Legs Eleven

My legs... actually don't look too dissilimar
to this image.

Today I learned about Nair as a product. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've known it as a brand name for some time now and always assumed it was US-centric. And, furthermore, that the effects as described in fiction were semi-magical and unrealistic. Anyway, I found a tube for a mere pound a couple of weeks back and obviously I bought that in.

Since the last, failed, effort at chastity I haven't dressed all that much, certainly not the amount of time that I have had available, not every moment I have. Part of me feels some regret but the rest of me just points out that I have waited as long as I have and, well, what's a few more days here and there? The half term ended last weekend, it was a good half term. I actually felt largely prepared for going back to work for the first time... in a long time. And, more to the point, I was prepared. Nothing went wrong. I had a great day on Monday, great I tell you, and then I just blitzed it. So much so that I actually had a day on Wednesday to plough through some of the admin stuff on moving house, which was... well, quite liberating. I'm trying hard not to think too hard about Tilly finishing her book, starting a novel, painting fences in the garden and actually doing gardening. All jobs that she lacked the time and mental space to do when I was at home and would never have been done because of childcare but are now, magically, getting done with children in tow. Because of course they are. I'm gone, Tilly has mental space to think about things and, as she explained on a post about her writing, the rising tide of anxiety is mostly being kept in check.

And I have been prepared for work.

In true Fictionmania style the cream was
even pink in hue.

Yesterday I tried a small amount of Nair on my left leg and was pleasantly surprised to find it did not cause a problem and cleared a patch from hair. Last night I slept collared and leashed, because it turns out I like how that feels (it's safe). This morning I slathered both legs in the stuff, Nair, and followed the directions. I was unprepared for the mental high when I saw my hair running down the plughole or the feel of my smooth skin in the shower. I wasn't ready to feel the need to shave off the bits I missed, nor the alacrity with which I was able to do this task - I know I waxed lyrical about shaving a few weeks (months?) back, but I had found the act tedious and time-consuming. But, man, using hair removal cream first and then following by shaving the bits I missed? And seeing the amount of dark hair just fall from my legs (and butt cheeks)... I was blown away. I almost shuddered with actual joy. Joy, you see, not just happiness: joy! I haven't felt joy for so long. Not since the first law (you can look that post up, I shan't insult intelligence by linking directly).

I have cooked. I have entertained the Boy with computer games and played along. I have done my legs, they are smooth, and today I wore a thong, tights, bralette and cami in celebration. I type in my newly acquired pencil skirt (picked up in October) and... I feel like I'm finally picking up where I left off back in 2006.

I felt actual joy.

Is it worth the cost? Honestly, no. But, given that I paid, I'll embrace it.

Pancake Day?

Yes, it's pancake day.

It's pa- pa- pa- pa- pa- pancake day.

On the left as you look at it, I remember
aching to look like that as a child. I even went
so far as to look at a fancy dress costume of
French maid once in Sixth Form.

A couple of times, never bought the costume
of course.

Forgive the indulgence, but since Tilly moved in with me I have cooked no pancakes. Now, I didn't much beforehand - being alone meant that I could never quite muster the enthusiasm - but I had done in 2005 with Toby. In 2006 I was much to alone and depressed and in 2007 Tilly was preparing to move. We agreed that pancake day would be a thing and that we would make pancakes in 2008 instead, something I definitely looked forward to. But it wasn't to be. I bought in the ingredients but Tilly was too full of morning sickness and it was shelved. After that... well, we didn't in 2009 because having a little one proved a bit too difficult, nor in 2010 because Tilly was pregnant again. Nor in 2011, little one, nor 2012 (I was too depressed to bring it up). 2013 it was done, by Tilly for the children, whilst I was at work. I got to do the washing up. Not observed in 2014, 2015 or 2016. But again in 2017 and 2018 it was done around lunchtime with me doing the washing up afterwards. In 2019 it was skipped again. 2020 was the most annoying - again it was done whilst I was at work, with much fanfare on Facebook, but I didn't find out until I got home and had to do the washing up.

