New beginnings

Ya know, somebody told me once that "life begins at 40" and I thought they were just being sarcastic. As a matter of fact, that woman WAS being a hag, because that was the day before my 40th birthday and they told me they couldn't hire me on permanently at the job I had been doing for 8 months. I said, "Thanks for the birthday gift, I'm turning 40 tomorrow..." and she just smiled and said those words to me. I nearly clawed her eyeballs out of her head.

Well, the more I think about it, the more I am wondering if it's true.

At first I scoffed, I dismissed it, I figured I was doomed and ready for the cardboard box on the street in my old age, no hope for retirement funds or pensions, no medical benefits, just sitting in a box on the cold cement, eating my cat food in a can.

But it's weird how life works. I mean, rewind back a few months ago, and I was going camping on Memorial Day weekend...well, it was a BDSM camp actually, but I digress. Some weird dude in a bathing suit---or wait, I think he was NEKKID actually---crawled up the kiddie slide at the freezing cold pool, and slid down it, screaming like a girl when he came up for air...everybody laughed of course, including him. I thought, "what a nimrod." But hey, it was a BDSM camp, maybe that was his "kink," who knows, and at BDSM camp, nobody judges you for anything you're into. That's what makes campity-camp-camp so damned awesome. I didn't want to go there though, if you recall, because I figured since my job just took a shit, I should conserve funds, and it cost a pretty penny to attend. I wanted to get a refund of the $ I had pre-paid for it, (borrowed from Peter to pre-pay it that is), and just focus on job hunting. But Peter insisted that I go, in fact he got downright mean about it and FORCED me to go.

And that's where I met Pete, and now I'm suddenly living in Pittsburgh with him, in the same house, sharing the same bed... I stand around the downtown area and think to myself, "This ain't DC." I feel out of sorts sometimes, even now, I still don't know my way around very well, I don't know anybody except Pete and few of his ex-harum-women that he tossed aside when I came along, after I stopped laughing at his swimming pool girl-scream that is. He was seeing about 12 different women, and having "friends with benefits" with 6 of them at the time when we met...his 50th birthday was one in which he decided he would have sex 365 days of the year, so he went out with a dozen women, stayed at their houses most every night, and even kept a damned DIARY about every sexual encounter he had with each one of them. Someday I hope to find that diary and read every word he wrote, just to see what the heck he saw in those chicks.

Anyway, so now I'm living in a new place, starting a new job, and voting for a new president. The country, I think, is breathing a sigh of relief...or perhaps anxiety, if you voted for the other guy...but now everbody's on the edge of their seat waiting for some new changes to come. And of course, it comes right before the holidays, where new experiences happen and plans are made for the new year.

So maybe there is something to this "life begins at 40" thing, that I didn't realize before. I've been trying to adjust to this new life, some days have been better than others, I feel homesick a lot for DC, and for Peter too...even now....and I probably always will feel those things to some extent. But as time passes, I feel as though I'm embarking on a new journey as a "girlfriend," *slash* "significant other," and that's a role I haven't been in since the year 2000. I tell Pete almost daily that I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time, and I am still afraid I'm going to screw something up...but he just musses my hair and chuckles and says I'm cute, adorable, and he loves me very much.

While I love Pete right back, I do want to see Peter again though, to tell him so many things...he was my best friend...so it's only natural that I miss having him as my confidant. I do have Pete now, as my confidant, friend, lover, boyfriend, etc., but Pete doesn't have the 2.5 year history of my hardships and struggles as a historical foundation to build upon, to fully understand where I'm coming from. He's only known me since Memorial Day, and to him, I'm sure my life doesn't look like it's been too difficult at all. But before that, and when Peter met me, he witnessed just how hard my life was, and how messed up and withdrawn and depressed I was because of it. He saw a different me, than Pete sees. So this is a hard thing for me to just let go of, he has a fuller understanding of what I've worked so hard to overcome, and he seems to root for me in so many ways, being my cheerleader as it were, in life. Pete is my friend, my lover, my future husband maybe--that remains to be seen--but he's never been my cheerleader, not really, not to the extent that Peter was. Now, don't misunderstand, that's not something he's HAD to be, because since moving here, he's PROVIDED so much for me, that cheerleading to boost me up hasn't been as necessary. He roots for me to find a job, he roots for me to adjust more to life here, he thanks me all the time for taking the chance and the risk and moving here to be with him.....so in that way, he does his share of "cheering" for me. It's just that these two men have seen two different versions of ME, and so they have reacted in different ways, at different levels, to provide me with pep talks and rooting me on when I feel down.

Now, the flipside of this, is that Peter never really rooted me on very much about my new book project that I've been trying to work on since last year...he's tried to give me pep talks about it, but has been cautious not to get my hopes up too high. On the other hand, Pete has actually been very encouraging about it, and today I talked with a lawyer about the legalities involved with the project, before I move forward. He's got another lawyer friend who is well versed in the intellectual property law that he will be talking to next week, and he'll bring my list of questions with him to get more answers from him for me. I thought that was very nice of him to offer, considering he's doing it for free. Pete was very happy about this, telling me it's a good way to start the process and encouraging me to keep going with it. I feel that he's been more gung-ho about it than Peter was, so for that, I am eternally grateful, because this book is going to be a very good thing I think. At least, I hope it will be. But I also know that nothing good ever comes without hardship and a lot of hard work, toil, disappointment, and upset. It's another risk I'm taking, but as I take one more, and then one more, and then another one, it seems to be getting somewhat easier to do. That is, it's never EASY to take a risk, it's actually the hardest thing to do in life, if you ask me....but I felt too afraid for too many years to do that, and I just stopped taking risks for a long time. Now that I'm doing it again, little by little, one at a time, spreading it out a bit so not to be overwhelmed, I feel as though I can handle taking one more step in that new direction more than I could a year ago, for instance.

I don't know where 2009 will take me, but I am glad for the changes that have happened in my life this second half of 2008. My life at 40 is better now, than it has been for at least 20 years previously, and part of that reason, is because of both Peter, and Pete, two men that I love very much, in different ways, for different reasons, because without them both, I would be lost.

I hope to share my life with them both, for a long time. They mean the world to me.

Love, Sassy Girl