So many things to talk about….

Hi Steve,

I hope you enjoyed your birthday, though I have to say, your message from Fan Asylum sounded as though you felt more sadness than anything.  I'm really sorry.  When I hugged you, I felt that sadness and it was overwhelming.  I know how that feels.  I have sunken into that abyss of depression within myself before too, and it was very difficult to crawl back out of.  I almost didn't care if I ever did.

I'm sad right now, about many things.  The most trivial:  The Super Bowl sucked.  Katy Perry sucked.  I don't care for her songs, and what the HELL was all that dancing palm tree, beach ball, CARTOONISH crap?!  And dammit if the Seahawks didn't get screwed.  What a huge bummer. The FIAT commercial was awesome, and the Snickers Brady Bunch commercial cracked me up too. Other than that, we had 8 friends over, with wings and dips and chips and chili too.

Another trivial sadness:  That damned RODENT, Pawtuxney Pete, (the groundhog), saw his shadow so we will have six more weeks of winter.  I'm fed up with cold and snow and ice and wind.  If I could, I would send it ALL to California---I read that you are having a major drought out there that is only getting worse.  Damn, if only we could send you all this snow and ice, to balance things out.

Less trivial:  My marriage.  I guess you could say it's pretty major.  I mean, this polyamory thing…I just don't know how to wrap my head around it.  I've never been a super traditional person, and God knows I'm not a conservative-type person either.  (Liberal minded to the core).  I'm trying to just roll with it, to just let it go, (DAMN YOU DISNEY), and try to adjust to the whole idea.  I don't have anyone to talk to about it, because none of my friends understand anything about my lifestyle.  My mom tells me that "it's just another lame ass excuse for men to cheat on their wives."

I said to her, "When dad cheated on you all those times, wouldn't life had been easier and better for you both if you had just said, "I'm going to visit my boyfriend this weekend, so you have to stay home with the kids."  She looked at me rather shocked…"Well…" and I said, "and when you got sick and tired of him, wouldn't have been nice to be able to tell him to GO SEE YOUR GIRLFRIEND and get OUT of my FACE?"  She sat there silent…."Well…."  and I added, "and wouldn't you have felt better KNOWING that he was out with someone, being told the TRUTH and communicating honestly, instead of being constantly LIED TO all the time?" She just silently nodded.

She still isn't understanding though.  And forget about talking to my best friend about this too, she's an old fashioned, traditional, conservative Catholic girl. All she says to me is, "If you're happy, then I'm happy."  Well, I can tell you that I take TWO (count 'em) TWO happy pills every day, and yet, I just feel numb about everything.  Pete is the rebound romance of Sally---I told him that.  Rebounds never work out.  POLY rarely if ever works out.  I've seen others crash and burn with it, for many years. Very few of my kinky friends can make it work for a long period of time.

Sally wants to be my friend…which, of course, makes me wig out a bit.  I don't WANT to be her friend, I don't trust her.  I'm civil to her, I even got her a Christmas gift, and a Valentines' gift, and I invite her to my tea parties, and she's over visiting at least 2-3 times every week.  I try to be nice, but at the same time, she makes me miserable.  She's so much BETTER at EVERYTHING.  She can carve BATMAN into a pumpkin for Christ's sake.  I'm lucky if I can carve 2 eye holes and a mouth.  She can cook VEGAN food, and I don't even know what herbs are all about.  She's 4 years younger than Pete.  I am a whole DECADE younger, and I don't always get the references to 1970's music that he and she once loved, or plays and songs from plays, etc.  They have WAY more in common than Pete and I do.

I told Pete, "You probably should just divorce me and go marry Sally."

He takes me by the shoulders, looks into my eyes, and says in a serious voice: "I'm not going anywhere. I love YOU.  I married YOU. That will never change."

…………am I gullible to believe that?  I don't know how long I can put up with this stuff going on. He stays overnight at her place once every week.  I sleep alone with the cats keeping me company, trying not to think about it.  I even watch those stupid "Ghost Adventure" shows when Pete is gone, to get my mind off of it, and then I have to turn on my closet light because I'm freaked out about ghosts instead.

I wash Pete's laundry, clean the house, make him dinner, I took care of his ailing mother for 3 years, and now I take care of her 2 cats…I let him have sex with me occasionally, even though I cringe inside, knowing that he and I both now have HSV-1.  Yeah, funny huh?  I was single for 40 years of my life with NOT EVER getting any kind of STD.  Always had condoms.  Got tested every year.  It took me getting MARRIED and suddenly thrust into polyamory to get oral herpes.  Yay.  I feel diseased and grotesque, even though it is so common that 1 out of 4 people have it, and may never know they have it, even KIDS have it from kissing their own grandparents or parents.  It's the most common of them all, yet I still feel like my fun days of kink are over, nobody is going to want to touch me ever again.

This coming weekend, we (the 3 of us) are going to an all weekend hotel takeover event in Ohio.  We are all 3 sharing a suite, with one king sized bed.  Should be a friggin' laugh riot.

Anyway, I just watched a new 15 minute documentary by Steve Spielberg and narrated by Meryl Streep, called simply, "Auschwitz."  I sat here, crying like a baby, just blubbering my head off, because even though I've SEEN hundreds of documentaries about it, and studied it, and researched it for most of my life, I just cannot get through it anymore without having a mental breakdown of blubbering.  I should still be teaching this history, I should just leave this messy marriage and move back to DC and do what I feel my whole life's purpose is.

I have to go now.

Love, Rebecca