Alienation

Alienation. Is it just because we don’t quite know each other yet? Will it get better as the week progresses? I am tempted to moan that it is because you aren’t here, but I expect it would be just the same either way. Will you think of me tonight? I know I will be thinking of you. But then, I always am. I don’t know whether I am being petty and petulant, or whether this really is what we are, or should be, all about. Please think of me, and wish me well, and pray, as I am, that I am equal to the task at hand.

...or something

I am struggling with the constraints of our relationship. I am struggling with the nature of all of this. I don’t want to work within this situation, but I understand the need for it. And I get the necessity for restraint. How do we do this? Should I back off? But I want more. I believe in this. I love you. I want to fight. I won’t push you, but I don’t want to let go as long as there is any chance of us making this work.It never ends, this longing for something more substantial. I believe I can make you happy. I don’t know what you believe. I suspect you anticipate that I will grow out of it, or something. I hope you will grow into it, or something.

Are you just biding your time, waiting for me to move out of your life? Perhaps I get that, despite my frustration. But more importantly, I am not prepared to take that lying down. Sometimes biding your time is all you can do, and sometimes, the situation demands a more proactive approach. I want to make you want me. I’m going to learn to play. I’m going to figure out what seduction is all about, and I’m going to become expert at it. Let the games begin, my love. Let the games begin.

an odd mixture of fear and resignation

I’m feeling an odd mixture of fear and resignation tonight. I know you saw me today, and I know I looked crazy. Maybe I am. I don’t think I’m prepared to try to defend my actions, though. As crazy as I may sound, I am in love with you, and I don’t want to defend that. I am afraid of this being unhealthy, taking what we have into an uncomfortable place where we dance around one another until we can be free. I do not want that. I don’t want you to pull away. I am so afraid that you will see this as desperately ill. I am so afraid that this positive energy that is making me so happy will turn out to be negative and oppressive, and illegitimate. I know I do not sound completely logical. I am afraid that that will frighten you away. Is it possible to go from some sort of insanity to a healthy, fulfilling relationship? I am tempted to defend this as just one of those things that happens when you love someone, that you lose your mind a little. But that feels like a weak defense. So where do we go from here? I know that I want you to continue to smile when you see me. I want you to treat me tenderly, but not delicately, to express your acceptance of me just as I am. I want to be reassured of your acceptance of me. My defiance is connected to this desire for acceptance, and I crave it from you. But in wanting this from you, am I denying you the acceptance that I crave so deeply? Can I accept you, just as you are, even if you are unwilling to accept me like this? I am imperfect, fragile, even broken. But so are you. I can’t come to love those cracks and dents until you let me see them. And so, in the spirit of reciprocity, honesty and reality, I want to show you my fault-lines with no apology. I want to learn to be a better person, not just for you, though loving you increases my motivation, but for me, too. But I can only repair the breaks when I recognize the value of this growing soul, despite them. It is when the cracked and split exterior of an old blue-gum tree pulls away, that the pure white, smoothly beautiful trunk is revealed. But you have to see the cracks to see how to remove that gnarled bark. Perhaps I fear your rejection this much, because it threatens the image of us that I have constructed. But beneath that image lies a real relationship. Beneath the visions, the fantasies and constructed dreams, lies a love I am only now beginning to glimpse. God, give me the courage to face the reality of that relationship. Until I see it, I can’t possibly recognize its potential.

I feel like such a weakling. I am never going to be able to come out all the way. I am so proud of having figured out who I am, and it is such an affirming, positive, exciting part of who I am, and yet, I’m unable to celebrate it under most circumstances. And I go as far as flirting with people, and pretending to have an interest, just to mask this. I think I may even have gone as far as to encourage the overtures made towards me, had there been such an opportunity tonight, just to keep up appearances. Can you imagine sleeping with someone in whom you have no interest, to make people think well of you? It seems absurd! My love, I feel so isolated. And it’s not just because you aren’t here. I get why you can’t respond to my emails. I get the difficulty of this situation. But that doesn’t make me like it any more. I want to be able to fall into your arms. I am so in love with you. I want you all the way in my life. I want a life with you. I’d even understand if it had to remain somewhat closeted. I just wish I could tell you, without fear, how much I love you, how I want to wake up every morning with you beside me, how I want to share my days with you, and my nights with you, and those moments of intense pleasure connected with knowing you’re doing the right work, and you’re in a beautiful place, and satisfied with life in general. I want to be able to call you my partner, and be so proud when someone compliments you, and feel like I am the envy of all those admiring glances. I want to kiss that beauty-spot on your collar bone that peeps out from beneath certain dresses. I want to touch the skin at the curve of your waist. I want to find your beautiful blond hair on my pillow and in my clothing, and I want to see you smile when I’m near. I want to explore bits of you no one has ever thought of loving before. I want to massage the skin on the arches of your feet. I want to really see what the back of your knees look like, and run my fingers over your calves when you haven’t shaven you legs. I want to see you with make-up on, and naked faced, first thing in the morning. I want the scent of you to linger on my clothes. I want to smell you hair. I want to take your ear rings off, and nibble the lobes of your ears. I want to kiss the nape of your neck. I want to know whether you too have dimples on your lower back, and how your spine curves. I want to figure out for good whether you wear mascara. I want to see your eye-colour when you’re laughing uproariously, and when you’re crying, when you’re passionate about something, and when you are perfectly content. I want to see your eyes burn for me. I want to see your face, the curve of your mouth, and the motion of your body in the throes of passion. I want to take you there. I want to tell you I love you. I want to fuse my mouth with yours, and feel like we’ll never part. I want to kiss you like I have my whole life to do it in. I want to kiss you like there’s no tomorrow. I want to kiss the palm of your hand, and the tip of every finger. I want you.

