dream invention

Last night I dreamt of an invention that showed how long an addict had been sober. It was all very sci-fi - a set of embedded lights under the skin in two lines, like a landing strip, from collarbone to the bottom of the ribs. These lights glowed bright red when the addict's acting out had been recent, and as the days of sobriety racked up, the lights would gradually dim. 

Once the lights extinguished altogether and remained out for a given period of time, they would begin to glow green - very soft at first, and then stronger with each passing day - to indicate the addict's progression toward a healthy life.

If only this were so.

I'm in Trouble

I'm in trouble. I have been floating in this limbo with Roi for so so long. Not floating, that's the wrong imagery. Locked into it, trapped in it, wishing to flee and holding that wish down with an iron grip the way one grits their teeth and locks the tongue to the roof of one's mouth to hold back bile. 

Lexie and I speak in code: "LBR" - life before Roi. How we were dirt poor and struggling but found happiness and beauty despite it. How now we live in a luxurious home so full of light and so devoid of happiness. She wants out too. 

The trouble being, as its been, my lack of a secure job. I've sent out resumés to no avail. And every silence makes me despair but I press on. This is not the real trouble. The real trouble is when my tongue slips and the bile rockets forth through my gritted teeth and Roi is made aware of just how much I can't tolerate being with him. Because then what? He wants to dissolve but I have nowhere to go except home to my parents, ripping Lexie from everything she knows where she is. Her school, her boyfriend, her friends. And while she wants out it is not so intolerable to her that she wants to leave the geographical area. She wants us to find a sweet, bright little home nearby - but that's not within my means now. 

Amidst all of this I am still employed by Roi and I have such resistance now to that work that it makes my skull ache. Every time I sit down to do the work I want to scream and break things, throw my computer out the third floor window and watch it smash on the lawn below. Tears leak out from the corners of my eyelids and I try, I try, but in an 8-hour work day I wring out an hour's worth of work - two to three on a really good day. And Roi hates me for it, is so resentful. I get that. It makes every sense in the world that if I need money that I should at least do the work I have in front of me. Beggars shouldn't be choosers. 

And while Roi and I agreed that the best thing that could happen for this situation is for me to find a job, he squirms every time I make the littlest progress. If I take a day to job search, to send out a handful of resumés, and I feel good for a second, like maybe I can do this, he calls a meeting to talk about work and our finances. Every time. If I call him on it he twists so that I can't find anything wrong. He's just trying to do what's right, and then I feel crazy, unhinged, damaged, and helpless all over again and I have to dig my way back to a bit of stable ground to catch my breath and start the process of resistance and force anew. Strap on the nearly empty oxygen tank and hope I have enough for the dive.

Kyd is struggling again too, and he needs my oxygen tank but I can't spare a drop. 

Safe Sex

Various conversations and readings in the last few days have me thinking about sexual trauma. It's a given (depending on who you talk to) that being a partner to a sex addict causes relational trauma, but I feel sexually traumatized too.

Before SA I was comfortable with my sexuality, I think as comfortable as anyone can feel in such a confused culture. I was comfortable with what I liked and what I didn't, and didn't think about or particularly care about what others were up to.

After SA, I see sickness and confusion everywhere.

If Roi Had a Blog

I found this in drafts from about a year ago.

I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety over this work situation. I've got to do more sales and bring in more work, yet I'm depleted of the necessary energy after having to manage my recovery AND Briar's complete dysfunction around work. She's screwing up royally but I can't talk to her about it. She is unable to take direction or criticism. 

We went to lunch today where I hoped to extract from her her intentions around work, and come up with a plan that might work for everyone involved. She couldn't look me in the eye and stubbornly refused to share her thoughts on the matter. Next thing I know she's bawling right there in the restaurant and I don't know what I've said. 

admin-style purging

It is officially summer. Officially the most triggering time of year since my life with Roi. I had somehow convinced myself that it's been forever since any indiscretions but then I just went back through this blog and realized that it's been about a year since any acting out with sex addiction and a mere 4 months since another breach of trust with prescription drugs. 

This is what happens when I spend too much time with Roi and not enough time in my own reality. All the crazy gets normalized and I end up feeling like I'm the problem. I'm the crazy. Like, what is my problem already, everything is fine. I forget that 5 years of nearly continuous addiction leaves its mark and there must be proper time to heal. 

What I don't forget is that despite sobriety, there's still a lot of crazy and the events of the last several months seem impossible, insurmountable to write about. Too many interwoven complexities that I can't possibly unravel in one blog post to catch you up on all things. Let's just say that I'm coming to terms with how ill Roi is and how ill I got and how far I still have to go and how Roi is probably done growing since he's been in denial for pretty much the whole show.

