After Twenty Years...

I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Things between us had been bad for a while, a long while. But sometimes I can be like the deer in the headlights, stunned into paralysis, mesmerized by the oncoming car, yet unable to get out of its way. Perhaps my expectations of this life have always been too low. Being from a family of alcoholics who had no real use for the dynamics of child-rearing, my sister and I learned, by trial and error, to parent ourselves. We did okay. Financially, each of us has made her own way through this world, held on to civil service jobs, bought our own houses without help, basically held her own. The things we were unable to incorporate have to do with self-esteem and relationships, things we were never shown. Like how to have faith in our own worth, how to give and receive love.

Time matters. Especially at sixty-seven years old. I sense denouement in the wings as my entire generation nears the end of our earthly sojourn. It makes sense to be kinder to each other in this chapter, but often, it doesn’t work that way. My parents had an open relationship and I stretched my limits to be flexible with a partner, who described her onset of sexual changes as just one component of a late-in-life crisis. She had my blessing to do tantric workshops, orgasmic meditation, anything within a structured sexual environment was not threatening to me. She said that she’s trying to get in touch with her “inner gay man,” but gay men have a host of opportunities for casual sex that are not open to lesbians. A quick b-j in a parking lot or bathroom stall and a visit to a sex club with private rooms and “glory holes” are not options in the lesbian community.

My parents’ first rule of non-monogamy was that each of them could do whatever they wanted provided they didn’t talk about it. The polyamorous community is the opposite. The bylaws are fundamental honesty combined with mutual consent. My partner started by attempting to follow those rules, but the problem was when I felt I couldn’t handle her having a sexual/romantic relationship with no guidelines whatsoever, there was nowhere to go from there.We all have limits to what we can withstand. 

I can’t help feeling betrayed. Although the responsibility for this split is my partner’s, it is upsetting that her new paramour knows me and was peripherally part of our friendship circle. I don’t understand why anyone would make this decision. Aren’t there enough lesbian strangers out there? Now I must worry about running into a person harboring negative, or worse indifferent, feelings regarding my well-being in this tumultuous world.   

Today, in this toxic soup of ash and particulate waste around me, I feel discarded, alone. When your world is burning, you are without choice, you must save yourself. Letting go of this relationship is not the path I would have chosen, but, like so many things beyond my control, it has chosen me. It remains to be seen where it will lead.