I have definitely crossed some sort of threshhold.
So, I’m in the northeast on a vacation. And yes, still, to visit p.- which is going as usual on his end, and very differently on mine. It’s the last time, and he’s going to regret it. And you all will get to read all about it, very soon. There may even be pictures or a video.
Anyhoo. While here biding my time, and visiting with friends whose schedules became unexpectedly overqhelmed, I decided to place a Craigslist ad for some entertaining dates. It’s always a fun excercise- responses leave plenty of psychological flotsam to ponder. My ad just said I was looking for a nice simple date, no expectations beyond good conversation. And for some smoke; I don’t drink really- nor do I enjoy how it makes me feel during or after, so I come by my chemical relaxation differently.
My evening plans ended up being made with an attorney much older than me and very different from the younger men who replied. Mainly because he had the goods and didn’t fuck around with asking me to make plans and letting me know he understood what I’d been looking for right off, while everyone else was still working their one liner emails. Plus I spent about ten years dating much older men and they’re generally putty in my hands, he had easy going plans for the night, and I knew I was going to have a long day, and I’m not really a crowded bar type.
Before meeting we spoke ont he phone a few times and I should have seen the night’s events coming when he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise…but I knew he was a short New Yorker and chalked it up to that from past experiences. We met up for coffee first, and then went to his place for a game of scrabble over some smoke and white russians and hockey in the background. I know- exciting, but it was right up my alley. We flirted and bantered and it was very fun. Really what I needed after a long and tedious week. After the scrabble game he made his move on me pretty quickly, and I wasn’t totally warmed up to the idea at first but decided what the hell once we started making out. He was a good kisser.
I’d mentioned in a few different subtle ways that I was kinky- I almost made the word ‘quirt’ (on a triple word score) – which is a very small whip like thing that I had in my purse- we had a ‘that’s a good word’ joke going, so I said “that’s a great word, and I know because I have one”. And thought that I had made it fairly clear that I am not the submissive type in other less subtle ways- I’m no wallflower and don’t give off those vibes. So when he grabbed a handful of hair and began to tug on it I politely but firmly said “Don’t pull my hair”.
He backed down a bit but kept getting aggressive in other ways. Not in a threatening way at all, or I’d have used my already well placed knee. More in a Dom sort of way.
I can and do enjoy vanilla sex, and with someone I know and trust I can enjoy some rough play during sex, but I’ve never enjoyed someone who gets aggressive right away since it’s usually a sign their either violent in other ways or a Dom. And I rarely end up making out with someone who is. So, to get my point across, I found his nipple through his shirt, and pinched it. First a little, then harder. He seemed to like it, we kissed again and I kept pinching… He said “Ow!”, and I said “Good”, and gave him a wicked look. He said something like “I don’t know about that”, and went to kiss me again. By this time I was not giving receptive body language back as he tried to pull me in various directions, but was still allowing him to kiss my neck. Then he went to pinch MY nipple, AND he started to try to pull me into a laying position on the couch by my leg, which is when I had to put the kaibosh on the whole thing and explain that I don’t ’switch’, at all. And apparently, neither does he.
He didn’t seem to believe me. And made several attempts kissing me again as I worked to extricate myself from the couch. I finally had to raise my voice to get it across- it wasn’t going to happen. I excused myself to the ladies room and quietly ordered a taxi with an iphone app. I came back in and said “Aww, come on. You’re not going to let me tie you up and spank you?” – and he said stunned “That’s what *I* say!” with his mouth ajar. Finally, he saw the humor in the whole situation and we had a good laugh. But he still kept trying to get me into the sack and push me around, saying how he’d never had anyone not like that sort of thing. He was also disappointed he wasn’t going to get to use his new sport-sheets set, and clearly a bit angry he wasn’t going to be having sex with me- although he did his best to hide it. Thank GAWD I sussed him out before I got into the bedroom, or you may have been reading about all of this is the newspaper instead of my blog. While laughing together and waiting for the cab, he mentioned that ‘this would go in the book’- a book he’s writing which he wouldn’t describe. I told him I’d be writing about it too, and told him I’d send him a link if seeing a man’s penis covered in tiny clothespins wouldn’t bother him. He turned a funny shade and said, no thanks. Then tried to kiss me again. I thought about twisting up his sac before I walked out, but in the end just went for a nipple again as the cab arrived. So easy.