This year I had been toying with the idea of doing it myself, and Tilly surprised me by saying that the children didn't actually like pancakes, indeed the last few years they tossed some but ate none, she told me. She was thus aiming for some Scotch pancake decorating on the Tuesday afternoon. I was confused, given our history of it, and so began my own preparations. I got in enough to make some pancakes, took Tilly at face value and assumed the children would help make the mixture, maybe flip one, and I'd eat them. 

More crepe than your standard US style pancake
perchance?

Well, of course they wanted to eat the pancakes. I had not planned for anyone other than me to eat them, so I only had in sugar and lemon juice (my favourites). But I had some chocolate spread and honey lying around to add to the party. The elder two, for the youngest was not with us, not only enjoyed making the mixture and cooking them (they did not flip, apparently Tilly had put them off that by having only one pre-cooked pancake for flipping photos in 2020, which explains that) but also enjoyed trying out various topping combinations and eating well. I make pancakes the way my family always had - a bit on the large side (the recipe I found offered 14 pancakes, it make just four of the size I am used to, well, remember from my youth - I have the original frying pan). It was fun, we ate well. But it was Monday, not Tuesday - Tilly had already said that she wanted to do some pancake fun with them on the Tuesday.

Alas, not these.

I do have some with
butterflies on though and
I do love them.

Obviously I was reprimanded on the evening when returning children. Tilly reminded me that she had deliberately told me her plans so that, she explained, I wouldn't do pancakes with them - that was what she was going to do. Furthermore, they wouldn't want to do pancakes twice in a row. Also, I was ten minutes late back with them, and now her evening was ruined. It would be over an hour until I got a text saying that I didn't need to be sorry and that things were mostly okay. The fact that the children had expressed excitement at doing pancakes with Tilly as well was neither here nor there. The fact that she had lied about them not liking pancakes was, it seems, irrelevant.

In other news, perhaps more fitting for this blog, I haven't worn boxers very much. I've worn them just six times since the New Year, four of which was in chastity when I was attempting to stop the chafing getting worse (I have three pairs that have a tight pouch like effect). It is most comfortable, and quite nice, something that I have tried before but now there is no guilt. I can wear knickers, wash them, dry them and then wear them again. Fantastic. Something so simple, so apparently harmless, and it's taken a divorce to realise. Oh, yeah, the Decree Nisi comes into effect sometime over the next couple of weeks, then I have to wait six weeks and one day until the Absolute - that's how divorce works here in the UK at any rate.

Awkward curtsy

Killing It

The last time that Tilly bought beer it was
significantly more upmarket and to my taste than
the mere labels. Indeed, she actually thought
about it. It puts my rejection of beer from her
afterwards into something more approaching its
proper context - a rejection of her in general.

Retrospection is one of the best pastimes that I have left, so obviously I indulge. I always have, looking backward is something of a feature on the blog as it stands and any exploration here will but up against it pretty quickly. So it was that I indulged in a dive to see previous episodes of Valentine's Day. And so it was that I was able to track when I gave up and when Tilly gave up. I gave up before she did, of course I did, growing saddened and cynical I stopped really paying attention after 2015. Tilly gamely tried in 2016 and I just didn't rate her attempts that year. Not long afterward she would become pregnant with our third child and my response, my reaction, would kill the relationship dead properly. It would convince her that there was nothing worth saving but the sense of security and it would allow me to develop to the point that I would risk the end of the relationship - something that I had long attempted to avoid.

Something we never quite managed in any of our
attempts at sex was the feeling that it was
mutually enjoyable.

Why bring this up? Because it was me that killed whatever it was we could have had. Indeed, the initial cooling of whatever it was we had had was down to me as well. My confusion over how to respond to Tilly combined with my tendency to focus on and see the black side of things meant that even before this blog began we were in trouble. I remember that when she moved in I was already having doubts and that her response to my one and only rejection of her sexual overtures had made me think that we were doomed. It was only what I now know to be my ASD that meant that we hadn't already split up by the holiday in the summer of that year, 2007, and the incident that led to the conception of our first child was mainly my exhaustion and last brazen hope for something different.