Sorry that this isn't all more poetic. I always need to do a bit of admin-style purging before getting to the writing. 

Dear Blog

It's me again. 

Here we are at the new house. And it's lovely. More than lovely. It's solid, and grounded, and peaceful, and grand. It holds a gentle energy within its walls. It sits on a hill on a quiet street, meeting squarely the mountains across the way. 

Kitten has found all the best nooks for naps, including nestled in beside me in my office chair as I work. 

All of my friends and family are agog and gushing with congratulations and wishes for long happiness in our new house. 

I take it in stride. This house, for me, represents the place where I will transition to whatever comes next. No matter how we try, Roi and I cannot seem to fall into any kind of harmony with one another. Verbally he pronounces it is all he wants, and yet strife follows nonetheless. It is now clear how exhausting of any good energy this relationship has for me, and if Roi weren't in a perpetual state of denial (is denial a personality trait?) he would probably feel the same. 

And despite how much I love this house, because I really do, I feel no pain at the thought of leaving it. Only that it seems wrong that Roi should live in it, that he may in the future have someone else live in it with him. 

I've explored this feeling thoroughly, rooting around in its soil, looking for any trace of jealousy or resentment. I do still have resentment, but it's not there regarding him living in the house. It just feels...wrong. As though the house wouldn't want him, would never belong to him no matter how much money he laid down. 

I only want to know that where I go next will be me, will be mine wholly, and that what this house gifts me will come with me. 

maybe i'll fry up an egg

Existential ennui. A problem we only have when life is luxurious enough for it, no? 

Lately I've found myself hoping that Roi would screw up in some major way again. Not yet, not now because I still couldn't handle it. But maybe a year from now when the economy is moving again (will it ever move again as it used to?) and when Lexie has moved on to college so I can go for my masters, and when I'm strong again like I continually will myself to be on the daily. Because then I'll be ready to leave I tell myself, and the leaving will be good. 

In this vein I've made a couple of meebly surveillance sweeps. Checked the caller ID, browsed his internet history, nosed into his usual hiding spots for alcohol and painkillers. Blessedly I find my heart's not in it. In part because I've found nothing to raise my hackles, and what's more his behavior has been consistent. No signs of trouble. Nothing on the radar. 

Unless you count his unusual spike in sexual interest after coming home from a physical therapy appointment where I learned she had worked on his hip, and had him change into a flimsy set of shorts to do so. Or how when he left he saw his physical therapist and another woman talking and he was sure they were chatting about his physique. All of which plays into the fantasies that drove his particular flavor of sex addiction.

I suggested that his sudden libido surge (after six months of sexual anorexia) might have been triggered by these events, but he looked me in the face and said rather sincerely that, no, in fact he was just a "regular guy for once". 

Because regular guys are always convinced that two women talking must be fawning over his build. Because when Roi looks me in the face and says something sincerely it must be true. 

I walk into the kitchen, stare into the refrigerator and have a thought about the nature of sexual fantasy in "normal" relationships. Maybe's and what ifs float around lightly in my head without taking any kind of root. Maybe he got triggered. Maybe bringing that home to me is progress. Maybe I don't know shit about what healthy sexuality looks like anymore. Maybe I'll fry up an egg. 

in the dreams of good and evil

I haven't had enough neurofeedback lately and it's showing. I am being reminded, not-too-kindly, that my brain is still vulnerable to PTSD symptoms, and that talking to therapist or anyone else does little to help me in the intersections of triggers. 

Two nights ago I had terrifying dreams. There were two tracks, both interchanging, and equally chilling. I only remember bits of one. I was in a house, standing in an dark entrance hallway. Outside it was black and creatures of various sorts came to the door. I would sense their presence and have to let them in. Each time a harmless animal would rush in and then straight out through the back. The "good" animals I was somehow helping, but often they would be followed nose to tail by other animals, mostly neutral, but some were dark, low-lying, shadowy things clicking and skittering along the edge of the hallway and detouring off the hallway to the upstairs and I could never get the door shut quick enough to block them getting in. 

I couldn't let in the good without letting in the evil. 

Later, I was standing in the living room in a panic because I knew there was a fox upstairs. A shy little fox, and yet I knew it wasn't a fox. It was something else, some evil disguised as the fox, meant to trick me and do me harm and I wasn't going to be able to protect myself from it or convince anyone else in the house of the danger as long as it was in the house in the form a fox. I stood there sweating, eyeballs rolling in my head,  frantically searching for a way to protect myself. 

In a flash of insight I knew what I had to do, and when the fox came downstairs I wasn't fooled by it's small frame or timidness. I grabbed the thing by its face and squeezed its skull between my hands as I forcefully repeated, "I know what you are, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE". After several seconds the fox exploded and transformed into one of the dark shadowy skittering things, and then vaporized.

