equivalent anyway) fails to live up to the belief system encoded in the Book. The part of the Book that is the same across most viral belief systems is that blame is good. That's how most of them spread.

Judge not lest ye be judged, but we're all guilty of original sin, WTF? Bad virus. Bad, naughty virus. But I digress.

Anyone reading this far, I apologize, but that's just how my mind works: I go off on tangents all the frickin' time. I'm not writing this for you anyhow. What are you doing reading my journal anyway? Perverts. You know, I do try to rein it in a bit and not go all stream of consciousness on your asses, because I have a special fondness for perverts.

One problem in our relationship has been our sex life. And I'm a lot to blame. I never spent a lot of time around any positive male role models growing up. Moving around a lot as a kid, I picked up a kind of natural mimicry, taking on the vocal mannerisms and body language of the people around me. And the person I spent the most time around was my mom, soooo.....

I come across as gay. I just learned this, can you imagine? Now, I've tried it. Given it a fair go. I don't particularly like cock. I mean, it's nice for the kink factor, but it gets old for me. I especially don't like men's bodies. I like curves. But when I'm "being myself" I fall back on mannerisms I picked up from my mother, not my father, and I come across as gay. I wondered why gay men were always hitting on me. I guess no one's really had the courage to tell me up till now.

But the beauty part is that I'm not attached to any particular marker of self. Well, a few of the so-called better self judgments still, to my shame. Judging yourself as better is judging something in the universe as worse, and the only one you have to punish for that egregious fucking error on the universe's part is yourself. Oh fuck, let down by reality again, what a bummer. Why does that keep happening?

I'm a natural mimic and Jenny is a genius acting coach. We went over a few things in specifics in the hotel. I'm far too expressive, men are macho and stoic. I walk like a girl, I should walk without bouncing so much. I cuddle up to her, rather than grabbing her and pulling her to me. I'm too tentative in seducing her and too hurt by rejection. So I've got a few pointers now, and it seems to be working.

It was a nice thing, getting my self confidence and self direction back before getting that call from Jenny. The call was nice, too, what with the abject apology and all. She has been especially nice to me. I've been especially nice to her, in ways she likes. Communication has always been our strong suit. When we put our minds to it, and we don't let our hurt get in the way, we can really communicate openly and honestly about anything. Now we've talked about the things we'd never had the courage or presence of mind to talk about before, things built up over years, and we have a commitment to work on them with professional assistance. I'm cautiously optimistic. But then, I'm nearly always cautiously optimistic. Unless I get attached to outcomes, that's a big no-no.

It's Jenny's thirty-second birthday. We hooked up a little over seven years ago, right after the Rainbow Gathering in Montana. She is with Mr. Y tonight. They both had to ask many times if that was all right. The three of us appear to be communicating better. Well, baby steps in the right direction are still steps in the right direction.

It's the least I can do, I have been very lazy in recent years. I've put a lot on Jenny, made her my entire emotional support structure, which isn't very healthy. I need to branch out a bit. Breaking up with her and going to the Rainbow Gathering has done a lot to remind me of the man I used to be, but I'll still have to be vigilant of backsliding and actively seek out new behaviors and situations where I can get my needs met outside of my marriage.

It's not like I need a lot. I need to be involved in a group effort that motivates me, that I can feel good about. I need to connect with people on a heart to heart level. And I need a certain amount of physical affection. Not necessarily sex, quite frankly numerous hugs are enough to at least comfort and silence the adorable little animal part of my nature. At Rainbow, all these things are just right there, within easy reach.

But I've had that in Babylon, as we call the outside world at Gatherings. Almost always in a joking manner but, you know, it is a diverse group and for some people it is their entire life. It's not hard to find if you seek it out instead of obsessing over the problems in your relationship, many of which are directly caused by said obsessing.

Ah, who am I kidding with the cautiously optimistic. This is a high water mark in our relationship. We needed the break. She needed to remember what she was actually giving up, and what she was potentially getting. She's never ridden that roller-coaster before, all her crushes have been unrequited disasters with men of, how to put this? indecisive sexuality. Then me. Then Mr. Y., who does not only talk a good talk but can pull something remarkable out of a rather distressing set of life experiences now and then. She was a little naive, relationship-wise. Now she's much less so.

I needed to remember who I am. I don't blame myself for collapsing into her after the fucking unstoppable whirlwind roller-coaster of a life I've had. Security is for suckers, though. And so is believing any of your own ramblings.

Because it all has to mean something, doesn't it? Because if it doesn't mean anything at all outside of what it is and what we've arbitrarily made it in our minds, then what the hell is self for anyway? And then we'd have to just look at what it is and not what we think it means. That scares the hell out of most people. Not knowing means death to the ego self. It thinks it bears full responsibility for creating order out of the raw chaos of reality and thus ensuring the survival of the meatware. That is actually a dangerous vanity.

Well cheers! Here's to staring into the void. Amusing, entertaining, endlessly thrilling, where there is no definition, division or partition and therefore, there are all of those things because not-this is a definition too. In that raw undifferentiated state that is the root and the resting place of all conscious moments, all concerns of the self are as one with all else. Subject and object are one and all that nonsense. It's a fun place to visit but I still can't live there, what with the draftiness and all.

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