Cassius23's Blog

Well, today was a better day.

It started out poorly with a muscle spasm in my shoulder, but my SO's OSO was able to fix that.

I got some stuff in the mail that I was looking forward to, which is awesome.

I've found that I have up and down times in regards to where I'm at.

For the most part I'm ok-ish with how things shook out.

Sometimes, though, it is harder than others.

These past few weeks have been in the "harder than others" category.
 
Wow, where to start.

Things were pretty much going the way they have been going. I moved into my new place which is working well. It is very quiet which is nice. I've been trying to get more active in the local poly community which is also going well.

Right now the big thing that's happening started around the end of November. I was at home and had an extremely bad back spasm. I couldn't move an inch without severe pain for a number of hours. It was, to be honest, one of the most scary things I've had happen in a long time. I ended up trying to crawl into the bathroom using just my arms to get into the tub to hopefully help the pain.

I called my primary and she gave me a ride to the doctor and the doctor told me that a cyst that I have had on my back for a long time was pressing against the muscle and causing the back spasms. So two weeks ago today I went into surgery to get the cyst removed. I found out that if I didn't remove the cyst when I did it most likely would have caused me to get very sick in the future.

The wound from the surgery has been slower in healing than they expected due to drainage. I'm off to see the doctor again today and hopefully she will have good news about my healing.

On the dating front I have one or two small hits but nothing serious(one of the women looks like Sarah Palin which is interesting). Poly Living is coming in a few months and as long as they don't ridiculously overcharge for their day passes I plan to take myself and my primary, Deb with me. At this point I've more or less accepted that the chances of finding a secondary are pretty much nil and that's ok. Right now I'd be happy just to be able to work out again, much less date.

So there it is.
 
A lot has happened since I updated last.

First of all, I can work out again and hit the gym last Sunday. I didn't do as well as I would have liked but I did ok. The good news is that I'm in better cardio shape than I thought I was. The bad news is that my weight max isn't where I want it to be at all at all.

I've been able to do my daily Buddhist practice 10 minutes a day pretty consistently but I feel a little bad because I need to find a way to do it an hour a day.

The big thing that is happening is that I have an inappropriate crush.

It all started in early December. There is a news website that I read pretty much on a daily basis and there was a story that interested me and I wanted to comment on so I shot an e-mail to the author. I have done this from time to time with other authors and rarely expect to hear back from them.

After a few days I heard back from the author via a very engaging e-mail. We have corresponded fairly steadily since then and I am even going to meet her when I visit Europe in April. She is really, really awesome. Intelligent, engaging, interesting, interested, geeky..and monogamous.

I'm trying my damnedest to not be crushing on this girl as she is in a long distance relationship, loves the person very much, and is monogamous but it is hard. Fortunately she is going for a month to see her boyfriend and I don't expect to hear from her(he is in a country where PC access is problematic) until March.

It is a good thing because now I have a much more clear idea of what I am looking for in regards to an OSO that is primarily mental traits with enough non traditional physical traits that I'm not chasing after Vogue cover girls.

It is a bad thing in that I should not be crushing on a girl that is monogamous. I really, really shouldn't be crushing on a girl that I've only had long e-mail exchanges for a month and never even met in person.

Fortunately I tend to crush until it becomes at least a little clear that the other person is not interested in an intimate capacity. I expect that will happen when we meet in April if not sooner. In the meantime, though, I am still deeply ashamed of this. This was doubly not meant to happen.

Thank you.
 
Poly postmortem

On August 30 my significant other of a little over six and a half years left me. This means that I am 100% single. I am sure in time that I will see some great purpose to it and see how it was my fault and hers and be able to be philosophical about it.

Right now this isn't that time. Right now it just hurts. A lot. A few times since it has happened I have gone crazy. I haven't hurt anyone(including myself) but crazy, nonetheless. At the moment I am in the middle of one of my more lucid phases.

Right now I have an immense amount of anger. I know that I am depressed although I don't feel "sad" in the most strict sense of the word. There are many things I blame, chief among those things are myself. I was foolish enough to think that I could do poly effectively. I was stubborn enough to stick with it. I was dumb enough that I couldn't make it work.

I was hoping that my feelings about things would mellow a bit as the weeks passed at least in regards to polyamory as a lifestyle choice. That has not happened. The more time passes the more I see that all being poly was for me personally was just the hustle. Polyamory for me was being with someone and wanting to make it work so much that I was willing to be with other people to make up for the gaps that she wouldn't or couldn't fill. It was about being lonely, using people, or leaving someone that I loved more than anything else. Polyamory was for me, at a very deep level, about my own personal failure.

I think at this point there are only two ways I can think of that I would be involved in a polyamorous relationship in the future. Either a number of women would have to approach me at the same time to be in a relationship with them(such that I would go from single to a full dance card in one fell swoop) or the relationship would have the caveat that I would only be with the person until someone else came along that would have more bandwidth but had as a caveat that they would be monogamous. The first situation is unlikely in the extreme and the second would be hurtful to the other person.

I don't know for sure but I think that this will be my last hurrah here or, for that matter, on any poly forum. I have carefully gone through all of my online resources and unsubscribed from everything poly related that I once read. No more conferences, no more munches, no more talk of unicorns, primaries, secondaries, compersion, or anything like that. I will read the responses here and, if it fits, I'll post a response. However, once this thread fades in a few weeks I will set this account(like I have with the others) to not tell me when there is a new reply. And that, as far as I can see, will be that.

I have found a community of people who, though they are very nerdy, are kind, patient, and are not terribly interested in my past. I think, given time, that the unstable periods that are happening now will fade and eventually the wounds will turn into scars. That is ok. I have a number of scars. A few extra don't really matter all that much.

I wish I could say end this with some pithy bit of advice or wise expression but I can't. My experience is unique to me and I am fully aware that for most people polyamory means happiness, intimacy, and all sorts of really good stuff. I just remembered that I posted my story here and wanted the story of my poly experience, at least in one place, to have a beginning, a middle, and with this posting, an end.
 
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