I forced myself up and out of the dream then, just barely able to pry my eyes open and will myself to keep them that way until the dream had passed. 

Meanings seem evident. 

It makes me question whether it is safe for me to stay on here with Roi until I am financially able to leave without disrupting Lexi's life. Resilient as I may be, living in a trauma field day in and day out where every interaction is like opening that front door to let in the "good" but not being able to shut it fast enough to keep out the evil - who can keep their head in that?

I used to think, "a better person than I", but I've taken to recognizing that my life force, my will to live unencumbered, is strong and it is this part of me working within wounded parts of me that keep me resisting and clarifying and pushing back instead of playing games that do not come natural to me, or throwing in the towel and pointing the nose of the car in the direction of "family" next time Lexi and I are in it, or just plain not fighting. 

There's no perfect answer for how to be in this, how to breathe an air filled with toxins that change shape, odor, color, and opacity and only get the oxygen.

The neurofeedback - it's like an oxygen tank I get to carry around for a few days until it empties out. I need more of that to keep from losing consciousness. Less talk time in therapy, more physical time.

quicksands

Therapist is really settling into her chair in a way I haven't seen before. She's got one leg over the arm now, the other leg tucked underneath the first one. We're talking about my "future", as in career and livelihood. It's never easy for me to explain what I want to do, and frankly, there's no real job title for it either. I have several "talents" that look unrelated, or abilities that suggest talents I don't actually have, and it's taken me a third of my adult life to circle around this mix of talent and abilities and wants to find the one or three common threads and how they fit together. 

I only started getting any real clarity a year ago, before the big bad sad, when I was happening to have a lot of lunches with a friend who was also a personal coach. She was the centrifuge to my handfuls of ingredients. We were meeting this way to work on some collaborative projects together, but after a time she was all, "Briar, you need clarity", and I was all, "I KNOW DAMMIT". So she asked me questions and I answered, and there was nothing new or surprising until we got past the point in the conversation where I would normally switch topics because I could feel the other person getting exasperated or overwhelmed or lost or bored. 

I never got much chance to work with what we pulled out of those conversations - by that time I was already clutching onto the edge of sanity by my fingernails. 

Therapist leans forward a little now as my throat clenches with frustration, my voice tighter and higher. "How long ago did you come to see me?", she asks as she reaches for my file. She shuffles through a few papers and announces, almost to herself, "June 16...so 9 weeks, just over two months." 

I'm not sure what she's getting at. She drops the folder back onto the table and looks at me, "It's rare that someone comes to see me in as much distress as you were in and makes this much progress in just two months, you know that, right? You're quite resilient." 

Her point, I gather, is that I'm being impatient. And I am. My birthday is next week, and I can't help but feel time is slipping through my fingers. One of my competitors in my industry has announced his book will be launched in November, he's already in editing stage. That could've been me and I blew it. And someone else has come out of left field with 1/8 the experience I have and will be presenting at the industry's biggest conference on MY GODDAMN TOPIC. That should've been me. I'm losing ground every day. I've already lost ground I can't get back. I'm not being pessimistic, I know how this shit works. I was positioned at the front of a cutting-edge wave, I had made incredible in-roads, but all those months I spent being depressed I dropped off the radar and other people moved in. Nature abhors a vacuum and all. 

I've got other plans, and I know I'll be ok, but no amount of well-meaning sentiments will convince me I didn't lose something back there in the quicksands of the Big Bad Sad. 

suffocating mud

Lately I've taken to hostility with Roi. It has a different flavor than anger or resentment, though one could see how the latter could manifest as the former. This is less about, "you hurt me", or "why can't you just be well?", or "I want my amends dammit", and more about, "get the fuck out of my way or I will hurt you". 

Roi sober is better than Roi not sober, but not by much. He's oblivious of his own feelings, completely disconnected between what he's feeling and what comes out of it. He exhausts me. Every conversation is loaded, and even if I let go of 99 out of 100, it takes work to let go. 

Whatever "recovery" I have under my belt so far is still not enough to stop the relentless draining throughout the day, so I walk into another room when he comes in, take long baths to avoid conversations, and cut him short on just about everything. At this point I have to wonder why he would even want to try. 

This on Facebook: "You will NEVER leave where you are - until you decide where you would rather be."  Rocked me off-center and I thought, yes. I've known this is my big obstacle. Having let this relationship, this work take me so far off course of myself that I don't know at all anymore where or what is next, having no plan except, "out". Of course there's the quaint notion of putting one foot in front of the other - hardly comforting considering where that's led me. I'm aching for, needing a plan and the lack of one leaves me feeling stuck in a suffocating mud. 

