Queen of Swords

Just back from KinkFest (my first time there), which was an incredible, sacred time -- and so much easier than Pantheacon!

I attended with the new man in my life, to whom I am both lover and priestess -- a delicate situation in many ways, but I don't know of any other way (at this time) to do the work I was called to with him. And he is giving me so much in return: enabling me to experience love and passion and touch again after my many years of grief and isolation. LM is still my husband, but X is indeed my lover and my friend. He's doing a lot of hard work -- "Grasping the nettle" as my own teacher would say -- and it's inspiring to watch his courage and commitment. And he's fun to be with too.

Last night and this morning I was given a special blessing by him. Without going into too many TMI details, he taught me a way to experience pleasure that is entirely new to me. Even my beloved LM and Michael, as skilled as they were, did not do this kind of subtle, focused, amazing kind of stimulation while telling me to "relax" and "float" and "just ride it."

This Queen of Swords, despite being very passionate and a sexual submissive, has not been very good at letting go sexually, much to my own frustration and often that of my partners. X has opened up a whole new way for me to experience and process pleasure that makes "letting go" far less of an issue.

It was amazing.

Or did I mention that?

Anyway. . . in the midst of this exquisite pleasure this morning I started laughing -- which threw X off at first, but I assured him all was well. I kept laughing on and off until we were done, and then I explained to X what was so damn funny. . . .

My primary elements are Air and Fire. I don't have a lot of Earth and -- as many of you know -- I can be downright hostile with Water. (And it's been mutual at times, as the multiple floodings of my old basement home can attest.)

A year or so ago I was having a phone conversation with my teacher and Scotty, one of her inner world contacts. I forget the topic of conversation that led up to it, but Scotty told me, through my teacher, that it was probably time I started coming to terms with Water. My response was "Oh no!" and a surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline.

Well, it turns out that X has a lot of Water in him, and the experiences he gave me during the past 24 hours were very much Water-aligned. And it was so very wonderful. And as I was lying there in bliss I remembered that conversatio with Scotty and had to laugh at how sneaky -- and generous -- the gods can be about Their lessons.

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I like hearing about ex's. I find that the tone with which a person speaks about their previous relationships, and the way they assign responbility for how things ended up, says a lot about them.

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No one is going to be surprised by my response to this. . .



I believe in the concept of a soulmate because of my experiences with uncrowned_king. I have no idea if everyone has a soulmate or not; I only know that I do.

Prior to Lohain, I did not believe in soulmates. Instead I focused on the wonderful richness of having intense and meaningful love relationships with a variety of different people. I was polyamorous and happy with it (once I figured out what polyamory was!).

Being with Lohain changed that. I never made a conscious decision to stop being polyamorous -- and maybe other things might have turned out to be less painful if I'd had that self-awareness. Instead, over time, without fully being aware of it, I turned more and more to him because what I shared with him was simply 'more' than even the wonderful things I was experiencing with LB.

Even now, more than two and a half years after his death, having pretty much come through my grieving process, I have a hard time imagining love, romance or sexual intimacy with anyone else -- even though sometimes I long for it more than I can say.

Because of what I experienced with uncrowned_king, I have a hard time imagining that one's soulmate "gets away." Part of what was so extrordinary with him was the mutuality of it. The only way I can imagine someone being able to walk away from that would be if they were already married or in some other way bound by a lifelong oath and were not free to fully engage in the relationship.

I had an important realization the other day, and have been working through the various implications since then.

I realized that I miss the feeling of being cherished, of being an important priority to someone else, of having someone else take delight in simply being around me and making choices to be with me and share with me rather than doing other things.

This realization is rooted in processing I've been doing around romantic relationships, but I gradually realized that it had implications beyond that. I've experienced it most vividly in romance, but it's also a quality of close, active friendships.

I don't have many close, active friendships these days.
I don't have any old friends whom I see regularly.
I have only a couple of friends who I feel I can call up any time, for any reason or no reason at all -- and they are all long distance.

This situation is very much my own responsibility.

I’ve been very indrawn over the past couple of years due to my grief. I haven’t had much energy for cherishing anyone else, and I certainly can’t blame others for not investing energy and emotion in me if I haven’t been in a position to reciprocate. Black holes are not fun to hang out with, and they're emotionally exhausting.**

The only way to change that is to start cultivating my old friendships again and building new ones -- and making sure that I'm more focused on giving and being available than I have been.

