Echoes from another life...
I have felt awkward contacting you since the new changes in your life because I really don't understand. I am very glad for you that you are happier now but find it difficult to grasp how that can be. I know it is not my business, but rather, your own personal choices and I accept that… Please tell me something about your life now and be patient with me as I try to understand.
Each time I get a message like this from someone that I knew before I made the decision to come and live with Master and T, I am faced with a dilemma and a set of choices.
These are echoes from a life that I left behind me. I made that choice with full knowledge that the break was likely permanent. I knew that there were so many who were dear to me in my former “vanilla” life, who simply would never, ever be able to comprehend the decisions I was making:
- Jeopardizing the marriage I’d lived in for nearly 28 years to create an incomprehensible relationship called “polyamory” with a couple who were themselves married.
- Involving myself in BDSM where I would willingly allow myself to get hit and otherwise hurt – isn’t that just abuse?
- Submission / slavery – what the heck is that all about? I’m a card-carrying feminist for Pete’s sake!
- Leaving friends and family behind to travel halfway across the country to live in a Godforsaken place like Cincinnati…
- Giving up a perfectly lovely home that I worked years to fix up and landscape and for what?
- Quitting a good job with no promise of another in the place where I was headed…
All of those decisions were made almost three years ago and most of the fallout has fallen. I’ve seen the results of the choices I made and settled, for the most part, into my new life here.
Still, every now and then, I’ll get one of these puzzled queries from someone from the past. They come from friends, from former in-laws, from people I once worked with – all folks I have lost touch with one way or another. Somehow, every so often, one of them will surface and ask the questions that must have been gnawing at them all this time – what and how and why?
I am always a bit taken aback. What is it, exactly that these people want to know now? Do I give them some sort of happy chatter that says something like, “I’m good and healthy and happy and well and hope you are too,” or do I take a deep breath and give them some fairly straightforward rendition of the facts? The truth is, I haven’t had a relationship with these people for all these many months. If I give them some sort of glossed over pabulum, they won’t be shocked, but we will still have no relationship, and whatever impetus led them to ask in the first place will be derailed (maybe forever). On the other hand, if I tell them the simple truth, maybe they will turn tail and run – or maybe not. With the facts laid out plainly and openly, my correspondent could maybe decide to take a deep breath, and ask another question or maybe two or three…
I might just gain a friendship renewed.
Sigh…
swan
posted by Sue @ 9:07 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Tough decisions... having never been in that position, I don't know how I'd answer. It does sound like they're interested in hearing the truth, though. Kudos to them, I guess, for trying to understand - and if they're shocked by your response, it's their own fault for asking, and in any account they're probably expecting it.
I agree with izabel. Tell them and be damned.
searabbit -- The decisions I made were made willingly and gladly, and I've gained much more than I lost. The dilemma is just in guessing what it is that people actually WANT to know when they send these strange missives after so long... Like you, we live our lives very hidden for the most part. People who see us in our daily "disguises" have no idea of what goes on behind our locked doors. It can be lonely sometimes. I have told some of it to my family -- my children know most of it and are fine. My mother, on the other hand, knows only of the fact that I have an unusual "family" configuration and is most definitely NOT fine. The only brother that I have any contact with, tends to side with my Mother. T's Mom is a very open and accepting and loving lady -- she doesn't exactly "get" us, doesn't have the details, but loves and welcomes me without any question, as do all the rest of T's family members. Master's clan: parents, kids, and the ex-wife seem somewhat reserved with me, not able to figure out what I AM exactly, but have seen me around enough to have just decided that I am part of the deal, and so I am almost always included... For us, the social gap comes in finding social connections that allow us to just be who we are without hiding and without pretense.
swan
As I read your post I found myself wondering why it was that I am one of those who understand without any difficulty what you are doing with your life - it just seems natural to me. Exactly how do these seemingly basic divisions among people come about? That's what I often wonder. And what's missing in those who cannot understand it? Why do they find it so hard to understand?
Upbringing is not the answer. I was raised in a very normal, fairly conservative home and have no recollection of anything out of the ordinary going on. Yet M/s, D/s, DD, BDSM and all the rest of them fit comfortably into my world view.
Malcolm, it seems that there are very few who are as open and as accepting as you are. Certainly, not within my family, and I believe (perhaps only because of the very conservative community here) not within the society in general. You are much more unique than you seem to believe.
swan
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