Blending lives

Seven years...  Almost down to the day, give or take a couple of weeks, but what's a couple of weeks in the face of years?  Seven years is how long my life has been flowing down two separate streams.  Two streams, two existences, two seemingly incompatible realities with torn loyalties and frayed expectations.

I've found, much to my chagrin, that life frowns on symmetry and so the two streams are never in perfect alignment or weight to each other.  Most of the time, it's the stream of "normal" life that's heavier and fuller and runs deeper.  That stream carries the "me" that most people encounter - the dedicated employee, somewhat harassed manager, strict and no-nonsense mother, exasperated daughter, quiet confidante.  If you get to know me through work or chat me up in the grocery store, that's the "me" that you'll get.  I can be funny and I can come across as forceful and determined.  I've been called a control freak and I don't really care if it's meant as a compliment or an insult. I'm intensely introverted and although most people don't know this, I still get intense flashes of panic when I have to engage in conflict or speak in front of an audience.  In this stream, I'm many things, most of them indisputably normal.  Downright vanilla, one might say.

And then there's the second stream.  This one sprung into life seven years ago when I met J.  In this second stream, I'm the "me" that I try so hard to hide from the rest of the world.  This stream carries the "me" that neither has control nor wishes for any.  Here I am someone who tries to be brave but who eventually cries and then screams in response to deliberate pain.  I am the person who finds peace in coils of rope and restraint and who stops hyperventilating at the touch of J's blade on my skin.  Here I don't need to have the last word but I do need to kneel in joyful surrender, abdicating all rights and choices but the right to serve the one I love.  This is the "me" that my other self doesn't understand and is a little afraid of.   

I've tried so hard to keep the two streams separate, as if afraid that one will contaminate and change the other, the way a spoonful of sugary syrup changes a glass of water.  And while I was focusing as hard as I could on keeping the two apart, I missed the turning point when what I was trying so hard to prevent had already happened. 

As all my energies went to maintaining the appearance of normalcy and shoring up the walls of the real "me", the hidden stream was slowly bleeding in through the cracks.  Tiny, curling tendrils of crimson that took longer and longer to dissolve without a trace.  Except that now there is a trace.  Too many bleeds have done what I had been desperate to prevent - my two streams have contaminated each other, blending into one.  It was easier to hide bruises on my upper thighs than it is to hide knife cuts on my arms.  It's even harder to admit that I no longer want to hide them; that I leave those cuts there on purpose. 

I could separate the two again.  I can even see it as a challenge and I'm nothing if not up for a fruitless endeavor, but why bother?  Why not let the two blend and see just how much of a challenge it will be to keep them in balance rather than separate?  Looking back, I can see that the separation was always a carefully maintained illusion; a hard-fought for lie of an existence.

I'm done with lying... let the streams blend and I'll learn how to swim.