In the past, I’ve had no problem and in fact have thoroughly enjoyed having all kinds of sensual interactions, including those with a more physically aggressive partner, especially when I have no intention of it being a long term thing. I have never NEEDED to be Dominant the first time I was intimate with someone whom I’ve not approached as a dominant, or felt oddly when dominating behavior comes about during foreplay- usually I can turn it around pretty quickly, too. But this time was different. Very different. As funny and silly as the story is, I recognized right away that I had definitely crossed a line somewhere back down the road without knowing it. I felt a little wistful for a simpler time. And a little surprised- I wasn’t expecting that. And a lot proud, as I can remember a time not so long ago when I wasn’t sure enough of myself to have stopped and left, or spoken up about my desires and needs so easily. I found myself wishing it wasn’t 3 am and that I had an easy way to get over to p.’s house ASAP, to make use of my new discovery.
It was a bit strange, and a lot ironically funny. But I’m still wondering how I crossed that line, and how far back down the road it really is.
This is a little more succinct than my last post – and is on roughly the same subject.
It’s funny how when you access a truth in your life it starts to show up everywhere. This evening I sat with C. and chatted like we do. It’s a big time, for her; preparing to leave for college. We started talking about her friend group and the realizations she’s made about herself over the last few months. About where we’d been together, and where we were ach going. She was telling me how she has finally come to terms with who she is and what she wants from herself and the people around her, and how she could look back and see where she had taken a big detour from who she really was to try and gain the approval of people whose approval really held no importance, and whose judgment really wasn’t about her at all. And she said that she had seen me going through the process of trying to meet the expectations of others by sacrificing who I really was, and didn’t want that for herself. I think all of us find things about our parents that we don’t want for ourselves, and and it must be that no parent is prepared for what that will be. Children are the ultimate mirror to hold up to yourself, I think.
I told her about some of the soul searching I’ve been doing for myself lately, and how I felt like I had detoured from who I really am in order to … please others. She knows about most of my work, now that she is 19 she also understands it. She is fortunately one of the most self aware people in the world, not all 19 year olds would be safe with such knowledge, but she is. I admitted to her that I hadn’t wanted her to have to grow up with a mother who was a sex worker, and she laughed. And told me “but that is who you are, and that is OKAY”. Then she backtracked and said she knew that by sex worker I didn’t mean something trashy but that sex was my interest in life LOL. It must be strange to have me as a mother. We teared up together and hugged and talked about how much we were going to miss each other soon. We will. That’s pretty scary, actually. She’s been my constant companion for 19 years now.
So I started thinking back….when was it that I stopped owning who I am? Because there was a point that I did own it. It might have been brief. And I have realized this point before, I discussed it here on my blog pretty early on- it was when L., my ex-cuck, first told me he loved me, and then told me he could never commit to a someone who had been a sex worker. It terrified me to think that, again, I had made a choice in life that would cause those who really did love me to turn their backs on me. At the same time, C. was going through her pre-teen dramatic power play stage, and brought my relationship with L. into her power struggles with me. The two coincided and I intertwined them. I did lose L., in the end. And then my grandmother and aunt both died and I found that they had really and truly, on permanent legal paper, basically disowned me. And I became very scared that the rest of my family – my mother and stepfather and brothers would follow suit. I realized that they might love me but might not stand by me. I met peter/p2. And fell deeply for him. But then realized, and was shown, that my history would be a barrier to something real and long term. All of these things came together along with the opportunities to purchase a home- the supposed American dream, and to purchase a business which I thought would -and pretty much did- fulfill a lifelong dream outside of adult work. Which separately, were choices I made because I thought I was fulfilling dreams, but in retrospect, I now realize were because I was trying desperately to gain the approval of those I loved- my family and friends and lovers.
