Peter's first promise...was also the last one broken.

PETER: obtaining what you need is the next step.  knowing that you can be understood means that it is not as difficult as you thought (or feared) to find what you need

ME: ....but you can't give me what i need....
ME: ...and you seem to be the only one who knows...
PETER: no i can't.  if I was a player I could play you completely and use you. I could make you feel incredible things Becky.  and you would ultimately be more hurt by me than by nearly anyone else simply because I can strip your psyche down to your naked soul.  but I refuse to hurt you and will not hurt you that way.  ever.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Stephen,

That paragraph above still haunts me to this day.  It is from my DC "boyfriend," Peter....my very first Dom ever.

I stumbled into the wrong email box last evening by mistake, while clearing out some of my emails from my inbox.  I found myself in Peter's emails from when we first met.  I cannot bring myself to delete any of them...I've got every email, and online chat that we've ever had together, the entire 2.5 years' worth...and until now, I've never gone back to re-read any of them because it was just too overwhelming.  I really should just delete the entire folder, and be done with it.  But I can't.

I was bored last night, so I went to yahoo mail and as I moved messages from my inbox to my folders, I goofed and scrolled down to put some emails into my HUSBAND Pete's folder, but accidentally put it into PETER'S folder....so I went back to retrieve it, and something caught my attention. It was the very first email I ever wrote to Peter, in reply to the one he sent me, where he began telling me "exactly what I needed" in a man, in a relationship, and in the pursuits of kink.  I had only just met him, a few short weeks before that, and suddenly this guy thinks he KNEW me.....it made me so angry---the "who the hell do you think you are," kind of angry, and I hated his guts for it, and I told him to fuck off.

That is how our nearly 3 year relationship began.  It was the best relationship, and the worst I've ever known, at the same time.  I don't know how to explain it, but that's really how it was.  It was a love-hate thing, mostly due to the fact that he was married and had 3 kids.

That paragraph above is what kills me the most.  It was the first promise he ever made me..."I refuse to hurt you and will not hurt you that way, ever."  Well, here it is, five years after the fact---and while I read this email, I realized that it STILL HURTS.  Not only did I cry, but while reading those things he claimed to know "exactly," I felt the very same exact throbbing in my loins that I felt when I first met him.  Because he was, and still is, 100% RIGHT about me.  And that is what made me cry the hardest.

"I can strip your psyche down to your naked soul." -----Ooooohhh, so dramatic.  And when I first read it, I thought, "What a ham, gimme a break, he's full of shit, he's trying to be so mysterious...what a stooge..."  But now, in hindsight, I read it again and I think, "maybe THAT was his first promise to me, and goddammit if he didn't do exactly that."  

So, on one hand, he DID keep his first promise, but on the other hand, he hurt me worse than any other man ever did, or could, and the most annoying thing is---five years later, it still fucking HURTS.  WHY CAN'T I GET RID OF THIS GUY??? Have you ever had a relationship with someone who just killed you---figuratively of course---but you can't seem to shake her out of your heart?? 

The way Peter treated me when I met Pete and moved to Pittsburgh to be with him, you would have thought I had killed HIM....he acted like the jealous boyfriend....only trying NOT to be....but at the same time, turned his back on me cold, after promising never to do that.  It left me reeling.  It left me shredded.  And I believe he did that on purpose, to make me "hate" him, so that I wouldn't want anything more to do with him.  He was mean, he was cruel, and he was rude.  And I loved him. God I loved him so much, he could have done ANYTHING to me----and I mean ANYTHING---and I would totally let him.

And I let him hurt me....I did it willingly.  I volunteered.  I deserved it.

I try to see things from his perspective...but I just don't know how to figure him out.  I wish he would leave me alone.  I wish I could just get over this asshole once and for all, and move on, and forget all about him.  But it's like there's this hole inside me, this wicked, evil place, that still makes me have dreams about him sometimes, that still makes me wonder what he's doing, if he ever misses me.........I'm a stupid idiot.  I hate myself for it.

