Eye of the storm

It's like a storm.

A storm blows this way and that - in an almost mindless way as it moves across the land. We are warned, there could be lightning, or tornadoes. There could be arctic cold or blistering heat. The winds could be strong enough to pick up your house and everything in it. After the intensity, swirling, helpless moment - there is eerie calm. Where to you begin to pick up the pieces? What do you hold on to? What do you let go of?

If I could stop my storms, would I? It always feels like I'm helpless to the pattern. I know what I'm doing could create an explosion, and somehow I know I'm choosing it. As I'm typing this I am upset with myself. When my storms hit, effects of the explosion leave me foggy and unsettled. It's no longer mania - that is at the center of the explosion, but it's not really depression either. It's regret. It's embarrassment. It's confusion. It's the fear I have no control and will certainly be back here again.

Yesterday my storm hit.  I saw it coming but my mind was everywhere at once and began jumping to conclusions and conspiracies. Imagine a huge "connect the dots puzzle " without numbers. As my my mind spins faster and faster. I jump from dot to dot creating an image that will validate my racing thoughts. I see an image forming. I can't hold it in. In a second I go from building storm to tornado. I'm pushed by my swirling mind me to be brave. Demand attention! Tear something up! Scream! Cry! The sparks in my brain set off the explosion. He is left with no option but to fight fire with fire, and my explosion comes head to head with his. For a minute or two I follow the pattern where the eye of the storm centers on him, and I connect the final dot to see the puzzle as the senseless scribble it really is. Chest pounding turns to steam and I'm left naked with nothing to hide my anxiety. I crumple and cry and react to his loud voice by shrinking just a little smaller each time till I am nothing. I've fallen apart, again.

I want to disappear - but he won't let me.

He pats the bed beside him and makes me sit, then folds his arms around me, gently guiding  me down till I'm snuggled up to his body  - warm, comforting, familiar. I want to move past the storm. With each shuddering breath I take he whispers "Sweetheart, everything is ok. I'm sorry. I love you."

His words guide me back, erasing the lines and pointless dots. "Why choose to be upset when things have been so wonderful? You know I love you, right?  I love you more than anything. I've only held one girl. I've only kissed one girl. I've only made love to one girl...that girl is you." And with every word from him, my mind calms and I come back together.

Today it's all so clear. I see the pattern and the path of yesterday's storm. I know there will always be triggers that will set my mind spinning. But maybe I can stop the next storm by remembering... "Sweetheart, everything is ok. I'm sorry. I love you."

Best Friends

We've been unbelievably busy for last 2 months, and it's been a wonderful mix of design and photography. And every new client has been so wonderful. With some we don't want the interaction to stop.

It's amazing to look back and realize Ben and I have been a successful working team for a long long time.We balance each other out, each able to insert our own style of creativity to whatever we do. For many clients, I think it is that we work together. We are seen as "adorable." I think in actuality is it Ben that is adorable. He is completely adorable, funny, sweet and captivating.

I keep writing about us, but I'm so in that space right now that I can't help it. We are not just partners in work and marriage, but we are each other's best friend. In some ways, its the friend part that's the glue that holds us together. 

So maybe its the work, or the attention, or the easy way we are together... but it feels like now is the best part. I keep feeling his wedding ring as we hold hands and it fills me with ... everything, all at once. 

Time passes love grows

Lately I've taken to wearing this necklace by Thomas Mann. It was given to me years ago my my husband. The charms read: Time passes love lives. Time passes love waits. Time passes love stays. Time passes love grows.

It's like we've started all over again. <3>

3/6/2016

And we've ended.

Time passed and he has passed me by.

There are no more words

The love note

 

I looked up from the desk in his office to see this love note I wrote for him. I had tucked it into this year's Valentine. It means the world to me that he saved it and even more that it's displayed on a shelf for the world to see. 

He tells me almost every day that he will be with me forever, but I don't need a note. I'm right here. He's right here. We are here, together.

An average day

He dances in and out of the room and back in again. He's so happy it's infectious.

I love the smell of him as he wraps me up in his arms. I love the feel of his heart beating against my chest and the tug on my lower lip as he pulls back from a kiss. I know and love every bit of him.

But most of all, I love that he loves me.

The scars on our hearts

I wrote this post a year ago, give or take. I took it down because I'd been blind and believed I was crazy. Most of those months seemed so normal, filled with the same number of "I love you more than anythings" kisses and bedtime snuggling watching  bad TV.  But there were weeks in his basement recording music with his friends and my son. I was not included, but  I wanted to give him time of his own. At first I ignored that voice in my heart. I wanted so much for there to be nothing to find, I did not think I could bear another gash across my heart. When that pain came with all the rush of missing time and misdirection I went completely info the deepest manic depressive state I've ever had, The light of my world turned off and I was left in the dark,And still I believed I was responsible and it was my crazy that put me there.That it was something that was my fault. Amplified by a horrible thing I'd done 16 years ago. It was a pain that left me empty and ready to just stop living. Thank you my sister listing to me and for not taking me to a hospital psych eval. Thank you to my mother in law for talking me down off the emotional ledge. Thank you for the tears and the flowers, and the passwords, and the posters and notes, and the begging - but mostly thank you for showing me I had not been crazy, and that you promise to forever be there for me and be the person I need you to be. You say never, ever again. You say I know that. You say that I know you love me more than anything.

