"It isn't your performance in board games that counts."
Themes & Subjects: Board Games, Attitudes, A Letter to Hibiscus's Father, Teal Swan's Videos, Paladin's Birthday
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Staring at Hibiscus across the table as well played a game of Gheos, I felt incredibly filled with my love and gratitude toward him.
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As the game progressed and Hibiscus was hard on himself for not excelling at the game, I felt my attitude switch toward a struggle against feeling depressed. I didn't let my agitation show.
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"Was my performance adequate?" Hibiscus asked after we'd totaled the points. He'd come in second place, not terribly far behind Paladin who had won. I came in last.
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"I'm not judging your performance in how you play the game," I said. Silently I added, I'm judging your ridiculous attitude and wondering if it was foolish to try to play yet another game with you despite the fact that every time you seem horribly depressed.
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"Of course you are," Hibiscus said.
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"Okay, fine. But how you play doesn't change how much I care about you," I said.
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"That I'll believe," Hibiscus said.
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"It isn't your performance in board games that counts," Paladin said, much at his own expense. There wasn't anything I could say to that besides agree, and agreeing seemed like it could be hurtful, and so I said nothing.
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After a short period where the only sounds were the clanking of cardboard tiles that we stacked and put back in the box, Paladin said, "And I think she is quite pleased with your performance where it does count."
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I smiled. Yes, yes I am, I thought. Clever Paladin. Did you know he was distressing me with his fretting about the game? Did you know you cheered me up by reminding me of that? Or were you just making jokes at your own expense because you wanted to lighten the mood?
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After gaming I spent time painting the Dark Eldar Raider miniatures. They were almost done. The Warhammer piece was Paladin's birthday present from me. It was Wednesday, February 10th 2016, the day before Paladin's birthday.
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I estimated that I'd spent about twelve hours painting it. It had five separate Dark Eldar figures, and the ship was quite complex with blades on the bottom, hooks stretching behind it, two decks, a flag and a sail besides.
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Hibiscus worked on Silverstag financial matters. I didn't envy his task. We retired to my room at nearly eleven o'clock. I read aloud to him from Hammer of God, and he read the later part of the chapter aloud to me.
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After the chapter was done I began touching him. He pleaded tired. I pleaded horny. He caved and gave me four orgasms, but gave up on his own.
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Yes, I thought. His performance is excellent where it counts.
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The morning of Paladin's birthday I woke up at six-thirty. I wasn't sure what woke me. Hibiscus had not yet come into my room to wake me, although he said he would when he got up. I didn't hear Hibiscus's cat or any other disturbance. The sky outside my windows was just starting to light in the east.
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I used the bathroom. I stood in the dark hallway where my door, Paladin's door, Hibiscus's door and the bathroom door all opened to the stairwell leading downstairs. Under Paladin's door there was a strip of light and I heard music faintly. I opened his door slowly and smiled when I saw him sleeping on his mats on the floor, covered in a messy array of blankets.
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The light was from his monitor, and the music was from a game he'd left running all night. It seemed intentional, as the game was zoomed up onto what appeared to be a fantastical city. (Not long after I discovered the game was Endless Legend.)
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I tip-toed back out and then opened Hibiscus's door gently. It was then, actually, that I discovered it was six-thirty. Neither my room nor Paladin's room had an obvious clock.
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Very quietly, Hibiscus's voice came to me across the dark room. "I'm going to sleep a little longer."
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"Okay," I said. I tip-toed to the bed and kissed his forehead and left again.
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I felt tired, but I very much wanted to stay awake. The previous day I had gotten up early with Hibiscus and as a result I had felt better than I had in weeks.
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If getting up early is the key, I have to find a way to stay awake, I thought. I tip-toed downstairs and fed Hibiscus's cat so that the orange fur-ball wouldn't start meowing his displeasure about not being fed despite the obvious awakeness of at least one person in the house.
