Headrush

I spent a lot of time freaking out about a lot of things when we were getting back together. Only a little bit of it showed, of course, but there were plenty of fish under the water. I didn't come the first few times we had sex; I hadn't expected to, and it didn't bother me. My body is a Rubik's cube. One night the two of them started asking me, "So what do we do to make you come? What do you need?" I froze, rolled up the carpet in my head, and went to sleep.

"You're not much of a talker, are you?" asked Shelby.

That will change with time, I told her in my head. What actually came out of my mouth was, "Not really."

Some days or weeks after that, he pounced on me at a funny angle and I found myself hanging off the edge of the bed from the hips on up, my chest facing the ceiling and my head near the floor. He pinned me down while I giggled and proceeded to lick my pussy. Shelby leaned over the top of me and grabbed my nipples, one between her fingers and one in her mouth. My laughter subsided and became moans as Aiden inserted his fingers in me.

My head swam as I hung upside-down, and my abs burned as I held myself in the air so I wouldn't hurt my back. The tension in my muscles started to translate into a building orgasmic sensation. Yes, that, don't stop. I couldn't get the words out, but Aiden didn't seem to need them. He kept working on my sensitive spots, his fingers and tongue pulling me toward the edge of the cliff. I was in disbelief as the orgasm finally rolled through me. I didn't think oral worked on me.

The giggles returned with new fuel as my head hit the floor and I lay upside-down in a daze. Eventually the headrush forced me to sit up again.

"Nice job," Shelby told me, grinning. "I'm not giving him the credit. That was all you."

Aiden just smirked at me, his face dripping.

Muckalee Creek Water

The "I Can Haz Feels" post wandered away from the point I was trying to make when it began. Reading all those old chats and things last night was like wading through an emotional swamp, and I came out stinky and dripping.

The thing that bothered me the most was pages and pages of Aiden trying to get my attention and me just ignoring him. For days on end. I can't explain now why I did that. Maybe I was objecting to his pushiness, or maybe I was lost in a fog of depression, or maybe I was mad at him for something. I know I wasn't busy; I was sleeping until lunch and bored all afternoon. And yet, when he would ask if we could meet the next day, I'd say only if I was awake in time.

That befuddles me. Why wouldn't I get up for that? All I had to do was wake up and drive 10 minutes. If only it were that easy now!

One of his messages even said that he would take the morning off from work to see me. We could've had the entire morning. And I didn't go. Would that I could reach back in time and slap past Skylar!

So it's really no wonder that after I spent an afternoon getting piss drunk and playing with razor blades, and then didn't answer him when he wanted to know if I was still alive the next morning, that he got a little annoyed. I was off working with Kevin the next morning, but I certainly could've found 30 seconds to clarify my status as "breathing."

But when his message train took the sudden turn from "please let me know you're alive" to "just tell me what the fuck you want," it was unfair of me to explode back on him for it. I told him that I was desperately in need of help and then threatened him when he offered to help; put myself in danger and wouldn't tell him if I had even survived; and then, when the stress finally showed through, I told him to go fuck himself.

I realize this is water under the bridge, but sometimes processing doesn't happen until a lot of time has passed. He's amazing and forgave me for everything, never even getting mad. The apology I didn't read until five years after the fact said that he blamed himself for lashing out at me when I was in an emotionally fragile state.

Would that I could reach back in time and slap past Skylar. Then again, she might've enjoyed it.

On Introversion

Why do I have these sudden attacks of needing to escape and go be alone? Because I'm an introvert. I love this infographic that explains the essential difference between introverts and extroverts: where we get our energy.

I can be loud and crazy and sociable, and that does not mean I'm an extrovert. I'm a high-energy, bouncy, enthusiastic person who goes home at the end of the day and finds peace in my personal bubble.

I consider myself a pretty high-tolerance introvert; that is, I can handle long periods of social interaction with lots of people before I reach the panic-button point. That point can be pushed out if I'm with people around whom I'm very comfortable, and it gets shorter if I'm in a stressful situation, since the battery drains faster.

Experimentation (life!) has shown that the lower limit, being in a new or uncomfortable situation with people who bug me, is a couple of hours, after which I will find some-excuse-any-excuse to walk away and hide in a corner. At my upper limit, in a place where I feel at home with people I like and trust, I can go several days before I start to get a little twitchy. Most daily situations occur somewhere between those two extremes.

I can tell when I'm approaching the end of my rope because suddenly everything becomes annoying. I get edgy and disgruntled, and little comments and actions that normally have no effect on me become enormously bothersome. When that feeling occurs, I pack myself off to a corner for everyone's sanity, and I think this is the point where an extrovert who's not super familiar with my patterns gets confused.

