December 8, 2000 I had the experience (traumatic? startling? mind-stopping?) of finding my partner at the time dead of a stroke.  At the time it was very traumatic, although one can also say that her passing was not completely unexpected because she had been very, very ill and I'd been taking care of her for the previous six months.  Still, death was "not on the agenda."  After the initial difficulty...what has remained with me since that time is that I became the keeper of her secrets, her unfulfilled dreams and hopes...in a sense, all the things she (Denise) showed me and told me in the last weeks of her life became the backdrop context of her death.  In retrospect, I can see now that she sort of knew she was going to be going...and needed to give as much of herself as she possibly could, since there was no way she was going to live to do those things she most wanted to do.  I keep those unfulfilled dreams and potentials with me...things that I know her mother and sister are unaware of.  I don't mind carrying these things...even though the feeling associated with them/her is bittersweet. 

This is very different from the sense of lost potential that I have regarding the relationship with CB.  Try as I might, it has been very difficult to shake the sense that she simply walked away from something that had a great deal of promise...despite its challenges.  There were plans we made, things we talked about sharing, places we wanted to go, things I wanted to share with her...and none of this will happen..at least between us.   It's this "loss of a future"...a particular possible future that has been so painful for me..in ways it feels like Denise might have felt prior to her death when she must have realized inside that she simply was not going to have the future she wanted for herself, that she had reached her limit, her end.   Although I deeply believe in love, and do believe that it's possible for me to "love again,"  I don't know if I'll ever really get past this sense of loss of future...that the probable trajectories of my life will have nearly as much intensity.  That might be good, since so much of the intensity that I do recall with CB was not very pleasant...but when it was good, it was amazing, magical and ecstatic....maybe like heroin or wet.  In the Greta Garbo movie "Temptress" the male lead finds himself desperately in love with a diva (Garbo).  In all honesty he had believed her when she told him that she loved him alone (he later found out she was married to his best business partner).  He pulls himself together, returns to his out of country business concerns and is faithful to himself.  Later, his friend and the wife, come to visit...and all hell breaks loose because every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to have a moment with the Temptress...and all she wants is the original leading man.  The business partner is killed and it seems that the Temptress just causes chaos whereever she goes.  She is not unaware of this..but seems just as bewildered by her powers as anyone else.  The leading man skillfully avoids her until at the very last he finally admits that he's always had these feelings and must succumb to them again.  He awakes the next morning to a note in which the Temptress reveals that she must leave him because she has realized that he is the only person who has ever loved her and she doesn't want to destroy his life.  Several years pass, and the leading man shows up for a conference in Paris (home of the Temptress) with his new wife, and sees the Temptress living on the street as a drunk and prostitute...she doesn't seem to really remember him...but remembers something of her love for someone  Are there some people who really are incapable of self-responsibility?  Maybe.  The tale seems to contain a moral about obsessive desires...and being true to ones self.  Part of that truth is to admit the feeling...the desire for that ecstasy, but to also demand an accountability of yourself and of the other for the mutual consequences of such.  As Sheryl Crowe puts it..."What do I do with these sweet love of mine...?"  I'm stuck right in this place...even as I venture out into the world and have been meeting genuinely fine people, all deserving of love and attention...some even wanting it from me.  I can't just stick this stuff with/on somebody else.  Unlike Denise, I don't have someone to carry the dreams of mine that will never be fulfilled.

These entries are moments of processing, as I said in the beginning a way of expressing concerns and moments that I have felt "silenced" about.  It's so difficult to write about such things without seeming to be petty...as if one has a laundry list of grievances.  At the same time, it seems as if memory works that way...rooted in individual moments that, while they might not be the summation of a circumstance, are often understood (or used by the self) as examples of something...a dynamic, a conclusion....for me confusion comes when individual moments seem to be in radical contradiction....when there is something about them all together that does not add up, even if separately they might be seen to have made sense.  This is part of what drives me to write this...to try to understand.  Something about this relationship has revealed to me diverse parts of my own psyche, separate aspects that seem to stand in direct conflict with one another.  In exploring these individual moments, when CB would seem to separate, when I would respond in frustration or anger sometimes (which is odd for me...normally I don't get angry about things like this...so why in those particular instances with that particular person) I really hope to find out something about myself.

Ultimately, the goal of this exercise is forgiveness and expression...regardless of potential difficulties in content.  If secrets cannot be shared, then what is the point?...particularly of difficult secrets?  I feel like the Log Lady (Margaret) in the television series Twin Peaks...trying to get to the root of an issue by asking and revealing all the most embarrassing questions...when for most of us we can't get past the fact that she is translating for a clairvoyent log of wood. 