She did, of course, buy me flowers eventually
and I was grateful. She did it many more times
too, out of deference and, yes, love of me.

It made her very uncomfortable, but she did it
anyway. Her reward? I drifted further away.

Tilly had agreed, following that first brush with the potential of pregnancy, to go on the pill. But since that point we hadn't actually had any sexual contact at all. This was after I said no and she had been angry about that and adamant that adapting to the hormonal changes brought by the Pill meant that she simply couldn't see us having sex at all. I had grown despondent and believed that I was looking at the end of our relationship. And I had already had sex - a big deal because I had always prided myself on my morality being that I wouldn't have sex until marriage or, at least, having sex would be in the context of a lifetime commitment. So, that we had had sex meant, to me, we were already effectively married, at least in the eyes of Him Upstairs. Rightly or wrongly, that meant that I had to very carefully consider the end of our relationship. Before that summer holiday I had convinced myself that we would probably not last much longer. Indeed, on the holiday itself I embraced the sex as a chance to bid farewell, reasoning that if I at least made it a pleasant experience then Tilly and I would have something pleasant to look back on afterward. I'd already broken my own rules regarding sex and so it seemed small potatoes to end the relationship on that note.

This is the March(!) after the summer, if you
squint, you can just about see the abandoned
temporary barbeque tray behind those plant pots.

Tilly did not eat anything from that barbeque
by the way.

Before I could do that, however, Tilly announced she was pregnant. And I was left, with a barbeque no less, in the garden of the house in the city we lived a bit thunderstruck. Was this Him Upstairs reminding me of my moral choice in having sex, and the consequences that I knew were possible? I thought so, and so after that point I resolved not to end things, to try and rebuild with Tilly and make it work. I loved her, she was still the woman whom I loved, and maybe she was prepared to try and make it work with me. I swallowed my pride, I just had to look more closely to find out what she was doing for me, support her more, be a better partner and we could do it. But I am also, and was also, selfish and struggled with this from the start. And so the ground was laid, the seeds planted, for where we find ourselves. Tilly seems happy with her friends, with the connections she has forged in this new place with people she likes. And I? I am alone. I have always been alone. But now that is clearer and more physically apparent than it used to be.

As ever, this is not the post I was planning to write when I sat down to type this evening. Rather, it is the one that fell out of my brain instead. That seems to happen a lot.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

 

Not a recent photo, nor really
connected with my post.
But it's me, and I like the hint
of bosom there. All natural, baby!

After the long awaited sequel to 'Going Out' took place I got to footling around, as one does when alone, and started the chastity thing again. It was moderately painful but I was doing it whilst dressing as full-time as I thought I could get away with - I am alone, right, so why not? It was a very liberating thing and I enjoyed it. I would get home from work and immediately change into my feminine wardrobe because I could, wearing my 3.5" heels from Dorothy Perkins that I got a while back in a fit of depression and a feeling that I should because I had the spare cash. they're size 8, 42 European sizing, and open toe so my man-feet of 43 European style can fit without too much trouble. I really like them. I took to standing in them to stretch the calves and it was lovely, really lovely. Remember how much I enjoy the feeling in my calves that I have been wearing high heels? I do. This brought it back.

