Unhappy mess.

I am an unhappy mess. 

Lately I hate hanging out at Missy and Red’s house when there are normal everyday family things going on, because it makes me feel even more like an outsider than usual (and I usually feel a LOT like an outsider).  I am the elephant in the corner that everyone is afraid to mention.  I imagine their kids are wondering what the heck I am doing there all the time.  It doesn’t help that I practically have to sit on my hands in order to not hug or kiss someone off-handedly, or say something that would blow our cover – which makes me want to be there even less.   Missy and Red are the step-mom and the dad…I am…the Chloe.  I have no role, and it makes me sad.  I don't belong.  No, I don’t want Red to tell them about us – even if he actually WANTED to, his ex-wife is a raging…meanie. She would figure out how to take the kids away or get more money or do something else to make his life a living Hell.

Also, I have been worrying lately about what they say about decision making (whoever "they" are).  You know…that thing about how we keep making the same mistakes over and over again without realizing it?  I have had two ten-year marriages that didn’t work out.  I must be making a mistake. Clearly I can’t be making the SAME mistake this time, but am I making some version of a mistake that I’ve made in the past?  How would I even know what that mistake was?   While Missy and Red are in the Trifecta, their marriage is continuing, their family is stable, their retirement accounts are growing...  Meanwhile, at least to the outside world (which is unbelievably difficult to ignore), it appears as though my life is at a standstill.  I am a middle-aged mother living with a college student in an apartment with paper-thin walls.  I drive a used car that requires constant maintenance, I have a job with no future (or insurance or retirement fund), and I don’t date.  It appears as though I hang out a lot with a married couple who can’t seem to get rid of me.  If the Trifecta doesn’t last, I will be in worse shape than before, because I will be all that...and older.  

Man, am I being a big baby about all of this?

F*CK the Unicorn (and not in the good way).

Ok.  Admittedly, I am in a mood.

I read this:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/01/30/sl-letter-of-the-day-we-found-our-unicornbut-shes-engaged

I realize I am stuck on the moniker, and this isn't the topic of the article, but who wants the pressure of being "The Unicorn?"

On any given day, I usually appreciate and enjoy Dan Savage's advice.  I really do.  Trust me.  But who wants to be "The Unattainable," or "The Elusive," or the object of the "Dude! You didn't really think you'd ever get a piece of that, AND still keep your wife, did you?!" type of locker room banter.

Maybe some girls do, but not me.  Well, not at MY age anyhow.

All I have ever wanted was to be satisfied, and (dare I say?) happy.  Once in a while, (or ok, often...) some adventure and excitement in my relationship are great and fun.  Why is it so disturbingly rare to be in a happy, long-lasting, committed relationship?  Why is must it be even more rare to find two people to be loved by?  Is there some unimpassioned ruling entity out there that says "threesomes" must be made of hopelessly beautiful people, engaged in short term, fleeting and/or risque encounters?  Are there no other "normal" people out there who crave committed intimacy (with...eek! more than one person?) on a long-term, loving basis?  Please help me discover that someone else has forged this path and can offer advice that will make my daily living situation less...impossible.

We have told our story...we hear stories...but have we ever actually MET anyone?  Not all three of them in the same room at the same time.

Good for all you young, sexy, beautiful, successful twenty- or thirty-somethings, engaged in exciting, fulfilling threesomes.  I can hardly wait to read someday about how perfectly and wonderfully things worked out for you.  And I sincerely hope they do.

Haven't we (meaning "most people," I suppose) all been at some point, ridiculously fanciful and full of beautiful, utopian fantasies of the "dream relationship" occuring during our lifetime?  No one said it would be easy.  Only after one has experienced the excruciating emotions of not only love, but loss, hatred, grief, bliss, dissappointment, betrayal, jealousy, and spite (among all others), have we become whole, and therefore finally capable of experiencing that "dream relationship."  In whatever form it may take.

Wait.  Is it just me?

I am human.  I am no more or less special than anyone else.  I want to feel cared for and loved.  I want to care for and love.  I don't need to be labeled.  Not "The Third" or "The Prize" or (God forbid) "The Unicorn."   I am a human being - trying to be as satisfied as possible during the little time I have left on this earth. 

