Back on a shelf
Up high out of reach

Afraid of the recourse
So she dares not to speak

Of the mind once let loose
When the spirit ran free

In a girl who felt empty
And wanted to be

So full and made happy
With choices her own

The world now expanding
And to later implode

Some decisions brought lightness
And others brought heft

This world so not perfect
Not all of us blessed

Now facing the future
With uncertain days

To live without peace
Or accept older ways

Her eyes showing now
Both favor and rage

Of that she was pardoned
And put back in the cage

~the laundry goddess, July 25, 2007

Dear Readers,

It’s been so long since I’ve sat down to write. It seems time has flown by at a break necking pace and as many blogs as I may have begun inside my head, there has always been a more pressing obligation to either the children or the house or some move related activity that keep me away from the keyboard.

We have been “knee-deep” into this move for just over a month now and I can honestly say it was unforeseeably monstrous and overwhelming beyond what I could have predicted. I find myself scattered, restless, and easily irritated. I have scrapes and bruises all over my body, and I’ve managed to inflame the carpal tunnel in both wrists. In a word, I’m exhausted. My normally sunny disposition is at best cloudy, sometimes downright stormy.

The most challenging part of the whole process (still underway, of course) is that nothing went as planned (does it ever?) and we got waylaid at practically every step of the process. What was supposed to be a fairly simple two week basement build in and some paint has now nearly tripled in time invested.

 Fix took off a week from work to begin the building process, which in actuality turned into two half-weeks divided by a week of work. Most of those days started at 8 or 9 am and lasted well into the night, putting us back in our beds after midnight most days. There seemed to be no end to the amount of laborious work.
 The former owner did not come through with some promises he made in the way of allowances and time schedules. This threw us completely off schedule and scrounging for operating funds of our own to complete the renovations.
 We experienced one of the rainiest Julys in many years. Under normal circumstances, rain in the summer is a good thing, but in this case, the resulting sauna like mugginess seriously slowed the drying time on both the drywall mud and the paint.
 The movers we hired did not complete the second day as scheduled and we now have the largest and most heavy items still at our other residence awaiting the completion of the basement so we can transport that furniture to its appropriate place, rather than in the garage with the first batch already in storage.

I found myself struggling with how to juggle the normal daily rituals and routines (and that alone is a full time job) and still be of use in the mammoth task we undertook in the renovating of our new home. No matter how much work there was pending at the new place, the need to stay on top of laundry and dishes and meals and packing still loomed at the old place. Between the rain and the unsettling of the nest, the kids were wound up and suffering serious cabin fever.

Thankfully, Big worked from home and most days, so he, along with an alternating older child or two, was able to maintain a modicum of standards in the Mommies’ absence. I cannot say enough wonderful things about a couple of friends that lent us some of their time to help – one with holding down the home front, another with painting and cleaning. Namaste.

Really, it isn’t as if it was all horrible. We have reaped some wonderful benefits through this process. Although everything isn’t perfectly finished and in it’s place, we are surviving together in the new house.
 The boys are happily camping out on mattresses on the dining room floor for another week until their area is complete.
 The younger girls are mostly moved in and unpacked and they have paint and paper and pretties on the walls.
 All the kids will have rooms that are theirs (two rooms are shared spaces) have been newly themed of their choosing. We’ve filtered out the extraneous belongings and are ready to keep our new spaces tidy and organized.
 There is so much light and bright in the new house, even our days with rain and thunderstorms have been enjoyable.
 The bank of windows around the house makes us feel more one with our outside, and the kids are more easily watched in their play space.
 Less but larger community spaces are giving us a better chance to really BE together while still supervising the activities and attitudes of all the children. Due to this, the Mommies are much more comfortable with the supervisory portion of their job.

Within a month the kids will be back to school, we’ll be complete with the renovations and be all moved in to the proper places, and hopefully all will be in route to some normalcy. In the scheme of the bigger picture, this will be just another slight bump in our lives. Just don’t ask me to do it again anytime soon.

~the laundry goddess, July 19, 2007

I have heard many times in my Christian upbringing, that the talents you possess is God’s gift to you, and what you do with those talents is your gift back to God. I think even now, as I dig further into my spiritual beliefs, I can agree with that statement. If the Creator can craft a being as exquisite as the human, or at the very least, institute a perpetual system of “intellectual design” that produces same, how vast must the universe truly be?