Thus apogee was reached a couple of days ago when I went out to go shopping in the boots that I bought way back whenever it was from Asda. I can't actually remember when, but it was after October 2011 and early enough that they featured in one of my favourite photographs that I have posted on the blog. Anyway, I was wearing those and some 100 denier woollen black tights that I bought for Toby's birthday bash back in 2005, so those tights are old enough to have sexual relations now, I guess. Anyway, those, and my flowery stretch top that I procured from Poundland (I know how to live) and the top I liberated from Tilly's binning binge back in 2010 from the Bay (remember the Bay?) - it's a cropped strappy vest top in mock-velvet. Very 90s chic. Under those I wore one of my purple camisole tops from 2013(?) and below that my lacy bra that I got at some point, I can't remember when, an underwire job with padded cups (38B in case you wonder). I stuffed that with the pop-socks that I stuffed with bird seed some time in 2019 when I got the chance (to B cup, obviously). I wore the mini-skirt that Toby gifted to me when we broke up (it's from Next, she told me that I would get more wear out of the size 12 garment than she ever would, as she was never going to fit it and she reasoned I would look better in it). Beneath the skirt I wore trousers. Why?

Remaining one of my favourite photos
of myself. Note the padded bra
(in this case 36B)

Over the top of the ensemble I wore my long woollen coat. Only the trousers showed once I added a scarf around my neck. The heeled boots were a bit obvious, if one looked, but the tousers did a good job of obscuring those to the casual observer. Had I not forgotten my face mask I would have walked all the way to the supermarket to get some groceries and back. As it was I only made it about a kilometre from the flat before I had to turn back and get my facemask. After that exposure and the worry of meeting other people I convinced myself I was being ridiculous to try it in broad daylight (I passed eight people, no one noticed. Or, if they did, no one cared). So I decided to change into trainers.

So it was that I went shopping almost fully dressed en femme and no one noticed or cared. It was a great experience. Not at all sexually arousing (though I confess that the thought of doing it both before and afterwards was very much a sexual turn on). I did it in chastity too. Oh, I was wearing a thong because of course I was, an effort to lessen the pain of the chafing on the scrotum (is that TMI? Probably) and keep everything packaged.

My point? I did it. I learned that I could, that I wanted to, and I learned that I can do things that I would like to do because I would like to do them and no other reason.

An image I found in 2005, taken in
2005, that I associate with that time
in my life. I remember being fascinated
by it. Sure, I masturbated to it, but
I would also just sit and stare at it.

I wanted that feeling, I wanted to BE
her in ways I cannot fully express.

In all of my relationships, all three of them, I have noticed that things that I would enjoy have not featured terribly highly on the relationship agenda. Terry, my first relationship about whom I talk too little, was the closest I ever had to a partner who wanted to do things for my benefit as much as for her own. She once tried to stop in my University room overnight because she knew that it was something that I wanted to try, though she didn't make it the whole night, and we had a very nice and chaste sleep over because, well, it was something I wanted to try. In return we did whole-body grinding whilst fully clothed and... well, you know, we were both useless and helped one another along in our complete lack of undserstanding of what we were doing. I may have been the one who was doing the polluting there, actually, but it was the closest I ever got to a partner who would do things I wanted to try for the sole reason that I might enjoy them.

In Toby I found a relationship where if I enjoyed something it was an argument not to do it. The cross-dressing became such an issue for Toby because, as she put it, I enjoyed it too much and didn't find it sufficiently embarrassing or humiliating. We didn't experiment with bondage much because, as she said, I would probably enjoy it more than she did to be tied up or wake up in bondage. She wasn't wrong. She wanted it it to be a punishment, something endured rather than enjoyed, and she felt that my enjoyment of these things detracted from what made them good for her. So we didn't do a whole lot on the grounds that I would enjoy it too much. It was why she stopped coming to visit my flat, why she stopped being driven places by me and why we, ultimately, broke up. I enjoyed her more than she wanted to be enjoyed and my enjoyment of things or the feeling that I might like something was enough to convince her that maybe we oughtn't to be doing it. I recall once that she did not like being called 'dear' (a fair criticism to be honest, it sounded horrendously belittling), and I was at a loss as to what elsr to call her. Maybe I should have tried 'Ma'am'? If only I'd thought of that. Ha, no, I digress, the point here is that there was a line about what we would do or not do and the line was what I would enjoy or want to happen.