That first Autumn was very difficult...but I don't remember much about it consciously, except that I was basically happy being in a household with a family for the first time in my life. My journal reflects that basic happiness...even though I was physically exhausted. Sometime in October, CB began to withdraw emotionally....I could always tell because she wouldn't look at me when she talked, she would quit saying intimate things...she would withhold sex.  This was the first time she did it...about the middle of October according to the journal.  It has to be connected to something...but she had always denied that anything in particular happened..although she did finally admit to me that it had something to do with issues surrounding her ex husband Ahmed.  She absolutely would not tell me what was going on..and eventually it lifted, or seemed to. This was the first time that I'm aware of that she deliberately kept something from me...but I don't know what it was.

Halloween was fun that year, although ETB refused to join LTB and me in carving pumpkins.

Later that fall the girls and I came down with chicken pox.  ETB brought them home a little before Thanksgiving.  LTB got them and soon afterwards I got them.  The girls had each already had chickenpox...I had never had them even though I'd been exposed to them multiple times.  So, I was really sick...a full blown case of adult onset chicken pox with the upper respiratory thing and all.  CB didn't get sick, but had to care for all of us.  I was down for almost three weeks.  Something happened during this period that I've always been really reluctant to talk about...because it seems so weird to me.  Even as I write this, I feel a hesitation...it's so personal...and damning in a way. But this is the point of such writing. During the height of my illness...when I was covered with those lesions...I was completely miserable.  They hurt like hell and at its worst I could hardly bear for anything...even the bedsheet, to touch me even though I was also cold because I had a fever.  At one point I hadn't slept well in several days.  CB came to bed one evening and indicated that she wanted sex.  I told her that I really didn't feel like it right then...but she insisted that we have some sexual contact.    It wasn't extensive, but what we did end up doing was excruciating for me...and at the time, she didn't seem to care about that at all (I also thought it was kind of gross).  I ended up feeling kind of violated.   I told myself that I should feel grateful that my partner would want to be sexual when I was so disgusting....This has always bothered me.

At this point I want to indicate that I have been sexually abused by adults as an adult several times in my life.  I've been raped/sexually assaulted twice and have been in a couple of abusive sexual relationships (both very short lived).  I do have a masochistic side to myself......a side that has a high threshold for this kind of thing.  It's hard for me to know when it's ok to really put my foot down and say no.  (I have to emphatically add that not all my relationships have had these features...most have been loving and healing, so I do know the difference...even if I can't stand up for myself at a moment) If
it's not overtly repeated (which the above incident was not), then I tend to discount such things as anomilies.  Still, it does give me a sense of how CB might have seen me...an object that could be useful, or could become a logistical problem.  At least that's how it often felt to me.  So what is this continuing love about? 

In rereading the above I'm reminded of a chapter in Tom Graves' book, "Wyrd Allies" in which he discusses the difficulties of parsing "use and abuse" in adult relationships.  According to him, part of what makes this difficult is that we actually do want to be "used" in a way, or at least be "useful."  I know that sexual intimacy is one of the few circumstances in which I really do want to completely surrender...regardless of whether I'm playing a dominant role or not., and such does make me vulnerable whatever the state of my self esteem at the time. Although I felt violated in the above instance, I'm really not convinced entirely that violating me was the intention...in fact, I'm pretty sure it wasn't.  This is a hard one for me, because intention does matter, even though intentions are not everything.  So, I keep this one open....no situation like this emerged again and so the significance of it becomes one of meaning....a moment to remember as a possible instance of danger, of checking boundaries.

As I read back through the last entry I realized, as I knew I would, that I had forgotten a couple of really important details...but this is the point of a record such as this, to go through the layers again and again until the whole can be more fully seen.  During the Christmas that I spent with CB, and which initiated our sexual relationship, I left behind my dear, dear cat-friend of 20 plus years with a friend of mine.  PB (the friend, not the cat) and I had developed a sexual relationship, but she knew that I was interested in moving on.  She took care of my cat, Lugh, during his last days of life...he went into terminal renal failure just two days before I was supposed to leave.  I was so obsessed with CB that I left him behind with PB and never saw him again.  Although I remained in contact with PB and with Lugh by phone and made the final decision to put him down (he departed on Christmas Eve) I never saw him again as he was cremated before I returned.  Somehow, I've always seen that as some kind of omen, yet an opening and change at the same time.  It was time for me to move on, and obviously time for him to let go...he had been slowly getting sick for some time...yet to choose that time and place...I've always considered it very interesting.  I have seen it both as inevitable and something I've regretted.  Am not resolved on this one....is certainly a testament to the nature of obsession and single mindedness.