With that in mind, I am not of the sentiment that we are here alone on this earth with no other goal in life than to live it fully and then die, The End. In a world as marvelous as ours, I believe our spirits live on; that our souls have mission and purpose. Along those lines, it is my opinion that we are not to live cavalierly, but to reverently find our calling. Some people choose to serve others, and some choose to serve only themselves.

In this great big world of ours, what defines us as intellectual beings? What leaves our mark on the world when we pass? What sets one apart from the masses? What is the Measure of a Man? In this particular blog, I am not speaking hypothetically of “us” as humans, but I’m a little more pointedly speaking of men in particular – most specifically, the men to which I am attached.

I am certain growing up a single child of a single mother made me a most biased candidate for understanding the male psyche. I wasn’t around many men, there were none in my home, I had no brothers, and my mother socialized mostly with other single women, or the mothers of my female friends. This will significantly skew a young woman’s perspective of what to expect from the male gender.

All my impressions of men (as a child) are ghosts. They were images I conjured in my head of what a father should be, of what a husband should be, of what a man should be. All those “shoulds” are of my creation and it’s been a difficult jump from there to reality, so I’ve not always appreciated the differences between men and women. Yes, I realize the universe needs the balance of yin and yang, but somewhere along the line I’d prefer a little more congruency of character. I am fully of the opinion the choices a person makes in this life define him/her. “You are what you do. Your actions (and attitudes) define you.”

Big and I, on many levels, are complete opposites. I always gave way to the thinking that it balanced us as a couple on some cosmic level. Fix and I, on the other hand, are very alike in many areas, and differ vastly in the ones where Big and I tend to sync up. Now even more than before, when all is working well and all egos are in check, this makes for a very comfortable and stable harmony within our home and within our loving relationships. What I lack with one of “my guys,” I get from the other. During a challenging moment in one dyad, I have the other on which to rely. This is not always the case.

Before I dive headlong into my sigh of exasperation, (and really, when have I ever gotten straight to the point??) let me first state clearly that I believe all conflict is the result of both parties. The party of the first part says or does something that offends or assaults the party of the second part, BUT, the party of the second part always has the option of response. Whether a situation escalates is normally (but not necessarily) up to the party of the second part. So I am not heaping blame upon the heads of another without admitting I have some part to play.

Without pointing fingers or flogging the accused, let me merely say that in recent months, I have been disappointed in, and by, both “my guys.” One of them has let me down emotionally; the other has let me down in a more pragmatic way. Both hurt terribly, and probably most likely because I expected (and still do) far more of them than they seem to want or be able to give at any given moment.

Admittedly, I am a high maintenance woman. I am full of personality quirks and pet peeves and OCD tendencies. I am well aware of this and try (try, try) to keep them in check and under control – or at least apologize for them when they run rampant. In most cases, all my preferences can be overridden with a few well worded and well thought out negotiation tactics. However, there are a few “vital” issues on which I (desire to) stand firm. Due to certain discrepancies in my own up-bringing, I have a couple of needs. Not the type of need that is based on preferences. I am talking about down to the depths of my core emotional needs.

The first need is that of stability. This is fully entrenched with settling down, planting roots, building a life within a community where the children have good schools and life long friends. I am willing to bounce and travel as much as the quad chooses as soon as the children are all graduated from high school. Until then, I need to know we have a comfortable “home base,” that our basic needs are met without question, and we have a secured plan for the future. It’s not glamorous or adventurous, but it is a temporary decision in the grand scheme of things.

The second need I have is of commitment. I suppose it could be a stability based need as well, but when I make a commitment to someone or something, it is for the duration. I take my vows very seriously and I do not enter into it lightly. I need to know that words like “leave,” “separate,” “I’m done,” or the worst of them, “divorce” are never uttered. My heart cannot handle the emotional upheaval that comes along with dangling threats; threats that in my mind are not even fully meant, but being used as a weapon, daggers intended for wounding the tender and vulnerable places in this little girl’s soul.

Big likes to accuse me of holding grudges. I don’t know if that is totally accurate, or if it is something more along the lines of having a certain way of healing hurts within myself that functions better with a certain amount of isolation. Healing is a process, and try as I may, I have not yet been able to learn the skill of setting my wound to the side and not allowing it to effect my day to day moods. I have been charged with being a terrible liar. I have no poker face. And yes, I wear my heart on my sleeve. So when I hurt, it’s obvious to all those around me. That is far different than being blamed for “purposefully and happily sharing my misery.”