It culminated in me using my handcuffs to
cuff a single wrist to my bed when Tilly was
very drunkenly trying to have sex with me
that time. We did not live together.

This is when she asked we not do it again.

We didn't.

This line became thicker and more defined with Tilly. Is it odd that all my partners have names that I use beginning with 'T' and that only Tilly has a traditionally female moniker? Hmm. Anyway, yes, early on I wanted to try with the tying up. In the case of Toby she had said that she was waiting for me to 'take charge' and dominate now and again - the times when I pressed her against a wall and kissed her were the bits she enjoyed most about our time together and my progression to becoming more and more boring (I think she meant submissive in retrospect) and need for a Domme were what stopped us working as a couple. Naturally, I applied that with Tilly. In my relationship with Toby I had worked out (correctly for her as it turned out) that people did unto others what they wanted to have done to them. So I experimented early on, consensually, with light bondage with Tilly. And, initially, she let me and joined in (though never returning the favour). Until that Christmas. I've spoken about that before, so I shan't do so again here, it is not entirely relevant.

She asked that I not tie her up again. I stopped. Of course I did, everything had been done with consent to this point and the understanding that she was enjoying it. When she said she wasn't, of course I stopped. Then, progressively, anything I said I enjoyed was slowly choked off. It became a big issue and thing when she moved in - I was trying to keep sex playful by being stupidly analytical - as in stupid, not a lot, as a joke and designed to be silly. Timing orgasms, but with a silly voice and not actually timing it at all. But she asked me to stop. I had been rubbing her feet (no sex) a lot and doing it as an act of devotion, but I was enjoying it too much, she told me, and asked me to stop. She asked me to play with her hair but then I was enjoying it too much or else she was asking me to do it until she fell asleep (this could take up to five hours on a work night from 10pm to 3am) and I stopped in the latter case, making her feel that I didn't deserve to do it when I was happy to do so. No, really, her words.

Remember this? I found the image the caption is
based on in 2008.

Then there was summer 2011. And Tilly decided that the passion was not only gone but that I should be punished for being a tranny. I guess. This blog started not long afterward, a culmination of my frustration and concern. I hadn't really been dressing, you see, since Tilly had moved in back in February 2007. Indeed, between meeting her in late 2006 and the birth of our first child in early 2008 I hadn't dressed at all. I genuinely believed that having sex with Tilly and having a relationship would allow me to gradually phase out my dressing if she didn't want to get involved. I mean, I was saddened that I had been open about it and she had ignored it, and worried that I wouldn't be able to never dress again but I had noticed that I hadn't felt even the urge much.

A side-note: I had not dressed at all apart from a pair of knickers for a week in Uni until the summer of 2004 when I bought a four pack of black full briefs from Morrison's on the back of a series of conversations with Toby, before we were going out. My first dressing in women's clothes followed that October round Toby's house in what would transpire to be her wedding dress. In 2005 I dressed fully in 'school-girl' outfit (but not really) for a club night for her birthday. I would dress again later that February and again in March, but that would be it. Then I would dress a bit over the summer of 2005 (including shaving my legs for the first time) and promptly stop in October 2006 after meeting Tilly. So, now you know.

Tilly getting threatened.

I think that's fair to say that she was.

The rest is a matter of record on this blog. Every attempt I made to fix our relationship afterwards seems to have been rather met with a spiteful response - ending whatever it was that I felt wasn't going far enough in protest that I dared to question it. Sex, affection, holding hands in public, kissing on the mouth or 'French-kissing' or even kissing at all. Hugging in a non-chaste way. Hell, even saying I liked her hair would usually result in some major style overall in the next hair-cut. Clothing compliments would be met by a change in wardrobe soon after. Looking back, that's easier to see and track. Being romantic resulted in a less romantic response, deliberate and obvious, so that we simply stopped being a couple.

Why did I not do anything about it? Because, over time, I have internalised that message that if I want something it is reason enough to not be doing that thing. My enjoyment or potential enjoyment of an activity means that it will not happen or possibly be removed from the list of options in the first place.

