This one’s not going to be easy. basically, I lost in love.

Over the last month or so, I was in a online relationship (or so I thought) with a furry named Dashy. We would hang out on furry IRC, cuddling and chatting and etc via text, and he really seemed to be into me, and I was increasingly into him.

I’m shy, so for me, it takes longer.

And he was very sweet, and supportive, and cuddly, and told me how great I was, and I was all cute and snuggly and funny and fun for him, and everything seemed nice. It wasn’t really much more than dating (with benefits), but I thought we had connected.

He even invited me to his own little IRC channel, where I met some other nice gay male furries. It was keen. I was even having some “maybe in the future” type thoughts.

Then last night, he tells me that he and this other furry I won’t name because he’s very sweet (and young) are now considering themselves “mated” in the furry fandom, but he would still love to have virtual text sex with me, with said other fur watching approvingly even, and maybe I could even be part of his little harem of other fuck buddies as well.

Admittedly, he phrased that last bit differently.

Needless to say, this did not go over well with me, in fact, I got super fucking pissed and I let him know it. And he had no idea what a goddamned landmine he stepped on because for all my sweet and snuggly ways, I am a poisonous fucking bitch when I am aggrieved, and I raked him over the coals (emotionally speaking) with my outrage and my verbal skills.

So he got to find out what happens when you piss in my fire. I told him that I knew that he knew what he was giving up. I told him that I would still be his friend, but never more. That I would be there, but eternally out of reach. I told him that he had known the warmth of my hearth and he would never know it again.

In fact, it was me who broke off contact because I was feeling physically sick of him. He led me on. He never promised me anything, of course, but he acted like he was really into me and that maybe there was a future for us. And to his credit, he admitted that he had basically lied to me via action, and he did feel bad about it.

But I was not, and am still not, in a forgiving mood. Dashy got to see a side of me that very few people have ever seen, and I am not in the least ashamed of it. He deserved the full brunt of my shockingly potent ire (well, shocking unless you have known me a while) and if anything, I feel like he got off too easily. He trifled with my emotions and I deserve better.

Especially since, as the title of this blog entry suggests, this shit has happened to me before. Many times.

When I was far newer to the whole online furry thang (don’t ask me how long ago that was, the answer would depress me), this exact scenario happened to me over and over and over.

I would meet a guy, he would seem really into me and like he really enjoyed my company and appreciated all I had to offer, and it would really seem like things were going somewhere, and then one day, out of the blue, he’d tell me he found someone really wonderful and they were mated now, or that oh gee, did I forgot to mention that I am already in a committed relationship?

But I bet you and my current boyfriend would get along really great together and we can all be one big happy triangle!

Yeah bullshit. That’s your selfish “I can have everything” dream. Here in reality, I am not your fucking toy.

And the thing is, back when I was younger and more clueless and much worse at sticking up for myself, I not only feel for this, I fell for to the point of moving all the way from Prince Edward Island to the West Coast of the USA to be someones “add on mate”.

First to Portland, then to Silicon Valley, I uprooted my entire life and went to live with some guy whom I knew already had a boyfriend or mate or whatever. I am not sure what the hell I thought was going to happen. But both times it did NOT work out (for one thing, I couldn’t work legally) because as it turns out, you don’t end up with a neat little triangle, you end up with a Y, where one person has two boyfriends and the other two have half a boyfriend each.

So I learned my lesson (eventually) and mow I will not even go there for a heartbeat. I now know that when it comes to romance, I demand absolute monogamy. Sexual monogamy means nothing to me, but I need to be the only one in my man’s heart, because he will be the only one in mine. when it comes to romantic love, I do not share.

And if that means forcing someone to choose, so be it.

The insane thing is, because this sort of thing has happened to me a bunch before, I feel extremely aggrieved and indignant that it happened again. And kind of stupid too, like I should have seen it coming.

Oh well. There is just something about me that makes people like me but not actually want me, not for keeps anyhow. Maybe I am boring. Maybe I just seem like too much work. Maybe I am just too accommodating and easy to get along with and people just don’t value me as a result.