I have no title for this

Today I discovered that a big honcho in my industry is on his second divorce and already on to his next girlfriend. Younger and prettier of course. Meanwhile, everyone is all abuzz over the book, "Sex at Dawn" which is essentially about all the evidence that shows how we are not meant to be a monogamous species. 

Great news for the sex addicts of the world. 

I have all kinds of jumbled confused thoughts about the subject of this book. I haven't read it, but I've read damn near every review. I can't speak intelligently on the book or the subject both because I haven't read the book and because being involved with a sex addict has completely skewed my sense of my own sexuality or what I think about sexuality in general. 

And that's been pissing me off lately. 

But here's where I am today, and understand my point of view is coming from a place of wholesale exasperation with the whole business of sex period. 

So what if there's boatloads of evidence that we're a philandering species? That women will mate with as many men as possible (evidenced, apparently, by the size of the homo sapiens penis) and that men will do the same competing to make their sperm number one. 

There's also unshakable evidence that we're a murdering, warring species. Where's the book justifying that? Do we want to read that book? 

There's also plenty of evidence that it's in our nature to eat as much food as possible and for our body to store fat, but given our modern day conditions of abundance and processed foods, should we follow our biological nature or should we try to find healthy adaptations by applying our minds to the problem?

Is the idea of bringing back a sexual free-for-all supposed to be some kind of enlightened evolution? Do we honestly think it will reduce our suffering? Are we so naive to not realize that we no longer live in conditions where this could be functional or even enjoyable? For instance, at the time in our history when we were more sexually fluid we lived in smaller groups and shared resources where the number of potential mates was limited and our survival depended on the cooperation of the entire group, not just who we were sleeping with or who sired our offspring. For instance, birth control, because without it our ancestors could only have so much sex before the tribe would run out of food.

Our ability to have sex was naturally limited. Where will the limits be what with modern transportation and the population explosion and never mind the internet...you see where I'm going with this.

I don't disagree with the evidence. I disagree that we live in conditions that make a return to our past possible and therefore it's useless to present the evidence without also offering solutions. And in the meantime, people are gleefully devouring and discussing the book in hopes it will give them free license to toss out discriminating wisdom and give in to sloppy behavior because, after all, it's in our biology. 

So go on everyone, eat until you pop, screw everything that moves, and murder anyone that encroaches on your territory. It's in your biology, so it must be right.

P.S. I'll remind you that I haven't read the book AND that I warned you I'm exasperated...just plain exhausted with the whole business of sex at the moment. Maybe I'll feel differently after I read the book.

and sunlight crashes in

Roi and I fought horrifically a few days ago. I was still coming down off the high from my week away (more on that later) (maybe) and he wanted to jump right into solving the problem of Kyd living with us and not seeming to make any moves himself to get independent.

The thing is, I agree with Roi. Kyd needs some boundaries and he needs to be accountable to us for no other reason than when people are connected to one another there's a certain amount of accountability. But I wasn't in agreement with Roi's approach which was to draw up a binding and punitive sounding contract. I objected to the tone, and the intent. He wanted my "feedback" which is code for he wanted me to agree with him so that he could feel ok with it. I didn't agree but I patiently explained my reasons and what could change in the agreement so I could get on board. I know Kyd, and I know addicts. Give them one little thing to argue over and they'll seize on it like a cat gnawing at a burr stuck in their coat. 

Each time I offered "feedback" Roi went back and rewrote the agreement, but he would do the exact opposite of what I recommended. If I said, "simplify" he added paragraphs. If I said, "explain the positives" he did, but then followed it by what he himself would get out of it. So I brought it to Therapist who chuckled softly to herself and sighed a little and then suggested that I withdraw from the whole thing completely because there was no way it was going to work. 

So like a good therapee I went home and calmly announced to Roi that I was going away for the day to think. Later I told him I shouldn't/couldn't be involved. And as he does when I try to take the sane route out he seduced me into conversation by seeming to be open to understanding what the problem was. And as I do, I took the bait and we were off to the race tracks where much hoof-pounding and whirling, choking dust clouds ensued.

It got ugly fast and ended with him concluding I was, as usual, insane and exhausting and maybe he doesn't have time for a relationship, to which I viciously responded that "fine, we'll see other people". Fine. FINE! I swept my body violently from the chair and made for the door barking over my shoulder that I was going to fuck someone else and enjoy the hell out of it. 

Ah me. 

I wish I could say my intent was only to shock and I didn't mean it, but no. My frustration at Roi's lack of amends (which he promised our therapist and me two months ago), his sexual anorexia of the last six months or so, and feeling so trapped with it all, is in fact leaving me to feel very vulnerable to the attentions of other men. It doesn't matter that I know how foolish it is. Christ, if I could act in accordance with my rational mind I wouldn't be here.

