I am not a morning person. If I am up and perky in the morning it’s because I probably haven’t been asleep yet and I’m just high from sleep deprivation. I say all that to set the stage for me not having actually seen the words come out of her mouth but reading them later. “Grief is just love that has no place to go.” It sounds very simple but it hit me as uniquely profound when I heard it–waking up from a bad night’s sleep after worrying about friends who were experiencing monumental losses. Their losses reminded me of losing dad and I fully understood what Regina was referring to. No I have not lost a child and I’m grateful for that because the people that I know that have had that kind of loss fold in on themselves for a while and we are lucky if we can bring them back to us. Losing my father kind of set my world off kilter because his love and support were so pivotal to my life in that moment I didn’t know what to do with all of that emotion. There was no one in my life that would be able to return it to me and there was no one I could layer it on without worrying about judgment or being cast aside. That’s why the ridiculous time frame from his death to his birthday to father’s day which is all of five weeks derails me some years. All of that love that I can tamp down the other 47 weeks peaks and can become overwhelming before slowly dying down and starting all over.
The last week or so I’ve been having conversations with a mythical partner before sleeping. Sometimes it’s an ex and sometimes it’s a conversation with a future partner. Either way I say a few things and then drift off. During one of those conversations it started to remind me of the grief is love that has no place to go mantra. If you have been around here for a while or you have read into any of my dynamics, then you know typically it takes a long minute for me to get over it when one ends. When it hasn’t, it has shown me that I wasn’t as invested in that person as I thought I was. I was angry with Emperor but honestly I wasn’t crushed. We hadn’t been together long enough and he never made me think of anything but play time not what our relationship could look like long-term. And I was angry with Mr. Wolf but more because he didn’t seem capable of dealing with my actual wants and desires instead of what he was hoping for in his relationships long-term. I grieved his death more than I did the end of our dynamic. But the other three, saw me make myself small enough to be ignored. It was the only way I didn’t rage at the world. I needed to be sad and to heal and it took longer than I wanted but that love needed somewhere to go, to fully dissipate and extinguish itself, before I could even consider a new source of flame. I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with the bedtime conversations and I will tell you now lol. Because as I’m talking I think about one of this mythical partner wrapping me in their arms sometimes I am asking what went wrong, or why we couldn’t be cuddled up now, or I was sorry for not being a better good girl for them. I fall asleep almost immediately so there’s no answer forthcoming oh and these folks are not around to actually answer and for even more transparency I only regularly cuddled with one of them and oddly enough it’s not his arms I imagine. It’s none of them really. Just a presence wrapping me up and making me safe.
I am the kind of submissive that will fall in love with a dynamic partner and I’m also the kind that will need time and space to heal from not having anywhere to direct that love if it ends. I think I knew that but didn’t have the very basic words to explain it. It feels like last summer is when the last bit if aimless love burned off of me. Kind of like when you step outside in the heat and your body is like bitch go back inside where the air is. But you can’t go back inside because life is outside. I’m waiting on the next great love to enter the chat but also not waiting. I still have to get better and learn about myself and figure out where my talents may need to be improved. For now I understand that my love needed some place to go and until it has a location then it will rest and learn alongside me.