Dreaming Is Work

This is th third time this week that I have had a dream that was nothing but heavy processing. Do you know the kind? How when you wake up, it is always too early, and you are always too tired, because the dream itself was so much work?

The focus on this dream? My relationship with Sister-Friend.When we were 21, we moved to Columbus, OH. We got jobs, made messes, I left after a year to come home to the PNW.

Four years ago, she and I had a talk. Things were especially fraught between us. She unloaded nearly 20 years of frustrations revolving around my behaviors, specifically all the things I had done in the previous 3 or 4 years that she felt were especially fucked up. I still think about that conversation. I still think about how unfair it felt. I still feel angry because she justified it by saying her therapist said it was ok.

I agree that her feelings are valid.

I think that her break up could have been kinder.

I still miss her sometimes. Not often, but when the missing her does strike, I ache so deeply in my heart I don't have a way to describe it. I spent over half my life being friends with her, though as time moves on, this statement becomes less true.

I've not been willing to open up like that with anyone else, and no one else knows those years of my life like she does. Maybe I miss the joint history, I'm not really sure.

I am certain that today I ache.

I Just Can't Even!

Brock, I wish I could get your fucking face out of my mind. You are culmination, and the current face, of intersecting privilege in America today. You are white, cis-male, rich, college educated, and heterosexual. Even though you were caught IN THE ACT of raping an UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN behind a dumpster, you were essentially absolved of your crime with the laughable sentence of 6 months.

I wonder, what would the sentence be if I was caught behind the dumpster, raping your unconscious ass with my biggest strap-on?

And then I am reminded of my friend, accused of raping several women by using trickery to have sex with them. And how the details of that seem somehow less horrendous, because they consented under false pretenses. And how shitty I feel because I know that rape is under-reported, rarely prosecuted, and when prosecuted they aren't always convicted. This is why I believe survivors of rape and sexual assault and now, the accusation is aimed at my friend and I don't know what to think, because I want to believe he is innocent, and the statistics don't back that up at all.

And I am worried for my daughter, growing up in this world where rape and sexual assault happen because people don't see other people as a people, they see bodies as objects. I am also scared, because her life can be cut short in an eye-blink, like my other friends and their son. He was killed in a motor vehicle accident yesterday and I am reminded how short life can be.

and I just can't even and I wonder how the survivors continue on.

Don't Read This (But I Actually Want You to Read It and Agree With Me)

Right now, I want to hate you for being totally fine with how things have been situated, but it is not your fault that all the agreements that I made 18 months ago are no longer serving me. It is not your fault that I made agreements and offered myself to be taken for granted. Who wouldn't want that in a lover? It makes things easy because I have chosen to roll with the punches.

I made them, because they were easy to make at the beginning. They felt good to make at the time, the place, the way I was living, and the things that I needed. And now 18 months later, they ache. The agreements I made allow you to take me for granted. The agreements I made allow your family to take me for granted. I put myself in this position and now I need to shift.

You said that you have heard me, and I think that is true. And I wonder, can you actually forge new agreements? I don't know that you can, and that scares me. I feel afraid.

When we spoke tonight, I broke things into dichotomies. I know that life is more complex than that, and still, dichotomies serve a purpose. Yes or no? They answer the question, because "maybe" isn't always an option. In many cases, it isn't an option at all.

I want a set amount of time, sacrosanct, just for us. Do you want the same thing? Yes or no? In this, there is no maybe.

I want my needs and wants to be present in your mind, as yours are present in mine.

I want to part of your everyday life, helping where I can, because the presence of happiness and ease in your life is important to me.

I want your wife to be a priority, and I don't want that to mean I fall by the wayside.

I want your family to be a priority, and I don't want that to mean I fall by the wayside.

I want to be a priority, and I want you to make a stand about our relationship. I know you won't. It's not in your nature. I want it anyway.

I want you to have ideas and opinions about us and our relationship. What is important about us? Why are you in this? What can you not live without?

I want to be essential to you, because you are essential to me.