Nevertheless, it did shock Roi into a moment of clarity. And he was seemingly awed by the revelation of how damaged he is and spent a good hour speculating and explaining the root causes of his "personal defects".  It should be splendid. It should be a ray of hope. Only the words he spoke as though they were new I've heard a half-dozen times before.

Still

I've been too long without writing. When this happens I get overwhelmed about where to begin or how to cover it all. I get frustrated that all the beautiful or important things I wrote in my head are gone. 

I could talk about the recent Sisyphean battles with Roi or how Therapist recently said the word "narcissist" in a sentence about Roi. I could tell you about the blissful week I spent on a cushion in a shrine room surrounded by the noise of children all about. I could tell you how I quit smoking and if I had only known how much better my skin would look I might've done it much much sooner. I could tell you about some futile crushes I've developed recently (the Sensei, the tall Russian, and the goateed Matthew Broderick look-alike) and how obviously wrong and stupid it is for me to be extending any energy on such foolishness. 

But for today I'm just saying, "hello, yes I'm still here". Still here trying to crack the code of me. Still here in battle gear hacking away with a broad sword at the tangle of what's what in this relationship. Still mothering and laughing and sleeping in too late and sometimes crying and moaning on the telephone to the precious few who won't grow tired of my need to follow every thread to its end. Still kicking the shit out of a punching bag when I have the energy to. Still dancing to trashy Euro-pop and synthetic 80's tunes every time I find myself alone in the house. Still having moments of clarity and double the moments of confusion.

Still here. Still me. 

three weddings and a monk

Last night I got together with a few friends from my alma mater (an all women's college) and we sat around talking about lives, politics, social issues, and of course reminiscing. At some point it came up that I wasn't at a certain event, or had left early, and I felt my stomach do the old familiar drop as I was stung by the memory of why I wasn't there. 

It was a reunion event a couple years ago, and I had set out in the early afternoon for festivities, but as the day softly receded into night I began to get anxious about how many hours Roi had been alone so when the festivities were being moved to another venue, I took the opportunity to bow out. 

I wanted to stay with my friends, but I couldn't. My head was so tragically wrapped around the addicts in my life. I hadn't always been this way, but as their disease progressed, so did mine. Or rather, in the case of Roi, as my knowledge of the extent of his disease progressed, the more sick I became. And I started missing out on things. 

Like:

I had to cancel an expense paid trip to take part in a science of mind discussion with the Dalai Lama and a dozen or two major scientists from around the world because Kyd had pulled something that made it impossible for me to go. I missed the wedding of two very dear friends because I was afraid to leave Kyd with anyone, afraid to bring him with me because of how he might act. I missed another wedding a year later for the same reason, and then I missed the wedding of someone else very close to me because I couldn't, just could not bring myself to leave Roi alone for that many hours now that his addiction had come to light.

Roi had given me ample reason to fear leaving him alone. As I uncovered transgression after transgression after transgression there were any number of things he might do with too many hours strung together without supervision. When I would go out with my girlfriends, he would call old girlfriends and lovers. When he went to meetings, he would stop at strip bars on his way home. When he was left alone for a whole day he would spend it cruising Craigslist for erotic dancers and masseurs. When he told me he would be late coming over it was because he was on the phone with a woman. When he would say he was going to bed it was only a half truth; he would get in bed and then surf porn. If I went away for more than a day he would spend that time at beaches or parties or bookstores cruising for opportunities to meet women, but also to just look at them and maybe glimpse a little more than he was intended to. 

And if I didn't go away, he did. It seemed there was always a reason he needed to be away, and it was always, always, imperative. He guilted me at every turn. To say no was to be selfish, to deny him. In his mind...in his mind it wasn't, however, selfish to sleep with a woman in Jamaica while I was at home dealing with Kyd's first major legal trouble. It wasn't selfish to have a sexual encounter with a woman in New York while I was by my son's side in the hospital. 

I feel sick when I write these things. But mostly now I feel a fierce, concentrated anger that has nowhere to go. So I dance for hours until my legs and neck and back ache with purified pain. I kickbox the shit out of the punching bag in our backyard. I swim until my thighs and arms burn. I hand it over to my therapist in small choking doses. I walk away from Roi and Kyd again and again with a sweeping motion of my arm as though I can wipe away the pain they bring entirely. 

sweating bones

The days still flow on by, a relentless passage of time. I've watched movies, danced some more, cried on the therapist's couch, held hands with my daughter, laughed about things, walked out on a conversation I couldn't have (and then walked two and a half hours to home), gone swimming, drove in a thunderstorm, cooked things and then ate them, stayed up too late and slept too late, and conversed with various friends.