"What's wrong? Why are you leaving? Stay and hang out..."

No no. If I stay, I will bite your head off, and it will be over absolutely nothing. Then we'll have a pointless fight about which I will feel very badly after I've had some time to sleep it off.

So, was driving home in a blizzard when I had a safe couch to sleep on stupid? Mm, maybe. But I did it for a reason that was pretty good.

Toes in the Water

December and January we spent slowly dancing around and figuring out how we get along these days. I had had a brief relationship with a derby boy - let's call him Hawk - who was very good-looking but did not give one lonely, mountain-dwelling fuck about me, and I was feeling like I had no boundaries. The next time Aiden and I hung out after our second first kiss, we cuddled on the couch. That was it. And it was wonderful.

I came to the realization that 95% of my human contact for the last year had been hitting people on the track. Hello and goodbye hugs with friends were the remainder. Oh, and some nights in Hawk's bed, but I hit my opponents with more caring than I felt from him.

So just cuddling on the couch was amazing and exactly what I hadn't even known I wanted. I didn't miss cuddles until I had them, and then I couldn't get enough. I said not to take offense if I fell asleep there, and Aiden said, "Why would I take offense to you being so comfortable with me that you fall asleep in my arms?"

We talked and talked about nothing and everything, catching up on life, sorting out our past, and sharing whatever was up with our days. I started to feel like I had boundaries again. We live 65 miles apart now, so we'd see each other mostly on weekends. One night the three of us got our drunky pants on while watching a movie, and then Aiden said he wanted to take the two of us upstairs and make us cum our brains out.

We hadn't talked about that. I didn't know Shelby well, and my last experience with poly had me sleeping with a girl I didn't want to sleep with, and I swore I'd never do it again. I freaked out...

...but only in my head. What I actually did was to follow the two of them upstairs and lose my clothes. And freak out about it the entire time. Silently. Because why would I stand up for myself like an adult when I can just melt my brain instead? I have no boundaries.

Nearly five years after we first met and swept each other up in a whirlwind, I finally got to fuck Aiden. To say that I'd been waiting five years for that wouldn't be exactly accurate, since I spent a good chunk of that time pretending he was the scum of the earth. But there were at least many months' worth of pent-up energy.

I'm sure you remember Half an Hour and a Couch, in which I discovered just how big his cock was. Good god. My body did not know how to handle that. I took as much of a fucking as I could take, and finally had to tap out, bleeding and sore and exhausted. Shelby said she had sympathy pains watching me.

I spent the next few weeks mostly pretty thrilled, interspersed with random freakouts. I kept talking to Hawk because I felt like somehow it would keep me from getting in over my head with Aiden; like if he didn't have 100% of my attention, I wouldn't fall into something I couldn't get back out of. Nothing had actually gone on between me and Hawk for several months, and eventually he officially called it off for derby reasons.

There was one Friday night where my plan was to stop by on my way from somewhere, hang out for a bit, and then go home. Aiden's plan was to take my clothes off. I don't think either of us was clear on the other's image of the evening in advance, and there ended up being this stupid battle where he stole my pants in a wrestling match and ran away upstairs with them, and then I fought my way back into them and basically ran. I looked back at that night a few months later and had to laugh at myself.

There was another, similar night, either shortly before or after that one, when I spent the afternoon there and we had a blizzard. By dark, it was coming down like a shaken snow globe, and Aiden and Shelby both told me to spend the night. I said no, and we went back and forth. I didn't have my overnight bag; they had extra toothbrushes. I didn't have my asthma medication; Aiden had some I could use. I had 4-wheel drive and enjoyed driving in the snow; my tires were bald.

When the two of them went out back to smoke pot, I was done. My introvert battery needed a recharge (read: me-time) and I always leave gatherings when the drugs show up. I headed out, slid around a corner and then another one, immediately got lost, parked on a side street to GPS directions, and then nearly got stuck. This was all within half a mile of the house, leaving me 64.5 miles to home.

Aiden texted me and told me to come back. I forged ahead. It took me three hours, but I made it home. The next day I attempted to explain to Aiden what possessed my crazy snow-run, and he seemed puzzled. This explanation deserves its own post, next.

I Can Haz Feels?

I planned to go to bed early tonight to make up for getting only 3 hours of sleep last night. Now it's midnight (that's late, by the way), because I kept digging through my old accounts and finding more things to read. I let Aiden into the blog today and since he was home sick, he binge-read the whole thing like I did yesterday. We agreed it's addictive.

