In Which There Is One Last Act Within the Old Paradigm

Gentle readers, I have a confession.

Well, remember all that stuff about nonviolent communication and compassion and love that polyamory inspired? It's not that anything about the plan has changed; I still fully intend to continue to throw myself into reorgnanizing my brains to become a healthier and more emotionally mature person. I want to learn to behave more compassionately, love more deeply, and treat myself with more care and consideration. I want to resist the urge to blame and take offense, I want to handle my emotions sanely, and I want to reach a deeper level of acceptance of people on their own terms. All of this is still true.

However, yesterday I did something that completely violates all the rules of the new way, and I feel pretty fine about it. I may regret it later, but I had my reasons, and I made my choice. I am coming to see this rather childish, reactionary, and quite violent gesture of mine as the last little death throes of the old me, demanding some recognition as it passes on. It probably needed that, poor thing.

It is no mystery why it happened the way it did. In about the most vindictive and horrible way possible, I burned--nay, blew to smithereens--a bridge with an old "friend" by whom I felt extremely slighted. I had spent several months crying and raging over Elena as she had suddenly--truly with no warning--begun to coldly ignore me or treat me with vague scorn. It had been going on for months, and I was coping with the slow realization that I had actually somehow fallen in love with her, albeit non-sexually. I'm talking about the real thing though: totally batshit crazy in love--you know, the dangerous kind that threatens to crumble foundations and smash your psyche into little shards of busted mirror when the loved one leaves you.

And yes, I was feeling busted, to say the least. Like someone had reached into my chest and ripped something out and not bothered to tidy up. I had stayed up all night crying over her, screaming on the inside, hitting things, and once I calmed down a little, trying to figure out how to at least create closure if I can't have her back.

So I went to work exhausted, and wrote her a short e-mail--much shorter than the one I wanted to send. I told her I hated her. Then she sent a very cold one back that explained, rather nonsensically, why she didn't want to see me. The last line announced that she was formally ending our friendship. It pissed me off, but I was relieved to at least have a little kindling to burn. So then I replied with a HORRIBLE one.

I mean, I haven't sent a letter that nasty and hurtful in years. I called her a liar and a faithless little crab and said that she would die alone and adrift if she didn't change...I snarked about how she could avoid that fate if only she would trust any real human more than she trusts her statues and whispering voices (she's a sortof eclectic spiritualist who actually does put a lot of stock in the messages she receives during her Ayahuasca hallucinations). I mean, it was epically bitchy. I was pretty surprised that I had it in me.

But I immediately felt much, much better. Being a solipsist, she is unlikely to have allowed the contents of my screed to touch her. Once she discards people, she's done. I know this from listening to how easily she could go from hanging out with someone enthusiastically several times a week to being convinced--usually by some minor event that should be just a blip in the course of a meaningful friendship--that the same person was somehow poisonous or contaminated with some vague disease which threatened Elena's...um...purity? Or clarity of purpose? Or something? I never quite got her rationalizations. It always seemed to me like a way to cover up for an intense fear of intimacy. Intimacy is just so messy, and it brings so much foreign energy into your life...EWWW....

Okay, I'll try to resist falling into shit-talking again. But hey, that is one of the perks of an anonymous blog that no one knows about. I can do this without harming anyone...except maybe myself, if I can't let it go.

That is exactly my point, though. I feel like this one last catty bitch-out needed to happen so that I could reach some sort of equilibrium and walk into the next phase feeling clean and balanced. I had to purge her from my life to complete the picture of an ideal future that my reflections on social experience have been painting for me lately, of a quite exclusive tribe that has no room for people who don't "get it."

My tribe has to "get" polyamory, of course, but the issue is so much larger. I don't mean any absolute "it" that must be got because I realize that most of what I want is subjective and entirely qualitative: harmony and mutual understanding, rather than specific characteristics. There are, however, plenty of specific characteristics that I am learning to watch out for. My experience with Elena has certainly taught me a few new things to be wary of, as well as a few techniques that people use to cover up their flaws. I won't be blindsided by the same things again.

So, here's to big, messy goodbyes! Goodbye, Elena. Goodbye, monogamy. Goodbye, blind acceptance of jealousy. Goodbye, catty note-writing. Goodbye, energy vampires. Goodbye, shame. Goodbye, self-loathing. Goodbye, denial and avoidance. Goodbye, emotional dependency. I hope you all find a nice, warm beach somewhere to spend the rest of your days without me.