I do know that I have friends who sincerely care about me.
I am not boo-hooing that "nobody cares".
This is about having let the ties that bind go slack from my side and wanting to change my behavior.


I'm never going to be someone who spends a lot of time "out and about."
I'm still an introvert with limited social energy.
I don't know what the best balance of "me" time and "friends" time will be.
But I do know that if I keep hoarding my emotional resources the way I have been I'm going to end up with very few friends at all.


I'm really hoping that is not coming across like a whine, nor as if I'm fishing for reassurances that people care about me. I do know people care. This is about me taking responsibility for feeling lonely, and deciding to do something to change that.


** oakmouse deserves several dozen gold medals for hanging on with me through the worst time of my life.

Yesterday I received a Facebook invitation from the ex-lover (RP) with whom I have the most unresolved business. Our past relationship was extremely volatile, and our tentative can-we-spend-time-together-again? interval several years ago started with a lot of kissing the first time we found ourselves alone and ended with me not responding to the last email I had from him because I felt that he was ignoring the concerns I had been expressing.

Then there's the matter of probable old business from at least one previous life, and possibly more, given that it's quite possible that his roots go back to the same place/time that LM and I do. In fact, he's someone I'd wished LM had met during his life, so I could check out that hypothesis more thoroughly -- but RP and I were not speaking at that time.

As I've said, Sunday was the anniversary of LM's death, and the processing around that also resulted in the processing of my grief about Michael, and releasing a lot of the pain I've been carrying around (and in denial about). Yesterday we were on chat together and he didn't mention the email I sent him, but we did spend about an hour 'talking' and having a good conversation otherwise. Of course, it was 2am for him when we started, so he might have been too strung out mentally to compose a good response -- or he may not feel like it needs a response. Part of my letting go of him is being surprisingly okay with the latter.

The email notification of RP's Facebook friends request came through just as Michael and I were finishing the chat. We're currently discussing where to have lunch next week.

I have no interest in or desire for a romantic relationship with RP -- but I have missed his friendship. He earned the same graduate degree I did from the same program, and his spiritual path is more resonant with mine than anyone else that I know locally. If we can be friends without triggering spontaneous mutual combustion, it would be A Good Thing. Or maybe it would be A Good Thing for me to fully release him as well. I don't know yet. But it feels like there is a lot of "stuff" that we haven't worked through yet that needs to be resolved.

I have the distinct sense that Someone has a clipboard with a list of unfinished business and tests with my name on them, and that She just checked off the one that says "Michael" and then gave RP a poke in my direction.

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In my experience, the most important quality of a significant other is his ability to make it safe for me to be utterly open and honest, and then to accept, embrace, and love all of what I have revealed of myself.

In contrast, I keenly remember a moment during my courtship with my now-ex husband. I had confessed a rather shameful secret to him, and he had listened with acceptance and forgiveness (even though the transgression had not been against him). It was such a relief to be able to tell this sordid truth and not be rejected, and I thought I could tell this man anything and he'd forgive me.

And that was true.

I realized far too late that "accepting and forgiving" is not the same "accepting and loving."

My sweet husband who could forgive anything could not accept and love certain parts of myself that were necessary for me to thrive.

It was Lohain and Lee who showed me just how liberating -- how intoxicating -- it is to be loved in every dark and secret corner of myself. That is a gift I will always cherish, a revelation and a realization that sets the standard for my expectations of all relationships going forward.

1a A great review with my boss yesterday.
1b A nice bonus coming on Friday.

2. Having enough income last year from Lamp/Mirror and Spiritual Direction to have to file a business tax return. (Didn't make enough to owe anything.)

3. Lunch with kateri_thinks today.

4. Good conversations with Wolfling

5. Re-reading American Gods and enjoying it much more the second time.

6. Crushing happily on someone who uses words like "beguiling" to describe me.


The last is also a bit unnerving, I must admit -- but I'm keeping it light, and he lives seven time zones away from me, so I'm simply enjoying our exchanges as a gentle way to open myself to erotic/romantic energy again. There should be a post in the relatively near future about my personal history with and reflections on polyamory.

Someone asked

I know you are hoping to date and fall in love again. what can you tell me about what you are seeking from a potential partner?

