Change your bookmarks and come visit QSA!

We’ve moved!

I know I announced that a little while ago, but I’ve noticed a ton of people are still visiting me over here… and I am so grateful for that! It is awfully quiet around Roughing It, though, because I’m not writing here anymore, but I am writing (week)daily over at Queer Skies Ahead. Please change your bookmarks, your reader, your whatever, and come say hello! Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Queer Skies Ahead

So I’ve been really bad at responding to people’s comments the past couple of days, and my dog blog is sitting untouched in its little corner of the internet.  Is it because I got a job?  Well, sort of, but not really. Is it because I’m suddenly very busy?  Why yes, yes it is.  Busy piecing together (read “fighting with”) my own domain name and website!

Why “Queer Skies Ahead”?  I have no real, clever answer for that besides that it’s cute and it’s hopeful.  We did the wedding thing and know we’re doing and will continue to do the marriage thing, and hopefully we’re looking at clear skies ahead: but at the very least, they’ll be queer skies ahead.  Or if you want to read the URL differently, it’s more of a warning: Watch out! Queerskies Ahead! Not sure what Queerskies are, but they’re probably cute and entertaining.

I am for sure no web guru, but I do like to stick with what I know, so if you read this current blog on its actual website, you may notice the new one looks remarkably similar.  I’m tweaking things here and there until my resident internet expert and awesome friend appears to make it all Super Amazing, but in the meantime, please come visit over there, change your bookmarks, do whatever it is you do to keep being my friend, because I really enjoy having you, Internet Friend, and if you’re still here now, you probably enjoy me, too.  Fingers crossed.  And once I know people are over there I can stop stressing about how to get it looking pretty enough for people to be over there, and then I’ll write about actual stuff.  It’ll be great.

On affairs, breakups, and reopening old wounds

Several years ago, I started dating someone I’ll call N..  N. was really pretty and really different from anyone I’d dated before.  She was 1. Smoking Hot (no offense to anyone else I’d dated before) and 2. taught me I could move in ways I had never before thought possible.  She encouraged me and pushed me in a way that felt fulfilling and truly inspiring.  But, you know, relationships and all that.  She lived far away, and I didn’t have a car.  Bits of tension crept in over silly things, and ultimately I decided that it wasn’t working out.  We ended things on good terms.

A year or so after that, I met B..  You thought N. was hot?  Well.  Anyway, I met B., we chatted, we talked about setting up a time to get together, and then Daphne came into the picture.  You read that right – the dog came into my life, and I decided that trying to learn to live with and train my first dog was not the ideal time to start a new relationship, even if it was just coffee dates, and so, once again, I called things off.

In the meantime, other things came into and out of my life.  And then, another year later, I crossed paths with B. again.  And this time, you know, something clicked.  True lesbian-relationship style, I fell madly in love, head over heels, and if I could have moved in with her, I probably would have.  Unfortunately, that really wasn’t an option at the time, but we spent a lot of time together, gazing into each other’s eyes, having grand adventures.  Yes, the adventures were so awesome I am willing to call them Grand Adventures.

In retrospect, it should have been a big warning sign that B. was openly dating other women. Several other women.  This was never a secret, but for some reason I really thought that in the end she would choose me.  And guess what?  She didn’t.  I was crushed. Oh, my, the tears; I think the only time I cried that much beforehand was when my very first girlfriend and I broke up and I was like, “Oh, so this is what people mean when they talk about heartbreak.” After B., I decided I was never dating anyone, ever again.  If this is what these relationships were like, I wanted none of it.

Well, last night, I saw N. again.  I don’t really know how to describe my feelings around all of this.  We held hands; we sat really close to each other.  No kissing, and only a little bit of ass-grabbing.

What do you do when you break up with someone you really, really love, and then someone else you once really loved wants you back?  Do you want them back?  Is it worth the risk again?  Do you hope that someone totally different will come along?  Because, sure, there are other people out there, but they’re different and maybe don’t have the qualities you are looking for.

I suppose this is a good time to note that I am not talking about actual people.  You may have noticed I’m actually married, I think I mentioned it once or twice, and it’s not really an open relationship (except in the case of roller derby?).  I spent my first year on a roller derby league having just moved to Boston; I had no friends, no girlfriend, and roller derby was pretty much my whole life (that was N., in case you were wondering).  I routinely said that roller derby was my girlfriend.  And it’s funny, now, how much it feels like an old relationship coming back. I went to tryouts last night for the league that I started skating with way back when it was a baby league.  I started skating with them before I knew how to skate, and when they were only a few weeks old.  Now I have gone through two skate upgrades, actually played roller derby, and this league is so real that they are having real life tryouts.

I’m excited.  I know how much derby means to me, and how much it can change my life.  But I’m also so wary.  I’m not ready for this heartbreak yet again.