Star Child is sent packing only to return

I’m going to get into trouble over this post.  Some people are nosy.  When they are, they get burnt.  When you read a witch’s private diary, even one such as this, it is no Judy Bloom and Harriet the Spy.  No.  The corrosion, the glyph, the sigil, is to suffer for what one does when one knows that one should not.  It happens to my wife, it shall happen to Star Child.

I leave too many clues.  Star Child knows she is Star Child.  She calls herself that from time to time.  Independently, someone else, with whom I have no connection, told her she was a Star Child.  So it has stuck.

To name something is to imbue it.  Plato mused on this.  In some of his philosophical treatises he mused on how bestowing a word on an object might affect the object.  It affects our interpretation of the object.  And all objects, as with everything, are simply manifestations of energy, just as we are the same.  An object does not possess will.  We believe we do.  Some of us more than others.  Some seem to have it more than others.  But the giving of a name, the bestowing of a marker, is not always just light and uplifting.  It can also contain and bind.  It can enslave.

It is no secret that there are many challenging aspects to my current life.  Divorce continues to loom and interfere with the flow of energy.  I am an entrepreneur.  Marching to the beat of a different drum.  Corporate life has never been easy for me, as I can’t seem to last that long.  I’ve obviously done well enough to have made it to serial CEO, even in a public company, but I usually get fired.  For some reason, the people who fire me, while they tend to be mean on the way out, seem to come back later.

My favourite quote was from the Chief Counsel of a company who was letting me go and was tasked with working out the terms of my separation agreement, and who confessed to me, “everything you want to do is right.  We’re just not ready for it.”  My bad.  The truth is that I need to learn to slow down and make sure this doesn’t happen.

But each time I get fired I learn something knew.

Recently I got fired before I even started.  It is sad.  I am in a funk.  But I am also curiously liberated.  It was a life-changing opportunity.  A fairy tale.  A story worth a film script with mega-stars.  For that, I would have sacrificed almost anything.  I even offered to share my future earnings with my soon-to-be-ex-wife.  She has power.  I wanted her prayers.  One day maybe I’ll get them again.  But by then they will also be diminished.

I got fired before I started because I came out as trans to them after the verbal offer but before the contract.  Oops.  I was told by a head-hunter friend not to do this.  ‘Get the job first’.  But that’s not me.  Disclosure.  I don’t know definitively.  Or do I?

I also don’t make enough money to make ends meet at this time.  This has prompted a bizarre juggling act of life on credit cards and selective paying of squeaky wheels or threatening ones.  

I mentioned in a previous post that my house has become a house of refugees.  I think that I like the idea of having people around all the time.  But what do they say about guests?  More than 3 nights is too much.  I have been getting to test that principle lately.  I’d feel a lot different if they were paying guests.  That will come next.  But in the meantime, I have to find my truth in this mix.

Star Child said, “but you’re a slave.”  And I replied, “but I’m not your slave.”  And the thread became one of equity.  We are friends with people with whom we have an equity balance.  When equity goes out of balance, then the friendship dies.  

Star Child wants to start a business with me.  But she is not strong.  She is not business partner material.  I like her a lot.  She is fun, creative, interesting.  But she is not her own master.  My main therapist has taught me to be my own slave.  If there is a gift that she has given me that dwarfs all others, it is this…to be the domme to my slave self that I need, and to be the slave and baby to my inner mommy that she needs.  It seems to be working.

I said some blunt things to Star Child.  I am not entirely sure if they were mean.  They were interpreted as mean.  I do not feel we are close enough to have that kind of bond.  I told her over dinner that I did not feel I knew her.  She said, “I’ve been pouring my guts out to you,” but then admitted that many of her friends say the same thing.  

But I wonder what she wants from me.  She has come to stay with me a first time and was dismissive of my interest in her…even though the energy was there.  Now she came back, but without a departure date.  Nothing planned, nothing discussed.  Just open ended.  Inserting herself into my life.  And I hate that I think of “fringe benefits” but what is equity.  We each bring something of value to the other person.  And while I enjoy her company, what she brings of value is not sufficient to hold my interest.  And I do not like being pulled off course.

So, I told her to get a job.  Back home.  She said, “but I thought we were going to start a business.”  And I’m thinking, ‘yes, we have talked in very loose terms about the idea of a particular business,’ but have done nothing to make it concrete.  Neither one of us know the particular business all that well.  I just said, “I’m not in a place in life that allows me to think about that.  I am going through a nasty divorce.  I don’t know what I own anymore.  I don’t have any money.  And I don’t know when that is going to change.”

So far so good?  What hurt her was that I said I wasn’t sure she was an appropriate business partner for me because she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.  I have no interest in being someone’s Daddy.  She told me over her goodbye dinner that she appreciate the ‘fatherly’ advice (she is not far off from half my age).  I apologized if she felt that I was chasing her out, as I was not, and would have been happy for her to stay a bit longer until she figured things out.  But she had a number of reasons why this was the right answer, and so the next day packed to go.

She took a taxi to the airport—I would have driven her but I had two back-to-back doctors’ appointments that had been long-standing.  Before going she downed a large glass of tequila to calm her for a long flight.  We said goodbye.

Two hours later she called to say her flight was massively delayed.  Four hours later she called to say her flight was delayed four hours and that she had been crying in the parking lot at the airport.  She had not gone in, had checked her bags, but had not proceeded through customs.  She had very vague and disturbing plans to become a vagabond of sorts.

Seven hours later I had picked her up and brought her home, and then dashed off to dance class.  Nine hours later I came home to find that she had gone straight to sleep, fully clothed, and still reeking of booze.

I don’t want to feel like a Daddy.  And I don’t want to have to take care of an adult.  We have wonderful laughs.  She is smart and beautiful.  Some people attract problems, carry chaos with them.  She is such a person.  I don’t often meet such people.  I am used to people who have their shit together.  It’s a lot more interesting.

Now what?  She is in my life for a reason.  I will find it.  She aligns with the weaker parts of my self, and that is good for it makes me see them and look to resist temptation.  She also introduces chaos into life that is healthy for this controlling person to be faced with and to try to overcome.

But if I get more done, much more, when she is not around than when she is, then she is an unhelpful distraction.  That’s where we are now.

And her presence also scares other women away.

Separately, I have ordered a treatment table for my budding somatic therapy practice.  It is good to have guinea pigs.  She will be one of them.  There is plenty to work on there. A litany of things.  She has that peculiar American trait of boasting about her ailments or congenital defects.  How did it become chic to have these?  Where does the desire to put oneself into a box come from?  The desire to see a doctor because the doctor will pay attention to you and listen to you is alien for me.  I haven’t seen a doctor or been to a doctor (bar two times when I was soooo sick) in decades.  I have no desire to.  I fear doctors…that they will just make you sicker.

I said to one of my children over coffee, “she’s pretty far out,” I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite so weird.”

“I have,” they said.

“Really, who?” I asked, admiringly.

“You.”  We had a laugh at that.  I shared the exchange with Star Child.  We had a laugh too.