Not Me

I've spent most of my life with a sex life that's either been boring or something verging on awful.  And I have second-guessed myself a billion times about this.  I mean, after a while, you think, this has to be me, the common ingredient is me.

Well, maybe not.  Maybe it is about finding someone who's actually a good lover.  Surprise.  I mean, I have no relative scale here that makes sense.  There's just the first part of my life (boring and insufficient), the middle part (clueless and troubled), and the recent part (damaged and incompatible).  With Michael, especially... I mean, objectively, so many strikes against anything working out.  The physical issues, but even more than that, the mental issues that made his tastes fetishistic and extreme and made it so difficult for him to have intimacy of a kind that anyone else could recognize, at least during sex.  It makes me so sad to say that, to acknowledge the truth of that, one of the greatest losses in a marriage filled with loss.  I feel, always, that I am betraying him, and I say these things, and I remember when we used to sleep holding hands all night, and my heart just aches.

So long ago and not so long ago. 

But he always blamed me.  Because, I think, he could not listen to me.  Because he couldn't give me what I needed the most, the tenderness and affection.  Not in that context, because for him it was flashbacks to a childhood that was, at minimum, sexually inappropriate, and at worst... well, neither of us ever knew really.  So what was left was the lie.  The lie that it had been just fine with everyone else.  That it was only me who had a problem with how he was.  The lie that he couldn't acknowledge to himself.  I believe that to be the truth of it... but when you're told again and again that it's you, it's hard not to take it in a little.  Especially since I am not perfect and not free of issues of my own.

Writing these things is ripping my heart out.  But I don't know what else to do.  I write, and I write, and it has to be where I am clear because someone else might read, because otherwise... otherwise there is nothing that forces me to think about it, to put words that make sense down, and maybe, in the process, to exorcise the ghosts a little.

But today and yesterday.  My hair still smells like smoke, and I am achy and tired.  But it was good.  Better than the first time.  Even with my weird and disturbing claustrophobia at the end.  I don't want to think too much of that, make too much of it, make a problem where there is none.  I think that was just a result of my overthinking.  And the rest... really good.  And I was able to relax and love it.  And it feels like a validation, that all the things before it were maybe not me.

And that makes me want to cry, but then, everything does.