#oy genius

Navel-gazing intensifies.

My roommate, Sunny, is dating/repeatedly hanging out with Boy Genius, The Unknown Quantity, and The Violinist.

First, I want to say that I’m happy for her that she has people. She has a lot of not great stuff in her life, so I’m glad that there are people she can spend time with and rely on.

But. I’m envious. Because she’s getting all of this play with different people, yes. But more than that, these are three people I used to have some sort of relationship with, either dating or play. And with each person, it ended because I wasn’t interested enough/didn’t give them enough priority, and not even necessarily out of an actual lack of interest, or at least not a long-lasting lack of interest.

Honestly, it was starting to date Reaction Junkie, combined with my spiral into depression, that ended each of those relationships. Plus some individual/specific things with each person. And I regret it.

With Boy Genius, Reaction Junkie didn’t like him for various reasons. He never told me to stop spending time with or playing with Boy Genius, but his opinion influenced my opinion and my actions, and I started doing less and less with Boy Genius. Reaction Junkie has since changed his opinion, and I did make an attempt to start playing with Boy Genius again a few months ago, but didn’t keep up with it. To be honest, that’s partially because, while I enjoy the play we did, he’s not quite as mean as I prefer. But it’s also because I spiraled into depression further.

With The Unknown Quantity, we played at events a bunch and I went to his place once. Then I guess I stopped going out as much because of depression and spending all my time with Reaction Junkie, and we didn’t play for a while. We attempted to get together again at one point, but by then neither of us was prioritizing the other. I was okay with that since it was equal. But more recently, I’ve made several attempts to play with him at events. I texted him beforehand expressing an interest in playing, but I never even got a response or an acknowledgement that I’d said anything. That really sucks. Being rejected, and being ignored. A month or so ago, I was at dinner with him and a few other people, including Sunny. At the end of the night, she asked The Unknown Quantity if he wanted to get together. He said yes, and that he was busy, but that he had time for her the next week. After they made their plans, I went up to him and asked if he wanted to get together. He said he was busy and didn’t have any time for the next month and a half. Well, fuck you, too. That really hurt, to see him make time for someone, and then the next moment to have him brush me off.

With The Violinist, I was the shittiest. We were dating for a few months, at least. We actually started dating not long after I started seeing Reaction Junkie. Which was not long before I started getting super depressed. Those things in combination meant that I didn’t treat The Violinist very well. I wasn’t doing poly well. Part of that was depression, yes, but part of it was me just not giving The Violinist the time and attention I should have. I kept canceling on him and didn’t make plans with I’m enough or spend enough time with him when we did get together. We actually got quite close. He knew all about my jealousy problems, and he talked them through with me. We spent a lot of good times together, but I wasn’t in a place where I could truly appreciate him. It took me far, far too long to realize that I shouldn’t have been dating someone else while in the throws of NRE and depression. We had a few conversations about our relationship, including one where we talked about spending less time together, but I really regret not figuring things out more quickly, and not having the guts to be as open and upfront as I should have been. I wish that I had told him I wanted to end things for the time being because I knew I wasn’t giving him the time and attention he deserved, and that I hoped that, once I was doing better, we could try again. I really, truly regret not having told him that.

I wish I could fix things with these people for a couple reasons. The primary one is, I admit, quite self-centered. I want more people to play with at happy hour and at events, both because I like playing with different people and because I know that when I play with other people and have fun, I have a much much easier time dealing with it when Reaction Junkie does things with other people. I’ve been hanging out with a couple of really awesome people lately (Not A Tumblr Dom and a great guy from okc/happy hour who has yet to be nicknamed), but they don’t come to happy hour, at least not regularly, and they don’t really come to events. Between Boy Genius and The Violinist, they come to happy hour pretty much every week, and The Unknown Quantity goes to a lot of events.

Besides just wanting more people to play with in general, I also miss playing with these people specifically. Even besides play, I don’t really interact with these people much any more, probably mostly because I feel awkward around them. I know that I have very compatible play interests with The Violinist and The Unknown Quantity. They both do mean rope (and are good at it) and they’re sadistic. I always really enjoyed the play I did with them; it’s exactly the kind of play I’m looking for. Even with Boy Genius, be is quite good at rope, and I had fun when I played with him, even if it didn’t exactly scratch my itch for pain.

Outside of play, these are all great people. I like talking with them and I really did enjoy spending time with them, and I miss it. Especially with The Violinist. We spent more time together than I did with anyone else except Reaction Junkie, and we had a lot of good times.

I get really envious of Sunny and the time she gets to spend with these people and the play she does with them. It makes me feel shitty about myself because I want to get more play and want to be wanted AND it reminds me of the fact that I wasn’t a good friend/play partner/partner to them. I want to ask them to play, but I think I’ll get rejected, and, honestly, I can’t blame them, especially The Violinist. I think I will try talking to them, especially Boy Genius and The Violinist, more at happy hour, though. Maybe I can start repairing the friendships/relationships I had with them.