La Femme Jenae

Today would have been Ruth’s forty-fifth birthday.

There’s no denying that the first two years Ruth and I were together I was quite a bitch. But in our third year as a couple I finally began to settle comfortably into the role of a loving wife and stopped spending most of my time giving her good and valid reasons to run for the hills. The change in me was perceptible to everyone around me, most notably her and the joy I began to feel from making her happy altered my perception of pretty much everything in my life.

As that year progressed I came home from work one Friday evening to find the girls were absent. Ruth had asked Stephanie to let them stay with her for the weekend and told me we were going up to the lake. It was the end of January so a bit unusual but not so much so that I thought too much of it. She had already packed for both of us (there were only summer clothes up there), the bag was in the car and she had done a little shopping so we wouldn’t starve. Ruth would have made an excellent Girl Scout!

The lake, in winter, is something of a postcard. Especially when we arrived to a full moon bathing the trees and the lake, both covered in snow, in the bright luminescence that is never fully achieved downstate. It really is a setting that takes your breath away, which it did.

So we sat in the living room with only the moonlight and talked for hours the way only couples so deeply in love can do. It was the first time we talked seriously and intently about what we wanted for our future and what we envisioned for our life together once the girls had grown and begun lives of their own. It was during this conversation that she first told me her plans to retire at forty-five. At the time she was thirty-one and I was all of twenty-three. It was a night of many firsts for me. It was the first time I ever considered that I may have a long life and that with Ruth I actually wanted one. Until that night I had been convinced that there was no escape from the likely path of my illness and the early death it would force on me. My fatalism has been a long-standing part of my psyche. It was also the first time that anyone had told me I was entitled to want things other than that which I was obligated to do. I had spent most of my life to that point with the belief that there were no options other than to subordinate everything to my responsibilities. Though it’s true that the main reason for my conduct during our first two rocky years together revolved around my distrust of her, something I never fully overcame (it was never a question of fidelity, it was always about mortality), it’s also true that I felt enormous guilt in allowing myself to enter into this relationship when it often had the effect of taking my focus off my girls. I saw myself as being selfish to the detriment of my obligation to them. That night Ruth made the convincing argument that the two were not mutually exclusive, that I would be better able to fulfill those obligations which she agreed not only existed but were paramount, were I to also respect the obligations I had to myself. This was something altogether new to me. For the first time since we had met and I had fallen so completely in love with her I ceased feeling guilty that my love for her exceeded (to whatever extent love can be quantified) even the love I had for my girls. It was that night I became incapable of conceiving my life without her.

Finally she asked that if from this conversation it was safe for her to assume that I planned on staying with her for the rest of my life. The question was sufficient to render me speechless and then to evoke a deep sense of shame. I began to cry. I told her I was ashamed that my behavior in the past had made it necessary for her to feel the need to even ask the question. My darling took me into her arms and held me, silently, for a very long time. As she did I made her a promise, silent and unspoken because the words had been said before but the deeds had remained elusive, that I would never give her a reason to question my feelings for her again. I believe in my heart to this day that I was good to that vow. While I retain regrets that Ruth knew there was a part of me that still had difficulty accepting her love for me when she died, I have no doubts whatsoever that she fully understood the depth of my love for her.

When I had finally settled she reached into her bag, took out two rings and handed one to me. She told me she had no need for the state or anyone else to either recognize what we are to each other or to accept it, all that mattered was our love for each other. She said that for her, marriage, both the word and the institution, failed to convey the depth of that love. Ruth knew the ravages of my illness and what it could do to me. As she slipped the ring onto my finger she told me that in my darkest moments I had only to look at it, to feel it there, and I would know there was nothing that anyone, including myself, could ever do that could take her from me. That so long as she lived I would never be alone. Before that moment I had never really understood the true nature or meaning of love. I remember turning her ring over in my fingers unsure of what to say. The emotions welling inside of me were so abundant, so overpowering. I felt the richness of life in a way I had never experienced before. In a rare moment of clarity I told her that she knew any promise I made to be there for her at all times would be hollow and false, that she understood in a way no one ever had what it meant to be me. But as I slipped the ring onto her finger I swore to her that night that so long as she was with me I would never stop fighting against it, I would never allow my illness nor anything else to diminish the totality of the love I felt for her. I did not tell her until years later that at that moment and for every moment we were together after that I had only one wish, to grow old with her and one day die in her arms.