So I've been stewing on this all last night and all day today, and frankly it's got me all discombobulated.

I can't talk to Pete about it though, I mean, he's already heard it all before....he was there when it all happened, he knows first hand just how things transpired, and he knows that I still think of Peter, and he still haunts me.  I don't mention him anymore because I don't want to hurt Pete by talking about Peter, ya know?  If it were ME, and Pete kept having this issue with his ex-wife, I would feel very hurt by it, thinking maybe I was wasting my time taking somebody else's place when I have no chance in hell of ever being the REAL "one," in a marriage with that person...always being second best...always trying to compete with a phantom woman I've never really known....I would be wondering why the hell I'm even here.

I don't want Pete to feel those things.  So I keep this shit to myself.  But at the same time, I need someone to talk to about it. Somebody objective.  I just don't know anyone that I trust enough to discuss it with.  Nobody really understands it, much less me.  I don't understand why this man----this evil stupid married man---still has a hold on me after all this time.  My life has changed so much in the past 5 years.  I met Pete, I moved to Pittsburgh 6 months later to my own apartment, then we moved in together 8 months after that, and now we've been married over a year and we've bought a house and we've got both our mom's living with us.....I mean, I'm not the same person as I was then.  My whole life has totally changed, and is totally NOT what I ever expected it to be.

I don't know if this is normal, for the love a person once felt to still linger so long after it's over and gone??  I don't know if it's really even "love."  I think perhaps it's more of an addictive hedonistic thing.  When Peter wrote, "I could make you feel incredible things Becky," he was speaking the absolute truth.  I've never felt those things since.  And if I tried to explain what those things are, I get all confused and it's difficult to put into words...in this same email, the same exact email, he told me that I would be able to orgasm on command.  I thought he was crazy, and there was NO WAY that could ever be possible.  But guess what?  He was right again.  I can still do that....though I don't get to very often anymore.

Peter was honest with me about every damned thing he wrote, all 2.5 years' worth, but at the end, he just totally lied to me.

I know, I know, I know....he was friggin' MARRIED, so of COURSE he was a damned liar every day of his life while he was with me, yes yes that is correct, I know....but with ME, he told the truth about those things he knew I needed, those things he knew he would bring out in me, those things he could train me to do, and those things he knew he could make me feel. 

How can a person deal with all these lies, AND truths, all in one person, and NOT have a "love-hate" relationship??  And why the HELL does it still HAUNT ME NOW???  Why can't I get OVER this???  It's frustrating as hell.  I dreamed last night that I was on this huge cement "island" thing, in the middle of the ocean, and suddenly as I was walking along it carefully, there was a huge CRACK and rumble, and it started to shift and move, and I was teetering, and trying to keep my balance, and run to the shallow area as fast as I could, but the crack followed me as I screamed, and it swallowed me deep into the ocean water----I couldn't breathe----and I frantically tried to reach the surface to get out of that scary place....

These are the types of dreams I have, all the time.  This is why I have some trouble sleeping at night.  I have nightmares. 

I have tried to seek out advice from various other submissive women that I know, only to realize that none of them have ever had a Dom like Peter before, and therefore can offer me nothing in the way of advice or anything else.  They just don't understand it either.  

So when you say "The love of strange medicine" Stephen, I know exactly of what you speak.  Peter was my drug.  He was my strange medicine, and I craved it, I wanted to overdose on it, I was addicted to it worse than I ever thought I could be.  If he had asked me to run into the busy street for him, I would have done exactly that, without hesitation, and no thought of my own personal safety...because I trusted him, and I knew he would prevent anything bad from happening to me.  It wasn't some sick and twisted death-wish on my part, it was absolute trust that I felt for him, and in my whole life, I have never felt that for ANY man.