The unattainable dream

Which brings me back to that walk to the supermarket. Doing something because I wanted to do it and enjoying the experience. Being almost breathless afterwards with the rush of what I had done. Dressing in pyjamas made for women to sleep that night and attaching a leash to a collar and then that leash to the bed post (I bought a bed with posts for this purpose) to sleep. Because I wanted to.

And then the crushing disappointment that I'm doing something wrong with chastity so that I am being woken every hour and there was blood and skin damage in the morning meaning that I had to abandon it again, after just eight days. After managing 160 days last time, this was a bit of a blow. I shall heal, I shall try again, but coming so soon after the high, itself a revelation after so long, was a blow. A big blow.

Not as much introspection as I usually put into things here, but there's my post.

Easy Mode

Still one of my favourite images of
myself. I miss those days. A bit.

I used to know who came up with the idea that white, western, middle-class males played the game of life on easy mode, but like with most information that is actually semi-useful in my line of work, I have forgotten it. I went to University and was funded throughout by my rich father and I got a decent degree without ever really appling myself like I should have done. Then, afterwards, got myself a Masters in Military History almost without breaking a sweat and using the loans I took out at very good value (1% interest in a world where 5% interest was standard on savings) to pay the tuition fees. Here I was courted and dated my first girlfriend, Terry, who has never really featured much on here.

Thereafter to a teaching degree, very cheap indeed with a government grant that covered rent and tuition, so I just had to foot the bill for food and entertainment. Living like a social eunuch, a skill I now know that I owe to ASD, this was no great shakes. I was lonely and conflicted, irrationally emotional a bit delicate over the wrong things (a housemate I really fancied and respected once chided me that I dealt with standard issues by crying and playing loud music alone, she was not wrong) but I completed the training and fell into a job by dint of being able to take risks that others would not (it was the Nazi lesson) which, again, I now know to be connected to my ASD and my lack of understanding of what the potential consequences might be socially if not legally. In short, I blasted through by being oblivious where others would be cautious and careful. Still didn't get a decent degree though.

Remember this? I'm on the beer again.

In that new job I applied myself, living only to work and read fictionmania. I branched out to sticky site, back when it was a thing with the Andare brothers, and then, inexplicably, found myself being sought out by Toby. Toby was exciting, edgy, cool and different. Bisexual, into the goth scene and involved with transsexuals, cross-dressers, drug-users and the LARP crowd. Exciting, intoxicating, experienced and three or four years younger than I. She knew stuff I had only dreamed about, literally, and led me through many formative experiences but I played the moral high ground card when it suited me because that's what I do best. It all ended, the only way it could, with her leaving me and me feeling hard done to despite making it all but certain that nothing could ever develop.

With Terry I hadf been the corrupting influence, with Toby I was unable to corrupt but she was also unable to corrupt me, finding that I was already there in many cases. Not in a good way, not in an edifying way. I did not know that I had ASD. I suspected that I was depressed, clinically, but did not pursue that.

Dating website. Holiday in the States. I met Tilly. I was still able to project being interesting and clever. Tilly was looking for security and I provided it. I did not notice that she wanted me to be normal. Because I thought I was normal.

Once my favourite photo of me.
Still the most honest one.

The year I met Tilly. Just six months
prior.

For someone playing the game on easy mode I am a shit gamer. And that holds. I don't play rule systems nor power game nor really play well. I do not learn. I do not improve. In every pursuit I have followed the same line: rapid initial learning, a plateau and then... just plateau. I get no better, I learn no more. The level I almost enter on is the level at which I remain. In Medieval Total War, in Lemmings, in Worms, it was always the same - I would start at a skill level, find that within the game, be matched and then... stick. Get stuck. Stay there until something else came up or I moved on. So it was with relationships. But Terry and Toby were not with me long enough to see that I also degraded. I get worse given time.