And so for us, on that day, we were married.

Though it had no legal bearing on our status as a couple Ruth subsequently legally took my last name. For the girls it was an incredibly powerful statement that she would always be there for them in the same way she had committed to being there for me. While my relationship to them has never fully shaken the awkwardness and ambiguity that we all feel, the question of mother or sister being difficult for all of us, there was no such difficulty between them and Ruth. She was their mother and they never hesitated in either thinking of her or introducing her to others as just that.

Years later, when she was approaching the end of her life we talked about the rings. She told me not to bury her with it. She knew I would have difficulty taking mine off and never said anything other than I would know when it was time for me to do it. She said when that time came she wanted me to give them to the girls, not for them to ever wear or use for their own weddings but instead it was for them to know that the love she and I shared was possible to achieve, that they should settle for nothing less for themselves. After she died I took her ring, put it on a thin gold chain and have worn it around my neck ever since while keeping mine where she put it on that January night ten years earlier.

Today, of course, I have been at the cemetery. I spent a long time talking to her, telling her how the girls have come into their own and how much of her was in them. And a lot of time in silence as well, just thinking about what could have been. What should be were it not for the cruelty of a universe I can never forgive. I was interrupted when the girls arrived but this came as no surprise. They’ve always respected my need for time alone there but I’ve also respected their need to come. We sat talking quietly for a while but I wanted them to have their own time alone. Before I left I took Ruth’s ring from the chain and slipped mine from my finger. I put them together so which was which could no longer be discerned and then gave one to each of them along with Ruth’s explanation of why I was doing it. Then I put my marker on the headstone and left them on their own which in many ways is less figurative than literal. I don’t know that I have anything more to teach them.

I do know that the last words Ruth ever spoke were to me. “Find a way to be happy.” I’m afraid that I will never know how to accomplish that without her but because it was her wish and because I am still so very much in love with her, I’ll continue to try.

And because it just fits…

I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve ever gone without wearing heels since I first donned them in my teens and equally certain of the same regarding make-up.  I’m absolutely positive it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without wearing a dress or skirt, probably ever in my life since it’s all I wore when I was little.  I’m even including times when I’ve been lounging around in the hell of depression.  Even then I’ll usually make a futile attempt at getting myself dressed out of habit although the results aren’t anything you’d want to be forced to see.  Usually I’d get really pissed at Ruth for not letting me leave the bedroom.  She, of course, feared the girls would see me and rightfully assume that mommy was off her rocker.  I won’t get into how problematic putting on make-up is when you’re in the deep throes of depression other than to say the shit should come with warning labels for girls like me.  There was one particularly embarrassing incident involving my use of mascara which, considering I NEVER wear mascara, shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

Now I’m not exactly depressed at the moment.  It would be hard to explain my current state of mind.  It’s a mish-mash of confliction and an overwhelming desire to ride my denial for as long as possible and hopefully die before it begins to fail.  While this is unlikely and in all probability I’ll pay for it big time down the road, at the moment I’m not thinking about that.  Denial, remember?  And there’s also the fact that over the last few months I have ceased caring about many things that used to matter to me.  The truth is that I really don’t care about much of anything these days.  Despite this, I’m in a fairly even place, certainly not happy but definitely not a textbook depression either.  So I can’t point to mental illness as the culprit.

I’ve been up at the lake for the last several weeks but that, in and of itself, isn’t the cause.  I’ve spent summers here all of my adult life and have worn plenty of dresses and heels and I certainly didn’t leave the house without at least a touch of make-up.  The local folks that I’m friendly with (which is pretty much all of them except for one hag that I’m not alone in avoiding) have noticed too.  Now this is a small town.  A very small town.  So small you can do a full census Sunday mornings when pretty much everyone is having breakfast at the general store that doubles as an eatery.  I’m not sure precisely at this point but it’s possible the population doesn’t reach three digits these days.

