Struggling

The sadist loves that word.
Struggling.
He loves to know that I'm struggling.
Struggling with a poem.
Struggling for air.
Struggling against the pain.
Struggling against my love.

Struggling against my love when it's love for him. He takes a sadist's pleasure and a narcissist's satisfaction from my love for him. It's another chain with which to bind me. Food for his confidence.

But that hasn't been the problem this week. My demon muse has been bound by chains of his own, the chains of his life, and hasn't had much time for me. There were few protective reminders that I am his, that I have work to do, exercises to practice to prepare me to serve his carnal desires. He allowed me to write for him once - over the weekend I think, I can't really remember, my mind has been working so badly.

The sadist isn't the only demon in my life.
There are others... thoughts... emotions...
trolls, hiding beneath the bridges of
my brain and my heart, waiting
to leap out at me. Waiting
to startle me. Waiting to
make me lose my balance.

I lost my balance this week
and I almost drowned.

Maybe it was the changing of the seasons, causing the earth to shift on its axis, leading me to lose my footing. Certainly the cats were acting strangely, fighting fiercely, growling and hissing and then maintaining an aura of wariness when they joined each other on what I foolishly once thought was a chair I had bought for myself.

Perhaps it was a manic spell. Except that I was too depressed for that, with a fragile balloon of sadness and tears nesting just beneath my throat.

Maybe it was just my broken heart.
Nothing more than that.
A broken heart demanding attention.

I wanted so badly to write him. I wanted to write him and say that I missed him desperately (bad idea) and that I hoped he was doing well (maybe ok) and now my glasses are fogging up and it's becoming hard to see the screen and there were things I wanted to share with him, such as the outcome of the work of the committee I was on and the clever April Fool's spoof that Gmail posted yesterday.

I struggled.
I struggled against temptation.
I struggled against temptation
with few words from my owner
to reel me back to sanity.

In the end, I couldn't resist. But I didn't completely fall. I knew that if I wrote him he wouldn't answer but would himself be thrown off kilter and I do/did/who-knows love him and want to give him peace.

So I went back to craigslist.
To craigslist in his city.
In his part of his city.
And I left a note in a hollow tree.
I stuck a note in a bottle
and threw it out to sea.

I wrote a very short post, w4m, with a name in the subject line that he would know was for him. And a short quote from a book, with a number, an age, altered to make it refer to him.

He didn't respond.
He probably hasn't seen it.

Later, I realized that if I really want him to see I should put it in Rants & Raves, which I know he reads. But I put it in w4m. Just in case...

He didn't respond. But a small handful of other men did. It was clearly much too esoteric to land a big haul, even in a city that size.

Some of the answers I ignored. A few were from men who seemed nice and/or intelligent and/or interesting, so I was honest and explained that the post was a message for one man, that I was suffering from a broken heart, and that I lived outside our nation's capital. I had an interesting conversation with one man, eventually discovering that we have a common interest, at which point I referred him to FetLife. It's amazing and sad how many married people are silently nursing their secret needs.

Another man turned out to live just a couple of hours south of here. He is smart, a writer, intriguing, having grown up abroad, and somewhat secretive. Of course, it turns out he's married but living apart from his wife. And eventually the talk was all of sex (no, he's not kinky) and then he was wanting to make plans for the weekend, and then he was acting like a child who couldn't accept the idea that this weekend was to be MY weekend, I had earned it over the last month of meetings and interviews for my committee, and no, it wouldn't be enough for me to have Saturday and then he would come up and spend the rest of the weekend in bed. "Now, Mommy! I want it NOW!!" Men are such babies...

So I wrote to men during the day yesterday as I fought the grief and longing and struggled with love and loss of concentration, which makes me think it was largely hormones, because I was dropping things and bumping into things and struggling with a headache, and finally when I came back to work after lunch home with the cats I drove the car head on into one of the supporting posts in the underground parking garage.

Not on purpose.
And not very fast.
But you know what cars are like these days.

It's not too bad. I was going very slowly. I didn't report it to insurance because I have a big deductible and then they raise your rates anyway until, it seems, you've covered everything they paid for the repairs. I'll take it over to my mechanic to check for internal injuries but mainly I'll just live with it.

Still.
I'm pissed with myself.

I drive into things every so often.
I lose focus.
And I don't have stereoscopic vision.
I need a chauffeur.
The kind Memphis Minnie was after.
One who won't drive anyone around town but me.

I lose focus.
I mess up.
But at least I didn't write the philosopher.

Not yet.

And now the cats are friends again. They're both in the chair, curled up together in the chair, Ketzel having given Marko a loving and very focused bath with her kitty tongue.

They always do eventually make up.