My challenge with my men at this point is I doubt their words of love, when their actions signify otherwise. The adage, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say” comes to mind. I know there are a lot of people who think this conviction is a form of manipulation; that I am exacting a certain response from them by using my moods to control. It may indeed seem that way, but my motivation is not control, it is self preservation. And it is not something I expect of those around me without being willing to give the same in return. If one of my loves has a strong emotional need in some way, I will do whatever I can to fulfill it, right up to the point of sacrificing myself (something I’ve done before and swore I’d never do to again.)

As an (almost) forty year old woman, I am evolved into something much different than I was at twenty. What I want for myself is different. What I expect from the relationships in my life is different. I am no longer willing to wrangle my hurts into a little box for safe keeping, and I am no longer willing to deny my true feelings their voice for the sake of peace.

Perhaps it’s my own fault for abdicating my right to oppose contrary behaviors in the past, but I find myself now in a position that resentment builds quickly when I feel pushed back into my “proper” GRITS box; when my mode of delivery is chastised. I’ve long since lived by the idea that one can communicate practically any message with a measured degree of tact. So why is it I feel only my sweet and loving self is accepted and pressing for accountability is rebuffed?

I suppose that in any relationship, how smooth and calm the waters are dictated by how you feel about yourself in another’s presence. Maybe I’m just that offensive to be around lately. Conceivably, I could be allowing the stress of the move and the overwhelming amount of work cloud my vision. But in my opinion, the measure of a man is how he treats those he claims to love and adore, and what actions he allows to represent his character.

~the laundry goddess, July 19, 2007

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” ~Samuel Johnson, English Literary Figure

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” ~Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

For 15 years I have loved my husband to the point of distraction. When I say that, I mean it in the literal sense. My love for him was and still is so very deep, that I overlooked many things. Things that in hindsight I realize were clue to an illness.

To the outside world we had a perfect marriage. We rarely fought or argued, unfortunately when we did it was not pretty, neither of us were good at communicating when angry, so it was generally very heated. We would make up and that would be the end of it for generally months. Arguing was not something we did, which, since we did it so poorly was a very good thing.

I had heard so many people for so many years , tell me that we had a perfect marriage, and how very lucky I was that I convinced myself that they were right.

Never once did I doubt his love for me, that was never in question. But what I did doubt was his happiness. As the years wore on he seemed to lose joy in the little pleasures of life. That’s not to say he walked around sour and morose everyday. But I could feel him “disconnecting” from me and our family.

I became convinced that if I were a better mother, a better wife, a better lover.. If I were a better housekeeper, or cook… if the children were better behaved or did better in school… then he would be happy.
I spent years trying to be a domestic Goddess and as perfect as possible. It was tiring and I drug myself down by beating myself up when I felt that I “failed” in my objective because he still wasn’t happy.

What I know now is that he suffered from depression and most likely has our entire marriage. He suffered many harsh realities as a child in a dysfunctional and abusive home. Much of which was hidden from me until these last recent months.

Within weeks of moving from our home state to live here with Goddess and Big, Fix suffered a nervous breakdown. With their strength and support we are healing. I say we because Depression does not just affect the individual, it affects the entire family. After his breakdown, much came to light and in his therapy and recovery we have had to re-evaluate our marriage, our life, and how we deal with each other. Not once in 15 years did I ever think we would not make it, that our marriage would not last. But over these 8 months, that question plagues me on occasion.

It is the strength of our quad that binds us now. The love of 2 other people and the blending of families to include 10 children now hold us accountable and cause us to fight harder for his recovery and our marriage than we ever thought we had the strength to do. We are healing, and Fix fights his demon of depression every day. Some days are great and we all fly thru unscathed. Others are not so pretty. But we take each day and each challenge as it is presented and face them head on.

Blending 2 marriages, 9 children and years of histories with joys and hurts is in and of itself a monumental feat. Many quads don’t make it. We have the added challenge of Depression to fight. But fight it we will.

With each passing day I become more convinced that this lovestyle choice is the correct choice for me, for us. I am more fulfilled and happier than I have been in years. It has become glaringly apparent that it is fundamentally unfair to expect that one single person can fill all of the needs a person has. They can fill enough, that for the most part you can be happy and fulfilled .