These aren’t particularly religious folks (it’s small town, rural New York, not Alabama or Texas) and there’s actually no form of church within the town, for that you’d have to drive about thirty miles to the zealots a couple of towns over.  Around here everyone pretty much subscribes to the Julianna Hatfield rule of “When I find god I’ll keep it to myself”.  So Sunday mornings are the local version of a pagan congregation getting together and worshiping at the alter of Joe’s griddle from which pour forth the most scrumptious breakfasts one is ever going to find.  It’s not surprising that no one misses it unless they’re deathly ill.  Sunday is the one day that Joe turns over the kitchen to his son who’s culinary skills would make him a God on the isle of Manhattan.  Except for Sunday he doesn’t cook for the masses, he’s too busy fixing transmissions.  It’s common knowledge that he’s far better in the kitchen than in his shop but everyone loves him nonetheless and they all bring him their cars anyway which is awfully nice of them since mine is pretty much the only household in town where there doesn’t reside a qualified mechanic.

So my stylistic changes have not gone either unnoticed nor without discussion, much of it with me sitting there although the conversations would lead one to believe I was invisible.  The general consensus is that I have no one to make myself pretty for which I have to admit I find rather insulting since I think I’m damn pretty regardless of what I am or am not wearing.  When I mentioned this I was told to be quiet, that no one asked my opinion.  You just have to love this kind of life and these kinds of people.

One of the champions of this theory is what used to be the ‘other’ lezzie couple but since Ruth’s passing is now the only lezzie couple.  They’re a pair of ex-pat, NYC comrades that bought their house here based purely on the fact that Ruth and I told them no around here cared that they were gay.  Presto, new neighbors but remember, small town doesn’t mean it’s small geographically, farms and all take up lots of land so neighbors mean they live almost ten miles from me.  Anyway, these two are dead certain that I’m dressing this way because I’m alone.  Bear in mind that until now it’s been pretty unusual for me to be up here by myself for more than a day or two.  Even before I met Ruth my time up here always included the girls.  My friends think that if the girls were up here I’d dress differently.  I have no idea if they’re right or not but there’s definitely something to be said about the way girls compete, even (or maybe especially) when they’re related.

It’s not like this was a conscious decision either.  I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself “Self, I’m tired of getting all gussied up.”  On the other hand, maybe there’s something to it.  Part of me definitely thinks “Why bother?”  I imagine I’m not the first girl to think this way.  Putting on a dress takes work.  A dress equals appropriately matching shoes equals appropriately and carefully applied make-up equals accented with carefully chosen accessories.  Putting on jeans equals sneakers, a tee and a sweatshirt which are considerably easier to match even just by accident.

It probably also has something to do with the fact that I spend the majority of my time in the woods either during my morning run or just walking about in the afternoons, sometimes sitting and writing as I’m doing now.  I may have always been a little on the ultra-femme side of things but even I’ve known that the woods are no place for frilly skirts or high heels.  Thoreau probably came to the same conclusion.

I’ll admit to thinking about it myself now and then but less than one would image of a card-carrying girly-girl.  Which, by the way, is still how I think of myself, I don’t believe for a minute that I’m turning into a butch Jennifer.  I’m not cutting my hair, I haven’t stopped shaving, I’m not running to get inked and there are no baggy pants involved, just lovely, my ass looks great in them, jeans.  I know because I’m still vain and petty and check myself out regularly.  But I don’t spend much time wondering why I’m not in a dress nor have I been continuing my shopping excursions which in the past would range from once or twice a week to daily, depending on my mood, the season and when my favorite designers’ new collections came out.  I also don’t seem to miss it.  This I do find a little strange.  One would think that a girl who annoyingly refused to wear pants at age six because dresses were so much prettier would miss her dresses.  I don’t.  I wave to them now and then as they hang forlornly in the closet while I grab a pair of jeans but otherwise don’t think about them much.  The vanity rush of dressing up appears to not have been required for me get through the day.  How odd to learn this at this stage of my life.