Easy mode. But I end up alone, lonely and sad. I end up no longer a Head of Department with minions, but a minion. Same pay, sure, but none of the power and the freedom to be creative. Because I don't actually follow rules, I pat them carefully looking for loopholes, weaknesses, holes and areas that can be exploited or subverted. It's not as useful a skill as it looks. Even my nuance to the white, western, mid- let's call it Default Man status. So, my wrinkle, my cross-dressing, my sprinkling of trans, my gender-queerness (if that is the right term), is subtle and camouflagued enough that no one would ever know. Sometimes even I don't know. I suffer no adversity, my life after University has been pretty easy and welcoming, I experience no sexism, no racism, no classism.

I almost wish I did. I might actually feel a sense of achievement now and again. Instead of failure.

What I left behind.

Going Out pt 2

 On the 24 October 2011 I went out for a walk in skirt and heels. The heels weren't really heels, they were wedges from ASDA that I had bought after a bit of an argument with Tilly early on in our relationshiop. It was after we had rowed about my cross-dressing that summer, after Tilly had decided that I was a pervert and evil and wrong and that I had misled her. After the end of the relationship, had I but known it at the time.

Not quite the wedges I bought, but close enough

I had to leave the house to get changed in the dark down the back of the streets where I lived, and I recall that I was surprised by someone walking in the dark on a windy evening indeed. I wore the wedges and then put on a skirt, it was one abandoned by Tilly. She insisted on keeping it until 2013 when she finally threw it out and ensured I couldn't claim it. But I had worn it already, so I was definitely in the wrong there - you should never steal anyone else's clothes. And it wasn't a long walk. It felt like a long time, I walked around the side of a street and then took the skirt off, and walked the rest of the way in jeans, all the way back down the road we lived on and into the woods. Where I stopped, removed the shoes and then walked the short distance home in trainers. I stopped in the car and wrote a record on my phone. And then, a few months later, I wrote it up as the third post in this blog. 5 December 2011.

Do you remember this as an aim and
as a hope for someone I'd meet in the same
image? I do.

Now I live alone. My musings on what I wanted from back then have been revealing. I kinda knew. I knew back then this is how it would end. But timing. Later on I would buy some boots, also from ASDA, also after an argument, also for repeating that lovely experience of walking late at night and preferably in a skirt. Over time I dropped the idea of adding a skirt because, well, I didn't really have anything like the long skirt that I had lifted from Tilly that would look like trousers from a distance. But, that was 2011. And then 2012. then we moved in 2013. And then it was suddenly 2019, and then it was 2020 and we split and then it was the New Year. And now...

Now it's 2021. And I have some time because I have finally got ahead of myself with planning for teaching in this Lockdown. And I went out in my boots. Not for long, not far (too scare) but it was nice. Just nice. It wasn't as electrifying as the first time in 2011, because since then things have rather moved on. I have spent a lot of time dressed and I have been in chastity, for over 180 days, and I have been to work under-dressed. So, I guess this time I was... I dunno. I enjoyed it, but it was short and unplanned and spur of the moment and I left with the boots on but only wearing full briefs beneath my clothes. I've done it now, though, so next time I shall wear tights and a bra and cami and maybe even take my new pencil skirt (I bought a pencil skirt).

And that's the story.

Oh, and on Friday I officially applied for a divorce. Tilly had scanned our marriage certificate and so I actually could.

Frankly I miss this image - it used to
practically be my signature.

Bullying

 The children were over, as usual, on Friday. My mother was due on Saturday. And, on the Friday night, we all had an early-ish night. I was asleep by about half ten. But the middlest was not. And he was winding himself up. He's been in a bit of tizz since Monday when we had a good night but he didn't want to play Pokemon and ended up sleeping in the following morning. I got him up but he was discombobulated and ended up having a mini-meltdown over being rushed to get ready and missing out on watching a video with me before I had to go to work on Monday. When he came back on Friday, despite the good evening, these feelings resurfaced.