It did take going through all of that as a whole to realize this. And it is a profound arrival, one that I am grateful not only that I have found for myself, but that I have been given the gift of witnessing in my own daughter. I am hopeful that she won’t have to experience it at age 35.
In the end, I have none of these things anyway. But all the people in that list I was afraid about are still in my life. Even peter. And isn’t that the kicker.
…back to our scheduled programming here at MsReciprocity.com
Wow it has been an interesting year. As 2010 dawns I find myself on the very precipice of change I’ve been anticipating for many years now; augmented by unexpected events of the past year.
My last update shared how I had, in August of 2008, purchased a vintage clothing store with sparky as my somewhat silent business partner; and how the economy bombing two months later had made the whole enterprise very trying. By the time I made my last post in June of last year I wasn’t sure we’d be able to make it, and was beginning to suffer some severe personal financial consequences…I hadn’t paid myself a salary in almost a year. Summer at the shop was dicey; but we made it. Only to be hit with September sales that were just $50 over our monthly rent, and an October that was at least 40% less than we needed just to survive with the shirts on our backs. After letting our single employee go, I no longer had enough time to work both the shop and web design on the side in order to pay the bills left owing by lacking sales, as I had been in order to survive. In November, I got a foreclosure notice on my home; and had to make a quick decision about my shop. Having owner financed it, I was fortunate to be able to talk the prior owner into taking the shop back and operating it herself. This, at least, meant that a local institution and the little shop that I do love so much wouldn’t be closing- at least on MY watch; one statistic avoided, at least.
A review of my finances made it clear that saving my home might not be possible and ultimately wasn’t in my best financial interest, and I am still in the foreclosure process- with a potential short sale offer. This, at least, has slowed things enough that I did not have to move myself out in 30 days right in the middle of the holidays. My daughter C. has spent the last semester at home at a local community college in preparation for attending one of the state’s best universities this Spring…and she moves into the dorms in two weeks. With her leaving the nest, and the business that required my daily presence no longer mine, I have come to look at this very tumultuous time as an opportunity. An opportunity to really and truly focus on myself and implement change in my life that honors this choice. It was either that, or admit that in the course of about four months I got to see my entire world disintegrate.
In addition to the loss of my shop and my home, and the end of my era as a parent, there was one more destabilizing event of the summer. In July I had reconnected with a boyfriend of 20 years ago. MY first on my own as an adult- I had actually completely forgotten him. We had been inseparable my first summer out of high school, and for about 6 months I was sure he was the one. When he left for college it fizzled out, and I was hurt but eventually realised it was just a summer college tryst. He found me on Facebook. Sent messsages saying how he’d held a torch for me for all this time. We met up, and surprisingly the feelings of 20 years before were there like they’d never left. I didn’t even care that he wasn’t kinky- at all (this was clearly dumb and went against my own advice to others, I do realize). In a very short time I asked him to move in with me- he was living 150 miles away and being almost completely blind was unable to drive. I have never allowed a man to live with me; I really did think that he and I were going to be spending the rest of our lives together, and very briefly was pretty blissful about life. I’d made it through the rough months of summer with the shop and was headed into our busy season, my kid was headed to college, I’d found an uncomplicated and easy relationship that I thought was going to last a lifetime. Three weeks after moving in we had a typical ‘getting-used-to-living-in-the-same-space’ morning fight before I had to leave for work. I came home to find he had packed and called a friend to take him back to his home 150 miles away, and we haven’t really spoken since. In addition to reconnecting with him, I had reconnected with all of my close friends from the time before I became a teenage mother- friendships I had never forgotten or been able to replace- who were mutual friends of the 20 year ex. What made the whole thing truly unfortunate is that he has taken it upon himself since leaving to do his level best to affect those relationships, too; with some surprising success. It was almost immediately after that everything else began to go to shite. The sales month from hell, followed by another. Having to let my employee go. Working the shop 80 hours a week with no pay. A good friend you may have heard about on the news, Leslie- Austin’s famous homeless crossdressing advocate- fell, had an anurism, and almost died. My home got foreclosed on. Then I had to leave the store. I did spend most of the last two months in tears, every day.