I do trust Pete, though, as my husband---ya kinda have to when you marry that person, ya know?---but, if he asked me to run into a busy street for him, I would tell him to bite my ass, no way, forget it, you're full of crap.  Why?? Because he is too easily distracted by everything and everybody else to really be there to prevent anything from happening to me.  He would try, sure, but I don't know that he would really achieve it, because other things happen and he just can't stay focused on me.  Peter, on the other hand, had these eyes....they burned right through me, he didn't just look at me, he looked IN me, and he had this smoldering gaze that just hypnotized me, because he focused totally on ME, and nothing else.  He knew my innermost secrets and sexual fantasies without my even mentioning them verbally at all.   He really understood me.

Sigh.

I'm sorry.  I shouldn't be sitting here obsessing about it.  I should delete the whole goddamned folder of emails and forget about him once and for all.  I really wish I could, for Pete's sake.  (and I mean that literally, for PETE's sake).  I love Pete, but in a very different way than what I felt for Peter.  Pete is a safer person to love, he's easier, he's more fun...in some ways.  In other ways, I feel like even though we've known each other nearly 4 years, I barely know him at all...and he barely knows me.  There's a distance between us, somehow, I can't really figure it out....there's like this invisible fear that we share....a fear of getting hurt, I guess.  Neither of us wants to hurt each other, we want our marriage to work, we want to stay together as long as we possibly can for a lifetime if God allows it....I couldn't function without Pete in my life.  He's my best friend.

Peter, on the other hand, was never my "best friend."  In fact, he was my nemesis sometimes, I hated his guts, I screamed at him sometimes, I beat his chest and threw tantrums....he had me so absolutely crazed in so many ways, I wanted to hurt him and then have passionate "make up sex," afterwards. (Which we did...a lot).  There were days when I ran from him, literally got into my car to race around the block when I knew he was coming over---to get away from him.  There were days when he took me out for a drink and I nearly threw it in his face several times, he got me so mad.  I wanted to throw things at him.  I wanted to claw his eyeballs out of his head.  He made me furious, he made me FEEL things that I hadn't FELT in so long, I was like a powder keg that he suddenly lit a fire under.  Every emotion possible, came flooding out of me all at once.  He left me drained.  He left me a limp rag doll.  He put me through so many roller coaster rides, I felt sick.

And yet, through all that, I loved him more than the sun and the moon and everything on the planet below.

I'd better go for now.  I just had to write about it, and get this damned man out of my brain before I can go to sleep for the night.  I have nightmares about him showing up at my door, unannounced, wanting me back.  And it scares me to death.  I have dreams of 9/11 still, and I have dreams of drowning, or falling over a cliff, or just being sucked into this huge black hole abyss.....I have these dreams at least 2-3 times per week, they wake me up, they make me lay there awake, my heart pumping wildly, sometimes I get up and roam restlessly around the house....not knowing what to do....trying to calm down.

Peter will surface again in my life at some point, of that I have no doubt whatsoever.  I am terrified of it.  But i know it will happen....and NOT because I make it happen, or WANT it to happen.....I just know him, and I know that---just like my friend Allen did when he got divorced---he will contact me when HIS divorce is on the horizon.  He told me that years ago, another promise he made---if and when he and his wife ever divorce, he would want to be with ME exclusively, long-term, without any hesitation....no matter where I went, no matter how far away I might be, he would find me, he said.  He owned me, body and soul, he said, and he would come claim me when he was legally able to do so.

These are the things he repeated during our 2.5 years together.  It wasn't just a one-time promise, that he flippantly made and forgot about later.  He repeated these things many times.  And here I am, getting used to being married slowly but surely with Pete, getting re-adjusted to living with my mom again, and his mom, trying to figure out how to take care of them both without losing ME, and my own sanity....I'm all wrapped up in this new life....but something lurks out there in the shadows.....and I know it's there.  Part of me fears it, but another part of me knows in my heart, there's nothing I can do.

Well, I have to go for now. Thanks for listening to this craziness.  Love really does suck.  I will never be able to figure it out.

Love, lust, and all kinky things carnal or otherwise,

your favorite crazy Pittsburgh chick....Rebecca