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From the fridge I pulled out a glass one-gallon jug of raw goat milk and from the pantry I pulled out some two-day-old maple sap we had harvested in the forest here at Silverstag.
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Hopefully this will be as delicious as I think it will be, I thought as I added one part maple water and two parts milk to Paladin's milk-frother. I started it running on "warm" which was somewhere below 120ºF and then added a tiny sprinkle of vanilla powder.
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Very carefully - quietly - I put away a few of the dishes in the rack. I left the silverware, lest I wake Hibiscus. I wasn't worried that I'd wake Paladin. Paladin had his music, his loud computer fan, and he slept like a rock even when he didn't have such things. Besides all that, Paladin didn't have a day job to contend with.
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As I wrote about this, I wondered to myself, how did we get so blessed?
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I put my hand to the frother to check if it was warm and noticed that it was. I stopped it before it stopped itself. I poured the foamy white mixture into a pint-and-a-half mason jar, added my glass straw and sipped. I moaned softly. The flavor was incredible.
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I pulled my bamboo spoon from the drying rack and carefully scraped the froth from the inside of the device, enjoying each little fluffy bit. I washed the frother and carefully put it beside the drying rack where it wouldn't get any of the clean, dry dishes wet again.
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I tip-toed back upstairs in my indoor Ugg boots. I took off my boots and put them beside my slippers. I marveled at these for a moment as I sipped my maple-milk. I'm really a spoiled princess, I thought with delight. Before this year I'd never bought myself slippers. I'd never had much by way of expensive shoes. And now, here I have two-hundred dollars in slippers before me.
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I had, back in the autumn, spent around $100 on the second pair of Ugg boots. I wanted the water-proof, extra-warm, vibram-soled version for outdoor use, and the suede gray pair for indoor use.
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Then, around that same time, I'd ordered a custom-created pair of curly-toed wool slippers from Etsy for $80. I smiled as I thought of Hibiscus and the things he brought into my life. Yes, I was quite driven by my twin passions for money and sex, and that was really okay.
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I wanted to give my love for Hibiscus every chance to flourish, and avoid the obvious potential dangers we faced. In that vein, I had decided to write to each of his parents and try to repair the damage I'd done with my reclusiveness in October.
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I'd tried to stretch myself a little to spend some time with Hibiscus's parents, even going so far as to go out to a restaurant with them, but I hadn't left a very good impression.
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Months later I still kept running through my head what Hibiscus reported his mother as having said while she was drunk: "Get a new girlfriend."
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Hibiscus had replied with "Fuck you." He felt terrible about the exchange afterward.
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February 1st I mailed a hand-written letter to Hibiscus's mother. She, apparently, didn't have an e-mail and was fond of snail mail. After drinking my maple-milk on February 11th, I set about writing Hibiscus's father:
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. . .
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Hi there Hibiscus's Father,
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It was great meeting you in October [as well as stressful]. I am quite interested in your work. Is there a webpage I can visit for more information about that?
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Hibiscus tells me you've watched a little Teal Swan. I'm curious which ones you've watched and what your reflections have been. Teal is the only person I've encountered with videos that interest me enough to watch hundreds of them. Often when I talk to people I end up recommending a specific Teal video to them.
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When I was in traveling in the north-east - in the early summer of 2015 - I co-taught a Transformative Consciousness class at an Eco Village. The man I worked with the most was dealing with meta-emotions about anger. He judged his anger as useless, destructive and even shameful. I recommended to him Teal's video Anger.
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Recently [actually, a long time ago, but whatever] a woman I know was telling me about her trouble with relationships, and asking me if she should leave this guy who she was with who had "amazing potential." I recommended to her Teal's video called Priceless Relationship Advice.
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Just a couple days ago I re-watched her video, The Justification Road Block, and concluded it was one of her best videos. It is about how we choose to stay in our comfort zones and then spend a lot of time justifying to ourselves (and to others) why we can't leave our comfort zone, and why this can be damaging/limiting. [This is a video I particularly hope that you will watch, and that Hibiscus will, for that matter.]