When I read this, my first thought was You're mistaken. I never said that.
The thought of loving anyone else, being partnered with anyone else, feels like profound infidelity.

And yet, I can easily imagine I did write that, or something close to it, at some point over the past year and a half.

The fact is, I'm back where I was three or four years ago: I'm not looking for anyone, but I'm aware that the universe can throw some amazing curve balls. uncrowned_king is still deep in my heart, still a living reality for me, and I simply can not imagine giving my heart to anyone else. But I've learned to never say never.

I start to try to imagine "what I would look for in a potential partner" and everything leads right back to uncrowned_king. I can't imagine sharing with someone else what is so deeply associated with him: a spiritual connection, a temperment that complements mine, a friend who sees and loves every part of me, someone who enjoys similar activities but who broadens my world with new interests. . . someone I feel safe with, who I believe will stand beside me and protect me -- and let me protect him when appropriate.

I want a warrior-king who honors and cherishes, delights in and lusts after his queen-priestess.

I'm not sure how many of those there are in this world.

Or if I have room for another one in my heart if I do find one.

1. I am fortunate enough to have several ex-boyfriends/lovers as good friends.

2. Personal inventory processing continues. Good stuff coming up. This weekend will be focused on framework and prioritization of fundamentals and goals.

3. Motherhood = leadership.
It's not only equal to leadership, but a lot of the principles of leadership apply, especially that of leading by example.

4. I use approximately 20% of my brain at work and still garner lots and lots of praise. This scares me.

5. I need to make social plans with friends at least twice a month. It's scary that I've been doing so much less for so long.

6. I have a couple of essays/reflections to type up and share.

7. I love LOL's. They keep me sane at work. (See #4 above.) I know I just posted one yesterday, but that was mostly for someone else. This one is for me, in fond memory of Steve Irwin:





8. Learning from my own mistakes is good. Learnig from the mistakes of others is even better. In the latest case, it prevented me from striking out in pain at someone else. Instead of assuming that the silence was all about me, and a rejection of me, I asked what was going on his the other person's life that interrupted our conversation. Guess what? It had nothing to do with me.

9. Lots of intense, meaningful dreams in the last few days, death and bears featuring most significantly.

Also: this image, which pretty much sums up my last week. . . .

The elementary school play wasn't so bad last night. It helped a lot that it was held in a multipurpose room and I got the seat in the back corner next to the window so I could read and not be obnoxious about it for the time before the show and then an hour or more into it. Then I could read my gadget without casting the light onto other peope. But I *did* pay some attention, and thought the kids did a great job. They're very poised and articulate at that school. There was a long series of dancing flowers, and each dance was from a different culture, so that was cool. Some of the costumes were amazing. My Wolfling was very proud, and rightly so.

Yesterday afternoon I still hadn't heard back about my interview, so I emailed the recruiter saying The hiring manager told me last Thursday that she'd get back to us by the first of this week. It's Thursday and I haven't heard anything. Can you give me a status report? She wrote back with a surprised apology, saying that she hadn't heard anything either! And since it's the recruiter who actually creates the offer letter, this means that I was wrong in my guess that they were already negotiating with someone else. So that possibility remains open.

I'll be going on the award trip to Florida alone. I invited four different people, each of whom had a good reason to decline, and refrained from inviting a few other folks who I like but don't think I'm up to spending four days in a hotel with.

Going through this process was emotionally intense, since it raised a lot of grief issues around the loss of both the love relationships I was involved with at this time last year -- and especially because I first said "I love you" to one of them the night before the first of these trips two years ago. That whole trip became a celebration of coming back to life emotionally, and I will always be grateful to kateri_thinks for her companionship and graceful spiritual direction during that time.

Eventually I have been able to center on the fact that I am an introvert, and there are worse things than having a luxury hotel suite to myself for a few days. I'm approaching it in the spirit of retreat. There will be corporate things to do: a for-form's-sake "business meeting" that will be a bit of rah-rah, a couple of organized activities which will be fun, but a lot of free time to myself. I expect to take advantage of the latter.

It's Friday. Wolfling's dad will be picking her up before I get home from work, and I'm looking forward to a productive weekend of doing my taxes, doing some ritual experimentation and spiritual studies, continuing the process of sorting my files (I finally found and figured out what to do with my various filing furniture), and generally getting things in order.

Have a good day, everyone!