Suddenly, I was crying.
I pulled the front of my hoodie up over my eyes and pressed it to my face to dry the tears.
I stayed that way, hiding behind the fabric, for several minutes.
I took long, deep breaths and told myself to steady.
Finally, I came out again, but as soon as I spoke, my voice cracked and a fresh flood spilled forth.
“I'm just scared that it's not going to get better,” I sobbed pathetically, covering my face in my hands. “What if it never gets better? What if it's always like this?”
“Aw,” he said. “You didn't do anything wrong.”
“What if that's worse? What if I did something wrong and I could just stop doing that wrong thing and then it would be better? But if there's no wrong thing to stop doing, then it's just always going to be like this.” Every word blistered and peeled from my lips with jagged, torn edges.
My eyes burned with hopeless fury.
“We don't get to decide who we are,” he said. “We just have to make the best with what we have available to us.”
“I'm just afraid I'm always going to be a drain on everybody around me. I feel like you're treading water, trying desperately to keep us both afloat, and I'm this massive dead weight that is constantly about to pull us both under. And I'm afraid I'm going to drag you down with me.”
For a moment, his voice cracked also. His face filled with sadness and remorse.
“I know you’re trying…”
“What if it’s not enough? What if it will never be enough?”
This was in between bouts of posting all sorts of things from the sweet and wholesome to the naughty and depraved.
In fact, immediately before this, we had been in one of the public chats together talking about… all kinds of stuff… in front of everybody.
Things that were fun.
Things that were giving us both a rush of dopamine.
We played with power structures.
We played with selfishness.
We played with different types of giving.
We played with different ways of experiencing each other.
…and we played in front of others, inviting them into it. Inviting them to be participants. Wanting them to participate. Wanting to give them the same rush we were feeling.
Wanting to share.
Then, privately, he messaged me about being happy with us and his brain still not being able to believe that all the events from earlier that morning had really happened.
“Yeah... mine, I think bounced it right out: ‘Surely, he was joking... Surely he doesn't actually want that... Not this soon... Not at this distance... He doesn't know... He's just saying that…’” I responded.
“I understand, but I do absolutely want it. I want to be your team mate and partner as long as I possibly can. I want that more than I want to do naughty things to your body, and that's a high level of want....”
We’ll say his name is ‘Felix.’
But then the implications of that morning briefly hit me - reality breaking in here and there like rays of sunlight piercing through the clouds.
“I’m so scared, Felix. What if I don’t know how to be a partner? What if that’s why I’m 38 years old and I’ve never been engaged before? What if there’s a reason for that? And what if that’s the reason?”
“I understand you're scared, I'm scared too, but not about those things... you already are my partner. I know you try your best every day and we're figuring out what works best for both of us. Life is messy, things aren't always going to be perfect, but I know you care about me so deeply, and I feel the same way about you. We will figure it out together, one step at a time,” he said.
“But why am I always the catastrophically broken one??? Why am I always needing you so much? In so many ways? And I just feel like I take and I take and I take. And my fear is that that will never end.”
And that’s when my skin got hot, my lips began to pout, and I felt panic as a surge of sobs threatened to spill from my body.
I took deep breaths.
I blinked up at the ceiling to gravitate the tears back into my eyes and not out onto my face.
I tried like fuck to calm myself down.
But then it happened anyway.
