Feb 26, 2014

Dysfunction

I know that she doesn't think anything bad about me for being sick. I know she doesn't love me less, or gets angry at me for that. She doesn't consciously ask me to do stuff that will make me sick, she doesn't want to break me, and if she do want me to hurt or give me a hard time, she will tell me it's on purpose.

But we tend to misread each other when I feel her wishes or demands overreach my capabilities.

How does other people do this? Vanilla people? Or other people in power exchange? How come this isn't a recurring problem for everyone else? Because it doesn't seem to be. Just for us.

One reason for this is of course my overwhelming sense of shame, and general lack of connection between experience and actions. Me being hungry doesn't mean I'm going to eat. If I'm sleepy it doesn't necessarily leads me towards a bed, and shivering from cold haven't got a very strong correlation to me putting on more clothes. I think there's something missing for me, honestly. I'm not saying it's all my fault or that there's something wrong with me, but I do have ADHD, and this is one of the things it leads to.

There's a disconnect. What I feel in my body doesn't show up in my behaviour in the same way it does for other people. Part of it is a trained respons I think; since I grew up undiagnosed and misunderstood, I was constantly expected to perform above my ability and was ignored or ridiculed when I showed signs of exhaustion or fatigue because of this. My feelings and experiences weren't acknowledged or mirrored by the people around me, because they were not expected. So there's that, and that explains a good deal of the shame and defensiveness I feel when I can't do what Mistress wants me to without suffering.

But there's also a more biological side of it I think, that's more about how my nervous system functions. It's like there's something wrong with the flow of information. I can on the one hand be aware of that say I have great pains somewhere in the body, or that I'm very hungry or something. But it's as if that information doesn't permeat the system. It doesn't reach all the places it should. And because of that, it doesn't influence my behaviour or show up in my demeanor. I don't stop to remove the pebble from my shoe, nor do I limp or make faces. But then suddenly something shakes loss and all the sensations arrive at once and in a moment I'm screaming with pain. There's no middle ground, no warnings. Not for me, and therefore not for anyone else either. 

In regards to Mistress I do try to tell her everything I know and everything I can tell. But that doesn't cover everything there is to know, unfortunately, and sometimes the disconnect between what I tell her in words and what my face and actions tell her muddy the water. I might tell her "I'm really tired" or "I really should have eaten a while ago, I need to get a snack" and for me, that means "red alert red alert, the "check enginge"-lamp is lit". It doesn't come across like that, though, and I'm not even aware of it. I've given her the information. I'm ashamed of my weakness, I have no real connection to what I'm feeling and experiencing, and I don't realise that what I tell her doesn't really translate to the actual state of things.

And then I get pain cramps from hunger or start crying from exhaustion because she didn't decide to put me to bed or feed me, and I didn't try to tell her again or ask for what I needed or express my needs in any other ways. I had already told her. She knew. If she wanted to make a decision about it, she would have.

And I'm not even a martyr here, I'm not playing it up for pity-points or being passive-agressive. This is for real the way I function (or dysfunction). There's some pieces missing, I think. And this, I also think, is the reason she freaked out on me when I answered her question about how I really felt about things. Because just as I have had bad experiences from telling her or other people how I feel if it's not good, she's had bad experiences from asking me those kind of questions. It's not the first time there's a nasty revelation behind my humming and hawwing, it usually means there's something wrong and she's missed it. And right then and right there, I think she just couldn't take that.

She didn't read the angst in my voice as fear or shame. She heard it as an accusation. When I was distraught and panicking, for her that meant that not only shouldn't she go to the meeting, she couldnt' because if she did she was a bad bad person, and she already was a bad bad person just for suggesting it. I didn't get that, of course, because it wasn't even on my radar, but I get it now.

The trip, the babysitter and general ickyness

Okay, so we went to bed with an unresolved horrible argument over our heads. When I woke up, Mistress was with little S, and we didn't get very much time alone all day. And we had a decision to make. Should Mistress go, or should she stay?

