“No Ma, you can’t give a gold star for that, and I will tell you why…” (Kidlet in the car on the way home from the quarry the other day.)
“He chose to try and date someone who lives 5 hours away. It was already a given that this would be a thing that needed to be done.”
Well fuck.
Point noted and taken.
Nor can I give him a gold star for getting a hotel room the first trip down to meet me in person, as to assume it was fine to stay at my house would have been presumptuous and really rude.
Nor can I give him a gold star for agreeing that we should wait on the physical aspect even though we both really wanted to because, no never means yes and that itself is a golden rule that bleeds red when broken.
My heart has been guilty of showering her intended with gold stars till they rain down like confetti from the sky and block out the sun, and reason and logic.
She gets excited and really likes the glitter, she’s like a 2 year old really, what can I say.
So, the question becomes…how to distinguish between real red flags, old psychic garbage left by those who came before, and still keep my heart hidden in her blanket fort, coloring until it’s safe to come out. She is prone to dancing on my sleeve.
Herein lies a pretty big problem.
I just posted to a friend’s page, when speaking of rape and trauma, that I stopped calling myself a victim ages ago. I am not my past, I am not my trauma and I am not my diagnosis. The chatty Cathy’s say “well it couldn’t have been that bad then.” To which I reply “Fuck you Cathy it fucking was. WAS being he operative word.” I don’t live there anymore.
Being a victim doesn’t serve me in any way. In fact it does the opposite and gives my rapist continuing power over my existence which was kind of what he wanted. That ain’t happening.
One man (or a few if we’re being truthful) did bad shit to me. So…I’m not with them anymore. The end.
In dating them and surviving and retrospect. I learned a lot about what I don’t want.
Speaking of. Let’s exhume the last two one last time and then bury them with the rest.
One was a man whore. The other a petulant child.
I get so excited by being chosen, I forget to look at who is doing the choosing.
The first of the last was absent, so when the second came and kept showing up…you got it… gold star glitter party.
The first was a quality not quantity kind of sexual thing. So, the second not being able to keep his hands off me was great by comparison, until I had to take a morning after pill because he wouldn’t listen and another time got a UTI when he wouldn’t listen.
The first rarely took me out but always picked up the cheque. The second always took me out but rarely wanted to stay home and I picked up a lot of the cheques.
Had I been able to cut parts of each and stitch them together the amalgamation should have been my ideal. But that isn’t how this works.
Maybe I deserve even better than that. Someone who just decides on me and stays, faithfully and equally. Who says we’re both weird and my weird likes your weird. No shushing, no hoop jumping, no cheating, lying, stealing, begging.
They were both selfish as fuck in their own ways. And I was always secondary. Literally and figuratively.
So much so that being single afterwards was a welcomed reprieve and paradise.
Alone wasn’t just a viable option, it was the ONLY option.
I was exhausted by the time the second one left.
Exhausted and twisted.
Every little thing the new one did that wasn’t utter bullshit was like this angel kiss of awesome on my psyche.
So I did what I do and I thought about it. And I said things out loud.
And while I will allow myself to appreciate things, especially chivalrous things like listening to my words and opening doors and paying for dinner and coming home early with me so we can go to the quarry with me instead of staying out all night to get black out drunk with his friends (which was his original plan).
He just did what I would have done. Traded a potential hangover for time better spent swimming and some pretty epic morning sex.
Gold star morning sex actually.
