The past reflected.
If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be where I am now, I wouldn’t believe you. In fact I might have even been horrified. Moreso because I was an uptight, little prude then. Ten years ago I was twenty-one, finishing my last semester of academic school and aching with the double loss of my grandparents and aunt in the last year and a half.
I was also a prodigious liar in a double life. Yes I freely admit it now, ten years too late. In the span of six months in 2007-08 I lost the small group of amazing friends I had built. Mostly through my own lies. Early in 2007 I had run away from LA, telling my friends a cocked-up story of why I was leaving and vanished to the AZ desert from July until September. I lost track of the lies I had told and fucked up a ton of good friendships I had made. I regret them, heavily. But that was a pivot point in my story, along with a ton of fear and loathing about myself.
In early 2007, I found out I was pregnant. I told no one, not even the person i was ‘dating’ (it was an abusive relationship and another really long story). Luckily for me, I found out early enough that a medical abortion was ‘easy’. I handled it quietly and tried to forget, locking away the trauma deep in my brain. During this period, I acted out, horribly and irrevocably damaging others perceptions of me and of myself. I lied, about everything, trying to cover my pain, trying to make myself seem more interesting, more mysterious, that my life was fuller than it was. Anything to block out the pain I had inflicted on myself, or to deflect it onto others. It was stupid.
I went to Mexico with a mission trip group that year, and fell into the super supportive people who came with me, I still wasn’t talking about my trauma, but they recognized that something was wrong and had the decency to let me be about it and keep me distracted. It was life-saving. One of the people i was working with was Gen, and she out of everybody got that there was something super wrong, and made sure I had a safe place to visit.
I went back to LA, finishing out the school semester, and attending services like I had before with my various friends, still being a lying snot, but too broken to even keep track. Then it happened, there was a sermon on the sanctity of life mixed with marriage, conception, and what we must do to protect it. According to that group, what I had done to protect myself, and honestly because I wasn’t ready, was abhorrent. I had to get away. So I ran, straight to Phoenix in the height of summer, and stayed until I felt good enough to go home.
When i got back, the palace of lies I built crumbled. I apologized and stepped away, only popping up infrequently in the lives of my former friends, mostly at the invitation of the ones that stood by me.
December 2008, I met my Sir. And the world turned again. Something better, and brighter was on my horizon. I told him what had happened, and he loved me anyway. He loves me for me. and we’ve been together since January 2009.
After 2009, there were other incidents that stripped my former life down, I made choices that people could not accept about my own body and wants and fell away from the “Christian life” entirely. I fell in love again, opened my heart to polyamory.
I continue to grow, to change. January 2019 marks ten years with my Sir. I had five years with a man called Faun. August 2018 marks a year with my Daddy. I love the people I have now, and celebrate my life with them openly. Its a beautiful reflection I see, not the liar, the hypocrite, the fake. I’m happy to be here now.
