Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Riley
These last six weeks have single-handedly been the most emotionally taxing that I have ever endured.
Before even setting foot back in California, I found a therapist who has been helping me. Dr. Romast has been kind but firm in our sessions.
She has supported me while guiding me to unpack the tangled web of feelings that my parents’ abandonment left within me from such an early age. She even made me talk about losing my grandma and how it made me feel.
I might have hated every minute of it, but I understand myself better than I ever have before. I also feel lighter after talking about things I had mostly kept bottled up my entire life.
I no longer feel like my abandonment issues are controlling my life. They aren’t gone. I don’t think they ever will be, but instead of letting them take the front seat, I can now metaphorically shove them in the back or even in the trunk.
My past will always be a part of me, but I don’t have to let it control me. I know I deserve love, and that it isn’t unimaginable for someone to love me.
Three someones.
The intensive three-times-a-week therapy has been grueling and emotionally exhausting, but none of it compares to the pain I have felt every second of every day from missing the three men I love.
I can freely let those words float through my mind, and I do all the time.
I’ve even said it out loud a few times. The first time I saw Dr. Romast smile was when I finally admitted that I was in love with them.
I had immediately broken down into sobs. She’d run a gentle hand over my back while I mumbled about how scared I was to lose them.
She helped me reframe that fear as a part of my reason to push me through the most challenging conversations.
I glance around my office. I have spent more hours than I can count sitting in this very chair, working endlessly.
Since coming back, I’ve found it very difficult to get any work done from here. I find myself longing to be working in my sweatpants on a comfy sectional with one of my guys cuddled up next to me.
I don’t even know if I have the right to call them mine anymore, but my heart can’t let go of the sentiment.
My eyes look over everything I have painstakingly pieced together for the podcast about Aspen Springs. Thank goodness we were prepared for several episodes in advance because this one is taking me an eternity.
I could have sped up the process by letting some of my staff help, but I haven’t been able to let anyone else put their hands or eyes on it. It’s far too precious to me to turn it over to anyone else.
All the segments about Hadley, Sienna, and Avery’s families are complete and damn near perfect, in my opinion. I might be biased, but this episode is my favorite out of all the ones I have made over the years.
There’s just one last part I need to add at the end to finish it off right.
I peek out my office door, ensuring everyone has gone home for the night. Knowing I have the place to myself, I walk over to where I have a few cameras set up in front of the couch in the corner of my office.
I press play on all three cameras, then pull a blanket over my lap and cross my legs underneath it. I take a deep breath and tell my story because I can’t tell the whole story of poly couples in Aspen Springs without being honest about my own feelings and the men I fell in love with.
I have no idea if they still love me or if they could ever forgive me. I just have to hope that this podcast will show them I left my heart with them six weeks ago, and I don’t want it back.
I am irrevocably in love with all three of them, and it doesn’t make me want to run for the hills anymore. It makes me want to finish this podcast as quickly as I can, so I can get back to Aspen Springs.
Back to them.