Why I am detailing all this minutiae is beyond me.

Yesterday evening Chloe called me - she had been watching football with my brother, and turned to him and said, "I want to talk to Auntie Aimee!" Boy oh boy, if that didn't make my night! I say this all the time, but I have never felt such a fierce love as the love I feel for those girls. Oh god, I would do anything for them. Give blood, give a kidney, throw myself in front of a bus - without a second's thought. (Though I do hope it doesn't come down to that!)

I think about my girls, my Kari and my Chloe, and I realize that it's safe to love them this fiercely - and what a leitmotif of my life, this quest for safety, security, comfort with no risk, and it is so suffocating yet I am just terrified to throw it off - I am so afraid of the great unknown. This is no aspersion, of course, against what I feel for them, or against my nieces themselves - it is more a realization that being an aunt is easy. I get to adore them completely, and they get to love me back, but there is little expectation, little opportunity to let them down, be let down by them.

I am so afraid to develop real relationships, ones that take risks. I remember as a kid when I wanted to ask something of my parents (especially my father), I would rehearse the words over and over again in my head, because the act of actually vocalizing my thoughts was so scary, and sometimes I wouldn't even remember if I'd actually said it out loud. And this rehearsal built up my anxiety more and more - I would work myself up so much before anything had actually happened. And I do this still. Not in the same way, of course, but I find myself afraid to speak, afraid to say what's really on my mind - I constantly censor myself. My words are ceaseless in my head and I rarely let them pass my lips.

A lot of this is coming up because of my reaction to Ben's reaction to my spontaneous declaration last night . A whole lotta angst over a whole lotta nothing, right? I think what's bothering me is that I don't know, don't have any conception of, what realistic expectations in a relationship are. Have I said this before? Sometimes I feel like this huge sucking vortex of need, and I don't know if that is a realistic depiction of myself. And then I think that I judge myself as needy just for having any needs at all - I think I expect myself to be easy, smooth, seamless, ready to please, and god forbid my own desires rear their ugly heads. Does any of this make sense? I'm not sure that it does. I'm struggling with these thoughts, trying to make sense of them.

I think of that first night the Louse hit me, how my request for support and comforting led him to assault me, and I know that that was all him, all his fucked-up-ness, I know that up in my head, but some part of me still feels like it only confirms my conception of myself as needy and insecure and draining. So then I stuff my needs and desires and then seethe with silent, bitter resentment.

Boy, I'm just the picture of mental health, eh?

What frustrates me is that I have built up such vivid fantasies of what I've always wanted in a relationship, that I don't know how to interact with a real live human being sometimes. I think about Ben and sometimes I think that he's not so skilled with emotional stuff (he's certainly unpracticed - him unpracticed, and me mucked up - great combo, eh?), but then I wonder, what standards am I holding him to? Could anyone live up to my desires? Could anyone be this fantasy lover who always knows what I want, is effusive and expressive and overflowing with boundless love for me? I struggle with this. My fantasies are often so verbal - when I imagine making love, I imagine a man overcome with impassioned outpourings of desire, moaning and whispering in my ear. I am often like that too - that's how I felt last night - and it always backfires on me, it seems. I feel like I have to remain silent.

But is it fair of me, at all, to hold it against Ben that he is failing to perform up to my fantasies? That he's a flesh and blood fallible human being? I just don't know what is fair of me to ask for, and what is unrealistic.

Again, I'm going around in circles.