Maybe my friends up here are right, I have no one to dress up for so I don’t.  I’m sure that at some point I’ll wake up and feel like donning my warpaint and putting on an outfit, it’s bound to happen at some point out of social or work necessity if nothing else.   But that wasn’t today and probably won’t be tomorrow either.  It’s a curious thing for me, there’s this vague feeling of empowerment I get from not doing it.  Maybe that’s a good thing.

I’ve been spending a significant amount of time over the last few days trying to decide what it is I want to do with the rest of my life.  (Well, that and starting really big fires but I won’t get into that other than to say they were well controlled and no one was injured.)  It’s a curious thing to be doing this for the very first time considering I’m thirty six years old but I really haven’t had the opportunity before now.  Up to this point what I was doing with my life was pretty much determined for me by circumstances beyond my control.

I wasn’t a Mom because I chose to be or even because I got stupid drunk, forgot I was gay and got knocked up.  I didn’t go out one night for a turkey baster either.  The truth is I actively did not want children.  So much so that for my eighteenth birthday I gave myself the gift of a culdoscopy which one would think would permanently resolve that issue.  Obviously not.  A year later I was toting my sisters around just like I had birthed the little critters.  Yeah, I could have handed them over to the state or done a private adoption but those weren’t terribly realistic options.  The state would mean foster care and let’s face it, even for a nineteen year old that wanted no part of motherhood that idea wasn’t even close to palatable.  The adoption thing I actually considered and even met with a few couples one of which referred to each other as Ma and Pa even though they were childless.  There was one couple that I liked and seriously considered, that would be until they learned I was gay and told me how sorry they were.  I could only image what would have happened if one of my sisters had turned out to be either gay or bipolar with them as parents.  So scratch the adoption thing as well and face facts I was now a blessed mother.

I didn’t chose my career either.  Once I had the aforementioned munchkins and dropped out of college I had to earn a living to support them as well as myself.  Now to be honest there was insurance money and I had offers to buy my father’s business for a tidy sum too.  I probably could have managed to finish school and raise them at the same time, it’s not like I would have been the first girl to do such a thing and I would have had better financial resources than most others in this position.  Instead I spent most of the insurance dough buying a house in the suburbs and then building another one on the upstate property I had inherited.  I was nineteen for fuck’s sake and nineteen year old’s rarely make wise, well-thought out decisions.  Hell, two days before my father died I spent three hours deciding whether to wear pink fishnets or black one’s for a singing gig that night (I went with white one’s since I was dead set on wearing my pink go-go boots and there is such a thing as too much pink).  The point is that having made these decisions I was left with few alternatives but to do the one thing I was already trained to do which was to take over my father’s business.  Well, I was trained for the technical at least, my father had started doing that before I hit double digits.  I often wondered if he knew his expiration date.  The business part I had to learn but really, how hard is it to learn to take people’s money while telling them you wanted more?  Manic me took to business instantly.  In any event, it was a better option than the alternative of “Would you like fries with that?”

Even my subsequent marriage with Ruth wasn’t exactly my choice.  We met and I fell for her immediately but still it was her that pushed to move in and make it permanent.  At the time I saw it very much like fortuitous circumstances as opposed to something I wanted.  This would be part of the reason I treated her so incredibly poorly for the first couple of years.  Years later she owned up to the fact that she intentionally railroaded me and wasn’t taking no for an answer.  She was older and incredibly strong-willed not to mention very used to getting whatever she wanted.  Damned if I didn’t make her kind of regret that for a while but she was a trooper and put up with my crap until I finally settled in to something more normal.  Or at least as normal as life can be with an untreated bipolar girl who’s level of denial was astonishing.  And with all that came our plans for the future, the way things would be for us once the girl’s had grown up and gone about their lives.  Well, the girl’s have indeed grown up and have their own lives which don’t include living at home, however, Ruth isn’t living at home either so those plans are pretty much toast.