If she went, I would be alone with our sick daughter while down with the flu. We wouldn't die of starvation, I wouldn't neglect the kid and I would be able to call for an ambulance if needed. But it was easy to envision two rather grim, taxing days, and the emotional ramifications afterwards for me would probably be rather severe (meaning I would be exhausted, depressed and pissed off for quite some time).

She could stay home, of course. If someone had said to her a month ago "oh, by the way, that meeting? Both your wife and your kid are going to be pretty sick that week, just so you know" she would have said "Hell no!" and cancelled. But this wasn't a month earlier. This was the day the meeting started, and it was a start-up thing for a project four years ahead. If she wants a face to the people she's going to be emaling for the coming four years, she better be there. She wouldn't have planned on going at all in the first place if it wasn't important.

Or we could ask her parents to babysit for us. My mom doesn't have the health for it right now, and my dad's out of town. But her parents could - if I hadn't had the flu. Because grandpa eats immune-suppressing medicine, hanging around with my viruses would be a bad idea. They're immune to chickenpox, though, so they could take little S to their place for two days. Great, I would get to rest, Mistress could go to the meeting, and little S would be taken care of. Except that little S herself cried her eyes out at the thought of it and refused to go anywhere without at least one of her mummies (preferably both). Understandable, since we went to Paris for two days without her last week, and she's itchy all over on top of that.

So we had three solutions that each one was great for two of us and really bad for the third. No compromises, no way of softening the blow. Someone would have to suffer. And we were desperately unhappy, with unresolved issues hanging over our heads, and all thinking or talking was accompanied by incessant whining from the itchy, miserable four-year-old.

As usual, grandma came through for us in our darkest moment. She telephoned and asked if she should come alone, and stay at our place  'til the day Mistress was coming home. That way grandpa wouldn't get sick, I wouldn't be left alone with the responsibility, and little S wouldn't have to leave her mommies or her home.

So in the end, Mistress went, I'm sick in bed, and little S is miserable, itchy and whiny in the living room with grandma. About every thirty minutes she makes a dash for the bedroom door crying for me, and my heart brakes. I've been up and about a few times, and even when I feel almost fine laying in bed after 30 minutes of sitting up and socialising I'm about to keel over, sweating and dizzy. Not all better yet, no.

I'm trying to console myself with that she's not really happier when I'm with her, she's miserable from the chickenpox and there's nothing I can do. Of course she prefers me from grandma, but she knows and loves grandma. She just wants me too, and I want to be with her also. But right now, I just want this horrible sick feeling to go away. I'm not to fond of anything right now, to be honest. Everything seems rather horrid.


Hurts to much to even be funny

We didn't really fix it that night. We tried, we tried getting close to eachother without causing more damage. We tried to find some common ground. But it's hard, when we're both hypersensitive and hurting.

To me, she was punishing me for being ill, she was confirming my fear that my weakness made me unworthy of her love, she was kicking me when I was on the ground, and there was nothing I could do that would make me good enough for her. She didn't love me anymore because I was sick and weak and useless, and all I should do was shut up and accept it. It broke my heart, but I  couldn't find any other explanation. That was the truth as I saw it that night, and everything she said and everything she did was filtered through that view of reality.

What did she see? I don't know, exactly, but when we talked about it on the phone yesterday I got the feeling it was something eerily similar to what I saw, but turned the other way around. That I was punishing her, drawing my love from her, for going away. That I only said that it was okay that she went, but if she did I would not love her anymore. Or something. And of course, that there was a set of magic "right questions" that she had to ask to make me alright again, and I wouldn't tell her what they were but if she didn't ask them I would leave her.

When we're both deadly afraid of losing the other's love, when we're both feeling ashamed and not good enough, we both want the others' love and assurance. But we're not capable of giving it, and so it ends in despair and heartache and martyrdom. We both love eachother to death, and we're sitting a metre away from eachother, grieving the loss of the others' love.


A really low point

I guess from her perspective the whole thing looked different. But that's just it. When I'm ashamed and tired and sick and sad and feeling unappreciated, my ability to take someone elses perspective is almost gone. And so is my ability to formulate cohesive sentences, reflect over my feelings or say anything except answering straight questions.