But there was an additional feeling. He didn't want to wake me, as he feared I would be grumpy at being woken. So he texted Tilly, who was still awake. And then he worked himself up, texting her that he was "too scared" of me being "grumpy" and it got more and more heart-rending. Until Tilly tried to wake me, but I didn't hear the phone. Eventually the eldest came and woke me, handed me Tilly on the phone, and the middlest joined me in bed at midnight, and slept.

Come the morning the middlest went home early. When I went to pick him back up with the youngest, Tilly was waiting outside. She explained that this was the final example she needed to prove that I was emotionally abusive and dismissive. That I had to face up to how badly I had messed up the children and how dangerous I was and had been. She wasn't going to let me "ignore things" by being upset, I had to face up to the fact that I was manipulative, abusive, gaslighting and in need of serious therapy. My guilt was a defensive screen, a way of avoiding facing up to my problems. Tilly had done the therapy, and knew the difference between her anxieties and reality. I did not. And I was the problem.

She was happy wioth me looking after the children, but my gaslighting and emotional abuse was the reason for the toxicity that had ended our relationship. She had been talking with friends who pointed out that my vocabulary and style of writing in texts was manipulative, authoritarian and dismissive. I needed to get therapy, get fixed, and fast. She had an article on autistic gaslighting that she wanted me to read, it explained what my problem was. The first part she bade me ignore, it was a bit too extreme, but it would show me that I was gaslighting and abusive and she wanted me to face up to it rather than get all upset and then carry on as if nothing had happened.

The weekend thus ruined and all agreements off, I picked up the eldest from her dance class before Tilly brought the youngest two around and my mother arrived at the same time. I had forewarned my mother about what had been said. Tilly stuck around a bit then left, with the children all with me and my mother. My mother was also a bit off-balance by what had been said, and I was struggling (as one might, being told one is abusive and manipulative is a hard thing to hear). Tilly had even used the low-blow of comparing me to a bullying HoD that I have spoken about on here before - suggesting that I had analysed him as I have everyone else and learned how to be like him.

All of this followed a series of texts Tilly and I had exchanged in which she had demanded we change our financial arrangements to something far more complicated as the current method left her "vulnerable" as she was "dependent on my goodwill".

That night, Saturday, my mother and I compared notes. I showed her the text exchange. Now, my mother is biased, but she did not believe me to be manipulative. She did point out that me using Tilly's phrases back at her could have been seen to be manipulative but that, if it were, then Tilly had been manipulative first. Eventually, Tilly sent me this article. I'm not sure it said what she thought it did. The first half described how an Aspergic partner may deny the feelings his partner had were real and then would simply carry on as if the discussion hadn't happened, denying that anything had occurred. This was what Tilly had categorically told me we had never done. And we hadn't. The second half said that accidental or no, hurting someone still left that someone hurt. But that a guilty and remorseful Aspergic partner would defend the lack of intent to hurt - the trick was to respond with compassion and sympathy so that they could do the same for the hurt in return. And the article closed with the sentence "regardless, and this is important, without intent there can be no gaslighting". So... I can't be gaslighting? A brief text exchange and Tilly agreed that I had never dismissed her feelings, nor argued that they didn't count and nor had I suggested the discussions we had didn't happen - just that I didn't change enough afterward and would hurt her the same way in a different conversation.

So... not gaslighting or manipulating or abusive? Just bone-headed and incapable of change?

Oh, and the eldest reckoned the middlest's fear was that anyone being woken would be grumpy, but he knew Tilly was awake. He had told the eldest that he was worried about waking someone. Indeed, when he came in to me and I let him join me in bed, he had felt safe and happy. His biggest concern had been me not picking him after the discussion with Tilly - he was unaware of any fallout.

So... I don't know. I have written a formal financial agreement that Tilly is going to check with some free legal advice based on what we have already agreed. And my weekend has been not at all what I had planned. And I feel a bit awful. I think, think, that I am not abusive. But is that just what abusers tell themselves?