These days are my life such as it is at this point in time. 

Therapist says I have a resilient little brain that is responding well to treatment. She says I am different already from when I first came to her. I feel it too and we smile at each other. It's still only the beginning, which is frustrating at times, but I am determined to not just come back, but to come back reinvented - stronger, wiser, softer, grounded and fierce. 

I feel closer to letting Roi go. The "thing" of Roi. He's more sober than he's ever been and that's different. I haven't once caught him ogling another woman, haven't smelled alcohol, haven't seen the pinpoint pupils. Yet he is small without these things. A deflated, simpering thing dragging his wibbly soul around in the length of his arms which hang limp at his sides. One might think he's depressed, and that in itself is depressing; that sobriety doesn't suit him.

He wants to be happy. He wants to be happy with me he says. But his sad discontent drapes over his shoulders, sagging them and when I look at him, I think, "I just can't". 

Roi has a white, pasty, piggy-eyed friend who moved to the Philippines to live out his days in financial luxury and sexual decadence. He's already gotten one girl pregnant, and to his credit, is supporting her. Of course it hasn't stopped him from continuing to fuck as many desperate young women as he can in between working and sleeping. Roi says he sounds happy. I want him to feel sorry for his friend for having to buy a proximation of love and acceptance in a foreign country away from family and friends. An awkward clinging hope that somewhere in Roi is a noble man, but that's how I got here isn't it? Hoping for something to be what it's not. He doesn't pity mr. pig-eyes, he thinks its swell that he "figured things out". It probably means that when I leave Roi will pack his bags to solve his money, love, and sex problems. I won't want to know, but I'll know. I already know. 

A sadness sweats down the inside of my bones.

Wanted: Life GPS

I am startled by Roi's return, literally. He has come home nearly two hours earlier than he estimated and I jump in shocked surprise when I find I am not alone in the house. He laughs and apologizes and we hop and bumble awkwardly for a moment in our too small kitchen. He thrusts a plastic wrapped bundle of flowers towards me, opening and closing his arms. I feel like a rabbit suddenly exposed to the gnashing teeth of a wolf and I can't stop moving around the foot or so of space around him to pick up a dish, throw a scrap of paper away, rinse out a cup - so he admires the flowers himself describing his selection to me and how they look ever so much better here in the natural light from the window. 

I flash my teeth quickly and take the flowers from him as I sweep by. I think I throw a thank you in his direction, but I'm not sure. The flowers I drop in the dining room on my way to the front door with a bag of garbage. 

We spend the next hour passing each other as he unpacks and I scamper room to room spotting things that need to be returned to their proper places. Twitchy, skittish laughter accompanies each passing and we toss explanations up into the air around us about where we are off to next, and what might come after that. 

"Just tossing this into the laundry", and, "just going to go through all this mail", and "I've got to get to the recycling center before they close", and "I seem to have caught this cold so I'm just going to lie down for a bit". 

After he naps we lunch at a local cafe and gawk words at each other, one moment sharing a laugh over something and the next moment sliding our eyes toward the window or the food when we come too close to edges that still cut. He tells me about the archeology lecture and the tiny Maine island that was discovered with a 1940's schoolhouse still intact and untouched with the last lesson still on the chalkboard as though the children might return the next morning to sit at their child-sized desks. He asks about my children. He lights eagerly upon the topic of the new Woody Allen movie thinking it safe and I announce brutishly that I've sworn off Woody Allen. I insist that we go see Harry Potter instead. 

"Of course, of course", he says. 

There's no better way to avoid someone you're in the company of than at a movie. 

Back at home we discuss the lives of our friends, by proxy to talk about ourselves. His friend won't be coming to stay for two weeks after all because the friend's new puppy isn't getting along with his cat, but also that it's at times too much to be around our "oscillations". Roi glances at me when he says this, and I am washed over with a small wave of grief and knowing. I see in my mind the last five years of push-pull desperation weaving through so much of our relationship. 

Is it even possible that we could ever be easy with one another? Why shouldn't we? Our intellectual interests are symbiotic, we are physically well-matched, we entertain one another well. Why should this be so hard?

Roi tells me about his other friend, an addict, who has recently hacked up another relationship and has decided to love heroine instead. I cluck and wonder aloud if this friend might not be avoiding commitment. Roi nods and explains how he realizes that one must commit to one life, and in his case he has decided it is with me, if that's what I want, of course. I can't say what I want. 

What's more, he continues, the addict must make a decision to recover. That he may still stumble, but without the decision he will always dance with the right foot in, while the left foot heads for the door. We talk philosophically on these matters, as though we are like-minded individuals who had just met at a dinner party, as if it is not our lives we speak of, as if the consequences of our theories are not ours to bear.

