LJ Idol Week 11: I Was Sleeping, You Thought That I Was Dead
It's only partly coincidental that my new solitary staff accommodation is adjacent to Mike's. I can't stop thinking about the night he came to visit me in the Eyrie, the night I steeled my resolve to leave Alex for certain. It feels unfair to have so much support while he has nothing. I'm not used to being the one who leaves, I've always been the one left behind. The one dealing with the hurt and not the guilt. Oh, and I feel so much guilt. I feel like I've somehow used him in order to undergo a beautiful and dynamic change in my life and now I've left him in a whirlwind of confused abandonment. I feel like the woman I told myself I would never become, and then I leave for France.
I leave for two weeks and Mike tells me that he'll miss me. We're ridiculously compatible. How tragic it feels to be leaving a once-beautiful and committed relationship for something that is so unpredictable but so passionate; the thought of not exploring it is unbearable to me. He drives me to the airport and we kiss in the parking lot as if kissing in public is a thing we do all the time. The newness I feel with him is so exciting and is impossible to tell if this is how it's going to be all the time or if I just feel this way because it's new. I think about him an unreasonable amount. It's constant and intoxicating and I don't want it to stop. I want to do so many things and go so many places with him.
When I return we sleep in each other's bed every night for months. We fall into a light and carefree relationship that is full of love and possibility. I know it can't always be like this, in a month his long-term partner will be coming to the Lodge and living with him again but I am ready because I am strong. We feel like two separate people instead of two halves of the same whole. I feel like a new bionic version of myself and like after what I've been through I can withstand anything.
Alex leaves for a few weeks and while he's away he writes me a love letter and it shatters me. I feel sadness, I feel regret, I feel like Cassandra in I Capture the Castle when Stephen declares his love for her and she can’t return it because her heart is elsewhere even though she wishes so earnestly that she felt the same way about him because then things would be so lovely and uncomplicated. I used to scorn her and say I would never become her. I said I would always pick Stephen, would be a fool not to pick Stephen. Instead I chose the one who can't love me in that same all-encompassing way but for whatever reason that feels more fulfilling to me than any kind of love I could have with my Stephen, my Alexander. Well, not mine anymore. Never mine, really.
He knocks on my door one afternoon and tells me that he doesn’t care what kind of relationship he has with me so long as it is a relationship. He tells me I am the best thing that’s ever happened to him, that he wants to marry me, that he wants to be with me forever. I had to be direct, I had to be firm even though my heart was breaking the entire time. He said he would wait for me to be sure, wouldn’t ask for me to give up my relationship with Mike and wouldn’t ask for fidelity, for commitment. He says he would do whatever it took for me to be with him in any capacity that I could, and I rejected him, I rejected all of it, and all of him. For him, as much as for me. He asked for almost nothing, and I couldn't give it to him.
He says it feels like the world is ending, that everything is going to be different now. I marvel at how I am able to have this kind of life-shattering impact on someone and feel intensely selfish and guilty. Most of all, I'm thinking that if he'd said all of these things to me a year ago and wrote me this letter, I would’ve married him in a second. I wouldn’t have doubted a thing. I think I would’ve been happy, for a time.
If he’d appreciated me for the past three years the way he appreciates me now things could have been different. I wish I knew why I was so unwilling to try again. Perhaps realizing that I can have a fulfilling relationship with just about anybody has changed my mind about true love. Maybe Mike is just a special case, we have so many things in common.
I put everything I had and everything I was into that relationship, and now I’m everything I am now. I thought for so long that it was either accept polyamory or lose Alex forever, and through that growth I accepted polyamory and now I have lost Alex, but because of me.
I can tell people are forming their own judgments about my relationship with Mike. It's impossible not to in a community of less than 100 people. They see us and they think that I broke up with Alex and now I’m with Mike, that I traded one for the other. Let them think what they want, the circumstances which brought us together was what helped me make the decision I needed to make for myself. My relationship with Mike is helping me do something that I needed to do for myself and might not have had the strength to be so direct and firm and otherwise decisive. I think there is really positive value in that. I have no idea what our relationship will become, but I'm ready to embrace every aspect of it and for me there's no going back.
I leave for two weeks and Mike tells me that he'll miss me. We're ridiculously compatible. How tragic it feels to be leaving a once-beautiful and committed relationship for something that is so unpredictable but so passionate; the thought of not exploring it is unbearable to me. He drives me to the airport and we kiss in the parking lot as if kissing in public is a thing we do all the time. The newness I feel with him is so exciting and is impossible to tell if this is how it's going to be all the time or if I just feel this way because it's new. I think about him an unreasonable amount. It's constant and intoxicating and I don't want it to stop. I want to do so many things and go so many places with him.
When I return we sleep in each other's bed every night for months. We fall into a light and carefree relationship that is full of love and possibility. I know it can't always be like this, in a month his long-term partner will be coming to the Lodge and living with him again but I am ready because I am strong. We feel like two separate people instead of two halves of the same whole. I feel like a new bionic version of myself and like after what I've been through I can withstand anything.
Alex leaves for a few weeks and while he's away he writes me a love letter and it shatters me. I feel sadness, I feel regret, I feel like Cassandra in I Capture the Castle when Stephen declares his love for her and she can’t return it because her heart is elsewhere even though she wishes so earnestly that she felt the same way about him because then things would be so lovely and uncomplicated. I used to scorn her and say I would never become her. I said I would always pick Stephen, would be a fool not to pick Stephen. Instead I chose the one who can't love me in that same all-encompassing way but for whatever reason that feels more fulfilling to me than any kind of love I could have with my Stephen, my Alexander. Well, not mine anymore. Never mine, really.
He knocks on my door one afternoon and tells me that he doesn’t care what kind of relationship he has with me so long as it is a relationship. He tells me I am the best thing that’s ever happened to him, that he wants to marry me, that he wants to be with me forever. I had to be direct, I had to be firm even though my heart was breaking the entire time. He said he would wait for me to be sure, wouldn’t ask for me to give up my relationship with Mike and wouldn’t ask for fidelity, for commitment. He says he would do whatever it took for me to be with him in any capacity that I could, and I rejected him, I rejected all of it, and all of him. For him, as much as for me. He asked for almost nothing, and I couldn't give it to him.
He says it feels like the world is ending, that everything is going to be different now. I marvel at how I am able to have this kind of life-shattering impact on someone and feel intensely selfish and guilty. Most of all, I'm thinking that if he'd said all of these things to me a year ago and wrote me this letter, I would’ve married him in a second. I wouldn’t have doubted a thing. I think I would’ve been happy, for a time.
If he’d appreciated me for the past three years the way he appreciates me now things could have been different. I wish I knew why I was so unwilling to try again. Perhaps realizing that I can have a fulfilling relationship with just about anybody has changed my mind about true love. Maybe Mike is just a special case, we have so many things in common.
I put everything I had and everything I was into that relationship, and now I’m everything I am now. I thought for so long that it was either accept polyamory or lose Alex forever, and through that growth I accepted polyamory and now I have lost Alex, but because of me.
I can tell people are forming their own judgments about my relationship with Mike. It's impossible not to in a community of less than 100 people. They see us and they think that I broke up with Alex and now I’m with Mike, that I traded one for the other. Let them think what they want, the circumstances which brought us together was what helped me make the decision I needed to make for myself. My relationship with Mike is helping me do something that I needed to do for myself and might not have had the strength to be so direct and firm and otherwise decisive. I think there is really positive value in that. I have no idea what our relationship will become, but I'm ready to embrace every aspect of it and for me there's no going back.