June 13, 2020 Waning Crescent 317 Days after July 31 Hi, it's been exactly 100 days since my last writing to you. Of course, that's because since this post, I have pretty much lived with you every day through this pandemic. I love that in the last 100 days, that we have had the opportunity to share moments in noticing the change in the leaves outside our home, cleaning a thousand times, cooking so many meals together and having endless conversations and cuddle. I felt like I could write so much more about how I enjoyed the last 100 days. Sadly, my writing to you about this is laden with heavy feelings about our conversation on Friday; about the relationship you have with J and J. As you have pointed out, the existing friendship you have with them is beautiful and I love your enthusiasm and joy when you get to talk about them. However, Friday's conversation was hard for me as you lovingly noted. When you shared more about your relational herstory with them, I realised that I had very little idea of what your relationship dynamics are with them. In my assumption, I thought that you were dating Jess and that you had shared one night of sexual fun. However, as you shared how Jer flirted with you, it dawned on me that I was holding a wrong story in my head, that your involvement with them, correct me if I am wrong, started with Jer and it was him that you were dating.
And when I brought up that we did not have a follow up after you mentioned you were going talk to "them", you then said you spoke to Jer only, which again revealed to me that they story in my head was not correct. Somehow that became very uncomfortable for me. As you are witnessing, since Friday, I have gone inwards to try to figure out what is happening for me and while I still am working it through, I have a few inklings of which I am still unsure if I am ready to share here only because I feel that it's none of my business. I don't want to be the partner that causes you to sacrifice your sexual well-being for my insecurities and realities about my social identities and how they might play out here and in the future I love you and my love is expressed to you in many ways. However, Im not sure I am meant to be "collected" which feels very much like how I might be "integrated" into an invitation of a friendship with them. You already know this and mentioned. I am a relational person and when I don't know people or why they want to be friends with me, I get suspicious. I am often welcomed because of my pleasant personality or because other people though I should be friends with someone, but in reality, my friendships do not form easily. I also don't do platonic relationships because it is a zone of guilt and shame. My platonism with friends are almost always DECIDED by others, not me, which brings about a lot misconceptions about who I am, how I am relationally and where my boundaries lie . I will be honest. Jer is a beautiful and wonderful person and I think of him as a fun person. However, I am unsure if he is a safe person around my gender, expressions, my race, my settler identity, etc. The same goes for Jess. After years of activism work, I can no longer assume just because someone aligns with me on race, that they align with my gender identity and my neuro-divergence. An invitation to a friendship for me has to be safe at this moment and I am unsure how safe I feel with them yet and perhaps this is something time will tell. I feel nervous about people treating me nice because our connection is you. My Aquarius senses tells me its potentially fraught for me to enter into a more complex relationship and to be held by you. You mentioned that your message to Jer was that everything stop until further notice and that there is a possibility of future continuance of exploration and that scares me. It scares me because I know how easily it is for me to be erased in relationships given my unstable political identity as an immigrant/settler while the three of you have close ties to these lands and culture. While I don't need to be your everything, I do worry about me becoming just a "thing". I don't best know how to explain this other that I am intimidated on gender levels, on neuro-divergent levels, on connection to land and culture levels, to personal levels where I feel I have nothing much to contribute. And you are awake. =) Will stop here for now. I love you.
March 05, 2020 Waxing Gibbous 217 Days after July 31
First of all, I have a bloaty tummy. You did not sleep last night . All I want to do is help you feel better, feel rested.
As I sit here in the living room, I reflect on the last conversation we had about my insecurities. The fear of being replaced, by someone better for you, lingers hard on the edges of my heart. And I don't even know what that means by someone better for you.
When Jackson reminded that you chose me, I reminded myself too that I chose you. And I chose you for so many founded and unfounded reasons. Not that I will ever need many reasons to be with you. There are words that I am learning to express my love for you. This love, that I so carefully guard. From patriarchy, from ingrained western styles of loving and unloving, from misogyny, from all that create divide between our hearts, from all that can stop us to communicating with each other.
And when I expressed my vulnerabilities of being replaced, so many thoughts are going through my mind about why I felt these deep insecurities. It was because I do not trust the systems and environments around us to help support us having the relationship we want with each other.
I want to venture and journey long with you, my labneh. It's not something I can easily quantify into compelling reasons. I know...in my heart...since the day I declared to you that I love you, that I want to be with you, that I CHOOSE THIS JOURNEY WITH YOU.
When I told you how scared I was of losing you, you reminded me of how you said the same to your counsellor. Then you reminded me of how much you love me. And that you love me so much. My heart was filled with assurance that empowered me to understand how you are experiencing this act of loving me. I don't always feel that I am the easiest person to love because of my life experiences.