Return to Sender

An old friend of mine notified me on Facebook yesterday that he would be in town today and would I like to go out on the town, and could he stay over? I answered back, "no, not a good time". 

He called today because he didn't get my reply. 

There's a history here. Many many years ago we had an intense, though non-sexual, relationship. It was romantic, it was sensual, it was much more than friendship. There was longing, and chemistry, and attraction. There was sweaty dancing with our foreheads touched together, there were nights spent holding one another, there were hours of lounging about and touching, there were shoulder massages and hair caressing and hand-holding. But there was never kissing or sex or anything else within the sex category. He never tried and I would never have agreed.

He was, and still is, a sublime specimen of a man. Darkly masculine and deliciously, achingly delicate.

During our time together he was unflinchingly focused on me all hours of the day. He wrote poetry and songs for me. He cooked special foods for me. If I was away he waited for me. If I was not away he was at my side most every minute of our shared free time. And I drank it all in, all the intense unrequited beauty of it -- all the while aware it was childlike, a fairy-tale dreamy rendition of love.

I let him love me in this way without letting him all the way in. I was soft and luminous under his gaze, but I was centered. 

Now that I have the label, I would define him as a Sex and Love Addict, no question. Back then, without having a name for it, I knew that he could and would fall as intensely in love with any other woman. It was his need. 

I saw him last Autumn twice when he was in the area. I found myself guarded, suspicious of his attention, and kept him at arm's length. Where I was once soft without being thrown off-center, I was now jagged. I could not forgive his need. 

And today when he called I just simply said no. And for all that may seem sane and intelligent, I miss the me that once knew how to hold that luscious energy in my hands without letting it burn me.

The Crazy Has Passed

It may not have been as linear, or intentional, or as graceful as WomanAnonymous's recent trigger handling, but the crazy has passed, and when I think about it, I did handle it in much the same manner as WA. I was just a lot more clumsy and messy about it. 

Progress, not perfection. 

I emailed Roi this morning that I was sensing a shift and would like to know if a shift has happened because I want to know where things stand. 

He called pretty promptly, and once I heard his voice I'm convinced that this time I got hijacked somewhat in error. I do think there is a shift in Roi, and though he didn't acknowledge any shift, he did say he's not really looking forward to coming home because he just really likes the small-town island and he wishes he could live there. 

Translation: Roi has had no real responsibilities while there, no one to be accountable to, no questions being asked of him, no expectations of him. He is cooked for every evening and other than helping with clean-up, no real chores. 

It makes sense I would feel a shift, and in the midst of my freaking out I considered this very real, viable possibility to explain it. But my brain is still vulnerable, and once hijacked everything careens out of control too bloody fast to get a hold on. The writing helps. You help. Recovery work has helped. Therapy is helping. But I am not yet able to catch the trigger before it kicks my feet out from under me. I am not yet able to trust that these extreme feelings will pass. I am not yet able to fully trust in the process of healing. I do not yet have faith that I will be returned to myself intact.

Now that the crazy has passed, and I'm reassured that Roi is not about to turn cold, I feel just a little guilty that I need Roi to hang in there so that I get to call the shots of our separation if that's what I decide I want. I just need to feel a little bit of control. 

Shift

I have been seized with anxiety since yesterday afternoon's email from Roi, and the more I try to calm it, ignore it, distract myself from it, move away from it, the tighter it's grip on my intestines. Once in this mode everything begins to get attached to it. If I email someone and they don't email back I start spinning into anxious explanations for why they aren't emailing me back. If I do manage to talk to anyone, I berate myself after for not asking about their day or otherwise acknowledging that they have a life of their own. Or I pace (if standing) or toss (if prone) for hours going over what I said. Was it crazy? Too much? The more I feel anxious, the more I feel desperate, and the more I feel desperate, the more I feel anxious. 

This mode is probably what led Barbara Steffens to consider PTSD as a more viable explanation for the behavior and response of partners of sex addicts. It is what I call, "having my brain hijacked" and I cannot begin to help anyone understand how torturous it is. 

Before sex addiction, I had anxiety over things, but it was manageable. Big events like my divorce, or the first time Kyd ran away from home so he could be free to party, certainly would send me into a tail-spin but it seemed normal. Normal as in these are the types of major events that are understood to throw a person way off their center. And I bounced back on a predictable and normative timeline. Especially considering the utter lack of outside support. 

So when I can't get a grip on myself, can't steady myself, can't stop the waves of anxiety and panic that come up when my partner says something so seemingly innocent, I know there is something very different about what being in relationship with a sex addict has done to my well-being. Yes, trauma and various abuses stretch back from the present in a nearly uninterrupted line to my childhood, and clearly that primed me for the current state. But nothing unravels me so quickly as the complex set of behaviors of sex addiction. 