I wanted to tell her how I was feeling and what I was thinking. I wanted that almost more than anything. But not more than I wanted her to actually want  to know those things. Since I was ashamed I couldn't stand the idea of telling her of my weakness and getting anger or rejection back. At the same time, I wanted her to know, and so I said that if she wanted to know something she could just ask me.

And, angrily and impatiently she growled "well, how do you feel about all this, then?". "It feels terrible, I feel sick and I'm really scared" I answered, filled with angst and shame and fear of rejection, a little relieved to finally get to say it, to share it, and deadly afraid I wouldn't be accepted, or loved anymore, when I couldn't live up to her demands.

And how did she react? She cursed in a loud voice, slammed the door she was holding, and stalked off, completely furious. I curled up on the sofa under a blanket, and cried. I was hyperaware of her every move, feeling like a mouse hiding in the grass, and trying to figure out what I would do if she would start yelling at me or hurt me. Nothing, I decided. There was nothing in me worth protecting anyway. There was nothing she could do that would make anything any worse.

What happened?

Okay, so what the hell happened Monday night? There was a lot of swearing and slamming of doors, from Mistress, and crying, pouting, reproachful looks and going away crying in corners from me. Despair all around, and a general feeling of doom and disaster.

It was a while since we did this dance, even though we once upon a time did it quite frequently. Lately though our hearts haven't really been in it. Even while I've been stomping my foot and claiming she can't possibly love me since she did/said/didn't say/didn't do whatever, I've often realised I don't really believe it myself, and that tends to take the proper fire out of any argument. We've been to happy, to secure in our love for each other, to let temporary misunderstandings and mistakes really rattle us.

But not this time. This time, the alternative reality where our love is a sham, and we're both alone in the world, ashamed and worthless, engulfed us both completely.

I think shame is the critical part here. We often conclude that to nip a potentially horrific fight in the bud "it's enough if one of us isn't a complete idiot". Unfortunately, when we're in a situation where both of us feel inadequate and all to aware of our short-comings, we both tend to lose our grip on reality and sink down in the quagmire of idiocy that is self-loathing and shame.

She didn't want to leave me alone with a sick kid, and especially not if I was sick too. But she really really wanted to keep her promise and fulfill her responsibilities at work and go away for two days for her important meeting.Whichever she choose, stay or go, she had to let someone down, had to sacrifice something.

I didn't want her to go away, but I didn't want to make her decision harder either. The more I felt sick the more I wanted her to stay, needed her to stay, and the more I felt ashamed of myself. I wanted to be the supportive partner, I wanted to say "it's okay, I can deal with this, you go and do your thing".

But. I also wanted to feel loved and acknowledged, and if she was going to leave me with the flu and a kid with chickenpox all alone for two days, I wanted to know that she knew that that was what she was doing. That she cared, that she made conscious decision to do that, and that she would take responsibility for whatever consequences that might entail.

The prospect of it scared the shit out of me, but I was prepared to do it if that was what she wanted, because I'll do anything for her.

And here is where it all went wrong. She didn't ask how I was feeling, and I couldn't tell her. I mean, literary couldn't. I've realised with time that there are other people out there who would have no problems voicing the words "hey, my fever's gone up and I feel terrible; I don't think I'll be okay alone at home, we'll have to figure something out" to their significant other. For me, that's not possible. I can't form the words, they are blocked by shame. I'm sure I can learn to with time and patience but as it is now, it's not happening.

So that's my idiocy. Hers, of course, was not asking in the first place. After a long day where Mistress got home earlier from work to relieve me and I stumbled to bed for the rest of the day, we finally got a chance to talk to eachother  when little S was down for the night. In the morning I had had a slight cold, a little snivelling but mostly fine. During the day I had felt progressively worse, and eventually realised that it wasn't a simple cold, it was more like the the flu. I had a fever, my whole body ached, and I had no energy to do anything except laying down and staring at the wall.

