Hope

We have been separated now for over a year. I am here and you are thousands of miles away. I ostensibly came to help my aged mother, but it was a welcomed reprieve for us, a break from the near constant fighting, the perpetual misunderstandings and slights, the inescapable stress of two planets in constant collision.

We were not always this way, but mostly always this way from our very beginning. I always said our relationship was never legato, always staccato. I chose you because I wanted someone strong, someone who could withstand the intensity of my personality, my over-confident intellect, the drilling and penetrating nature of my judgements. Because I wanted to release myself from being that person, if only for a few hours each week, with someone who was emotionally and intellectually strong enough to take the burden of my nature from me. To lift it from me, to give me a sanctuary from myself. Perhaps this was always too much to ask of anyone. Everyone else has their own demons, their own insecurities, their own search for safe harbors.

I have lived most of my life unaware of how powerfully I impact others, however unintentionally. I am very small femme woman, never physically intimidating. I have simply done as I chose. Since I am late to this self-knowledge I often forget how others experience me. At my worst and most negative, I have been told that I can be intimidating and overwhelming, a kind of powerful inescapable intense force. I know I have eviscerated very powerful people at times easily, and wielded more power to affect outcome professionally than others in my orbit. Just by dint of personality. At my best and most positive, this same intensity and focus can make me very warm, charismatic and charming, a natural, enthusiastic, and visionary leader, and a confident and inventive problem-solver. People have always been attracted to these traits in me. And at my best I provide safe harbor for others, I am optimistic, eternally hopeful, and can lift up others who are in my universe.

But for me, these traits are a blessing and a burden. I like being able to help others. But there are times when I tire of being the strong one, the smart one, the brave one, the caring one, the one who eviscerates the powerful wrong-doers on behalf of the powerless, the one who is never afraid, the one who reassures and comforts, the one who will always make things right, the one you can trust with your soul.

I wanted you to be the one to take that burden from me. To shelter me. But you have your own demons, your own intense insecurities, your own burdens. I worried that I could not trust you to (or perhaps I just never let you) take care of me, in the most intimate way. This way that manifests for me through sex. There is a reason I like to be fucked, to be taken, to be over-powered by my lover. To bottom to her top. To trust her to care for me when I am weak, and afraid, and lost. To be completely vulnerable to her, to be naked to her. These are not simply metaphorical musings but literal ones, I manifest my vulnerability in my nakedness to you. I give you what I do not give others, I give you the presentness of my self, no past, no future, only what exists in this moment. I am not here to fix anything or plan strategically or tactically for a future action or to analyze a problem, I am just one naked body, existing only to respond to your touch.

But the anger and fighting have left us separate broken planetary bodies, without contact, except though passing words. It's hard to see this as an improvement over collision, but it is where we are. This has been our relationship for years. And while our state recognizes marriage equity, you have never asked me. And I have never asked you.

I have been away now for more than a year. I thought it would be good to finally come home, though we have fought on the phone, like nothing has changed. I thought we could try to connect again through renewed fucking, you might like it, you might want it. You might like the power to make me come for you. I bought you a new cock and harness for your birthday, hoping to inspire you. But you were suspicious of me. You had earlier pulled out the estrogen implant from your cervix to replace that lost through your hysterectomy, and you told me you decided not to take vaginal estrogen supplements. Your sex drive has disappeared. "I don't know," you said "it's hard to feel any interest in fucking (you) anymore." The words were plain and hit me squarely.

I am not sure what to do. I wasn't so sanguine that renewed sexual intimacy would allow us a base of closeness that would buffer the distance that comes with the clashes in our styles and personalities, but I had hope. Now I have none. And I don't know what to do.