Diaryland: August 2003 Archives

*gasp* So....bored...*gasp*...need...something interesting...

I have been away for quite a while. Here's a summary of what is happening in my life:

She has made some changes to her plan. She got a job at none other than Cirque du Soleil! No, not as a performer, but starting as a customer service rep. The opportunities are endless once you are in there, too, I am told. The president has a "fou du roi", like a court jester. The cafeteria is huge and actually has good food. The people are friendly. She may actually get to make some friends at this place. Everyone is a little weird; she'll fit right in. Everything is going well there.

In fact things are going so well there that she has decided to postpone finishing her degree to pursue this path. Maybe she'll get into PR for the company. Maybe she'll start travelling. I don't know.

We had a nice talk last week. Her and I (I'll have to give her a name, won't I? We'll go with Rose, she likes that name) talked about what we are to each other and how we will act going forward. I officially do not have a girlfriend; she is also single. Officially. However, we are obviously more than just friends, and we aren't just friends with benefits, either. We really love each other, but for many reasons which I am too tired to get into here for the most part, we choose to not be exclusive with each other.

I sometimes refer to her as my girlfriend, but only to people that don't know me, or her. She's something else, our relationship seems to transcend most normal tags. I'll just call her Rose here, and her name (her all-too-common name, ostie!) outside of here.

Rose has decided that she wants me in her life forever. I can live with that. I want her around, too. I love her, after all, and our story has been evolving far longer than my story with Catherine. But love evolves, changes, and comes in so many forms. We will remain very good friends if nothing else. We are free to do as we wish. This could be the beginning of a beautiful, polyamorous friendship. That reminds me, Julia gets into town for good today...

Catherine (who I had lunch with last Monday, first time I had seen her since this day), was little more than a bit of a transient in Rose's eyes. Someone she can have her fun with for a few months, or maybe a couple of years, and then, a fadeaway. Rose seemed to know this when they met last May, and that was part of why she felt a little cold towards her.

By the way, I want to punch out Rose's ex. Not the most recent one, but the father of her daughter. I want to just punch him out, but he'd just ignore the blows. Not because he is so tough, or disciplined. But because that's what he does; he ignores that which he does not want to deal. If he didn't want to accept the loss of his hand, for example, he'd just convince himself that that hand wasn't worth using, that it wasn't "up to the job", or that he simply needed a change.

For more than three years, Rose had custody of their daughter. He wanted it. He had a new girlfriend who became a wife, and they wanted the girl to live with them. Rose saw no reason to give up custody until her life fell apart last May. She made a hard parenting decision and gave up custody to him.

When Rose had custody, not only did he get every other weekend with her, but he got every other Wednesday as well and long weekends, as a show of good faith, to show that she had no ill will towards him. Now he has a good paying job, a wife, house and car. He's living "the life". And her daughter is in good hands. But do you think he would extend the same courtesy to her? Not a fucking chance.

Rose isn't even allowed to have a phone number; she just has a pager number. To get a phone number, they'd probably have to go to court. She isn't allowed to meet his wife, this woman who is living with and teaching her daughter things. On Friday she found out why. This woman hates Rose with a passion. Why? Rose's unwillingness to just give up custody when they wanted her to "caused strains in their relationship". She was "causing trouble for years". Yeah, sure. It wasn't Rose's fault that he was spending all his money on lawyers and losing (there was no compelling reason to change custody). That woman gets a kick in the fucking box. Lying bitch. Grow the fuck up.

He is a condescending asshole, too. He thinks he's better than Rose. Yes, she has had a rough time of things, and now lives in a one-room apartment (although a really nice one in the best neighbourhood in the city), but two years ago he didn't even hacve a place to live, nor did he have a phone number. These people are unbelievable.

Well, I think she is in much better hands now. Her own hands. She is doing it on her own now. And I'll be there when she needs me.

I feel terrible. Not even close to good. Just shitty. Why?

This is going to sound strange, but it's because my testicles feel tired. Really really tired. And not just by testes. The space where my vagina would be if I were a girl. Ummm, the perineum. It's fucking exhausted. Last weekend, I decided to give it a break, but of course, something happens.

I have a houseguest for the week. Someone with whom I have been intimate with off and on since May. It's the former secretary at my former place of employment. It's a little late in the day to get into my feelings for her, but I will say that she is extremely sweet, talented and fucking pretty. (You don't hear that much, do you? Fucking pretty. But she is. You'd agree if you saw her.)

She has an awful family. She is from a small city about an hour away. The place is full of bigots and other idiots. Her parents can't stand tha fact that she even knows me. They regularly ask her why she is hanging out with that nigger, and why a white man isn't "good enough" for her.

