and I know, and I know, and I know just how this ends (part XV, and end)

(This turns out to be the last in the series.)

Feb 22, 2021, 7:17 PM

[given name], former master, distant love, inconstant ache.

In the last six years my life has changed a great deal. So...let's go into some of those. Not that you're reading these, but...something in me still says, write, on occasion. This is the last time i will.

I'm collared to a man named Matthias now. Of morbid amusement, since the rise of COVID, things have gone off the rails with him too. But before that, I was his, absolutely, with the exception of clients I took through Sakura. I'm still working at Sakura.

[I] is off and on these days. He voted for Trump, and...I can't get past that, especially with the insurrection Trump and others fomented against his own government, and members of his own party, this last January 6th. So..we don't talk a lot these days.

[F] and I barely talk, these days. What little we had, limping along, finally died, and I was the one to declare an end to things. I walked away; he still would like me to reconsider. It's made remaining friends difficult, for all that I still care. Maybe the fact I still care is part of what's difficult.

I met a man about a year after Matthias, named [E]. He has a lovely spitfire wife named [T]. They're marvelous, and marvelously sensual, and good friends, and we make the time we can to spend time together.

I met a blue-spotted cat named Hiro. Therein followed an extremely tangled thread of interrelations, confusions, mistakes and misunderstandings, and in the middle of everything (for reasons not concerning me), he stormed off the grid and left me alone for three years. I actually met him, and started falling for him, before I met Matthias. I accepted Matthias as a lover, and as my dominant, a year after *serious* conversation on what that collar would mean for both of us, but I, at least, know that--at least at first--I accepted at the end of that year of conversations because Hiro was gone.

Hiro recently came back, and proposed, and...I said yes. And it's been a tightrope walk ever since. But...if it is the most difficult balancing act of my life, it's also one of the most rewarding experiences, and I do not regret accepting his offer to partner in the least.

He met a lovely lady named Justine, and she is a bright shining supernova hiding a core of fractured insecurity. Sometimes the insecurity overwhelms. Sometimes she acts out just to get negative attention from either of us, and it drives me bats. But she's a joy, and so talented, and I watch people wander into her orbit and remain, fascinated. And I entirely get why--she has an orbital pull all her own. And I adore her.

I started following the work of a spoken-word poet and live performer named [R]. We're becoming close. I have spent a great deal of time trying to quit the whole falling-in-love-with-everyone game, because he'd be very easy to love, and recently...I decided that for good or ill, I was at least going to admit it. He's not running away so far.

And I suppose the final acquisition is a man named [M]. Older than I am, and presenting so in world, with white hair, and wrinkles, and...I love him more sweepingly than I thought I ever would. He is...caring, and funny, and wry, and warm, and a fantastic dancer, and willing to listen to anything I say without judgement, and willing to work around everyone else in my life. And he accepts everything in me--the scars, the successes, the fragility and the surety, and in world, the various avatars that go with them, from my 'human' face to the wee little Kemono demicat. I may keep some things close to the chest just to remain a discrete being, if nothing else, with everyone--but I know to my marrow that there is no face, no change, no mood, no pain, no rage he doesn't see and accept. That's a treasure beyond words.

He reminds me a lot of you, actually. You without the soul wounds.

I am...still wounded, myself. I may always be. I've done a lot of healing, and a lot of processing, and on the other end of things I look at a life that is an odd whirl of social engagements, otherloves, and terraforming--because, of course, Hiro is the Duke of Gearhaven, and the Lindens *finally* reopened the land store since he emerged onto the grid, so we *finally* have the sim of Gearhaven, and the Dark Sea next door, and we're building it up again. We'd been on one of Anshe Chung's rental sims, Oceanpoint, but...it's ruinously costish.

And yes, there is still some small, traitor part of me that wishes you'd return, but there's far more of me that just wishes you well, and living, and hopefully happy, and staying far far away, because...the breaking of faith was too extreme, my once-love. Too extreme by far. At this point, I'm glad you're alive, or at least were when I spoke to your machine that last time, but I'm happier never seeing you again.

But that's my life now. Mostly, I'm content. On more occasions than I expected, I'm even happy. I am loved and I love, and there are many threads in my tapestry that bind me close to the world, and to others, and I am many threads through the fabric of others' lives. I am no longer pinioned on the high mountain, even in thought. I'm still with the girls, not that I ever expected not to be. And COVID has caused great and terrifying fear, because...I had weakened lungs to begin with, and I am now very nearly agoraphobic about leaving the house. But I have a lovely set of masks to go out in, at the least. I have one with chibi cryptids on it, one with a pirate map, one with skulls and roses, and my favorite was one I got from Tormented Artifacts, and it says ADAPT OR DIE.

I'm trying. I am trying with every fiber in me, to adapt to new things, to accept change, and to adapt away from the person who needed to be at your feet. Regaining the ability to listen to Poets of the Fall helped, oddly. Discovering a singer who goes by LP helped also. (This may remain my favorite song of hers, at least the next few years, as it's already been the favorite song of 2020.) So this will be the last letter I send you, into the void of non-responsiveness.

It won't reach you, but I hope the thought does. I hope you know, somewhere in your embattled, mercurial soul, that someone occasionally thinks fondly of you. Because I still do, on occasion, in spite of everything. I am just no longer, and will never be again,

Yours~

J

And that...is that. That's it. I learned what I needed to. I had the talk with Matthias. We're in a better place, though the ground's still a bit rocky. And all roads no longer lead back to that missing master. Barring this excoriative excess, I doubt he even crosses my mind more than once every six weeks or so (when I'm not editing and posting things referring to him), so...it's starting to fade. Another decade, I may not even remember his name.

And that will be something of a bittersweet day, too, but on the other hand...all he had to do was talk to me. All he had to do. I've been here. I haven't moved since I sent him every point of contact I had. We still have the same house phone number that he'd been given.

So...while in the main, while the reason this all happened may have been me, probably was me...the lack of any and all contact? That's on him. And I am no longer taking responsibility for it. Not my fault, not my burden, not my Master, not my job.

I'm moving on, after far too long of standing in this one dark place, reaching out. And for once, you know...that's actually a hopeful thought.



(Though I still don't know what to do with this.



(I don't want to throw it away, because of what it once meant...and I don't want to keep it, because of what it once meant. The one thing I am sure of, is that it no longer watches over me.

(But that's okay. I have others watching over me now.)