Raw

People ask questions; about slavery, about limits, about polyamory, about all the ins and outs and details of our lives. We work to answer honestly posed questions. It is an investment of our time and our energy. Sometimes, it requires that we dig deep into areas that many people would consider to be private. We expose ourselves here. We are vulnerable here. It can be terribly hard to do.

This last round of questions, about slavery, about limits, about polyamory, pushed me into my own, personal morass of worry and doubt and fear and frustration. So, as I wrote about all the various bits and pieces of this, as the conversation proceeded, it was my own rawness that I was poking into...my fears.

I think that, because we write and talk pretty openly and freely about all of this, it seems to people who look in from the outside that it is easy, stress-free, painless. It happens more often than not -- people who read, who stop by here on their rounds in the cyber-neighborhood, just figure they know us, and never ever contemplate that they are pawing around in things that are tender, not finished, not tidy, not easy.

I think that people who live more "normal" kinds of lives just assume that we are "the same as them, only different." They think that we value the same things, see things the same way, share the same rights, experience the same social situations. It is easy for conversations that start off as apparently friendly and curious and open to turn judgemental and hurtful with just a turn of phrase -- just a word here or there, a shift in tone. When that happens, a relationship that previously felt good can turn pretty sour pretty fast. It hurts.

The reality is that I am not now, and don't expect to ever be, entirely easy with a more open form of poly than what we now do -- the family that includes the three of us. I understand and accept that it is His desire and dream to add more people to our family. I don't like that. It doesn't make me happy. It scares me. When I am talking my way through ideas like "compersion" and the "naturalness" of living in poly relatedness, I am talking to myself. I am gathering support and advice that I can hopefully use. I am not "trying to justify" anything. To anyone. I am working. Hard. Trying to practice what I will someday have to live. When I discuss limits that are not "mine" but His, I am not talking about some imaginary abstract impossibility. I am looking into my future and hoping to develop the skills that I'll surely need to live up to agreements I take very seriously. Often, because of the nature of this place, I share what I am learning, the things I am pondering here. If any of that is helpful, that's good. If it doesn't resonate, or doesn't apply, or just doesn't make sense to readers, that's fine, too -- just move along. You are not invited to try and argue with me in that event. Don't judge. It causes me pain, and it makes me angry. Just go quietly away. Please.

I don't spew my doubts all over this place. I seldom discuss them with anyone. It isn't germane and it isn't important -- it just doesn't matter. The fact that you don't see them here doesn't mean I don't have them. It doesn't mean I'm so thick skinned that I cannot be hurt.

Right now, I'm hurt. No more questions. Not for awhile.

swan