It's the same time time frame as last year. Its truly gone. Our life is back normal, filled with the same number of "I love you more than anythings" kisses and bedtime snuggling watching  bad TV.  I'm ok, perhaps a bit more medicated But there are triggers he doesn't see. I am not the same woman that I once was but not because of the scar. It's the life that I chose.

Symbols

I don't know what to say except "it's complicated."

I ordered this heart today. My husband knew I wanted a Thomas Mann heart for my 60th birthday. The day should not be upsetting, but it is because I am afraid my feelings about always being young at HEART might be overshadowed by the feeling of being old. It does not make it easier that my husband is 22 years younger and fabulously bizarre and unique. I love him now as much as I did when I met him 19 years ago online in "The White Rose Inn" - a chat room on AOL where people role played through words in a game called the "Vampire Masquerade." I started as a cat who roamed the Inn watching and interacting remotely through inner monologue, commenting playfully on the people in the inn.

That is where I first "saw" my husband. He was bizarre and funny and completely captivating. Nym was his character's name. He had other characters he also played as did most of the people sitting at their computers, connecting with the world through a new and addicting way. You could be anyone or anything you wanted to be. As character, they interacted with other characters and their "environment." As a cat, I saw that characters and the people playing them were engaging emotionally. There were in battle, banded together as "families," and as couples. They fell in and out of love. There was passion and fear. As in life, your character could "die" and you could no longer be that person you were so invested in. With a roll of the dice your fate was determined. Nym was as the center of that. While he was funny and the darling of everyone around him, he was also powerful enough that if you had to go head to head with him, your character would die.

I wanted to be loved. To be in love. To be happier than my world beyond AOL. It was wrong. It was cheating, but I abandoned the cat and became Tink. As Tink, I was able to have feelings. Real feelings. I fell in love with Nym. He fell in love with me. What should have been pretend wasn't. I still love him the same way I did then. Completely with fierce intensity. The characters, Nym and Tink, said they had "no gaps" no space between them. And when I met him in the real world, it was obvious to us, to everyone - that we were meant to be together. Both our lives turned upside down, but we were together. Against all odds, we are likely one of the only couples that met in that world, in love, still in love, married, together...

There have been moments in time where we were torn apart. HEARTS were broken and put back together. We both remember those painful times in a heartbeat. Sometimes we let those feelings out, a weapon, hurtful, not meaning to pull us apart. We hurt each other with those words. Regretting them the moment they are said. Hoping the turmoil they cause will pass quickly, moving past and back to being as we have always been since the moment we met. We are supposed to be together and nothing feels better - more intense and wonderful.

Yes, it's complicated.

The heart, this heart, like all hearts before it represent both sides. It represents the sad times and the happy ones. I have them tattooed on me, but they are written on our beating hearts as well. I am sorry. I am always sorry for the scars I left on his heart. I know, even as a new scar is scratched next to the others that it will heal. They always do. I know he never means to hurt me and I never mean to hurt him. No matter what - we always come back to the point we started at - closing the gap till there is no gap.

This heart, though it fills me with a mix of happy and sad will heal. In time the heart always heals, so I am choosing to heal it now. I have less time than I did at the start. Less time to dwell on petty pain, a moment there, a moment unmeant. I choose to see only the love in the heart.

All any of us have is now. With a roll of the dice, we could be removed from this world and cast into another, be it dark or light. I want to pass with no regrets, no anger, nothing unfinished or unsaid. I hope for light, where there can be no gaps always and forever.

It does not have to be complicated.

I love you Ben. I will always love you. More than anything.

More than you know

My body is a map showing the consequences of loving him.

Heart tattoos mark the times of heartbreak and forgiveness.

One floats on the waves of the sleeve that matches his.

One is being sewn back together with swallows pulling the strings.

One has roses growing through it, simultaneously piercing and grounding. At the top of sleeve that matches his, his name unfurls.

I am his.

His body is a map revealing the loves in his life.

Ghouls and creatures, nintendo, muppets, and me.

My face looks out from the woman on his sleeve.

My initial is on his ring finger.

My name burns in the flames of the sacred heart on his chest.

He is mine.

On and on...or so I believed.

3/6/16
He is no longer mine
What I thought was for always was "until"
His name on my arm will never let me forget.