The "Sticky" Exercise
Sunday, August 28th 2016
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Hibiscus got up early in the morning and began working on plumbing for the attached greenhouse he was building. Like Saturday morning, I didn't see him at all. It felt like it wasn't really the weekend at all.
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Around four o'clock I sat down to write:
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. . .
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I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I feel so deadpan it's absurd.
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I catch a whiff of something and smell myself to see if it's me. It doesn't seem to be, and yet it smells like my own sweat, in a sorta pleasant way.
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My plants are looking well. The orchid that is currently blooming seems to be loosing its flowers at this point, but the lily is happy with its new transplant. The dragontree looks like it could be happier, but most everything else looks like it is thriving.
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In one corner sits the piles of sticky notes I had Hibiscus and I write up about our individual visions of an ideal food agreement between us would look like. I still have not read his. I finally feel tempted to, as I seem to be in such a stuck place - for no reason that I can discern - that feeling anything seems preferable to this weighty nothing I seem to be experiencing.
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I want to contact Mahks or someone for help. I want help in general.
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I'm not used to feeling like I don't want anything like I do right now. Nothing besides cock in my ass, and I don't even know why I want that. Well, let's explore . . .
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Cock in my ass feels violating. The violation feels right. It feels like relief to feel violated. The sensation reminds me very strongly that I'm alive, but also makes me feel powerless. I have no control. Right now I have too much control. Too many options.
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I could be working on arranging stones outside for a stone planter. That would be good because it would get the stones out of Hibiscus's way, and the planter will impress him, and the garden will make me feel better about myself overall.
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I could be working on my game of ethical quandaries, which I did some earlier. Or another game of mine. Feels productive, feels creative, feels challenging and good.
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I could be writing my novel about my life and/or editing my past journal posts . . . Hey. You know . . . That sounds vaguely appealing. I'll do it.
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. . .
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So I worked for a while on old journal entries from 2004. I saw Hibiscus a little in the evening, but then he went back to work for a while. I had learned some time ago to stop expecting him to be mine on weekends, to stop expecting him to be mine every evening. It only got my feelings hurt, and worse, it made Hibiscus feel guilty and caught between me and the things he wanted to do.
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Thus, I felt unattached, adrift . . . apathetic. When Hibiscus finally joined me at ten o'clock at night I conveyed to him how empty I felt.
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"Maybe we should look at the sticky notes," I suggested. "I can probably handle it from this space I'm in." From this dead space . . . maybe I won't trigger so much, I thought.
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So we did. When we had written them before, we'd only looked at mine a little. He'd read one that I wrote that said, "Prayer before each meal." It wasn't something I did, but it was something I wished I did.
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"That would preclude snacking it seems," Hibiscus remarked.
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"Yes, I suppose it would," I said. And that would be a good thing, I thought.
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"And how do you define prayer, anyway?"
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And the conversation went on like that. It didn't seem very productive. It seemed that the most helpful part of the exercise had simply been writing so many of the things I wanted. It uncovered for me the stark truth of how strongly I wanted someone better than myself. Someone who would be pulling me up in all of their actions, and not pulling me down - tempting me with their bad habits and vices. But that was revealing too - because I wasn't just in one mind about what was better for me. Because there was no objective better.
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Reading his stickies, even the ones that said things like "sweetened breakfast cereal," I felt inexplicably numbed. Have I given up? I wondered. I started sorting his stickies by how I felt about them while he was reading my stickies. Perhaps I wasn't as hurt as I expected to be because I had been so well prepared. I knew how distasteful his food desires were. I knew he wanted to eat sweetened foods, pizza, and fancy cuisine at restaurants.
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The sticky exercise was intended for each of us to put down the ideal agreements we would have about food. Then the idea was that we would negotiate using the sticky notes. It was a lose idea that had been inspired by some things Mahks had said while we were at polyamory camp.
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One of Hibiscus's stickies read, "Eating out with friends," and then the next, "Eating out with family," and then, "Eating out with other women." That one had my stomach dropping and my heart burning. That I hadn't expected. I hadn't been at all prepared to feel jealous while doing the exercise.
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"I can't comment on what you wrote and also watch you while you're moving around my stickies," Hibiscus complained.
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"That's okay," I said. "I can stop if you want."
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He was quiet for a while. I took a deep breath, unsure what he wanted.
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"Why not just make this more simple. Why not just have one splurge day a week?" I said. I felt prepared to cave to whatever he wanted - at least, in theory.
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"I don't want to do this," Hibiscus said, dropping his head into his hands. I blinked, not sure what I'd done to trigger him, or what he'd read that had bothered him so much. I squirmed.
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So we put it aside. ( September 7th 2016 - 10 days later - I wrote about how this "setting it aside" was impacting me.)
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Monday morning (August 29th) Hibiscus came to me when he woke up. It set the day off in a good mood. I got up and ate breakfast. When I returned to my room I was hit with a strong smell. My room really needed cleaning. I changed my sheets, dusted, cleaned my floors, sprayed my bed and office chair with an essential oil blend and showered.
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Feeling inspired, I reorganized drawers as part of the ongoing process of integrating more stuff I'd brought from my old life in Snowland. Going through my clothing piece by piece, I found a shirt which Basket Bear had given me last summer. I had told myself it was such a nice shirt that it was worth replacing its missing buttons. Basket Bear was otherwise going to donate it. The soft, black flannel button-down had spent a lot of time in my drawers, rarely being worn because it lacked buttons.
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I counted its missing buttons. Five. It came with three buttons on each sleeve. I decided I didn't need the second button for the option of tightening the cuffs of the shirt. I carefully cut the threads that held them to the sleeves. I pulled open my drawer labeled "sewing" and pulled out the bag with buttons, not expecting to find much that would look right. I found two black buttons of the right size. They were a different style with four holes instead of two, but they'd work well enough.
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Four out of five. Where would I find a fifth button? I searched the inside of the shirt, knowing some shirts came with extra buttons. And there, sewn to the tag, was indeed an extra button. I cut a length of thread, threaded a needle, and attached the buttons one at a time, testing each button to be sure it worked before moving on to the next.
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When I was done, I felt accomplished. It is amazing how differently I live my life when I'm aiming to not spend money, I thought. Instead of spending time browsing Amazon for new things, or on PACT's website seeking out new organic cotton clothes, I'd actually repaired something. I felt a little stirring of pride. I had a little of the old me back, the person I'd been before I became drunk on the privileges that being with Hibiscus brought me. (The same privileges that most of the middle class took for granted.)
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Feeling incredibly pleased with myself I dressed for garden work and spent an hour weeding and harvesting food. My rainbow chard was growing so fast that I could easily take enough for two large salads each week. I also brought in tomatoes and snacked on the ripening grapes. I wonder if I'll need to learn to make wine myself, I thought. Hibiscus would be going away for nearly a month, and the grapes were turning purple now. I estimated they'd be ready right about the time he was leaving.
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The following day . . . (click here for the entry that takes place on Tuesday, the next day.)