Now, why hadn't I told her this? The thing is, I thought I had. When she came home, she hugged me and we talked a few words, I said I felt crappy and went straight to bed. I came out for dinner, ate a few bites, and went back to bed. I _said_ I felt horrible. I sighed, I told her I was shivering, I mentioned having a fever, I told her all of those things. But... I did it evasively, in bits and pieces. I even came up to her at one point and asked for a hug and wanted to be pitied. But somehow, in some way, it didn't register in her mind as "c is feeling much worse now than she did this morning".

Or it did but she didn't want to know. I don't know which it is, and I don't get it. Anyway, when we did get a chance to talk to eachother, she described the schedule for her trip to me, without asking me anything. I said "yes" and "okay" and "I understand".

For me, it's inconceivable that she didn't start out the conversation (the first real one we had been able to have all day) with asking about me, how I was. For her, I guess, she didn't because she figured if anything had happened or changed, I would have told her. Only, I wouldn't, because I can't. I need a question, and a sympathetic, non-judgmental ear, to be able to talk about stuff like that.

She said I seemed strange, or angry, and that it was obvious that there was something I wanted to say to her. I thought about it and said that no, there wasn't. There wasn't anytjning I wanted to say to her, if there was I would have done it already, and if there was anything she wanted to know she only had to ask, and I would answer.

I think that if I had poked a bees nest with a stick, I might have gotten a calmer,  more level-headed reaction out of it then that response provoced from her. 



Feb 25, 2014

General misery

Yesterday we had this huge breakdown and fight, with both of us feeling betrayed and pissed off and misunderstood and panicky. I hate when that happens.

At one point, just before I went to bed, I was on the toilet, trying to pee, but instead rocking back and forth in despair, crying soundlessly and hardly able to breath from heartache. It was the most miserable I have been in years, my brain was in some sort of panicky, primal state where everything is gone except misery.

Right now Mistress is in Tallinn, Estonia. Little S is in bed covered in chickenpox. I have the flu. The state of our little family is rather pitiful at the moment.

But we skyped just now, and talked for almost an hour about what went wrong yesterday. Apparently, Mistress assumes I will tell her without prompting if my cold develops into the flu with high fever, even if she's to busy to actually ask how I'm feeling. The fact that I assumes that if she wanted to know how I was she would ask doesn't exactly help, though. There might have been a slight misunderstanding regarding this, yesterday.

Right now, I'm going to obey orders and go to bed. I miss her.

I miss her.

I miss her.

I miss her. 

Feb 22, 2014

A trip to Paris

We went to Paris. Can you imagine? I got to see Paris.



We haven't been there all of Febuary, there's no neat excuse for me not updating for three weeks. It's just like that sometimes, I get quite and can't form words. And then I snap out of it and start writing again.

But anyway, we went to Paris. Mistress had a meeting, and I got to tag along. We flew there from Stockholm Wednesday, and home again yesterday, and stayed two nights at a hotel, while Mistress' parents babysat. Two nights is not a long time to spend in a big city, but it's a rather long time for little S to be without her mommies, so it felt like an okay compromise. Anyway, Mistress is travelling again on Tuesday, so if we had stayed any longer she would barely gotten through the door before it was time to leave again.

I like tagging along to Mistresss work-functions. I get to play the role of acconmpanying wife, and I'm rather good at it, for short bursts of time. I'm good at mingling and making acquaintances, and I actually enjoy meeting her colleagues and chatting about work and travels and all kinds of things.

But mostly, I just like beeing with her. I don't want to be left at home, I want to be where she is. She is my home. Anywhere in the world is okay, as long as we're there together. (Well, except maybe Helsinki. We had a terrible time when she had a meeting in Helsinki and I went along. But I could probably be happy there too, just as long as I could be with her, and we could cook our own food and didn't have to rely on Finnish restaurants...)

This trip, I got to see the Louvre. And Notre Dame. And the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes. And I got to walk along the Seines and drink red wine to lunch (and get tsked at by the waiter for answering "oui" when he asked if I wanted ketchup to my fries). I liked Paris. I want to go back there, someday.

I also like being home again, with our own bed and our kitchen and most of all, our adorable four-year-old. It's good to have a family. It's good to be missed when away.