So here I am, thirty-six years old with no clue as to what I want my life to be from this point forward.  Inertia keeps me working and now that my sister is involved with the business there’s a certain obligation to keep it running until she’s ready to take over.  Although there’s no guarantee that she won’t come to me a year from now and tell me she wants to leave and go into basket-weaving.  I’d really like to move up to the lake permanently and doubt this would be an issue for the business.  The nature of it is such that I could still maintain control and do my job remotely.  I’d come back down to the office when necessary but that’s not really all too often and is usually only when I have to meet with clients.  The problem with this idea is that it’s in the middle of nowhere in a town with a population of less than a thousand so the likelihood of ever having a social life is pretty slim.  This was fine when it was Ruth and I but if it’s just me I’m figuring it’ll probably stay just me forever.  It’s not like there are oodles of gay girls up there for me to pick from.  Pretty much none actually other than one lezzie couple who are lovely but, well, married to each other.  Maybe I should look into getting one of those off-shore brides?

The idea of being there full-time is enormously appealing.  Whenever I think of being able to go days, weeks even without seeing another soul, well, it’s damn near orgasmic.  But not quite and the truth is I’m over my ‘Don’t touch me” me phase and would really like to get back to having those regularly.  Preferably not limited to the solo kind.  I think I need to get myself a ‘lady-in-waiting’, a gay one that’s available whenever I ring the little bell on the nightstand but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.  See, the problem is that I’m pretty desperate to be left alone and that worked out great with my prior plans since Ruth was very much on-board with this.  She didn’t like people anymore than I did and had the bonus quality of providing truly awesome sex.  But the reality is that a new girl will probably want to have a life, you know, go out, travel, meet up with other gay type folks and have lovely evenings with us all being so perfectly gay together.  I, however, do not want this.  I want a kindred spirit, a social misfit such as myself so we can spend our lives dodging contact with the other humans on the planet be they gay, straight or otherwise.

If this sounds appealing to you and you also happen to be very smart, very pretty, very gay and very good in bed, drop me a line.  Or maybe not, since responding would immediately discount the very smart thing.  Damn, the mail-order bride idea is looking better and better.

“I’m not sure I like where this is heading.”  I knew what she meant but feigned ignorance as I sipped my water, took a hit off the joint and passed it back over to her.  I didn’t really know how to respond.  What did she want me to say?  Should I tell her she had it all wrong?  Should I lie?  What good would that do, she already knew the truth, or at least she knew more of it than I was comfortable with.

This had been going on for weeks now, since Lani left and for months before that.  I thought we were on the same page, a little intimacy when one of us needed it but nothing romantic, we were friends, no more than that.  Was she trying to tell me it was no longer enough for her?  That just seemed so implausible, she knew we would never make it as a couple.  She’d said it herself many times.  I took the joint back from her, felt the smoke fill my lungs and closed my eyes as it made it’s way to my brain.  The brief kaleidoscope of colors sped past for a moment and then vanished, when I opened my eyes she was looking at me.

“I don’t know what you want me to say except that this is really nice weed.”  I smiled and handed her back the joint hoping a little deflection would get her to change the topic.  I really didn’t feel like having this conversation, I just wanted to enjoy my buzz.  It was bad enough to have my therapist crawling around inside my head, I definitely didn’t want her there too.

“You’re making me into your pillow princess and I don’t like it.”  Ouch!  That hurt and I pulled my head out of the ether just long enough to scowl at her.  For that I kept the joint to myself, taking another long, slow hit and letting it wash over me.  It really was very nice weed, subtle with a sweet taste and aroma that lingered on my tongue and in the air.

“I’m not making you into anything.  I can’t help it if you’re reading into things.”  Oh geez, I really said that, huh?  Every time she tried to touch me I pushed her away, hard for her to not read into that.  Too bad I’m not talking to someone naive enough to buy into my crap.  Maybe I should just go back to the clueless twenty-something’s, I never had to have these conversations with them.

“Don’t bogart the fucking joint.”  She grabbed it from my hands indignantly.  “If you don’t want to share, which you obviously don’t in any way, roll your own.  And I mean that in every conceivable way.”  Well, this was going from bad to worse and doing it in a hurry.  I was starting to get mighty uncomfortable.  Why the fuck couldn’t she just accept things as they were and not feed her need to put some deeper personal meaning to it.  Whatever the meaning was, it had nothing to do with her anyway.