So I went chasing the high and read all the words I could find. That was unnecessary and depressing. I can't explain the way I acted toward him. One might argue that it doesn't matter now, but I always dig for the reasons behind my actions, thoughts, and feelings.

Feelings. I haven't had those in a while. Aiden makes me have feelings, and it's fucking disconcerting.

It's very different from how I had feelings for various exes. I used to measure devotion in how hard I thought I would panic if that person were removed from my life. But I've changed, and it's for the better; that model either resulted from or resulted in, or possibly both, a couple of unhealthy relationships into which I lost myself.

I don't know how to describe in words what Aiden does to my insides. All I can express is that he touches something with which I'm not entirely familiar. I alternately embrace it and fight it; I'm very proud of rebecoming the even-keeled rock who never flusters and never cries, and it's a big part of my identity that I don't want to change. But sometimes, I think, you have to allow a little slack downward to get a really great upward swing.

It's like the difference between taking anti-depressants and not taking them. Taking them pushed my existence into a tunnel - downward direction was limited, but upward was as well. I'm long off the drugs, and I can maintain myself in that sort of way; I have an iron grip on the downswings, with all sorts of control mechanisms in place to keep me turned away from the deep end. My standard daily variance exists between "chillin'" and "fuckin' awesome," with an occasional side dish of "mildly annoyed."

There's been a disturbance in the force lately. Not like "headed for a breakdown" level, by any means. No alarm bells, please. I'm just becoming more reactive to situations, specifically those that involve Aiden. We've actually had a couple of small fights over the last couple of months...and saying it that way, it sounds so normal that I almost feel stupid actually putting this much thought into it. But I don't really fight. Not anymore.

Or is the implied comparison in the "anymore" irrelevant? I might be comparing "Skylar in a relationship" to "Skylar single," and maybe they're just two totally different beasts that shouldn't be compared.

No, that's not reasonable. I'm me, no matter who's around. That doesn't change.

But it does. Apparently. The fuck.

Aiden

I did not speak to Aiden again after that last "go fuck yourself" message. He apologized, but I didn't even read the entire message, and then I stopped checking my accounts.

I started a long process of erasing all the good memories of him from my mind. It was a foundation of the new relationship with Kevin; if I didn't hate Aiden, it would've fallen apart, so hate him I did. Kevin spewed bile about him and I danced at the hate party.

Eighteen months later, I got a Facebook message from Aiden, saying that he was sorry for the hurt he had caused me, he was finally leaving his wife, and he hoped I was well. I freaked out and told Kevin, who called Aiden and threatened him with law enforcement if he ever contacted me again.

In July of 2012, three years after our falling-out, I ran into Aiden by chance at a farmstand in town. I knew he knew I was there only because he wouldn't look up from the floor. I took note of the fact that I had almost zero reaction to seeing him and that he was still as hot as ever, and then moved on with life. I wrote in my journal later that "I took it as a reminder of where I don't ever want to go back to."

In January of 2013 I left Kevin and couch-surfed until my new apartment opened up in February. In October of that year Kevin left the rest of my things - except for a choice few, about which I will refrain from ranting - out in his driveway, and I borrowed a truck from work and Eben's helping hands to get them home.

In the process of unpacking that followed, I uncovered my journal from 2009. Curious, I sat down on the floor, in the midst of the tornado of stuff, and read it beginning to end. Near the end, a piece of paper fell out; it was a letter from Aiden, the one that ended with “And while it will pain me deeply if you need to hate me I will understand it and I deserve it.”

Hate? No. I hadn’t hated him in a long time. I don’t hold grudges, and once my feet were off that fire, it had melted into oblivion.

I searched him up on Facebook and sent him a message that went something like, “Hi, hope this isn’t too startling out of the blue, but I thought you should know I don’t hate you. Hope you’re well.”

The next morning he responded. He was thrilled to hear from me. We spent several long messages catching up; getting through four years of not speaking requires a lot of characters.

We messaged every morning when I arrived at work, and met up for the first time a week or so later, at an open jam for circus prop spinners. Spinning and chatting was a good way to say hello without having to sit and stare at each other awkwardly. After the jam, we leaned against his car in the parking lot and talked, just like we used to do. He gave me a hug before he left and said, “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too.”

That meeting had one startling outcome: the attraction was gone. Completely. Like it had never existed at all. I was surprised, but not complaining; it would certainly make things easier if we could legitimately just be friends.