Let me just pause and say, "Motherfucker". 

I've sleuthed for the source of my most recent anxiety and realize that it isn't being triggered by the library. It's being triggered by a shift I'm sensing from Roi. A shift I predicted and told therapist I was anxious about right when we started. 

Roi's core issue is not really sex addiction. It is a steady state of flux that he doesn't know how to manage. He has no inner compass, no set of values, he changes his mind easily and given whatever the context of the moment. He doesn't know how to be, he doesn't know what to be, so he follows an arbitrary code based mostly on attraction and repulsion. His sense of a person's value is determined by hard, material measures that he can understand like wealth or education level or physical attractiveness or what club someone belongs to.  He cannot understand values he cannot see such as integrity or love.

This means he is easily swayed. The addictions only add to his floating morality.

So when he left for these three weeks and I began treatment, I said to the therapist that I was a little terrified that I would find myself in the vulnerable place between broken and whole when Roi had a change of heart for the umpteenth time, that he would turn cold and try to force me out.

And that's what's triggering me. Not the library so much as feeling a shift in his attention. I have no idea what is prompting it, I just know I feel it.

Well Hello Uncomfortable Feelings

Awesome therapy today calmed me down considerably, gave me a bubble of peace from which to draw air. Yay for therapy. 

Then I got an email from Roi. 

Mundane niceties ended with "I'm attending an archeology lecture at the local library at 7:00". 

And then I remembered why depression can be considered a coping mechanism. I'm not comfortable with the feelings this innocent statement brings up and I'd prefer not to be having them. I'd prefer not to be scrambling for healthier coping like taking a bubble bath or doing the dishes and just doing the dishes, no thought. 

I got through the, "don't worry, there's no real beach where I'm going", followed a few days into his trip by, "I went to the beach today. Oh yeah, I forgot there was a beach here." I shrugged it off and went about my day. 

I got through seeing the stunningly beautiful black woman at the local Trader Joe's and the thoughts that she was exactly Roi's type and everything I'm not. I leaned over the freezer and grabbed three packages of my favorite green chili chicken burritos, took a deep breath and kept on shopping. 

I got through my trip to the local swimming hole the other day with Lexie and seeing the guy who had positioned himself behind a group of college girls, who was clearly alone, who was not sunning or napping or swimming or reading or doing anything really except staring at the girls. I got through wanting to ask him what he was doing. I got through convincing myself he was a creep, and projecting Roi's behavior onto him. I got through wanting to confront him or to tell the girls there were being subjected to his leering gaze and didn't they want to kick sand in his eyes? I got through seeing Roi in his place, and it didn't help that the man was about the same age, height, build, and coloring of Roi. I took Lexie to the other side of the beach and we played fetch with the adorably muscled pup that frequents that side of the swimming hole. 

So perhaps it's because I solved one problem, at least in my own mind, and that simply made room for other unresolved stuff to make an appearance. Or perhaps I'm addicted to pain and seized on the first opportunity to wallow in it. Or perhaps I don't have the black void to float in to avoid the sharp edges. Or perhaps my instincts are dead on. 

But that one little statement set my mind to spinning cogitation. Round and round. All the memories of innocent statements that were carefully crafted fronts to seedier motives. He's been frequenting this library for two and a half weeks now, and for a sex addict who can get a phone number at a local dive pizza parlor in less than 20 minutes, twice, and who has a history of acting out in libraries and bookstores and at beaches, "I'm going to an archeology lecture at the library at 7:00" holds too many other possible meanings. 

Additionally, he's been talking a lot about how much he loves the library, and how he's starting to get a glimpse of the "that small town community peace you so often speak of". It so happens that this library was transitioning while Roi was there. The original library had burned to the ground 20 years ago and the new building was just unveiled last week. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony and Roi attended. He also helped drive boxes of books from the temporary library to the new building. 

None of this sounds remotely like anything Roi has ever done or would ever do. 

He loathes helping to move things. He has never expressed an interest in our local happenings. He has never expressed an interest in archeology. In fact, I imagine it to be just the type of topic that would bore him to death. 

And the really, awful, shitty truth of all of this is that it could be exactly what he is saying it is. Or it could be just like so many other seemingly innocent cover stories that mask an opportunity to act out in some way. A myriad of ways. An emotional affair. A seduction. A fantasy. Other forms of acting out I'd prefer not to say out loud.

Either way, I'm pissed to be in this place again. I do. not. want. to. be. in. this. place. I am angry that his actions in the last 5 years have stripped so much innocence and groundedness from my experience with him, or in the world generally. I am livid that I can't shop or swim or hear about his attending a lecture without having to employ deep breathing to keep my head from exploding.