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I find that I have a strong desire to stay inside my own comfort zone which includes humidity, a lot of plants, warmth, quiet, a comfortable place to lay or sit, and an activity which feels engaging or soothing to me.
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Here in my room I have a place safer than I've ever had in my life. Not to say I've lived dangerously in the past, but I've often felt like my space was not safe because so easily it could be permeated by cigarette smoke, burned food fumes, angry voices, screams from a movie on television, and so forth.
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I was fortunate enough as a young child to have a silent home with little to disturb my writing, playing, and creating math problems for the fun of solving them. [Does the idea that I did math problems for fun score any points with you?] I guess I accustomed myself to that to a large extent. [So please pity me instead of thinking I'm intentionally rude.] I was quite miserable during the years that my brother, his wife and their daughter lived with my parents and I.
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I believe I'm on the autism spectrum. I have a lot of the tell-tale signs and experiences. It was often put to my parents that I ought to be diagnosed with something so that I could get help. They were afraid to have me labeled, afraid it might impact what career I might be able to have as an adult, so they refused this advice every time it cropped up. [Little did they realize that there was virtually no chance of me ever getting or holding the kind of career that might be off-limits to me if I had been labeled.]
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I'm unsure if professional help would have been useful, since doctors couldn't even figure out that I had stomach ulcers when I was sixteen. [I think I told you about this in person. I think I re-tell this story too often. I think I harp too much on this.] I used to blame that on the unhealthy lifestyle choices I was making, but now I realize that behind those choices was a severe depression which I repressed behind a mask of loving my abusive boyfriend [Dragon] at the time, among other things.
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Fortunately, I left that guy [and got with Porcupine, who was also kind of abusive in his own way, but I loved him passionately]; explored my abilities as an artist, a writer, a gardener; went on a couple road trips with my dad; and spent three to six months traveling every year for the past five years straight [with Paladin, my husband, your son's metamour]. That beats the ideas I had about what I'd spend my twenties doing. (I used to believe I would have eight children, birthing most of them in my twenties.)
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[Or maybe it doesn't beat my original plan at all. Maybe I should be having eight children. I don't know. But the idea of children terrifies me, and Hibiscus doesn't think he wants any anyway. I wonder, does that disappoint you?]
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Yesterday looked like a winter wonderland here at Silverstag for the first time all winter. The snow clung to the trees covering everything in a gorgeous array of icy formations. I realized, for the first time in my life, that when it looks the most beautiful during the winter is also when the car will be the most icy and difficult to clear! [You probably know that, but I needed some light fluff so this letter wouldn't come across as overly drama-filled.]
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For my birthday last month, Hibiscus bought me dance classes. I've wanted to get involved in taking dance classes again for many years, but between traveling and other interests, it seemed like an expense and commitment I couldn't afford. [Mostly, it was just the expense. But I don't want to say that.]
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Each Tuesday for the past month I've been taking a tap class followed by a belly-dancing class. It is fascinating to contrast them. They might be two of the most different dance styles one can take classes for.
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I've found myself particularly immersed in the tap classes [despite feeling rather humiliated in my classes]. I took tap as a child, but I never was any good [or rather, was the worst in my class year after year, and still am]. I'm struggling now [to put it mildly], as I put myself in an intermediate class (since that is what was on Tuesdays), but I'm enjoying the process [both the physical one, and the emotional one] and practicing a lot between classes.
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I hope to get to spend more time talking with you in May. [Which is a hint about Hibiscus and I having a commitment ceremony in May. I wonder if that will be obvious to you?]
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~ Nuria
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PS: Did Hibiscus's Mother get the letter I sent her through snail-mail? [Because if not, I worry it was lost in the mail. I hope not. It took me a while to write. I could hand-write it again, since I do have a copy of it digitally that I've transcribed, but seriously. Hibiscus says she didn't mention it over the phone and that she mentions everything, so he can't imagine that she got it and didn't say anything.]