Of course, being the introspective type I already am, this has led to much soul searching. Which is still going on. And being the action oriented kind, trying to nail down … ‘what next’. That process is still ongoing, too.
Looking back upon the year and a half of experiences that has risen up behind me, I can see clearly thatf I have been on a pretty big detour from the path I had been on before. I’ve been trying to discern the real reasons I took that part of the forked road instead of the other side….the shop, buying a big house, trying on a vanilla with the intent of it being for life. I think it’s a bit like a big two day cram session at the end of a hard semester you didn’t work hard enough through. It all kinda makes me shake my head. Of course not all of my reasons for all of those things are related, or were when I made those choices. But it’s pretty funny now to look back and see them in entirety; how they thread together to make one path. I am sure I will write more about that.
I have also thought about this blog. The parts of me it represents, why I haven’t posted here the whole time I owned the shop, why I use it for personal catharsis and unburdening. Sure, I share some kink here; but over the years this blog has become more about my personal thoughts than my kink world. That is mostly because my kink world hasn’t existed much. At least not the way I had wanted when I started this site.
I have many domains. I don’t do much with most of them these days- or at least I haven’t yet. I have a ‘personal’/professional site that is my real name. I thought I’d use that for both freelance work and a sort of personal repository- family pictures, personal blog, a place for everything that was personal but not kinky. But I find that there are many things I don’t want to just put out on the web under my real name for just anyone to see. It isn’t that I’m embarrassed, more that there are certain people I wouldn’t want to see those things- my personal ramblings about my personal life. The people who knew me from the shop and might just be randomly googling my name. My ex friends and boyfriends of 35 years- there’s not many but we all know those people are out there. Potential employers. PTA parents, until last year; now, college admissions offices. Sure, I could make it private- the private stuff. But the point, often, for me, is just putting it out there. Writing for myself alone lost it’s attraction long ago. And so I find my first reason for writing about most of my personal life here. There is one other reason, which is the culminating thread in this post. I think it’s most easily brought to light by pointing out that I could have developed another domain name I own as a personal diary, and used this one for kink, and my other for an online ‘clean’ representation of me for the general public. Except that all of my other domains, every single one, is obviously for kink. When I realized this, I realized that it represented something about myself I’ve just been avoiding. There are two very distinct parts of my life. The part where I hide most of who I am and just try to fit in; trying to check off all of society’s requisite boxes for a 35 year old single mom and hide everything that doesn’t fit….represented by the ONE domain name which I struggle to use twice a year. And then there is the other part… the dynamic and creative sexual being, who revels in exploration and admiration, where attempts at success come effortlessly when fully embraced, every time….represented by over ten domains that I have some pretty awesome plans for, and in particular by this one, where I’ve spent the most time sharing about my real self and thoughts over the years.
In all of this tumult, and introspection, the question I have been seeking the answer to most is … what do I want; what makes ME happy…who do I want to be, for ME? I tend to think that it can be easier to see people’s motivations, including my own, by stepping back and looking at their actions – without thier words or thoughts on them- over a span of time. I realize that, as much as I did want my shop, and my house, and my ex, all individually, that as a whole they made me feel pretty miserable and trapped and shut down. That, as much as I did spend that year complaining a lot about the things I was processing, the year that I spent posting here every day and making plans for my, ahem, online adult empire (sorta), was very happy. And the years spent in the adult industry, also pretty happy, comparatively. I have come to realize that much of my adult life has been spent hiding the true me, and that I am now faced with a unique opportunity in that I know the path that is the true me, and the other paths I have been on have all abruptly come to an end.
