June 14, 2000

 On Friday, it will be six months since i moved here.  Six up and down months filled with changes, filled with adjustments.  Good emotions and bad emotions, when i felt incurably homesick one moment and ecstatically at home, the next.  And soon, it will be two years that He and i have known each other.  Where did all that time go?

     And isn't it funny how you think you know a person completely, yet when you live with them you discover there are tons of things you never even suspected.  

     Some days, i don't feel like i know Him at all.  Other days, i can tell by His posture exactly how the day is going to be.  i know every nuance, every tone of His voice.  Then i feel like i know Him.  

     Yet, it's so hard to put our learned behaviour patterns behind.  Hard to understand that what He might say in jest, i am overreacting to because it has been said in a harsh and cruel way to me by someone else before.   Hard to understand that where before, i was hounded and pestered and never left alone, always being depended on to solve a fresh crisis, or make life "all better" for someone else, now i live with Someone who retreats into a space of His own, refusing to emerge until He's resolved things in His own way.  i feel rejected.  Not needed, nor wanted.  Isn't part of the reason i am here the fact that i am a companion who will listen and support?  

     And that's where i find this lifestyle's power exchange difficult.  i feel sometimes, that it takes my voice away.  That i can't or shouldn't get angry.  That i shouldn't be offended when i'm told i am being prickly and no matter how much i protest, i am not believed.  (And because of the insistence, i do in fact, become prickly.)  That i shouldn't feel hurt when, after moments of silence i am dismissed with a "you may get up now."  

     i understand that part of the problem is my inability to communicate in stressful situations without starting to cry.  So my silence, although perceived as being sullen, is often in actuality only feeble attempts at fighting away tears.   

     But i get the idea in my mind, that if i turn around and say "that's it? i'm dismissed?"  then i am being a brat.  And that's not the way it is intended at all.  Yet i cannot find it in myself to become a groveling, mewling sort of person.  "Please listen to me Sir," is not something i can say without feeling like i am sniveling.  Posturing.  Posing as something other than simply what i am.  And i'd just start crying anyway.  i cannot stand it when i cry; i get angry with myself, so i stop talking.

     i'm a woman who happens to have a nature that is submissive.  And strong-willed.  i have difficulty reconciling the two.