Email exchange: CDS (Courage)

I still regret so much having to stop seeing you right now. I see your image everywhere and think about you. I believe you are right that my problem is that I can't decide. I wasn't prepared to have to, at least not now. The stark choice of divorce has changed the basis for decision as I just can't throw away my family connections after all these years without stopping and assessing to be sure.

I do hope that there will be a way for us to work together again regardless, though that may be naive of me.

Be well,

CDS

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I am all out of sorts. I don't know where I am anymore. I have lost what I thought was an anchor on which I've built hopes and even dreams. But I am trying to situate things and I know that sometime in the future, we will meet again. Under what circumstances, I don't know.

I am going to be brave and hope that you and I will someday have what we want out of life and have them with each other. I live and love with courage.

Emyn

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I was thinking of writing to you tonight. I don't know if it transgresses on my promise to not be in a relationship with you, but I just need to say a couple of things.

I too am all out of sorts. Today I just couldn't believe that I was facing the weekend without you and that I couldn't look forward to having you with me tonight. Restless, uneasy, and so very doleful. On the way back to my hotel after a long day, I realized how much our weekends would energize me and how bleak being here for 3 weeks now seems. I began to want to cry and just felt that my heart was maybe breaking. How did I get myself into this situation where I am pining for you and for my about-to-be-lost family life at the same time?

Please never believe that I don't love you; never believe that you aren't worth being loved. I am sorry that I have to take this journey with such uncertain outcome. Stay courageous.

CDS

Happy Me

Yesterday afternoon, I went to aero class after several days of absence. My work schedule for the past two weeks was really hectic. I had a fun time. I got to do seductive moves that I normally wouldn't get into. I didn't do them very well but it was fun.

Freddie was in the gym area when I finally came out of the dance studio. His face lit up when he saw me. He gave me a wave. This time he was more open, no longer tentative. He was happy to see me and he was not afraid to show it.

It was such a thrill, I didn't know what to do. We did exchange pleasantries; he even made a joke of having a meeting right there since three other members of our committee were present. He was so sweet. But since I didn't have a script for this kind of behavior coming from him, I didn't get to maximize the opportunity. So I left him for the shower room.

It was a wonderful feeling.

As I undressed, I glanced at myself in the mirror and noticed that a curly strand of hair had escaped my meticulously combed and pinned pony tail. It gave a softness to my face that I was unfamiliar with and I realized that I've always appeared meticulously arranged to Freddie. This was the first time he'd seen my hair disarranged, my face flushed, and my clothes all sweaty. And this was going to be the first time he'd see my complexion all tight and pinkish and glowing.

I love the way I look right after a good workout. My skin would just glow and shine with health. The pores on my face would be so tight, the flesh so compact. I look ten years younger. I combed my hair into the usual pony tail and stepped out of the shower room, ready to be praised.

Alas! The guy was on his back doing chest flies.

Oh, well. His loss, not mine. But I felt really bad. As always, I took it as a rejection. I kept thinking: why does he keep giving me mixed signals? The last time, he took his time to wait for me. This time, he doesn't even give a hoot.

Late that night, after several hours of feeling down and sorry for myself, I realized that the guy wasn't giving me mixed signals. The signals have never been mixed. He's attracted to me, but he can't do anything about it. So it wasn't rejection; it was an impasse.

That's not so bad.

My life is hilarious.

Time of month

I am having the most painful menstrual period in my life yet.

My period started on Friday, the 1st. It was a week late. Not because of any guy, although Lord knows it wasn't for lack of trying. It was exhaustion that delayed it. Exhaustion from work, no less.

The week I was supposed to have my period, I had three straight days of seminar-workshops. On the third day, I was so exhausted from being on my feet the entire time, the veins on my feet looked like they wanted to jump out and scream bloody murder. And the strain was so awful. It's been a long time since I felt so tired, I couldn't get to sleep. Talk about torture. I so desperately wanted to sleep because I was so tired, but I couldn't sleep precisely because I was so tired.

So Friday of that week comes and I use a pantiliner, expecting to mess it up sometime in the afternoon. Evening came and nothing. The pantiliner lay there on my undies, clean as newly washed linen. It was so dry, it looked like it had just been pulled out of the pack. I went through an entire pack of 20s that weekend and the next few days following without a spot of blood on any of them.

Friday came and so did the blood. One week to the day, and the blood came trickling out.

For all the cramps I endured all through the week before, I would have thought that the blood would come gushing out, a veritable river of blood. But no, it would come trickling out in a slow, tortured ribbon of red.

And the cramps worsened, accompanied by hyperacidity causing bloating and sharp pains in my gut.

I spent the entire weekend in bed, twisting this way and that, looking for a comfortable position to at least curb the pains shooting up and down my front. I took anti-spasmodic and hyperacidity tablets like there was no tomorrow. And, to make matters worse, I was so hot for sex.

I kept fantasizing about Freddie: his mouth, his hands, his shoulders, his chest, those long legs, his hard body against my own surrendering softness. It's enough to drive any woman crazy.

Or crazier.