I would appreciate if you would refer to me and treat me as such.

Thank you.

P.S. - I have truly and sincerely, down to my CORE, fully enjoyed and appreciated all the special treatment and attention I have received over the past two years.  However, it wouldn't be fair to any of us if EACH ONE of us didn't feel that wonderful at any given moment.

Missy gets messy.

From a couple of posts over the past nine months, one might think that Chloe had cornered the market on unexpected eruptions of emotion. She has not.

I mentioned recently that I have been surprised to find myself the Least Bothered Person In The Room, through that period of storms. Maybe I jinxed myself: since then, more days than not, I am the one of us who's having the worst day. (Not that it's a contest.)

Several features about the Trifecta have contributed to my discomfort over the past couple of weeks. Mind you, some of the triggers are external events that have nothing to do with us -- but the nature of my response, and the effect that my behavior has had on the threesome, are frankly freaking me out a little.

I take my meds. I'm not in a giant episode of pathologic proportions. It's just, I hate feeling angry or resentful or sad ever at all, and I especially hate it when those feelings burst out at the wrong moment and bring my partners down. I'm usually the sweetness-and-light type, and even when I'm cranky, it tends to be only mild to moderate. There was a while there when Red was uncharacteristically moody (even before the storm), and it did scare me. That got better. Lately, he's "concerned" about me instead, and I think he and Chloe are having secret conversations about just how alarmed they should be.

The answer is, I don't know.

One of my parents was a scary yeller, so I don't yell. Even raising my voice for more than two sentences kind of shocks me -- and I've done it at Red at least three times in the last week. I don't cry unless there's a damn good reason, yet the weeping has overcome me a couple of times this week, at what seem to be trivial provocations.

Maybe it's that we keep shifting and settling into a new equilibrium, only to find that we're not done yet. A little like when your lover turns over in bed, halfway waking you up, then both of you falling back asleep. Except sometimes you don't. And now there are two who can wake me.

I want to scream: why does it have to be MY work that has the only elasticity? Such that if we as a family need more money, the only way to get it is for me to work more hours? Which leaves the other two with all kinds of time together without me, which in theory doesn't make me jealous, because I know they'd rather have me there, and it's not that I don't want her to be with him, or that I don't want him to be with her, it's that *I* want to be with **ANYONE** and that makes me sad and childish and unreasonable and I hate it.

Someone treats Chloe badly at our workplace, and I become enraged. I have less than half of the control over anything that happens there, but I have a thousand times more investment in her happiness than anyone else does. Or than I would have for any other colleague. And she is ridiculously protective of my happiness, sometimes to her detriment. On the one hand, I want her to stay there forever so that I can make her life better and she can make my life better and I can at least get a peek at her almost every day ... and on the other hand, I want her to gain a better opportunity, with something closer to the compensation she deserves, and where each of us is not clouded by our devotion to the other. I want to not have to be so careful around each other while other people are watching. And I can't stand wanting two opposing things so strongly.

All this grimness on my part has been a wet blanket, on the evenings when we three only get to spend an hour or two together after work, and then have to go our separate ways. If I squelch my discontent, I'm disconnected. If I let it show, they both are more blue.

These past four days, the not-just-happy-hour kind, have included a lot of fun. An evening at the ballpark just the three of us, a movie with the kids, a big family dinner with everyone from grandma to auntie to grandkids, a low-key barbecue today. Two of those nights were filled with stay-up-late, sprain-your-privates, super-glue bonding type mindblowing sex. On the downside, I had to work late Friday night, worked half of Saturday, and most of Sunday. Felt sorry for myself almost every minute. But, I come home to find Chloe has fed the kids and put away the dishes. The next I day I come home to find Red has vacuumed the house and is entertaining my ailing mother, whose arrival I missed because of work. The day after that I come home to find that Chloe has shucked the corn and made a new pitcher of tea, and Red has fired up the coals and fixed the kitchen drawers.

I come home.

I come home to find:

I come home to find love.


Somehow I have to either get a grip, or get used to not having a grip. Somehow.