I also realized in rereading that I may have given the impression that CB was less resistant to the idea of "us" than she was.  She went back and forth on the idea quite often in the beginning and I believe I chose to interpret that at the time as insecurity rather than as an honest issue about her true needs and wants.  Honestly, it can/could be all of the above.  But I was so into her and into the idea of being with her that I over-rode practically everything else to the contrary. 

And things seemed to go our way...I got a coveted (and difficult to obtain) contract instructor position at the same installation where she works...and the household in which I was living (a community house) was breaking apart due to the building being sold...so I had to get out anyway.  It all seemed to be coming together for me to move...so in May of 2005 I moved in cross country with CB and her daughters.  It was like a dream come true for me..even though I knew (and my journals indicate) that there would be difficulties...ETB, the youngest daughter had already expressed her discomforture with our intimacies but CB was determined to have her own way: "This is just what I have to do for myself," is what I quote her as saying.  I was bothered by the fact that CB didn't seem to want to bring the whole new "family" together to talk...and actually avoided it most of the time....and now I think I should have been much more proactive.  At the same time, it was all new for me as well and I really didn't know what to do  myself.

One of the major issues facing us was space.  Everyone in the household had a bedroom or an office space for themselves except for me.  CB did try to accomodate this at first...she divided up the closet space, threw out her bed to make room for mine, provided bookshelves for most of my books, and set me up in a corner of the master bedroom with my own desk.  It was the best we could do under the circumstances I guess...at the same time it created immediate difficulties.  I have always had my own bedroom or office so for me the situation required extensive adjustment.  Despite her own best efforts, CB began to almost instantly resent my presence.  I told her when I moved in that I required some time alone every day for meditation or rest.    She tried to give me this space at first...but as time went on it became more and more difficult for her to do so. 

Again, in retrospect, it seems to me that this was the point where I should have considered moving into my own space...it probably would have saved at least some aspects of the relationship.  But, by September I was working two full time jobs (90 plus hours a week) and still trying to adjust to vast differences in environment, climate and just the stress of a whole different life...so that possibility just didn't occur to me.  20/20 vision in hindsight.

By September a couple of other things had happened....My journal records the first instance when CB played me off against her daughter ETB...had to do with a movie.  All three of us wanted to see a movie, so CB and I assumed we'd all go together, but ETB pitched a fit and refused to go with us as a family.   CB gave into ETB and secretly went with her to the movie in question while I was at work and then revealed to me that she had seen the movie and really didn't want to see it again....so left me to go myself.  I got really angry about this I'll admit...and was really hurt. 

There was also a separate circumstance in which CB and I arranged to go to a theatre production in DC.  For reasons that are not clear to me, I was an absolute bitch during the whole trip up there...I basically accused her of not really being committed to the relationship and when she protested I essentially called her a liar.  I don't know what this was about...it could have been PMS on my part...or this could have been connected with something.  I know that at some point that summer the stress became so intense that I declared some regret for having moved to begin with....but during this time, we did often take time to talk through and negotiate these conflicts..even though, I've found out since then, that CB didn't work with ETB at all on her issues concerning our relationship...ETB was pretty much left to her own devices....LTB was summoned to "assist her sister."

This all seems very weird to talk about...because honestly, I was also very happy during this time...CB and I did a great many things together, shared cooking and company.  I remember the time as being stressful, but also very happy in many ways....despite all the negative things I've described, I can honesty say that I deeply loved (and still love) CB.  I've certainly never been more attracted to anyone in my life.  We shared a profound attachment to poetry, Middle Eastern culture, cooking, music, theatre and there was certainly a deep sexual connection....at least for me.  She has tried to downplay that most recently, but I don't really buy it completely...she certainly seemed to be deeply connected at the time.   When times got really bad later on, I hung on to those good times at the beginning to remind myself of what we could be again...I chose to forget some of those early troubling symptoms....although they could have been symptoms or not, depending on how they were dealt with.  It seems that nothing was really dealt with...which is perhaps the larger issue.

More later...much more later.