I am still ruminating and stewing on all of this. And, truth be told, wrapping up the ugly loose ends of dissolving a business, moving a kid to college, and downsizing 20 years of the flotsam of family life I’ve collected. My current plans don’t go too far into the future. The kiddo leaves in a few weeks…I will take her and get her settled. In the meantime I am selling as many of my belongings as possible with no regrets- I am looking forward to living lighter. I will return home to pack the rest into a storage unit, find a home for one of my cats, load the other two and about three months worth of personal necessities into my car, and drive across the country to stay with a good friend in the Northeast rent free for a bit while I catch my breath. From there, I have a few branches to the path roughed out. But not very far.
I intend for this, however, to be my last post like this- trying to culminate 6 months of experiences into a brief but complete enough ‘catch up’ for my few readers left, or for those who might happen upon this blog and wonder WTF? I’ve been updating software and thinking about the direction I want MsReciprocity.com to take. I miss posting here regularly and beginning today, am doing so again. And because the paths I have planned for myself involve honoring the truth of my actions over the last 15 or so years and stop hiding who I really am, a powerful sexual woman, I intend that my subject matter here will be of a more kinky nature than in the past. There will likely be a re-design soon; and I may give myself a separate ‘personal diary’ area to continue cathartic personal writings without a truly kinky bent, and move most of my past postings there. There are also some kinky surprises planned; but they are still in the works and may be a few months.
So…yeah. I think that covers everything. Not nearly, but…enough to get back to sharing the inside of my head with you here. Ooh, yea! Except that, I am now an incredible redhead instead of dirty dishwater blonde. Much better.
Clearing Cobwebs
Ok, so I’m not so great at consistent posting here. What can I say? This is a personal, for fun site. I’m not concerned with page hits, or how popular I become in ‘the community’ with it. And I work online. Lately, about 16 hours a day, poring over thousands of lines of code. My work isn’t always so intensive, but when it is, it’s pretty hard to want to spend any more time at my laptop when my work day is over.
I guess I’m that way all around. Stress really takes the fun out of me. And, right now my life IS stress. For those of you who have followed me for the last year or so, you know that I am on my way uphill from a bad financial spot after hitting a very low point in a deep depression that lasted a few years. I’m say- a third of the way up; and things keep getting steeper…for all of us, I try to remember. Then there’s the kid. Getting ready for her senior year and college. And bleeding my schedule and wallet dry. I thought I was prepared for more expenses the last few years of high school, but sheesh. Try over a grand last month for various fees, extra curricular events, competitions, deposits of trips and summer courses, advanced testing, college prep, and senior rings and jackets….that’s before lunches and pocket money. Of course, home ownership has become costly. My fridge has gone out and part of my fence blew down, and HOA fees are due. And there is family too. Dad is doing fair, health wise. A brother is getting married in the summer. Everyone wants my time in free web work and visits in which they will do little but proffer advice on how to ‘fix’ my life. Lately I’ve felt as if even a 72 hour day wouldn’t offer enough daylight to get everything done; and have hit the ground running before 6 am and fallen into bed after midnight still clothed almost every day for 3 weeks. And yes, my body is telling me about it. I had two ocular migraines this month- fortunately painless (yes, migraines can be painless); but one left me unable to see (anything but a flashing ‘floater’ and the same effect you’d see if you stared at a bright light for several minutes), basically, for about 13 hours. I took the opportunity to sleep. And think.
I have lots to write about here. sparky and I have actually NOT talked about the blog because I’ve only seen him twice since that last post about it. One day was a slave shopping trip I had planned for Valentine’s day; I took him for his first trip to a lingerie store, and planned to go to a toy store afterwards but we ran out of time. I wrote about 3/4 of a post about it and got pulled away to something. When I find the file I wrote it in I will update, it was fun. I used my new purchase from BodyAware.