“Just because sharing for me is different than for you doesn’t invalidate it.”  There, let her chew on that for a while.  Hopefully long enough for me to start to muster up the energy to get the hell out of there.

“Oh bullshit.  Did you try to palm that crap off on Lani or did you let her touch you?”  She took a hit and handed the joint back to me.  “You know, that’s not even the point, I don’t really care how you were with her or anyone else for that matter.  All I’m saying is that this doesn’t work for me.”

“It seemed like it was working half an hour ago.  Unless you were faking it in which case I’m nominating you for an Oscar.”  Two points for me, I managed to ignore the question completely and put her on the defensive.  But it was a dumb thing to say and I knew it.  I took another hit and hoped she’d just let it go.  Wishful thinking for sure.

“Fuck you, Jen.  This isn’t about my orgasm and you know it.  There was a time when we were sharing those and fuck yeah, that worked for me, but this one-sided shit just doesn’t.  You wanna be a stone femme, go right ahead, just don’t expect me to still be interested.”

“Stone femme?”  Now there’s a loaded term if ever there was one.  So many possible meanings depending on who you ask.  I took another sip of water and handed the little that remained of the joint back to her letting my fingertips trail along her calf afterwards.

“Put whatever name you want to it but it comes down to the same thing, you want to give but don’t want to receive.”  Ok, a fair enough summation.  But I still didn’t know why this bothered her so much.  We both got out of it what we wanted.  Unless she was wanting something else, something I wasn’t in a position to give her.

“Why the fuck does any of this matter to you?”  There, I asked the real question.  At least it was the real question to me and let me frame it so this wasn’t so much about me as it was about her.  At least that’s how I saw it from where I was sitting which was far too comfortable to move from despite feeling like I really should run like hell.

“Because you get everything you want but I only get half of what I want.”  Screwed again.  Kind of hard to argue with that logic since it’s right on the money.  I should know better than to do this dance with a fucking lawyer.

“I can’t give you what you want.”  Could I make it any plainer than that?

“More bullshit.  You managed to do it quite well just a couple of months ago.”  True enough.  But that was then and this is now.  People change.  Their needs and desires change.  Confort levels change.  Why aren’t I allowed this the same as everyone else?

“Fine.  I can’t give it to you now.”

“Let me know when that changes.  Until then, I’m done with this.”  There was no malice in her voice, a touch of sadness perhaps but nothing of annoyance or irritation.  She was standing her ground while letting me stand mine, nothing more than that.  I couldn’t really blame her.  She’s a magnificent person, she deserves to get the things she wants.

I looked up at her as she tossed the remnants of the joint into the ashtray and watched as she lit her cigarette.  The smoke sat heavily in the air in front of her so she appeared to me now in a fog.  I felt sad.  She was a dear friend and I’d hurt her.  Not a mortal wound or anything approaching one but still, I knew very well how small cuts could accumulate.

“I understand, hon.  That’s your call.  But you do know this has nothing to do with you, right?”  A touch of panic, although I kept it undercover.  She was only talking about the sex, right?

“Of course I do.  We’ve known each other a long time, Jen.  I know you a lot better than you think I do.”  That was becoming rather obvious and it occurred to me that aside from Stephanie, I’d known her longer than I’d known anyone else.  I’d never thought of her this way before but she was truly an old friend something I didn’t really think I had.

“So we’re still friends?”

“Don’t be silly.”

She leaned forward, reached her arms out towards me and I responded in kind.  It was the warm embrace of friendship and I was near tears.  I hadn’t realized how important this relationship was to me until that very second.  The idea that I could have just lost her in this way sent a shiver through me.  For what, sex?  Obviously I could live without that, but I wasn’t so sure I could live without this.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want.  This was probably a bad idea from the start.”