Is it bad grace

Is it bad grace to not reveal something that could have a very serious impact on you to you, because of a confidentiality matter elsewhere? I am privy to this information under terms of work confidentiality, but have a moral and emotional trust with the person whom this information affects. My ultimate loyalty lies with this person, and not with the work associate, but I don’t know what good revealing this to the person whom it may affect will do. It could just lead to more stress and antagonism, and ultimately have a negative result.
I know that you are being protected by particular higher-ups, and I’m relieved by that, but I suspect that the direction this trouble is headed, that may be more of a disadvantage, than an advantage. Don’t feel too safe. Don’t relax too much, but don’t loose sight of that perspective you mentioned. I’m afraid of losing sight of reality here, because I’m just so subjectively implicated. Don’t forget that whatever the outcome of all of this, I’ll still love you, and still support you. I really do get that you’re human, and fallible, but I also think that the trouble here is coming from elsewhere, not from you. Should it be proven otherwise, however, I will not stop loving you. This doesn’t change who you are to me.

That lightbulb I’ve been waiting for has possibly just hit. I’ve been seeking to understand the reality of my love for you, to determine whether I am in love with the real you, or a projection of you I have constructed. And I am now certain that it is you. If it was a projection of a perfection I had constructed, I would be unable to deal with the disruption of that image in the possibility of you being wrong in this matter. In fact, however, the possibility that you may be wrong does not in any way disrupt my feelings for you. I love you. And your humanity makes me love you more. Or at least, makes me understand my love for you better. The possibility that your broken marriage may be your doing first and foremost doesn’t make me want you any less. I’m certain that he manipulated you, but even if his story reveals that he feels manipulated, I still believe that we can create a functional relationship. That’s what marriage is about, after all. Taking two imperfect human beings, and working, unendingly, at making a life into which both fit productively. We’ll get there yet.
This is, I am told, potentially a healing understanding. I really hope that it offers you healing as much as me. I am learning that I am, in fact, capable of having a functional relationship. I hope you will realize that you are worth loving, and that you can be an equal agent in a loving relationship.

Your power is important to me. Because powerful women are one of the biggest turn-ons I know, or recognize. I am growing more fearful for your wellbeing moment by moment, because of info I shouldn’t have, but am receiving. How do I make all this work out in all our favour. I know I am taking too much responsibility for you, and your wellbeing, but I feel like it has been thrust upon me, whether I wanted to accept it or not.

I’m beginning to discover that I am protective of everyone, regardless of circumstance, or my relationship to them. Well, perhaps its time I became a little protective of myself, and my time, and my emotional space. I have emotional space for things and people who build me up, and keep me moving forward. And I have space for people who, by building them up, I can claim an investment in. I have space for mutuality, and joint nurturing, for circumstances which enrich us both, and partnerships that are growth orientated. I do not have space for partnerships that produce the level of anxiety in me that this working engagement is beginning to. And whether the anxiety is self-created, or something real and tangible, is irrelevant, if it is having an impact on me as extreme as the one I am at present experiencing. There is, therefore, no question as to where my loyalties lie. On the other hand, as my father pointed out, selective perception is a blessing too frequently overlooked. I don’t have to see even the information that is shoved in my face. You are aware of at least enough of the situation, and the modus operandi of the person in question, to know that self-protection is important now. And you know how I feel about you. And if you ever forget, I’ll send you a single long-stemmed red rose to remind you.

Update: 8 October 2005
I am out of that situation. I caved, and told her (ok, she dragged it out of me, after getting a hint about what was going on from other friends I was talking to), and through a little, departmentally approved white lie, I have been extracted. I feel guilty as hell, because I could have turned this into a disciplinary matter, which would have helped you out so much more, but I fear conflict, and a little voice in the back of my head continues to remind me that I could have been exposed to this information by accident, and could be overestimating the situation.