Something doesn't have to be "right" to be "necessary". They're both opinions, value judgements, anyway...

Doesn't mean I don't still feel guilty.

Or that I feel like explaining this here, because... why? Because I don't want people to know how much I think/care about them -- or *don't* care? Because nothing else has really changed? Because I still don't have words?

Yeah, there's really no point in being so cryptic.

Getting back into a BDSM relationship again has brought back a lot of old issues, hurts (funny how that wants to come out as "hugs" instead), memories, fears, insecurities, guilts -- mostly stuff with Stephan and Tara, a little with Jeff... I've spent many hours going through old journal entries (though I don't have any of the tarsajam stuff, which I did want for a while -- don't know if it matters so much anymore), e-mails, chat logs, pictures, memories, everything. I've found myself crying more times than I can count through all of this.

I haven't been completely alone through all of this -- I've shared buckets of it with C, who's been incredible beyond words -- listening, supporting, understanding, accepting. That horrible phrase, "not ready", which used to plague me and terrify me anytime I got anywhere near BDSM, no longer does.

I'm still angry with Stephan for some things -- some of which I should have been *more* angry about at the time, though I denied it, even to myself.

I'm frustrated and saddened to realize that he will probably never understand me or why some of the things he did hurt me so much. I've tried talking with him about a few things, and gotten absolutely nowhere -- it's as though we're speaking entirely different languages that sound alike.

And it's gotten to the point where I don't care (much) about that anymore. I don't feel like bashing my head against that particular wall anymore -- it's gotten me nowhere, and I'm sick of it. No more milk in that cow right now. I'm surprisingly indifferent at the thought of seeing him again -- not afraid, not upset, not eager, not much of anything except a vague revulsion and .

There may well be more down the road for me there -- but that's where it seems to stand at the moment.

But Tara... I look at a picture of her and get feelings of guilt, sorrow, regret. Feelings that I destroyed something of far greater value than I knew until it was gone.... and yet, from what I now remember of the situation, from my perspective, that I don't know how I could've done what I felt I needed to do any other way. And it doesn't sound like she knows why I did it -- it certainly wasn't meant to hurt her at all, though I guess I didn't think that it might. (I remember saying something about being unable to lose something I didn't have...)

An analogy that comes to mind is that of having a limb crushed and trapped under a giant rock in some remote cave somewhere, and being unable to escape because of that excruciatingly painful Ste- er, limb... the only way to survive would be to cut off the limb, but I didn't have anything sharp enough to do so -- everything else I had tried had failed. So I violated her private journal to find something sharp enough, and it did work...

In the beginning, I had asked that I never be allowed to act the way JS did, throwing tantrums, pushing and pulling in unfair and unkind ways... but I did it, and it was permitted, and continued, and I'm ashamed of that. A lot of things were my fault; a lot of them weren't. (I remember that last dinner with Harley and him clarifying from what I was saying that I felt a need to be "kept in the loop", which I felt was very much not done when I went back to MI...)

And I can't change the past, I can't fix things, I can't magically make them better. Perhaps someday the magic words to make certain things better will come to me and I'll know them as such... but I don't hold out much hope for that -- hoping alone rarely accomplishes anything.

I'm doing a lot of qualifying here, trying to make it clear that this is how *I* see things, understanding that it may look completely different to others. They're my feelings, whatever anyone else thinks of them.