“Oh pooh.  It served a purpose.  It wasn’t a mistake.  At least I don’t think so.  And I’m not closing the door on it happening again, who knows?”  She smiled at me and ran her hand across my cheek.  “But here’s a piece of advice from a friend, you can’t spend the rest of your life in love with a dead girl.  Not much mileage in that.”

I’ve been having trouble posting these days and I’m not exactly sure why.  It’s likely a big part of it is the extreme nature of my chemistry of late that’s keeping my mood hugely erratic and hard to hold for more than a few hours.  I’m constantly off-balance because of it.  The other part is that I write more personally here and there’s a lot of internal confusion about issues I just can’t seem to get comfortable with putting on public display.  I’ve done it twice and removed them both within a day.  It seems Stephanie might have been right, that my intensely private nature makes it pretty much impossible to really reveal myself openly in the way I can do with people as individuals.

I mentioned this little dilemma to another friend this afternoon and she had an interesting perspective.  She thought that I tend to be more prone to responding as opposed to initiating which is an accurate and insightful observation.  She wasn’t talking about writing but I think it applies just the same.  It’s not that there’s no writing going on, there’s actually more than usual but when I think about it in the context of what she had to say I see a valid point.  Pretty much all of it in the last few weeks is responsive.  Much of it is more political in nature and is either in response to a specific point needing to be addressed or more often, a specific topic someone has asked me to write about.  The personal writing is fairly similar, for the most part I respond to what someone has asked or a point they’ve made.  In the last two or three weeks I’ve only initiated one really personal mail which was a late night, angst ridden type of thing that certainly wouldn’t be something I’d post.  If I had written it to anyone other than that particular person I would have been hugely embarrassed.

I’m not sure what any of this means of portends for the future.  I know I retain a highly driven impulse that wants to write here yet when I do I’m uncomfortable with actually posting it.  It leads me to believe that a feeling I’ve encountered before is at play, one that comes from leading an isolated and solitary life and sometimes makes me want to shout, not for the benefit of others but to hear the sound of my own voice.  I also have to admit that a recent experience elsewhere on-line has reminded me just how judgmental and inflexible most people are.  And then there’s the practical reality that I’m very reflective at the moment but in order for any of that to makes sense the backstory is required.

I’m reminded of what a very dear friend had told me last spring when she and I first began corresponding.  She told me that when it came to talking about her history she had two reasons for not doing so, the first was that it was depressing and the second was that no one really wanted to hear it which was (and remains) exactly how I felt about my own.

Then again, all of these feelings at the moment may be chemically induced.  No way to ever know for sure.

I’m in therapy on Friday explaining that I’ve been feeling a pretty typical, fairly mild depression taking hold and mentioned that I was glad in a sense.  I’ve been rapid cycling for a while and it’s just really annoying.  For one thing, it really makes it hard to know which restaurant is right for dinner plans.  Not to mention footware.  Depression sucks.  Depression in four inch heels sucks even worse.  I do not feel pretty when I’m depressed and trying to just makes it worse.  But if I’m going to be popping into a little mania in a few hours I may want to go dancing.  This crap can really present some serious wardrobe issues so a straightforward cycle into depression would almost be a relief.  My therapist told me she was pretty sure I was the first patient to ever tell her I was happy to be depressed.  Ummm, well, yeah, ok, when you put it that way.

Apparently the cycling just needed a long weekend to take care of some personal business.  Or maybe it just missed me.  Either way it was back in residence Monday night.  Of course this is after therapy.

Tuesday I had a new experience, a full blown anxiety attack.  Paralyzing to say the least and it scared the crap out of me.  It happened in my driveway when I was trying to leave for work so I went back inside really, really shaken.  Now I’m not one of those people that thinks my therapist is my friend or a ‘life coach’ and I don’t call her to check to see if she thinks it’s alright for me to get my nails done.  But I thought this warranted a little jingle so I did.  I gave her the quick run down about what happened and how I was feeling incredibly scared to go back outside and that I wasn’t sure if it was really an anxiety attack or something else.  She assured me that it was indeed an anxiety attack.  Being the good little patient I’m trying to be these days I asked her what she thought I should do.  “Stay home.”  She went to school for that?

