I have no doubt that i’m not going to finish this entry to the degree that i want it to be finished. I usually rehearse what i want to say for days before i put my fingers on the keyboard. I find the strands, i pull and tease them apart, then as i try to find a way to work them back into each other, i feel for a certain type of cadence; a rhythm to my thoughts and how they interconnect. Once i have that, i try to weave them back into a tapestry with some parts fitting into others with the hope that once completed, there is a cohesiveness and singularity to whatever it was that was on my mind.

This feels a bit loose and disjointed. Maybe it’ll congeal as i keep going.

I’m not sure i should be writing tonight. Technically speaking, i had enough sleep last night but i don’t think i had enough REM. So let’s see where this goes and if it holds together well enough as a rough draft, i’ll publish it but with the caveat that it’s likely to be revised a few times.

Parallel to everything that i’ve written about in the first two parts is something that has been growing in me for several years.

the disconnect.

Strands that once tethered me to the beauty around me began to fray. My desire to meet and date women started to break. For years it’s become more and more difficult for me to connect to others and for the same amount of time, my desire to has faded as well.

It’s a contradiction of sorts. I won’t lie- i am achingly lonely. It’s now been six and a half years since i’ve had any intimacy. That was with a woman that i dated for about three weeks. The woman i dated before her lasted for about that long and was two years earlier. As an aside, i will never date another poly woman again. Ugh.

And that loneliness isn’t just the craving for physical touch. It’s also just having someone to talk to, someone to sleep next to, someone to share a meal with…

It’s wanting, perhaps needing someone who speaks to me because she wants to and someone that will listen to what i have to say.

And as the years have gone on, i’ve found myself just… i’m just unable to connect with others like i once did. And it’s not cynicism. It’s not “just getting older”. It’s far worse than both of those things because i don’t remember HOW to connect anymore.

The first two parts of this entry were about this woman that i dated. She’s gone now. Her messages became less frequent and then shorter. And now- not a word from her in months. For my part, i can say with sincerity that i enjoyed our conversations but i’m also reminded that in the 10 or so months of our bouncing messages and emails back and forth, she never called me. At one point i was ready to call her but after a few “maybe laters,” i took the hint. If she wanted to speak to me, she would- but she didn’t.

I do not know why she contacted me last March. I have nothing to offer her and perhaps she finally realized that and just disappeared.

There is a cruel irony of sorts at play here.

After she left me some thirty years ago, i eventually went into counseling. One of the things that came from those sessions is i have some pretty severe abandonment issues. To a two year old toddler, having his mother get sick and die was something that shaped me. The woman i call my mom is technically my step mom but she’s the one that raised me and she is my mom.

But when i was 14, she left my dad for reasons that i won’t go into here. Shortly thereafter, i was shipped off to a boarding school which our valedictorian nicknamed, The School for Disposable Children.

Abandonment is just baked into me it seems. Then when Michelle left me in late 98, it broke me. The wounds have healed, the armor has been fitted to hide the scars but without condition nor prefix, Michelle absolutely and utterly broke me and i have never been the same since.

Back to those counseling sessions.

Being able to identify this underlying issue of abandonment explained much of why i had such a disproportionate reaction to when she ended our relationship. Well, that and i was inexperienced and emotionally undeveloped.

But this time? To be sure, it saddens me. She is an exceptionally strong, intelligent person and she values altruism. She has endured cruelty that too many women know but few overcome- yet she did.

She has made an exceptionally brave choice to abandon the predictability of corporate comfort to pursue her own direction. And although i doubt there’s much i could have done to help her, i wanted (and still want) her to succeed.

But now she’s gone.

Again.

The first time she left, it devastated me. As i explained, i was a different person then for better and for worse- but mostly for worse. And she was a different person. It was unfortunate that our communication failed but we were both young at the time and i suspect that neither of us quite knew how to effectively communicate.

This time, it saddens me. I genuinely appreciated her and her conversation and it plucks this wound of abandonment that can never heal. But this time, not a single tear. Just the cold comfort of knowing that virtually every time someone from my past pops up, they never explain why and once they have their fill of me, they leave. Guess it’s just part of having the charm and charisma of a bucket of soggy oatmeal.

It doesn’t make me angry. Sad? Sure but you know how these three parts have been titled The Disconnect? And that’s what it is. That particular sensation- the growing emptiness that has metastasized between me and the world around me- i’m coming to the realization that it’s both completely understandable and entirely justifiable.

shelly.