Stairway to Tether

The last 3 nights were so disgusting.

Was it one night?

I remeber leaving with a nauseous rage.

In this moment I don't even recall what straw broke the camel's back. "I'm not attracted to you..." "I think so..."

Stupid.

I have a sense that a lot of hyper masculine men use women in a comforting way. But build relationships and trust and longevity with men.

I am seeing how my typical gender confusion in high school played out. I felt like a boyfriend would fill a gap.

Now I see the gap is a gap and not a partnership

That's to say. I may view partnership in a hyper feminine way, where my trust and longevity belongs to women and LGBT members, but my comfort and desire lies in men.

The antithesis of what I view these hyper masculine archetypes to be performing. I am antithesising the men I seek.

Is there a safe way I can operate like this?

Is there a cover or acceptable way to present a casual use of men?

So I am 29, in my second serious relationship that is challenging me, and I want a goal for my 30th birthday that is entirely self oriented.

So I grew up in North Vancouver, which is at the base of a few mountains. On Grouse mountain there is a hike called the grouse grind. It is advertised as "god's stair-master". And I have never hiked it. Most people I grew up with did it at some point, but I was never keen on fitness. I actually hated running, which I still do... and would avoid anything of the sort.

I've decided I want to do the grouse grind for my 30th birthday. Pick a more and more challenging hike each month until May, then do the grind and see the bears that live up there.

When the tethers snap, you can imagine snapped electric cables in an electric storm. Zaps of lightning and the tethers writhing.

Writhing really is the word. My heart was shattered, but it wasn't, it's like the resin amber of our relationship that had grown over my heart had exploded. But inside my heart, the emerald cut emerald that is my heart was exposed.

A little explanation about my heart. I started learning about chakra meditation from a yogi I have the privilege to listen to every week at my job. She taught me about chakra meditation and how the chakras connect to organs and emotions.

One day I started drawing my chakras after I was done the meditation and I started to discover them inside of me. My root was a small red ball, my sacral was an orange wash of watercolour, my sacral was like non-existent. My throat charka is shackles, I'm still working on connecting to her. My third eye ached with ignored intuition, and my crown was a slim chain around the top of my head. My heart, a throbbing nuclear glow around my emerald cut emerald, a hard rock covered in slime. Connecting visually and emotionally with these energy centers has been my first look at my physically emotional reality. Only just now writing this I almost feel like this particular drawing exercise helped me brave the conversations that lead to the split.

My heart wasn't cherished, it probably still isn't, but I'm learning to open to the right people. But now I know what she looks like, she is always there. My root chakra has transformed to more of a watercolour, my sacral is a spinning orange with Saturn rings, closer to what I feel my alignment should be, they're all settling into my awareness.

So I wanted to write about the exposed wires. I realized how raw and exposed I was, and created a bowl of safety for myself. I moved in with my parents, I built a breakfast, lunch, dinner, routine, I committed to my work.

I took a week off, which was supposed to be our vacation, he probably took her. OOOh still bitter. I got norovirus. I had no where to hide and nothing to distract myself.

Completely cracked open, pissing shitting crying and puking. I started walking my dog on bigger hills and deeper in the woods, I indulged in art, I watched TV and movies, I found peace.

But I felt alone and desire, a gap I wanted to fill.

When my 8 year relationship ended in 2024 I told my therapist I felt like my whole life was tethered to him. It was like every tendon in your body lets go and snaps up to contact point. One by one, my emotional tethers snapped from the ground and waved, flailed, danced and cracked up into the air.

I knew I had made a mistake. I had invest myself into another person in a damaging way. Many people in my life saw this as par for the course, the standard of navigation. Find someone you wanna fuck, fuck 'em, and stay with 'em forever.

Okay, so no one in my life said that, but the way I perceived life it was the message I carried. Seeing so many major relationships around me fitting this rubric of first love and love forever. So from the jump I thought it was what my life would be. When I met Kevin I was just excited to feel a connection with anyone. I had gone through all of high school agonizing over the desire for romantic interaction. Obsessing, festering, dreaming, jerking. When there was a boy who was attractive and silly and interested in me, I was stuck.

A month in, we lost our virginity to each-other. I was just beyond happy to have a physical relationship, and I felt drawn in by his unique mind. If you really know me, you would know that I am going to find the most interesting person to interact with. So for me to be obsessed with a man with insane reading retention and memory makes more sense than I feel I can express. I thought someone with difficult family members would be able to handle my rough side. Boy was that a misguided assumption. It lead to major avoidance and a totally embarrassing degradation of our almost decade long relationship. Like the whole time he was just trying to keep me happy, doing the same thing I was doing, trying to play the part of first love, love forever.

Sad part? He left me for someone, which was for some reason my biggest fear. Probably because I started to want to move on, but my trauma wouldn't let me. I started taking meds, I started going to therapy, I knew I had to make a change. The better I started to feel inside, the more I realized our years were a lot emptier than I wanted. And the more he pulled away, indulging in the avoidance reality.

Catching him masturbating, watching him on his phone for 4 hours in bed at night next to me, never having a good time when it was an activity or event I was invested in. The support was fake, it was put on, it was obliging by our own poor expectations of each-other.

So lets get to the part that cuts deep. I started my journey, but didn't know the most important part was out of my hands. in 2023 he started forming a friendship that crossed my boundaries. I told him, tell her to find other people to talk to, it's not appropriate in our relationship. He continued to writer paragraphs to her, constant Instagram meme sharing, they did martial arts together.

I was out and she was in, there it was plain in front of my face, he loved her and I was a burden.

Don't forget we lived together, had a dog, and filed taxes together at this point...

Valentine's day 2024 came around, and I was fed up, we had plans and I felt uncared for. We cried, I smashed a can, grasped ice, and still went to our valentines day date... late....

It was over, but it wasn't, it was "I don't know"

A week or so later I said, I'm going to go stay with my parents for a few days.

When I came home, I asked him if he still wanted to be together, he said "I don't think so".

More context? I was still 100% invested in making it work, "we can do couples therapy, we can find the spark" grasping at invisible straws.