It's been a really long time since I have even been on this site...I've been doing a great deal of processing and reflection and have concluded that it is time for me to put personal stuff on a blog like this.  As I mentioned in the last/only entry, I keep journals which record practically every facet of my personal and spiritual life...been doing it for years.  I have often found these journals to be invaluable in retracing events and understanding the contexts of decisions that later turn out to be of significant consequence.   I'm a historian in professional practice...so it makes sense...even though I know that journals are not objective...they help me to remember and recreate the totality of things...because I forget. 

So, I've decided to use my journals of the last few years to talk about a relationship that has had great significance in my life...not because it succeeded, but because it failed to achieve the intended objectives.  The collapse of this relationship forced me to re-examine everything that I had previously considered important in relationship...and created the conditions which has led me to completely change whole aspects of self...in fact, perhaps led me to embrace parts of myself that I had previously avoided.  In this sense, this relationship is the most important connection that I have ever made in this life for it brought me to my major turning point.

Another reason for writing about this relationship stems from the fact that the other significant person involved is currently a professional colleague of mine who is spreading untruths about the nature of our past liasion and its dissolving.  She has taken it upon herself to present a facile surface reading of what was a deep and profound connection that greatly disturbed me, her and her daughters.  She has tried to take control of the narrative and dimiinish the importance of what occurred between all of us.  In writing my version of the narrative, I intend to correct what I see as her attempt to cover over important truths regarding the nature of our relationship specifically, and the dynamics of relationship in general.  I'm not intending this to be an expose...since my own position could also be affected by my disclosures.  I will not vilify her or claim that she alone is responsible for the failure of the relationship...nothing could be further from the truth.  This is part of the reason why I'm going to use my journals before, during and after the events...plus my ongoing reflections which have occurred in the last few months as my grief has finally subsided and I'm ready to move on.  My journals will assist me in making sure that I reveal as much about myself and my responsibility in this collapse as I do about her.  It is only by telling as much of the truth as possible that deep healing can commence...and this is true for her as well...the fact that she refuses to tell or reveal the truth, even to her so-called closest friends...makes this account all the more necessary.

So first...the general-particulars:  CB works as a professor at a military installation in Annapolis, MD.  Her specialty is Arabic language and literature.  Please do not look her up to harass her.  I provide this information because it is available to the public and is posted on various websites.  She has two daughters: LTB and ETB. LTB is in her second year of college and ETB will be entering regular high school this year.  I met CB in the spring of 2004 when we were both on Fellowships at the Library of Congress.  It wasn't until close to the end of my tenure there that I really got to know CB.  She kept to herself, and was only up at the Library maybe twice a week.   At some point I realized that she was attracted to me...there were a couple of times that we ran into each other in the bathroom and she always wanted to make some excuse to touch me or my hair.  It was a vibe...and I found her very attractive, so I enjoyed it.  About 10 days before I finally left she invited me and one other woman (an out lesbian) to her home in Annapolis for dinner.  I ended up being the only one able to go...and had a nice evening with her and her daughters...as I left I got this funny feeling like I would be seeing her again...something about this was significant. 

When I left DC ,where I had been living, to return home to KCMO 10 days later I got the first of a series of "zaps" regarding CB.  I  now know these for what they were...she was sending telepathic messages to me (subsequently, these would become frequent...and she would admit to them).  My sufi teacher calls these "zaps" the "magnestism of the nafs" in other words, people who have similar ego defenses and wounds will often powerfully attract each other in ways that seem supernatural or pre-ordained.  I'll accept both explanations.  Over the next few months she and I began a long distance relationship which was finally consummated over Christmas of that year.

I'll definitely admit that I pursued her and that there was  some reluctance on her part.  But she was also interested and very attracted and in the end, she initiated the sexual part of our relationship.  I felt like I had to allow this because of her reluctance...I wanted her to want to do this.  I don't know in retrospect how much pressure she might have felt, although she could have told me no, because I was going to be leaving at the end of my visit and she could have opted to never see me again.  There is a co-dependency at work here..and perhaps her own conflicted needs. 