I didn’t hear from him again until five days later. I figured he was busy, but he started our next conversation with an apology for ignoring me. He said that he hadn’t told his girlfriend, Shelby, that I had cropped up in his life again until after we saw each other, and he had to make her feel safe. Already impatient with some unrelated drama in my life, I told him in no uncertain terms that if there was going to be drama and bullshit, I wasn’t going to hang around. He swore no drama and said I should meet Shelby.

A couple of weeks later, I stopped at their house on my way to an amateur night, met Shelby, and re-met little Aiden. We continued chatting every day, and it wasn’t long before we started slipping into a flirty pattern again. I saw it and backed the fuck off. The attraction was returning, but I learned a lesson last time, and I wasn’t about to earn the name of Homewrecker again.

One day we were discussing a friend of mine who was dabbling in BDSM and Aiden said, “You know what it looks like when I take the leash off the Dom side of me, don’t you? I think you quite enjoyed every minute of it.”

“But why on earth would you want to remind me of that,” I responded, as a memory from an afternoon in a car flooded my mind. He took it to mean, Don’t make me think about those awful memories. What I really meant was, Stop teasing me with something I can’t have!

He told me not long after that that we were exploring the boundaries of our new relationship to find out where they were. I said exploring is all well and good until you stumble over a cliff, and then you can’t undo what’s been done. He called me after work that day and said, “Sweetheart, I need you to know there are no cliffs here,” then informed me that he and Shelby have a polyamorous relationship and whatever his new relationship with me turned out to be, it wouldn’t be a problem.

I was skeptical. It sounded like too easy of a lie. Then I went to a friend’s birthday party one night in Aiden’s neighborhood, and he told me to crash on his couch afterward. When I showed up, we were all drunk, and they were seeing off friends. Shelby was getting friendly with the girl, and I watched Aiden as he watched her. Then I sat on the space heater – their furnace was under construction and it was December – while we settled into conversation. Shelby wandered through some poly topics, and I was finally convinced that she knew what was going on and was okay with my presence.

They went up to bed after making me a nest on the couch. Then Aiden came running back downstairs, ostensibly to check on laundry, but there wasn’t any of that. He hugged me good night, bit my neck, I bit back, and he grabbed my face, kissed me, and disappeared up to bed.

The next morning I had to be up early to go run a 5k. He made coffee and eggs, and we chatted and watched their chickens run around the back yard. When it was time for me to leave, we had another long hug, followed by neck-biting, followed by makeouts. I was trying not to grin like an idiot as I walked out the door.

Rebecoming

Skylar lives.

Five years later. Hello, if there's anyone out there to greet!

After those couple of incidents - the wandering-in-the-woods one and the drunkypants-with-razors one - I got on anti-depressants. I got back into school, rebuilt my relationship with Kevin, graduated with a Bachelors degree, and got a job as a technician in the public safety industry. Boring, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons about controlling my emotions and not falling off the deep end. I locked myself out of this blog to remove the temptation to ever go back to the darkest days of my life.

As I was starting life post-college, I discovered the sport of roller derby, and she more than anything else has saved my soul. I've poured my heart, soul, love, time, money, sweat, and tears onto the track. I'm in my third rostered season now, and I kick ass and get my ass kicked and constantly strive to improve. I do lots of other things in the name of cross-training, but they all come back to improving my derby.

In 2012, I got off the pills, and woke up to the realization that I'd been existing in a fog of apathy that I'd convinced myself was happiness. I finally kicked Kevin to the curb at the beginning of 2013 and legitimately moved out. It still took me a while to break that awful hold he had on me, but he's good and gone now. He finally left our shared job today, so I shouldn't have to see too much of him anymore. I got in my car after shift this afternoon and literally sang the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of my lungs. I hacked my way back into this account tonight after several previous failed attempts, reread every one of these posts, and shook my head over and over at how I could go back to Kevin after all the things he said and did. He really never changed. He's always been a codependent, over-emotional, childish manipulator.

As for the other major players in my stories...

Wren: I was Maid of Honor in her wedding to the Navy boy, and then she friend-dumped me. I tore out my heart in letters to her and cried for weeks, but she was determined that we no longer be friends, and we haven't spoken in over two years now.

Eben: Still one of my very dearest friends. When I moved, it was back to our college town, so he randomly drops in on me at home or work. He's introduced me to some new friends in the area, and we play board games or shoot each other with Airsoft guns, depending on the weather.

Rizz: Was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010 and died in 2011, leaving two small daughters with his ex-wife. We had a "mixed-anything" party in his memory, because that was what he always ordered at the bar when we played pool. "Just make me a mixed anything." He was a kind-hearted friend and quiet troublemaker and is dearly missed.

Aiden: Gets his own post, coming soon.