Out Of Control

I normally try to keep my comments "on track"; it is, after all, a kink blog. In spite of that today's entry isn't incredibly kink-related. It's really more along the lines of a "life lesson" than a "kink lesson" (or opinion, or advice, or whatever you consider my entries).

Recently I've talked with a couple of new girls, and I've talked about them a little before. I talked about Maria before, but - due mostly to circumstances beyond both our control - we have almost entirely fallen out of touch. It's manifested in an unpleasant way - not a hostile one, at least as far as I've seen, but an unpleasant one. Still, I will just leave her alone until such time she wants - if she wants - to talk to me again. I'm not happy about it, but... If it's what she believes she needs right now, I choose not to argue the point.

There's another girl - Sarah, let's call her - I haven't talked about yet. I met her on OkCupid and we started talking; we hit it off very well. We have a lot in common and a number of mutual interests, including a number of geeky games and books and such... And including bondage, dom/sub play, sadomasochism, and a common understanding of poly relationships. After speaking for a couple of weeks we agreed to meet, and it would have been last Tuesday; unfortunately, it was cancelled. However, she had something else come up out of her past - something that made her decide she needed to pull away from me - from us, or whatever potential we might have had as a couple. I've gotten comments from a couple of friends that she's lying just to step away from me... But it doesn't matter either way. If she's interested in picking things up again at some point, she'll contact me; and if she isn't, it doesn't matter much whether she was telling the truth or not.

Something else happened this weekend which follows the same pattern - of a sort. I was woken up at 2:30 this morning (Sunday morning) by a phone call from my father; he's in Hawaii, and had been waiting until early morning UK time to call my uncle. Because he was very upset he managed to confuse my number and my uncle's in his phone (our last names are the same, and first names are the same length with the first two letters, so it's not completely outside the realm). Since we were on the phone anyway, he told me that my Great Aunt had died. She was old - almost 90 - and was recovering from having broken her hip. She'd even been released from the hospital, when she died - very suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. I've always had a small family, and I was close to her. She was the last person alive in the generation before my parents on either side of my family; she was one of the tiny number left in my line on that side, which has shrunk greatly in the last three generations. We were in the process of arranging plans for her to visit this coming summer, which would have been her first time in this country in more than twenty years... And the first time she'd ever met my son. And me? I've broken down twice - once this morning when I realized I'll probably never find out whether or not she ever got my Christmas letter; and once this afternoon when I stopped by work to pick something up and found the voicemail from my father, who hadn't yet realized he had the wrong number and was trying to leave a message for my uncle.

My point? My point is... Things aren't always in your control. Life happens, whether you want it or not. It can be a rude shock - it can be terrifying - it can be depressing - it can be even occasionally be good. But it's never what you expect.