"To let go what must be let go"

I feel like I should be writing something here.

I've been writing reams and reams for the Sorcerer today, pieces that might have gone here except then I couldn't help adding on personal bits and then I gave them to him because really, they were for him all along.

I'm tired and floaty and my butt only hurts a little and Marko is beside me on the couch giving himself a very thorough tongue bath and I wish the man who owns and canes me were here.

OK, truth be told, I just wish that SOMEONE were here. We could push Marko over. There'd be room for a third.

In some ways, I'm quite happy being home alone with the cats. I'm exhausted, and tomorrow will be disgustingly busy until so late that it will be early, and I will be surrounded by more people than I will at times want to deal with. But I will have a position of responsibility and will not be able to hide myself away. So being alone tonight is exactly what I wanted.

And yet...

There are theoretically a number of options, all of which are in fact not options at all. They are all unavailable or inappropriate, busy or far away. There's my old lover, whom I now classify as a friend with whom I sometimes have sex (he agrees to this designation for the pair of us), who will be back out this way in November. We can celebrate the election outcome with our own fireworks after hours and hours of gentle, thorough, considerate, attentive love-making. The man is brilliant in a vanilla sort of way. But good natural vanilla is in fact quite delicious, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again.

There's my director, my collector, my tormentor, whom I would love to be with but who, I suspect, is not the sort of companion I need on a night like this. On the other hand, should he text me that he was sitting in his car in front of my house, I would immediately realize that he was EXACTLY what I needed on a night like this. On any night. On any day. He has that effect on me. I have suspicions that he hypnotized me the moment he turned up that first time and that's why, since then, my will has not been my own. But I don't care. I'm glad that he wanted to take possession and did.

Could be worse. He doesn't leave me barking like a chicken. (Yes, I know that makes no sense whatsoever, but that's what popped into my head so I let it out. Shows how really really tired I am. I shouldn't be allowed to write when I'm this tired. Because now I'm going to make a fool of myself.)

You know what I'm going to say now, don't you? You know whom I really need...

Is this going to happen every damn night I'm home alone with the cats?

I want to be quiet.
I want to be comfortable.
I want to snuggle up to you on the couch.
You'll be doing cryptic crosswords.
I'll be doing... it doesn't matter.
Maybe nothing.
I'll be swimming in the joy of being next to you,
in the joy of having you in my life.
I'll be admiring the haircut I gave you.
I'll be taking your picture
trying to capture in pixels what is you
as if knowing all along that this idea of
we, of us, was a mirage.

I miss you.
I need to let it go.
I keep thinking I have.
But I haven't.
I can't.

The evil egotist told me that I needed to have notebooks. So I bought them, and took one with me to High Holy Day services. Considering that every year I've been scrawling inspirational passages on any scrap of paper I could get my hands on, it was a remarkably sensible idea.

This year, a passage jumped out at me with accusatory relevance.

T'shuva/Repentance: to look within ourselves, to change what can be changed, to repair what can be repaired, to let go what must be let go.

"To let go what must be let go."

There are two things that I must let go.

1. my hatred for ex-hubby #2
2. my love for the philosopher

Well, maybe I don't have to stop loving him so much as let that love ease into something else. And mostly I need to let go of Hope. Let me focus my need for Hope on Barack Obama. And how convenient - Obama can take care of Change as well. I do need to get to work on this change business.

But I have to stop hoping that we will ever go back to being a we. I have to let it go.

I stun myself sometimes. I am thoroughly, properly obsessed with and devoted to the man who now guides me and teaches me and canes me and chokes me, who encourages both my writing and my submission. Yet I can switch in an instant from thoughts of the man who owns and hurts me to thoughts of the man who owned and loved me.

I touched myself last night. I was aroused from touching the canes and the chain, from hiding them away for company and then taking them back out again. I lay there on my bed, thinking of the fiend who has turned my life upside down, and I remembered the things he had done to me, I rolled the memories around in the mouth of my mind, tasting the sweetness and the burning heat, remembering the pain and delighting in the total lack of fear. My body was torn with desire and devotion and memories of serving him, and the twinges of lingering pain as I writhed on the bed brought back memories of his cruelty and aroused me even more. And his words and his deeds and his all-encompassing presence devoured me and I came and I came and I cried and I sobbed...

and as I sobbed, I cried out my love for the philosopher.

As I am crying now.

And if that isn't confusing, I don't know what is.

I'm tired.
I'm exhausted.
I have a long day tomorrow.
I feel like an idiot.
I long for two men and I want different things from each one.
And the fiend will read this and heap scorn on me
and he'll be right.
I need to let go.
It never could have worked
and I'm only hurting myself.
And the philosopher will read this and be sad
and he'll be right.
I need to let go.
It never could have worked
and he can't give me what
I can only hope
he wishes he could.

Time to go to bed.
Time to touch myself.
Time to burn with desire for the man I serve.
Time to cry for the man I can't have.
Time to cry
and eventually
time to let go.

And I will try NOT to think about this other passage I copied from our prayer book:

At this moment is the universe born.
At this moment, all things are possible.