Sweetie's Seducer III: Me

Written 30 January, 2007

Sweetie’s Seducer

3. Me

Now I’m going to reveal something about myself. Perhaps it exacerbates my insecurities. or perhaps my level of insecurity is entirely appropriate, considering the nine points I made about Martin’s poor character and bad intentions.

It will require me to reveal a small bit of my history, something I always thought had made little impression on me.

I’m a bastard.

Is it correct to call a female a bastard? Probably not, but I don’t know another word.

When I was in eighth grade, I read that brown eyes are a dominant trait. Blue-eyed parents cannot produce a brown-eyed child.

My parents have blue eyes.

I thought my eyes were brown. I now know they’re hazel, and who knows the genetics of that, but I told my mother what I’d read.

Whereupon she began to weep.

And revealed that I’d been born out of wedlock, and that my father wasn’t my biological father.

I cried with her of course—and, I thought, that was that.

As would anyone, I examined my feelings about what she had told me from time to time, but they never aroused any conscious emotion, even though my abortion had clearly been an option.

And probably that would have been that, but for the other circumstances of my life.

That’s it. That’s all. That's the thing that might have bothered me without me realizing it, the thing that may fuel my insecurities about Martin’s pursuit of Sweetie.

Which are the worst insecurities I’ve had in my entire life.

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Then there was my life its ownself.

First, I was an army brat. That entailed moving around a lot, and if moving around meant I got to make new friends, it also meant I lost existing ones.

I lost a lot of friends. And extended family was always a long way away.

I was married when I was twenty-three, to someone who figured that if things got difficult or boring, well, that’s what divorce was invented for.

So the marriage lasted only five years. When things got difficult or boring (I'm not sure which), that was that. Exit spouse, stage left.

When I was in my thirties, I had a tumultuous and exciting relationship that endured for eight chaotic years. We were desperately, hungrily in love with one another, enamored of and drunk on one another.

But it didn’t work. She wanted me to be something I was not, and wouldn’t forgive me and embarked on an extended crusade of verbal abuse because I couldn’t be that thing. And so we ended.

At about that time, I got word that I was to have no contact with my family. And I didn’t see my mother or brother or sister again for twelve years. I never saw my father again, for he died before I was forgiven.

To her credit, my other sister did accept me after a few years—but then she and I had always been the black sheep of the family.

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So, I have managed, without any particularly bad behavior on my part, to lose absolutely everyone I’ve ever loved or cared deeply about in my life.

Which, maybe, is what happens when one is a bastard.

I don’t know. I only know that in my life I eventually came to the point of not wanting to be involved with anyone for fear of the inevitable loss, fear of keeping my win/lose ration at 0%. I didn’t want to suffer another heartbreak, for the cumulative weight had come to comprise a crushing load. I didn’t need yet one more stone thrown onto the pile of lost love.

But with Sweetie, I was unable to stop myself.

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I had a bad time when I realized Sweetie was being ardently pursued by Martin.

And I had a moral wrestling match with myself, and I determined that perhaps he would be better for her than I was.

I had a worse time when Sweetie revealed she had met Martin face-to-face. I was in shock for the rest of the day, and I had a restless night.

I’m a secure person, but I have my limits. They’d just been surpassed.

I almost never have restless nights. If I was told I was to be shot at sunrise, I would probably manage to get in a good nap.

But Sweetie had made it clear there were factors mitigating against our ever being more than SL sweeties. Meeting Sweetie face-to-face was not in the cards. Now she had (to her credit! I would hate for her ever to think she need conceal anything from me) revealed that she had met face-to-face my only (to date) competitor, a man whose intentions, I was absolutely certain, weren’t good.

Maybe, just maybe all this would be enough to drive anyone crazy and I’ve managed pretty well under the circumstances.

But I can do even better. And I will. For as long as I can stand it, anyway.

I’ll do my utmost not to blow up like Pele the volcano. Or worse, to implode rather than explode.