Is there some law somewhere that says you can’t want more, you can’t have all of your needs met ?? For 15 years, Fix and our children have been my world. I have been happy and I could have spent the rest of my life at this level of happiness. But now, with the love of 3 people each touching a part of my personality the others can not, I am deeply at peace with the person I am now and the way in which they each color my world.

I have Fix, the man I share a history with, the father of my children the keeper of my heart. Mr. Big, the man who challenges my mind , has shown me other worlds exist and makes me want to reach for the bells of success. And finally Goddess, my soulmate, the one human on this earth that knows me better than any other, the woman who has caused me to look at life in a whole new way.

As we move thru each day and each challenge it is the love that sees us thru. We each are committed to seeing this thru until forever.

Temptress

Ghosts of our Pasts

I find myself pondering about the past life experiences of the poly women in my life, which may have given them more of an inclination towards poly. I have more history with Laundry Goddess than Temptress so most of these thoughts involve LG. I expect when I finish this exercise, these ideas will be considered for a moment and then tossed away with a “nah, that’s not it”. But sometimes, they turn out to be true or they start a conversation that leads to the truth.

When Laundry Goddess and I got married at the ripe old ages of 22 and 20, I found myself trying to measure up to a ghost that never was. It was like the line from “TopGun” when Cruise is talking about his father and is asked “Is that why you are always second best up there?” Many guys feel they have to measure up to the man their father is; I suddenly felt I had to measure up to the man that my wife’s father wasn’t. He had left when she was three years old and had done a poor job of even being an absentee father from 500 miles away. Laundry Goddess was looking for a mate that would treat her children much differently. She needed me to be there the ways he wasn’t. The few times he has visited in the last 20 years has seemed to turned my wife back into the little girl that still hopes her daddy will be there. She has been described by Temptress as a Faberge Egg. The title has proven very fitting at many times in our life together.

Our very first date was twenty years ago today. A mutual friend-girl had introduced us a couple of months earlier. After several failed attempts at asking her out myself, the same friend-girl decided to invite us both to the same movie. The weird catch was she also invited another girl I had actually dated before a couple of times. After four of us caught a late showing of “The Witches of Eastwick”, the friend-girl insisting on the two of them being dropped off first, setting me up to be head over heels in love and engaged within a few weeks. We made it official and public on our one year dating anniversary. We were so young that we had to finish raising each other. I’m not opposed to drinking alcohol. I’ve just had so few chances to do so because LG has been underage, pregnant, or nursing most of our lives together.

Overall, I have been fairly pleased in my abilities as a husband and father to my family, but areas in need of improvement are often pointed out. I’ve bruised her many times over the years often out of ignorance or stupidity. Many of these mistakes are etched permanently on my conscience no matter neither how many times I apologize nor how repentant I am. The question I find myself asking is has LG chosen a poly lifestyle because I failed to keep her believing in me? When she says, “I’m fine with you having friend-girls. You’re going to do whatever you want to anyway” does she really mean that she has been hurt by my actions so much in the past that she refuses to count on me to measure up to that ghost any more? Knowing that Temptress has been through similar situations, is one of the reasons we are now a quad because both women were no longer willing to be positioned where they had to count on their husband in life? I’ve asked these questions of both women and still find myself unsure if they even know the answers themselves.

Even the little day to day things can really stack up. Little issues and hurts that have built up over the years seem to bubble up and really accent our original mate’s flaws. “What If” is a terrible mind game because the challenges we’ve all gone through can’t be taken away without also taking away the good things that have come alongside as well. How many polyfolk have come to this lifestyle because they had been let down enough times before by people that mattered to them, that they were no longer willing to put all of their expectations on any one individual. Is polyamory, for some, an attempt to heal such a lifelong wound? A more positive spin would be “out of every adversity is the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

I’m envious of the obliviousness of those souls that are happily still expecting to get everything they need from one soul mate. I miss the magic of the season brought on by believing in Santa and the Easter Bunny. As my friend, Firegod, is fond of saying, you can’t un-know something once you know it. Maybe going your whole life without having experienced this enlightenment allows you to still hope for the perfect monogamous relationship where one person can be your all in all. Maybe ignorance is in all actuality, bliss. I still prefer having the knowledge though. In less than two months, I will have spent more time with the Laundry Goddess than I have without her in life. For me then, bliss will be another 20 years with not just her but with Temptress and Fix as well.

~Mr. Big; 7/10/07