Last May, after the drama that caused her to leave Montreal (it involves a crazy ex), she realized that she was in a pretty bad place mentally, spiritually, emotionally and practically. It was a bad way to raise her daughter. Her ex (her daughter's father) has been asking for custody for three years and has proven his competence and love as a father. He has a house, a stable job and a wife. She did what a responsible woman in a bad situation would do and decided to give up custody of her three-year-old daughter to her ex. Her family, especially her 14-year-old sister, believe that she is the worst kind of person because she abandoned her child. Yeah, abandoned. If her brother had "abandoned" his child (no, he doesn't have one) they wouldn't have said a word. I may write more on this later. It's odd that they would say this, though. They hate her daughter. She's a burden and noisy. Her mother always yells at the child for no good reason. She just can't stand the child.

She is around 5'3", and approaching a normal weight. She gained 30 pounds from July 2001 to July 2002. This was due to the stress of her previous relationship. This isn't normal. She took steps to lose this weight, and is succeeding. She only has about 10 pounds to go. Yet still, even before she gained the weight, her parents would go on about her weight and basically say that she was unattractive, fat, whatever. They even said that, when making jokes about her relationship with me, that it's good that she is with me because black men like fat women.

So she had to leave Montreal for personal reasons, move into her parents basement who she doesn't like and who don't like her, get a crappy job and lose it because of some stupid mistake, and put up with her family calling her a loser. I can't believe that she hasn't completely lost it.

Well, she's going to show them. (Or maybe not. She has almost written off her family except her brother, who is actually kind to her.) She is moving back to Montreal in September to finish her degree. She only has two courses left; depression kicked her out of school. She'll have her own place, which she has never had. She will get a part-time job to finance her schooling. Afterwards she will get into a research position or start writing professionally. In any case, she will succeed. And the arrogant fuckers will probably take credit for raising such a good daughter.

However, last weekend I got a call. She asked me to put her up for a few days. It was the least I could do; I'd do more if I could. She had enough of those terrible people and had to get out. And out she got. She is spending this week trying to find an apartment that will let her move this weekend because her daughter is coming this weekend. I don't know if I want her little girl here; it will be weird. I think it will happen, though. I was shown home movies of the girl tonight. I guess that was to be a preview.

All this to say that this was the worst week for me to try to turn off my dick. The whole package is just so weak and tired. It needs a nice long vacation and it isn't getting one. What a summer.

I posted TOBL in a forum. Here are some responses:

I don't believe in the concept of "soulmate" or "Mr. Right." I know there are many people in this world I could (did) love. Some were right for me; others were not. The love I felt was not automatically better and more true for the ones who were right than for the others. Would that it were so. Life would have been much, much easier. There is an element of choice in love. Some people don't like that idea. They prefer to believe in the romantic, fairy-tale ideal that one "falls" in love, and one doesn't have any control over whom one loves. I think these people confuse love with infatuation and lust. Simple attraction can come suddenly and unbidden, but that is not love, although it can contain the seeds of love. Love grows and ripens. It must be nurtured and cherished. This happens by choice, not by chance. We are not helpless creatures in the clutches of Destiny. Life is like a river, and we are like kayakers upon it. The river has a current, a flow that tries to lead us in a particular direction. However, we have paddles and rudders, and we can choose our own courses, although it may be easier to follow the current. We choose. We are in control of our own kayaks. "The One Big Love" is the stuff of fairy tales told to children. Adults make their own magic and write their own stories, and we don't always live happily ever after.

Another said:

TOBL is a myth, pure and simple. Yes, there are many people who believe that they've found it, but there are just as many who felt the exact same and then found out that it wasn't. Plus, the idea that it's THE ONE Big Love is rather depressing. If TOBL is real, can one only have ONE true love throught one's life? If so, have I already found and lost mine? If not, does that mean the love I had for Gus wasn't "real"? What rubbish. No, TOBL is a fairy tale, and fairy tales, although nice to listen to once in a while, make HORRIBLE teachers. I believe in true, pure love, but I do not believe in The One Big Love. I don't believe that love will conquer all, that love makes everything perfect, that everyone has a "soulmate" somewhere in the world, or any of that fanciful garbage. Love just is. Some of us are lucky enough to find it. Some of us find it and then lose it. Some of us find and lose it several times over the course of our lives. Some of us never find it. Some of us find it but don't recognize it. Some of us see it where it never was in the first place. (This woman lost her husband, Gus to depression a year ago.)

I had a dissenting and well-written opinion but that seems to have gone straight to cyberhell.