Today I took a mental health day and let my racing brain recoup from what has already become a busy semester of grad school. I stayed home and allowed myself the guilty pleasure of purging through my closet, a relatively normal thing to many that used to be an extremly difficult thing for me to do.
For 28, I have been and done many things. Even looking back through this blog, when this whole journey started, I feel as though I have lived an entire life since 22.
A lot has changed since the last time I sat and wrote in this blog. A lot continues to change still.
We moved to Oakland in late April, after I met Ace in Chicago. Outside of the truck being a monstrosity of a thing that we both struggled with it was further proof that we wouldn’t kill each other while spending extended periods together. Honest reccomendation from a lovesick fool; find yourself a partner that will belt out Paradise by the Dashboard Lights with you while driving through Iowa. It makes the hours fly.
Seth has been both a saint and a rock. He has blown me away with his consistency, from showing up and helping to pack up and move back in April to continually paying his share of rent when some of us weren’t able to. I was so afraid of asking him to be domestic, and to be domestic in a city at that. He moved to Oakland for me. He reminds me often that he wouldn’t have stayed if not for me. Our relationship reminds me of perfectly worn in leather; comfortable, and natural and an easy fit that feels so good. I partially think it’s because we’ve both been through the school of hard knocks, and having come so close to losing everything we are both so grateful for what we do have. He’s steady, warm, comforting. After a year and a half of being together instead of drifting apart we’ve gotten closer. There’s nothing about he and I that scares me and that’s.. refreshing.
I’ve gone from being completely on my own and barely able to keep a roof over my own to, while being tight, living with and in a family of my own. The kids and Ace’s other parter Aeonise joined us in California in June, and with their arrival my life completely changed. Aeonise and I are still learning how to communicate with one another and live together. She started dating Seth soon after the move in, and bless my Papa he’s been pacing the relationship so healthily. I suppose there’s been a bit of practice living with a partner while also trying to date them. He managed it with me. There have been some baubles, but that’s expected with all major life changes.
I love our two kids to death…but gods do kids change everything. They change priorities, energy levels, what comes first.. They’ve changed social schedules and when I can and cannot go out and what I can and cannot say. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Planning a wedding while working on grad school is.. exhausting. Gratifying. Stressful. While adjusting to a poly nesting family which is..apparently a rare thing? Whoops? While balacing other partners. As I mentioned. Life is..completely different.
I’m balancing life with my nesting partners and family as well as life dating other partners. I’ve had a girlfriend for over a year now, though we started calling each other partners in August officially. Joy blows me away. She’s gorgeous, intelligent, compassionate… and another partner I’ve connected with on chance. It happened two Surrenders ago, at a queer orgy. I had tried to set her up with Ace, who I knew was crushing on her and who was at the time visiting from North Carolina. She gave me this heart-melting grin and said, “Actually, I’ve had a crush on you for a couple of years now.” …and then after four years of friendship we ended up frantically making out for several hours. Since then the dates have become sweeter and sweeter, with the right sprinke of spice in between. I admit, I find it hard to get enough of My Lady. When we play, when we kiss, when we dance, it’s like the world falls away and it’s just she and I. My sweet Ace often mentiones how he likes seeing us together because the glow he sees makes him better understand why people comment about he and I.
Chris and I are still Chris and I, though our interractions are limited these days. There is a lot of love, though sometimes little spoons and time on both our sides. What I have always been grateful for with mine and Chris’s interractions are that when we are together we slip back in to he and I, and when we are apart we support one another best we can.
I’ve cut ties with two familiar figures from this blog, Cal and Ryan. Ryan.. is probably the first parter that I have regrets with. I try very hard to live without them. I regret not noting how manipulative he was earlier. I regret beign so blind and submissive and desperate for his attention and love when he used me and manipulated me. I don’t regret writing the letter that got him formally banned from parts of the community, as, unfortunately, I was one of several that fell into a pattern with him. He almost destroyed me. I wouldn’t let him do that to others more innocent where I could help it. James chides me for beating myself up about Ryan on the regular. He reminds me often that sometimes lessons have to be learned the hard way. I hate it when that asshole is right sometimes.
The other figure I am no longer in contact with is, ironically, the person that started all of this. I’ve cut ties with Cal. Not formally. But I no longer speak to him, nor have any desire to interract with him when we are at shared events. A lot was leading up to that. A couple botched scenes. Continual nights at BaGG where I would watch him drink until his own mental disorders were out of control and then have to go to bat for him with another manager in order to keep him from getting banned. And then he began talking about the 18 year old long distance partner he was courting. He was goign to take her virginity, since if he didn’t do it someone else worse would probably do it. So he might as well give her what she wanted. Cal has teenage daughters. I lost all respect for him when he went through with the deed, marking this poor girl for life. I’m still shaking off some of the echos of Cal and it’s been years. I was FAR from a virgin. I wish the poor girl as well as his other partners luck. I do not wish him ill, but I find nothing safe or comforting about his company any longer.
The world has continued to spin, even as I’ve run out of time to write time and time again.
Tonight, as I purged through my clothes, I found remnants of other me’s. Girly dresses I had worn to make Ryan happy. The polka dot pin up dress Chris had purchased for a date, which remains safely hung in my closet. A couple nerdy pattern dressed that went back to the days of me being James’s. So many different versions of me. For the first time I had very little trouble purging out the unused or little worn clothing, the echos of Rene’s past. It felt good to clear out the cobwebs; to find in the piles of folded fabric what I wanted to cover myself in.
I am different. Life is different. And with that, it’s time for a different blog. I will make sure, as I transition things over, that this archive is reachable for those that want to keep reading it. My kinky journey has far from ended; it’s just no longer at its beginning. I’m quite a fewf chapters in at this point.
Speaking of my kinky journey… there is the matter of James.
There has been a twisting, winding road with he and I. There were many points where we likely should have left each other be and not shared space. Four years after my collar came off we are healthier than we have ever been. We share space weekly, with the ritual of BaGG remaining a staple in my life and now in Ace’s and Seth’s as well (with Aeonyse waiting until we have a steady babysitter so that she may also go regularly). The playing-not-playing has been a common occurance for a couple of years. But, we’ve gone from me sitting near him if there’s space to me sitting by his feet to him making space so I could sit by his feet. To sharing the couch and cuddling.
I’ve asked him to be in my wedding. That, too, was a gradual process. It started with asking him to be my photographer. And then he had so many wheelchair issues that I hired a backup to let him be a little bit of a guest. And then my matron of honor told me she wouldn’t be able to come out for the wedding. I could have let the spot open. It would have actually evened out the sides of the aisles. Instead, I asked James to stand up there with me. To be my Man of Honor. I told him straight out that under no cicumstance should we stand across the aisle from one another, and under no circumstance should he stand across the aisle from ANYONE, but having him up there with me would mean more than the world. It would mean that he actually approved of who I was legally bound to. He trusted who would be catching me regularly.
He said yes. And then I asked him if we could actually start playing again. Regularly.
And he said yes to that too. We have a play date later this month. The first one we’ve had for three and a half years.
And so my journey continues, no longer fresh and new. There’s a bit of jade in my eye now. Nonetheless, I very much adore my big, fat, poly, kinky life. Even when I am exhausted and drained.
Until the next chapter I remain, as always, yours.
~Rene