At the same time, CB seemed to really enjoy our connection and over the next few months she helped me purchase several airline tickets so that I could visit.  As I reread my journals, I realized/remembered that she was the one who first broached the possibility of my moving in with her and the girls in March when I visited over our spring breaks.  My journal records that I was very excited and overwhelmed by the possiblity, but constantly questioned myself and her about the conditions.   I was especially concerned about the effect of my presence on her daughters.  She finally asked me: "Are you willing to be family to my daughers?"  Of course I said yes...yet when I asked her about what she was telling her daughters about us, she revealed she wasn't telling them anything.  I found out soon after I moved in that she had not even told her daughters I was moving in, but "was staying for a little while."  In retrospect, I'm not sure how to read this....but my journals do indicate that I saw this as a danger sign, even though I was also overwhelmingly happy to be with her...so I swept all this under the rug.  Little did I know that this kind of avoidance on her part was to be a major source of conflict between us.

I'm going to post this now since I have to run errands...but there will be more to this story...and I'll probably even find more to add to the above as I dig archeologically through my own records.

I keep my own journals for personal discovery and history and have never really wanted to post that stuff online because I figure..who cares?  But, I do have a job at an interesting place, a place that is definitely politically incorrect and controversial...so, thought I might write a little about my experiences here...within the boundaries that they set about not "revealing" security sensitive material...which should be easy enough...so no real names to protect the inplicated or guilty...but periodic glimpses of what life is like in a military educational institution.

First off, almost every honest professor/instructor/teacher here (and that's what I do/am), admits that the Naval Academy is only kind of an educational academy.  The goal is not to train people to think, which is what the putative ambition of most educational facilities are supposed to be in theory...but rather to indoctrinate young people to think along certain paths, in certain ways.  Most of the students are more or less aware of this...and depending on their personalities, find various ways to adjust.  I have had classes where not a single student agreed with the statement that "Being at the Naval Academy has made me a better, more honest and honorable person," but rather said that the pressures of the Academy actually made them into better liars, cheats and hidden people.  I'm sure that's not universal...but it does seem to me sometimes that the abnormal pressures these kids are put under is not producing the kind of officer/soldier that the "brass" envisions.  I guess time will tell.

So, just a run down of this week.  The week started with the climbing of the Herne...an obelisk that all the members of the  Plebe class (freshmen) have to figure out how to climb (after it's been covered with oil...it's about 20 ft high or so) collectively in order to be matriculated up to 4th Class Midshipman...to become an actual initiated student.  This particular year the affair was a bit more somber because late last week, as finals were ending, a 4th class student was found dead (it seems of natural causes) in her dorm room at Bancroft Hall.  It seemed to cast a pall over everything...but with over 4000 students rooming in one place (Bancroft Hall is the largest single building dorm in the world apparently), it seems at least one student dies each year.  Earlier, over Spring Break another student was killed in a freak motorcycle accident.   Every year after Break, students start coming into classes with broken limbs, sprains, this year one of my students was compelled by his advisor to come to class drugged up on Vicadin (sp?) with a punctured lung.  The normal rules don't apply here, since when you sign your name to the NA application...if you are accepted, your body becomes the property of the US government and you literally have very few civil rights left.   It's tough to watch and deal with as a teacher.

So, later this week, on Friday, we have commissioning, which is the equivalent of graduation.  Every Midshipman is given the rank of Ensign and receives his/her first military duty assignment.  Depending on what each has decided to do, they go into the Naval Air Force, the Navy proper (ship or submarine duty), or into the Marines.  There are a multitude of rituals that attend this process, each with their own uniform and procedure....for civilians, it really is another world...almost another religion.  It's interesting but kind of weird....kind of like the language I had to learn in order to figure out what the kids were talking about....a hat (military hat) is a "cover,"  the bathroom is "the head,"  just like a ship, each floor in each building is a "deck" and the walls are "bulkheads."  (I had to pretend I was on the Starship Enterprise when I first started working here in order to get all the terms right).  If a student has a free day without a class, he/she's on a "civilian" that day...a late day with only afternoon class is "a grandfather."  ...and so on...  Some of the punishments for infractions really do seem to come out of the medieval period...students are denied meals and sleep for infractions of protocol, they are forced to run laps for hours without rest and obviously can be denied "liberty" or free time/down time.  The point is to build stamina and secure obedience to the chain of command....assuming your superior officer is a human being.   It's scary to me.

Commissioning week always includes a number of airshows and flyovers by the Blue Angels, an elite corp of performance aircraft that are specially flown by Navy pilots.  For about a week the airspace over Annapolis and down Highway 50 is peeled open by the lowflying roar of these planes....some folks love it, some people, and many animals apparently, don't care for it at all.  It is interesting to me....but I don't like the noise and the shaking of buildings very well...so I usually go outside and watch a little, but am very happy when it's quiet again. 

So, we'll see how commissioning goes this week...and more later.