Where do we go from here?

My relationship with Cygnus has taken many blows.

We have survived the complications of polyamory (his complications, as I have never been able to make other connections, have other relationships), both as they affected us and as they impacted other relationships.  We have survived cheating and lies (on his part), rage , alcoholism, and drug addiction (again, on his part), and being pushed through the meat grinder we call a justice system.

We have survived advertisements on Craig's List for NSA (No Strings Attached) sex for him while I was out of town, and the anonymous mailing of printouts of those ads to me, and the repeat of the advertising months later.  That I knew about the first lot beforehand didn't make the second easier to bear when I learned of them not through discussion, but through seeing them on my screen thanks to others pointing them out.

We have survived his alienating every one of my friends and family members and many of the people I call community out there in the world.

We have survived my mental illness, kids, weather, his moving out, and his insane jealousy at the mere idea that I might be talking to another man (with no intent to act sexually, plainly stated to everyone with an interest at the very beginning).  He can't even stand that another man once complimented me very prettily and made me smile and blush because of it.

We have gone through so much.

But.

Now, nearing the end of his time in prison...now...we are not surviving.  We are failing.  I am tired.  I am tired of the abuse.  Tired of being told that everything I do is not enough, or not good enough.  I am tired of the narcissism.  I am  tired of the anger.  Tired of the blame.  Tired of the bitterness.  Tired of being denied my emotions or emotional support because of his anger.  Tired of feeling as though I must dim what scant light manages to shine forth from me because it threatens his ego, his fragile sense of self.  Tired of feeling that I must live only for his sake.  Want to know what it is like?  Go read this.  I did, and cried, because yes.

I have tried to save us.  I am a strong swimmer, a strong woman, but I can't save the titanic if I'm the only one bailing.  Now, too little too late, he is trying to talk, saying he wants to do the work.  Now, after insults and lashing out and words calculated to devastate, now when I have told him honestly that something has broken, has died, inside me and I don't know if it can be repaired or revived, now he wants to make the effort, and...

And I don't think it's working.

I know it's not working.

I know it is futile.

I found some value in myself, and he tried to kill it.  I did something I'm proud of and he railed against me for excluding him.  I strive to provide a childhood for our daughter and he complains about what he's missing rather than exulting that she is experiencing wonderful things in the world through the many people who adore her.

I get it.  He IS missing out, he IS stuck in prison, but we're imprisoned, too, and I yearn to be free.  I have to be free.  I have to be able to breathe, to sing, without worrying that somehow I will wake the slumbering giant of rage and it will terrorize us.  It's not right to expect us to molder away here, stuck in the moment in time when HIS choices put him where he is, but expect that, he does.

I have tried to tell him over the last few nights, but he won't hear me, keeps trying to turn the conversation to something hopeful or distracting, and I'm too damned tired to fight him for conversational supremacy but I have to, have to make him understand that this isn't his home any more, that I will love him forever but can't live with him any more, we are not partners and haven't been for a very long time and I don't have it in me to carry us both any more.

I'm lonely, and tired, and aching, and lost.  There's no road map through this place.  Where do we go from here?

It's Not Just the Bars Make the Prison

Treat a person like an animal, a dangerous creature to be caged and minimized, to be starved and controlled, and what can you expect but that they should become that ravening beast you have all along accused them of being?

Feed their spirit, nurture their humanity, show them that they can grow to be more than what they have been, and there can be tremendous change for good.

Idealistic?  Probably.  No less true for the idealism, though.  If one, even one, can change the path they're on and become a light in the dark, I would see them given the opportunity rather than let them be trampled into the mud and misery.

I have seen and heard of much of the negative in the world of jails and prisons, and certainly Hollywood has aggrandized the worst of it all.  What is missed or quashed or ignored is the good, the tremendous good, that happens among and between inmates every single day.

Yes, there are gangs.  There is bigotry.  There is violence.

There are also people who give a bar of soap to someone who can't buy their own.  People who reach out to their families in the outside world to help connect their fellows with THEIR families.  People who ask their loved ones to give a ride to a stranger so they can visit.  People who share food, offer a pair of socks or a shirt, lend some paper, a pencil, an envelope, a stamp, never asking anything in return.  People classified as less-than by society who act as more-than despite the expectation that they should be anything but their higher selves.

Prisoners are people.  They have souls.  They are imbued with the same divine spark as all living beings.  To see them as lesser is to diminish us and create the monsters they never would have been without our help.