Long time readers of my journal are no strangers to the fact that my mood is extremely oscillatory. Much like the colour scheme of this site, my mind is either entirely black or entirely white. I can jump several times an hour or day or week or month from exceptional bliss to extreme depression and sorrow. Sure, this lets me feel alive, allowing me to experience life in an intense manner, but it is sometimes scary as these wild swings are not under my control.
The entries in my journal reflect this, albeit in a skewed fashion, because I’m personally more likely to write when I’m down.
The closer I get to Stacey, the more I’m beginning to understand why I might be this way. I seem to have an extremely black and white view of the world around me. People and experiences and surroundings are either “insanely great,” putting me in a state of intense bliss, or “horribly hurtful,” driving me down into the depths of depression. There seem to be no shades of grey in my perception of or response to the world.
The same is true of how I experience the women I am with, including Stacey. For the first months of our relationship, I was in a state of ecstasy. There was nothing she could say or do wrong, and whatever she was was perfect for me. But more recently, things started to change. The more she talked about her past, the more perturbed I got about her sexual history. I started to sink and see everything in a negative light, and there was little she could say or do that would help me.
The darkness had nearly descended completely, until she reminded me that we’re all just humans and have different aspects of our persona that could either please or perturb another. She pointed out that how I might not be a perfect man by any objective standards, yet all that she’s been longing for. Looking into her loving eyes and soft body as she told me all this reminded me of how happy she’s made me this past half year. And that her past is just that, her past. I don’t have to fully understand or accept it right away, just to recognise that through her imperfections, she’s someone who’s capable of making me immensely happy.