So today I’m back in session, mid-level depression and this is how it started:

“Still happy with your depression?”

“Oh fuck that, I was lit up like a Christmas tree this morning.”

“I warned you.”

“Did they really teach you ‘I told you so’ in whatever school you claim to have gone to.?”

“It was a correspondence course and no, that one’s mine.”

“Can I go now?”

“Sure, more cookies for me.”

At the end of October I had told her I’d be much more comfortable if she could be less clinical and loosen up a bit with me.  Maybe I need to rethink that.

Ok, put your thinking caps on, there’s going to be a quiz at the end so pay attention damn it!

Here’s the scenario and the progression of a day in the life of two girls.  You are there and watching the events but can’t interact with them directly.  Why?  Because!

You’re in a park on a lovely warm spring day.  Across the way you see two girls in their mid-thirties.  They’re sitting on a bench close to each other holding hands and talking.  Their clasped hands are in the lap of one of them.  Both are in jeans and flats, one in a hoodie, the other in a tailored jacket and tee.  As you watch you see clear signs of affection between them, they brush the hair out of each other’s face and will often run their fingers along the other’s cheek when they do.  After a while you see one rest her head on the shoulder of the other, immediately you see the arm of the other drape over the first pulling her close.  You can tell they’re still talking.  This goes on goes on for a little while, say half an hour or so.  Then they get up and embrace.  Their hands run over each other’s bodies although not in a blatant sexual way, more tender than that.  Then they kiss, on the lips, you’re too far away to see the level of passion but it’s a long, lingering kiss.  You watch as they walk out of the park holding hands.

Later that evening you’re out at your favorite gay club when who walks in but the two girls from the park.  My, isn’t that a coincidence?  They’re both dressed in decidedly femme style, one a bit more than the other.  One’s in a skirt and blouse with three inch heels, the other in a dress with four inch heels.  Now that you can see them more closely than you’d been able to at the park you can see they’re both quite pretty.  They come in and sit at the bar moving the stools to be close to each other.  They order drinks and you watch them as they imbibe, everything indicates they’re flirting with each other and it’s absolutely adorable, or repulsive depending on how you view that kind of thing.  They constantly touch, the requisite hair flips, they laugh and clearly are enjoying themselves and each other’s company.  Now and then a boi comes by but is always rebuffed.  As the night progresses you see them alternate between sitting either at the bar or a table together or dancing.  You pay particular attention to how they dance together during the slow songs.  Bodies pressed close, both running their fingers through the other’s hair and down their back.  The taller of the two often nuzzles into the neck of the other.  Frequently they kiss, sometimes on the lips, other times a soft, sweet peck on the cheek.  As the night draws to a close you see them leave, arm in arm walking in unison.

[Now this part is going to take some imagination and a leap of faith that you can both walk through walls and be invisible]

For whatever your reason you follow them home (ok, so I just made you a wee bit creepy, it’s ok this is an academic exercise so go with it).  You watch as they get out of the car together and walk into the house.  A few minutes later you turn on your invisibility and go up to the house and turning on your ability to walk through solid objects like the front door you enter.  You can hear them laughing and giggling from upstairs immediately.  You tell the voyeur in you to shut-up and take a look around the house.  Everything about it reeks of femininity.  There is no man-cave, no mahogany rooms with dark leather chairs, no ten foot wide screen and no sports anything.  If I guy lives in this house he’s gay.  Very, very gay.  It’s filled with soft pastels and floral prints, cut flowers in vases and house plants, and everything is in it’s place, neat as a pin.

Finally the voyeur in you wins out and you go upstairs where it has grown quiet.  You walk into the bedroom and before you see them you see two sets of clothes, including bras, laying over two separate chairs.  You look to the bed and see them curled up, facing each other, one brushing the cheek of the other with great tenderness.  They’re talking softly and you see the unmistakable look of adoring love in each of their eyes.  You smile, sigh wistfully and leave.

Ok, here’s the quiz…Define the relationship between these two girls for both yourself and the way you think most others would view it which don’t necessarily have to be the same.

I’ll tell you that there IS a right answer.