With you, I feel more lovable. I feel more loved. I feel more at ease about who I am. As I continue to grow with myself and witnessing your growth with yourself, I am learning that us loving each other is indeed a journey of bliss and intentional living and loving. Feeling blessed gives very little to how I really feel about us.
Thank you for gifting me this journey that I never thought I would be on. I love you. So much.
Feb 17, 2020 Waning Crescent 200 Days after July 31 We have been lovers for 200 days. The red-headed woodpecker visited the cedar tree today Yester-night, I chased the medicine with determination That it will bring you rest And the faint street light, that shone through the covers, when I came back into bed The sight and sound of you sipping on the same mug I am using now to take the same medicine was solace. And my heart felt loving For you with each sip you take and each time you move your eyes saying "this mug is so big" I captured that moment For I too love you so big.
Feb 04, 2020 Waxing Gibbous 188 Days after July 31
A few days ago you told me that you are choosing to center my needs
And even though I know I don't always feel deserving and this time i ask myself why not let you
the opening of a heart to the invitation of even an expression where i can be cuddled by you
Jan 23, 2020 Waning Crescent 175 Days after July 31 suddenly... i feel safe with you i cannot explain this form of safety it's unknown to me and i want it so very much the stroking of your hair after a long day of white flour power speckling onto our faces and we make delicious pancakes safety pancakes filled with the love for labneh and the love of thick creamy yogurt from spoon to tongue ... the shit is still happening and the beautiful you continue to bloom so shyly and courageously i can only imagine how both of that takes place when you jump off the highest platform at hillcrest; like a fearless love of my life...who jumped right into my heart...more than 175 days ago.
Dec 23, 2019 Waning Crescent 145 Days after July 31 Warning: This one is hard to read. But all with love. my labneh. i hope that you stumble onto this after the holidays because i am writing from a place of heartache and also love. a hard tension showed up for me yesterday after sharing time with bunny and jackson. the tension is about the three of us - you, bunny and me -and the shape of the relationship we share. i am unsure of how to approach this with you in person and know how to say the right words and so i decided i would write it here instead. #scorpiointensity in the snippet of conversation, bunny and i exchanged some honesty about the relationship the three of us, the earth team, share. and in this honesty, and i express for myself, realized that there are gaps of perceptions of what and who we are to each other. and bunny mentioned that three of us are a "couple" and maybe a TRUPPLE. And if you remember the story I shared with you about being non-consensually put into Relationship Anarchy, I feel like this is happening. I heard them express fuzziness about your relationship with them. (important note: I am feeling extremely intrusive about writing to you about your relationship with bunny and I don't feel good but am pushing on with love and courage.)
we also talked about "romantic friendship" and i remembered your conversation to me when I asked you what your relationship with bunny is and you also said "romantic friendship". when i got home yesterday, i could not sleep. a tightness was formed around my chest. and so i inquired on this tightness and what emerged was the fuzziness of "romantic friendship" - what you have with bunny. i then realised that i have a very different reference of the use of "romance" because of the context of my life experiences. I use romance for what i can only describe as what i experience with you. i don't use romantic for bunny. instead, i would refer to it as a getting to know each other still friendship.
i don't really know what to do or ask other than asking you to help me see the relational shape of you and bunny, you and me, all three of us. i am again confused as to this "thrupple" that bunny brought up. i guess what i want to ask is could you and bunny actually be in a romantic lover/partner like what i think you and i are? because if that is the case, i really need us to have a conversation. in my memories that are circling in my head, i am reminded of the time at my place when we were having hotpot that you blurted out to bunny if they were proposing to you and that was hard for me. i had let it go until yesterday. *You just wrote about dreaming of a chosen family in whatsapp and i am getting stuck with "shit, i am wrecking your dream."
while i don't feel this to be the end of things, i do think it's time and a chance to actually talk about chosen family, romantic friendships, polyam, friends with benefits, and arrangements while there are still un-talked accountability about white/BIPOC tensions within Undivided, and how this is showing up/can show up, in this friendship the three of us share, and the potentially life-long romantic partnership we share. I don't know how else to lead this conversation forward other than i need assurance that we will sit down and talk about this. I want to feel secure in my life-partner relationship and that for me means that i don't want to be constantly navigating race and gender insecurities within the three of us, thinking that you and bunny are friends, committed friends, the different labels that English affords and then finding out you are actually "dating as lovers" that is not outspoken to me.
And i am afraid that under all this, i am the token lover that is unconsciously used so you and bunny can be in the fuzziness while i navigate what me and your relationship means to us in this chosen family. * as you probably can tell, my language is getting heated up and "protective". I am feeling protective of who and what i am in our "trio". bb, i don't feel good about this. about the fuzziness, about the mystery, about the unsures, about the "i don't know what we are", about when i get to ask for more time with you and how that would mean if you needed to choose between me and bunny's.