I’m still going to put my heart out there, though. I’m 41 and I want a Man of Life, dammit.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today, I made a little bit of progress.

Specifically, today I recognized that I was becoming depressed in the afternoon, and deliberately got up and moved around some to try to shake it off.

It worked, more or less. It didn’t exactly fill me with coruscating torrents of everlasting joy, but it kept things from getting worse. Next time I will do a little more than what I did today, which was to get up from the bed, go get a glass of water, and then sit myself at the computer without permission to go back into my bed for at least half an hour.

It’s a baby step, but that’s one big baby.

Like I have said before, the idea that I can change my mood through action is weird to me, alien even. I have spent so long just treading water that it never occurred to me that I could swim. (More water imagery!)

And it’s more than just weird. It means taking responsibility for my mood in a way that is entirely new, and more than a little scary, to me. After all, if you accept that you can affect something, you automatically assume responsibility for it. The two things are not separable, as much as some people would like to think they are.

Power equals responsibility.

And a big big part of me does not want that responsibility and would actually prefer to go back to acting like there is nothing I can do against the swelling tides and riptide currents of my internal maelstrom. That part of me is so scared of taking an active part (and hence responsibility) in my own life that it is willing to dive deep into the pit of oblivion in order to escape it.

And the thing is, I don’t understand why. What it is about having the power to change my own mood that scares the hell out of me? Why is that part of me so scared of responsibility that it actually prefers depression?

And what does that say about the nature of my depression?

Well it certainly indicates that my depression, as awful as it has been on literally every level of my life, is an escape mechanism. A way to avoid having to deal with the world and accept responsibility for myself. This is not truly a shock and runs concurrent with my previous theorizing, but it really underlines the nature of the problem.

See how my language becomes all precise and science-formal when I talk about really deep stuff? Intellectualize much?

Anyhow, the fundamental question of why I fear responsibility remains. When I try to examine the subject (not easy, girt with fear as it is), the concept of “attachment” springs to mind. Responsibility ties you down, limits you, weighs you down. A deep part of my fundamental emotional nature equates freedom of motion with safety and limitations as traps.

And traps, of course, as DANGER.

But that doesn’t really explain an aversion to self-responsibility. It’s not like taking responsibility for a home or a task at work or being the treasurer of your local polo club. It makes no sense to fear being tied down to yourself.

And yet, in a way, it does. If I take full responsibility for myself, that actually comes with a whole lot of new, scary things and a fair bt of change in my life. I would have to stop fucking around and grow up and actually take charge of my life and where it goes instead of that eternal drifting in the mist that has been my life for twenty years.

And deep down, there’s a part of me that, it shames me to admit, just does not want to grow up.

Maybe it has something to do with my incomplete childhood. My inner child still feels abandoned and unfinished and broken, and refuses to grow up any further until it gets what it feels it needs, like the love, affection, attention, acceptance, and validation it never got in my actual childhood.

And maybe that is not negotiable. Maybe love is a vitamin and without it you just don’t grow right. You have to either find it in the world or somehow provide it for yourself, like plants manufacturing their own food from sunlight and water.

And my inner child feels really ripped off by life, and thinks that even having to go find it or make it myself is a grave injustice, and Someone owes it all that it has not gotten for life, and it is perfectly willing to hold out for that, like a child holding their breath till they turn blue.

Well I’m forty one years old, and clearly, I ain’t gonna get it. At least, it’s not going to show up on its own. So I have to ask myself what stubbornness and being “right” (ha!) are worth, and if I can give up my hunger strike and go out into the world and get something to eat.

The only person I can rely on to be that caregiver that I need so badly is me. I am going to have to accept a duality that normally I would avoid, namely of being child and parent at the same time.

I loathe binaries, but sometimes you have to separate things for a while in order to be able to recombine them into a greater unity. Maybe it takes being two people to learn to be one whole one.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

I want to love my inner child. And my inner child wants the love. But I guess that inner child wants the love to come from somewhere else, and feels like if it has to come from within, it’s worthless.

I don’t know. It’s all a very complicated game of emotional chess to play with myself.

I should probably make note of all this in regards to bringing it up with my therapist next session. Seems important.

Anyhow, I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.