Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I'd planned on making a journal post to explain my absence last Thursday, but I never quite found the time before I left town. I took my computer with me to Lake Tahoe so I could do a journal entry in my spare time, but there wasn't any.

For the most part, I haven't been posting lately because I've been depressed. Fifteen years ago I was diagnosed with Chronic Major Depression. It'd been going on then for almost fifteen years, and I'm only 39 years old. I think it's safe to say that depression's been a major force in my life. It comes and goes these days, I'd been off medication for a couple years and was coping pretty well, but it hit with a vengeance about two months ago. I struggled for a bit with it, but eventually my lovers (both worried) convinced me I needed to Do Something about it.

So last week I went to the doctor who's handled my anti-depressants in the past and we worked out just what I'd be taking. You might wonder why I'm going directly for the drugs -- I've had a lot of therapy, and though it's done wonders for me in some areas, it doesn't seem to do much for my depression. So my doctor loaded me up with enough Wellbutrin samples to keep me going for a few weeks, and we'll see what happens.

One thing that's happened is I've got jitters like I've had ten cups of coffee. Well, at least the laundry's getting folded now. And I've got this strange urge to clean out the garage (yeah, I should go lay down until it goes away...).

But that's not what I wanted to write about. I spent most of the last decade living with L -- it would have been ten years this coming October 11th. We stopped viewing ourselves as a couple two years ago, shortly after my final gender related surgery. It's no coincidence, though friends have always teased her about her sort of passive bisexuality, she's straight, and I'm a girl now. Last summer we sold the house and with a promise to stay in touch, went our separate ways. We did keep in touch, after a fashion. Originally the idea was to have a "movie night" or something once a week. We never quite got to movies, but we did have dinner. Once a week became more than her schedule could handle and we dropped back to once every couple of weeks, and then "tax season" happened (she's an accountant), and she ran out of time all together.

We never did quite manage to put things back together. Tax season's been over a couple months, and it's been about half a year since we'd even managed to have dinner together. Two years ago, we went to Lake Tahoe to try to figure out how things were going to go. She'd been having problems with our relationship, I'd volunteered to shelve anything sexual a couple months before, and we were going to take the weekend and have a good time. We'd crossed wires somewhere and she'd though that this meant trying the whole sexual end of things again -- something she initiated, much to my surprise.

It went badly. She was all kinds of stressed over it, and I had to stop things so we could talk after a little bit. This was the end of our Relationship (with a capital 'R'). We were both polyamorous and had some fantasies about keeping things going without a sexual connection. We shared a house, and shared many parts of our lives, and we were mostly comfortable with this.

In the end this was Not To Be, as the man she was seeing -- J -- slowly took center stage and eventually moved in with us. I think J had issues with me. I know he never saw me as a woman (he's said so). On top of that, I think he's always worried that L might change her mind about me. I know that he's jealous of the small amounts of time she has spent with me. Anyway, the three of us in a house together was not a recipe for success, and eventually we sold it.

So L and I just went up to Tahoe to spend the weekend again. It was light, and pleasant. She's not one for words on most occasions, and certainly doesn't want to analyze her feelings, but we hit on a few highlights of our relationship and how we got where we are. For me there was a bit of melancholy. We've certainly both changed. We seem to be great company for each other too, but we've lost the bits of what was between us that we were trying to save. I think or feelings for each other could best be described as "sisterly" at this point.

On the way back to drop her off, we stopped at her office so she could pick some things up. I sat with her while she gathered everything. I looked at the certificates on the walls, the clutter of a successful accountant and I was sad. I put her through college -- she was managing a theater when we met. I teasingly called her my retirement plan, because she was going to be a success. Well she is one. And I'm not in her life. At least much.

We probably talk more about each other than to each other, but we made noises about spending more time together as we parted. She can't spare the time to visit me, but she's open to me visiting her new house. When she mentioned all this to J, the look on his face was... well, it wasn't amused. We'll see what happens.