I feel that bunny will get priority and bunny has also already made it clear to us, telling us how afraid they are with our relationship and in my reflection, I was very not okay with Bunny checking up on whether we already have a major fight or that we are needing to center their fear of being relegated or demoted though us being together. I'm unsure if you are catching it but Bunny's directness at asking conveying to us their fear without consideration that we are still building our romantic relationship and intruding without checking in, has been extremely hard on me. I have been working to ensure I am caring for them and I have need to say, I am hurt, by their intrusiveness through you, into our relationship and putting labels and pressures that seem to be fine for you, and it's actually not ok for me.
All the plans both of you have made to live together, and for them to keep suggesting and checking in with you if you are going to ask your dad for money to buy a house, feels to me to be extremely intrusive and inconsiderate of you family dynamics. In fact, it came across to me as manipulative. And i don't know how you are able to keep letting Bunny disrespect your family and your dad's relationship with their comments, to the point you are trusting them to deal with your dad, while they have a broken relationship with theirs.
I'm not telling you what to do about that because it's your friendship with Bunny but I am pointing out what I see, where it sits uncomfortably for me and that both of us have not asked or commented abut Bunny's relationship with their partners. I just know they have many struggles and I have to say, I don't know if they see how non-equitable this friendship is at the moment. I make space for within myself to be supportive of you and Bunny's relationship development but I don't think the space is afforded back to me when the boundaries are unclear like that. I fear that I will become the bad person asking for your time. When you went to wild church with bunny, i was doing a lot of work reminding myself that you are not taken by the lure of christianity and whiteness and that bunny is safe and church people are safe. both of you also have more spiritual access to Christianity me and you do. you know about christianity. and you are comfortable with it. and i am not ok with christianity. and i am not ok with it. and that is a tension for me. Again, i am feeling the need have clarity about this chosen family shape you see and have, and whether i can actually be in it, while you also have multiple romantic and sexual relationships that you are connected to in such deep intimate ways. And especially with bunny and viv. im not asking you to choose. i just want to raise awareness that these are racial, religious, gender, dynamics, that i am at the very edge of this relationship circle, especially when it comes to wanting you as my potential life partner and the potential for me to be let go, forgotten or be pushed out is very high, as i have already experienced with your living plans. I could understand if you badly want to live with Bunny and Viv and build this family. I am just worried that it will be YOU AND BUNNY AND VIV'S family and we are all the collected ones, including me. I don't want to be a collected one. I want to have a say on how I want my chosen family to be, who gets to be in it and who needs to work to be in in. While I have expressed interest in living with Bunny, it's not a strong desire. there's many reasons why i don't sleep over at Bunny's. I am grateful they showed me to help and support me but that is not a reason for me to feel grateful to the point of letting them step into my relational boundaries through you, which I feel is what they have done, and to me directly.
Im really not sure what I am asking of you. I really don't want to be erased because of another "whiteness accident" that has continued to intrude into my life, and i become a near-fatal victim of it and be left completely alone and lonely. There are many things I need to talk to Bunny about, and am going to reach out to them about what happened on Sunday and how it tipped my trust in my friendship with Bunny. Some repair works needs to happen for me. I love you so much
Dec 01, 2019 Waxing Crescent 123 Days after July 31 Soft waking, eyes fluttering heart skipping bed lingering water romancing gentle strolling coffee and breakfasting kissing and hand-holding up 18th and 19th kitty and cuddling kissing and hand-swinging tongs and hair-spraying eyes lingering and breathe sharing heart-melting in drizzling perusing and pursuing shopping for currying hugging and cleaning writing and writing loving and caring eating and familying packing and riding longing and desiring missing and sleeping ... my love, Lara my favourite way of sharing sunday with you. it can only get better i f i was sleeping beside you tonight too.
Nov 25, 2019 Waning Crescent 117 Days after July 31 This must be how it feels To truly feel the fear Of flowing more into desiring of wanting to loving you I never thought I could have the immediate courage To linger in the oceans Of your deep earth fire To feel this pull of invitation And challenge and expanding the depth That love can hold In all my journeyed life of learning love I have never met another Whom I recognize as my soul's wildest dreams, My heart's wildest desire ... my love, Lara, over the last few months, being with you have allowed me to feel into the desires of wanting to express my love to you in so many ways. this experience of loving you is my way of expressing to you, from my neuro-divergent brain, what it means to love you, what I am feeling, experiencing, learning and stumbling into. There are so many feelings I cannot express into spoken words and so this is my way of loving you too.