A little hurrah for Bodyaware here…GEEZUS those guys are fast. I ordered Wednesday with standard shipping (tee-hee- I first typo-ed ‘whipping’…wonder what is on MY mind?), and it was in my mailbox Saturday morning. WOW, and kudos to BodyAware, again. The chastity belt was exactly as stated on the site. Real leather with fabric facing fused to the inside. Came with it’s own luggage lock and set of keys. And under $30 bucks. And mmmmm….pretty. It is one size fits all, which means the waist strap is almost as long as I am tall; so I will have to find my leather needles and cut and edge it, maybe make a loop to hold the free end, but for now I’ve been using it as a handy on-slave-strap to smack with and a lead. On sparky about a bit over a foot is left dangling down his backside. Handy. But not pretty and it doesn’t tuck in well. However, if you are a … let’s say husky man … it WILL fit you. Easily.
Anyway, it was after that date that things got so crazy busy for me. And after that date that I realized I had to do some real soul searching. About what I want in a submissive and in a relationship. As hard as I have tried, I cannot feel a spark for sparky. And this makes my time with him feel more like time spent with a client (yes, that kind) than time spent with someone who is serving me. Like it’s not about me, at all. Not just because of the lack of spark, but that has much to do with it. Fortunately, I don’t think sparky is head over heels, and it will just fizzle out amicably.And yes, p. and I are still talking, sort of. This is a subject I’ll have to cover later.
Anyway, this soul searching led me to engage in some research and learning into empathy, both in general and in it’s relation to BDSM. As in being an empath, not being generally empathetic. I’ve always known about my empathic skills, which I’ll get into later; but like most with them, have struggled to recognize and live with them healthily. One particular effect on ME is to really have difficulty discerning my own wishes and desires from others in my life. It’s very easy to ’soak up’ what everyone else needs and make it my own. That’s been a good thing for parts of my life…becoming a single mother at fifteen for example, or having a handicapped sibling in a large family not always capable of giving her the best attention. It made me a great escort, and makes me a legendary lover. But it’s also been bad for me, in that I’ve rarely been able to consider my own wants and needs separately from my responsibilities and obligations to others. And I think that has much to do with my dominant tendencies, AND my reluctance to delve into them. As does being empathic. There’s plenty on that subject I expect to explore. I’m curious to know if other dominants who have empathic talents feel these abilities affect their desires and role.
Governor Spitzer’s dance around his dalliances, and the embarrassing press display of false prudishness over it, has me thinking on another article or two in my Sex Worker Stereotype series. I watched a pundit on CNN yesterday say something to the effect of “I’ve met him close to 20 times, and am shocked. He seemed like a very nice man who loved his wife and family and was a good person….”- of course these are not her words verbatim. But it seemed ridiculous to me. Why wouldn’t he be a nice man and a good person, or love his wife, even if he DID see an escort? Personally, I’d find it morally appalling if the lady (and the money spent and security detail used for seeing her) was a *lover*; someone to whom Mr. Sptitzer was obligating himself and giving of himself personally to. In THAT case I’d wonder about how seriously he took his obligation to his family, or his character as a person. But not that he may have seen a sex worker on his own private time. It seems to me that a man willing to carry on an ongoing affair outside of his marriage with an officially unpaid companion is much more morally corrupt than one who indulges himself with someone in whom he plans to invest no emotion or romance. And while I don’t know about the details of the investigation, it is days like this when I think about the number of colleagues I had who worked in circles like the one in question, that I am rather happy to have had my name out of the grapevine for a few years. I had an article planned about sex worker’s scruples which included quite a bit about keeping the trust of privacy between client and worker; and while I feel that’s an important point- thousands of workers zip it while only a few sing- maybe this isn’t the time to make that point.
Lastly, I have some literotica and some posts about the mental aspects of D/s to work on. I’ll try and bring one or two of them to fruition very soon so you have something fun to read.
There’s also some work to do here on the site- clearing out of cobwebs and freshening up my theme and such. So keep an eye out for changes….I’m still around.
Just the way it is. Performed by Ms. R and her backup singers, the Vainglorious Exes.
