Well, it has been a bit.

I know, normally I'm posting a few times a week. I've been avoiding this blog of late. The whole thing with the ex left a sour taste in my mouth, combined with PD reading this thing (though he hasn't touched recent entries out of respect of letting me write freely, knowing that it's likely he'll eventually catch up to the "now" of things is a bit of a stopper for me and I need to work through it).

It has also been busy. I'm with PD almost every night, with C on the one night a week I'm not at PD's place. We spend most of the waking hours of the evening together, then I sleep and he goes back to work in his office.

And... I like it. I like this.

I've been processing a lot lately, trying this pieces out, trying to reflect and see what goes together, what doesn't go together, what theories fit, what can be applied, and what was nonsense.

It's hard to sort out the fantasies from the realities, sometimes.

I still am not sure if GV8 was the man I thought him to be, or if I just idolized him so much that I failed to see his flaws.

If he was who I thought he was, then he changed dramatically in the end.

If I idolized him so strongly, then it was only at the end that I started acknowledging behaviors of his as poor, and that was only enabled because I was away from him for long enough during that last split to get my head back together to a degree, and because I started dating PD, which reminded me of what a "normal" relationship was like.

You know, where partners are equals.

Where disagreements end in discussions, not decrees.

Experiencing that was like shedding off a too-heavy cloak.

An "Ooh, yeah, I forgot this."

And then it came back.

The knowledge, the experience, the things that I said I would never let myself do or never let someone do to me because it was unhealthy and unequal.

I keep thinking back to the party he took me to that Saturday, our first Saturday back together, the Saturday we split up. The people. Gods, the people. The sex in the pool, on the hill, the man pissing into the girls mouth until she fell into the planter, the drunk couple playing drowning games in the pool, her face bright red, make-up slogging down her cheeks like a strung-out whore, the rolls of fat hanging over rope-corsets, the people barely sober enough to walk up a short flight of stairs, the man shoving some girl's face down on another's cock, the blonde Vienna sausage- so stupid, so arrogant, so compensating, the trust-fund baby with the bitch-tits, the Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler/Whatever photographer with the skeezy ponytail, the roaming eyes when GV8 introduced me, the though flashing across faces of knowledge that he swings, so they'll be fucking me soon enough, the girl bent over in front of the bar, getting punched in the back, her grunting screams like some wild beast dying.

This was not for me.

That life was not for me.

I stood there, looking around, feeling trapped, feeling so anxious, my fiance apathetic to my distress, later telling me that if I couldn't accept his party lifestyle, I shouldn't have said yes. Later telling me that he would fuck when he wanted, who he wanted, all I had to do was be at the same party.

I stood there, looking around, and realized that as little as I think of myself so often, I am a thoroughbred compared to the majority of the crowd he was exposing me to, and I would be ruining myself if stayed and allowed the trash at that party access to my life, my body.

I sat across from him at the diner, looking at him, feeling my sadness and rage growing as he laid down his law again. Realizing that nothing had changed. Realizing that I was second class. Realizing that it was no longer love he felt for me, no longer chasing me to be with me, wanting me to be happy.

No. He was missing his favorite chew toy. The squeaky ball. And the only way to get it back was to dangle a deep desire in front of it, one that would keep it there without chance of ever leaving again.

It stopped being "us", it started being "him", more than it had been before.

I want to hate him for ruining it. This whole thing spills over onto good memories like a bottle of ink. I would have happily spent the rest of my life looking back on him, wishing things could have worked out, daydreaming about how things could have worked out, still thinking of him as the most amazing man I'd ever dated, letting the "what if"s run about my head.

Instead I'm at this foggy place where I'm trying to be understanding, trying not to be mad, trying to recognize that he is simply human with a lot of experience in managing people, but not a lot of experience in maintaining a relationship. He doesn't get certain things. Maybe he's not wired that way, maybe he just doesn't have the experience, maybe he simply doesn't care.

It doesn't matter much, though. I've been told by both PD and Roman in their own ways that the intentions, the feelings, don't matter, it's only the outcome. To stop trying to analyzing him and our relationship, stop trying to puzzle it out, and just accept how he handled things (poorly) as an end result and work forward from there.

Now... now I'm here. Nerd Control Tower. Sitting on a comfy futon, cats around me, cat hair on my face, on PD's laptop. I'm with a man who really likes me. Maybe even adores me, in his own way. He treats me incredibly well, we have a wonderful dynamic and, yeah, there are issues. Some of them we may or may not get through. But he never tells me that it's his way and if I don't like it, then I should leave. Or if I don't change my behavior, I'm not worthy of dating.

It's unexpected.

Meeting someone so soon.

And I think that part of me knows that if this doesn't work out, and doesn't work out in such a way that causes me a good deal of pain, I'm going to withdraw for a bit, hermit up in my shell.

I've gotten commitment-phobic. Relationship-phobic.

It was fine, pre-proposal, but now that that is all over, I'm terrified of being in a relationship again and each time some little thing happens with PD, my first instinct is to bolt. Fuck this, fuck relationships, fuck trying to work things out, I can't handle this, I'm so gone. And each time I have to sit myself down and remind myself that I'm being irrational, getting spooked too easily, that PD is not GV8, that he's never going to treat me like GV8 did.

And that makes it sound so bad. Like GV8 was abusing me or something.

He wasn't. He was caring and supportive, nearly always willing to lend a hand. He was good to me, good in ways that I needed.

But, ultimately, it turned into something not good. And there was always that undercurrent of imbalance that was maintained, that undercurrent that let me be constantly aware that I better be good enough for him, or I'm gone. And I better let him do what he wants, or he's gone. Which really pushes home the idea that I'm not equal in value to him. I'm of lower value. Inconsequential, really.

Nothing more than something that makes him feel good.

The erratic behaviors, the ups and downs, the constant testing, the lack of communication, the sink holes, it was a constant battlefield of me trying to keep my head up, me trying to be what he desired.

I don't know, I'm too tired to explain this right now. It's going to keep coming out incoherent messness.

He loved me, in his own way.

And I hurt him. In his eyes, I'm sure I utterly betrayed him. I told him I would marry him, marry him on July 1st, and then I bailed. I went against what I promised to do, went against my word.

And he'll never understand why.