Sexuality Happens

Q and I have been together almost a year and a half, tripling any previous relationship I’ve been in (she has me bested by a lot with three years). She was not changed me, but helped me find different and other parts of myself.  I never thought I’d want to spend any long amount of time with one person, want to live with one person, want to significantly share my life with one person. But I do.

Granted, I still have other play partners, and shoot partners, and of course, my loving moose Evey back in Denver. I’m not losing the kink side of my life, or the multi-partnered side of my life.

I never imagined I’d find someone who didn’t leave me when the pain was too high and I could leave the bed. I never imagined I’d find someone who would be  as silly with the cats, and sometimes even sillier. I never imagined I’d find someone who was as into social justice and rights for everyone as I was, but also wasn’t hoity-toity about the revolutionary politics, keeping people out. I never thought I’d find someone to whom my attraction never waned, but only grew as I got to learn more and more about them as a person. I never dreamed I’d find someone who would let me breathe pretend fire on them, and communicate in meow-talk. I never thought I’d find someone with whom I could share a bed and fall asleep in their arms and not feel awkward and uncomfortable throughout the night.

We’re officially registered as Domestic Partners in the city of Phoenix, so that I can share her medical benefits (until they get taken away in October, because Arizona is a conservative, queer-unfriendly state).

And today, at Pride, we’re participating in the mass commitment ceremony.  And this will be our engagement. We want to show the world that queer people are real people. We love, just like anyone else. We worry about what happens to our partners, and if we’ll be allowed to see them in the ER or the ICU (you don’t want to know how many forms I had to fill out to make sure she’d know if something happened to me during my surgery last October). We want to be recognized, just like anyone else.  Perhaps the relationships will end, perhaps we’ll drift apart, and perhaps we’ll stay together, just like anyone else.

We hope, that when we move back to Colorado, they will soon approve equal marriage rights, and we can get married there.  But for now, her titanium ring, and my onyx/boulder opal bracelet (I’m not a huge ring fan…may save that for the wedding) will show our choice to commit to one another, to be there for one another, to support one another.

I love her, more than I ever thought I could love. And she loves me back. When I’m with Q, I feel safe, and loved, and cared for and happy and silly and all of these things I’ve not ever really felt. I don’t have to make excuses for her drinking or drug use, or her flaking out on me, or her treatment of others (as I have in the past with other partners), because she is so on par with my values and ethics and morals and ideals, and that makes me one very happy panda.

I’m ready to commit to her. Not forever; I don’t really believe in forever. But for as long as the two of us can be happy and support each other, I’m there.

-Essin’ Em