“it’s just the way it is”…
When p. said this a week or so ago, it really pissed me off. Really. And it really worked on me for several days, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. Or, more accurately, I couldn’t, or didn’t want to, remember why. While trying to stay physically busy and mentally distracted, somewhere between vaccuming and finding a well hidden php parse error for a client, a little recurring memory in the back of my head set itself free and wafted through my thoughts:
that’s just the way it is”
…echoed through my head in a cacophony of several voices from the past that I have worked hard to forget.
And suddenly I knew, remembered what “that’s just the way it is” stands for. Again.
I sat, a little woozy from the sudden rush of memories and voices and mental images. Working backwards, I recognized L.’s voice immediately, the man with whom I had my last long term, and cuckolding relationship. Telling me on my 30th birthday that it didn’t matter that he finally -after years- could tell me he loved me, or that my daughter had grown so attatched to him, or that we worked so perfectly together both in and out of bed. It took weeks of fighting to get him to admit the reason. Which was, that I was, and in his eyes always would be, an escort. As he’d suggested when I hit a rough financial spot, and helped me become; and that this ultimately meant that he couldn’t commit to me. I made the biggest gesture to him I could think of, ‘retiring’ publicly and replacing my website with a message to my clients about why, and a personal message to L. expressing my wish to do whatever it took. In the end, it was still ‘just the way it is’.
Harmonizing above L.’s deep voice was K.’s. He was an awkward Canadian salesman I dated for a couple of years during one of my ‘off’ stints with L.; and lucky to have me. He had initially met me as an escorting client who reached out to me personally when my daughter was injured; but when it finally came down to brass tacks, he made no bones about not committing, at all, because of how we met. “That’s just the way it is…” – I do recall those words fitting into what I wish had been our final conversation. He showed up 9 months later in legal trouble, hoping to save his visa status with a marriage proposal, possibly the only one I may ever recieve. Made in the car as I drove him to pick up his car post jail stay. I never wanted ejector seats in my car quite so badly as I did at that exact moment. What a cherished memory. That’s just the way it is.
There were a few chorus boys, minor flings that could have been much more, singing along in the background a refrain of “just the way it is..is..is”. None of them left enough of an impression to remember the circumstances, but the phrase stood out. And the reasoning behind it was all the same.
Then my first real love, S. broke through in a clear solo, reminding me that I wasn’t really the ‘resume’ wife he needed for his military intelligence followed by medical career. Despite the years I’d spent putting him through school, the support through military basic and tech school and an overseas station during which his non-custodial daughter was severely abused by her stepfather and there were all manner of legal proceedings and difficulties to manage stateside, and during a trip I’d made to help him prepare for another overseas deployment. “That’s just the way it is”. He did say it. Followed by a dear jane letter a few months later, telling me the woman he’d itnroduced me to so I’d have someone to run errands with on base during my visit (another deployed soldier’s soon to be ex wife) was now his wife, and never to contact him again. And he repeated the refrain as if it was some sort of justification or explanation.
There are other times men in my life have used the phrase, too; which is why I’m surprised it took me a week to recall the real meaning. I can remember my father, a military officer and non-custodial parent most of my life, explaining to me glibly why I only heard from him once a year or so with the useless euphemism. Or my daughter’s father, explaining to at age 18 to 15 year old me why he couldn’t be bothered to help me figure out what to do about my unexpected pregancy, or a decade ago why he’d left the country to reside where his child support couldn’t be legally collected and would always drive nice cars, dress well, and live grandly, no matter what I thought C. needed from him. That’s just the way it is. It’s a more comfortable way for those with an emotional bunker mentality to say “I’m going to think of myself first”, and by “myself” I mean the reality of the vainglorious hauteur, not the high-brow noblesse that people like this have become in their own heads.
I don’t like to let these people enjoy their comfortable little lie to themselves. I usually find a way to extract a confirmation of the real reason, in one way or another. This time, it was a brief email message to p. Friday morning; composed like a mirror so that how he responded, or didn’t, would make the truth an unavoidable elephant in the room. No response. It’s early yet to ‘call’ it (not really, but work with me), but I’m pretty sure I know now why it is just the way it is.