Jamie says she doesn’t trust Peter Kent

and my mother has been unusually vocal about her similar feelings.

 

Jamie says the other volunteers and Daniel Capiro feel the same way.  Jamie broke down in tears today when I told her that I had asked Peter Kent to move in with me.  Everyone thinks he is just using me for my money and that he cares nothing for me personally.  I think my mother pretty much summed it up today when she said, “I wouldn’t worry so much if you were flush right now, but things are really tight and you already have Jamie and your dad and I to support, so I don’t think it is a good idea for you to take on one more mouth to feed.”

 

Funny that she didn’t mention the cats.  I work the way I do and provide jobs to the family and staff for the benefit of the cats, not for the people.  I pointed out to Jamie that Peter Kent and I have been inseparable since meeting a month ago and her paychecks still come in on time and there is no concern that she is about to lose her job or her security.

 

She says it isn’t about her, but that she thinks Peter Kent is a fraud and dangerous to me.  I asked how she could say something so definitive about someone she doesn’t even know and she says that any man who would move in with me, two weeks after meeting me, must be a con artist.

 

I really resent that my closest family finds me so undesirable that they believe a man would only love me for what I could buy him.  I found it hard to accept that they thought that Don was trying to kill me rather than divorce me because of the cost.  We never even spoke seriously of divorce, or in being less than in love for life, but it was so easy for my family to believe that Don could care so little about me as to want me dead.

 

On occasion they have nearly convinced me.  It is my own family and staff who are concerned that an “intruder” will somehow diminish their income or job stability.  Who is using whom?  This troubles me more than I want to think about it.

 

Am I so self-centered as to believe that I have more to offer a man than just the fruits of my labour? Is my value all in my bank account?   Am I so egocentric as to believe Peter Kent when he says that I am good for him in so many emotional ways?  I know I am good for him financially.  He doesn’t say it, but I am sure he feels the lack of pressure to support a woman.  Why should that always be the man’s burden?   Was I so blind that I could not see how Don really felt when I took care of him?  Did Don’s cheating on me mean that I was somehow not enough?   I believe that people can be selfish and empty and incapable of being filled, but I am not willing to believe that it is because I am in some way lacking, that every man who crosses my path is that pitifully lost.

 

I create my own reality and I don’t want a life of being used, betrayed and unappreciated.  I am not willing to create that life for myself by attracting or nurturing a relationship that is bound to end in misery.  Yet I am unwilling to set up a barricade about myself to keep all potential heartbreak at bay.  It would be less of a risk for me to love Peter Kent at a distance, but I won’t construct a wall between us.  (I originally said, “can’t” but that is incorrect.  I can do anything, it ‘s just a matter of what I will or won’t choose to do) I am healed by his loving touch.  I am relieved by his ability to ease my pain; whether it be his hand on the small of my back, his ability to be strong and let me cry, his incomparable capability as a lover or his knowledge of what my body needs to be strong and healthy.  To distance myself from him emotionally is to lose much of what makes all of these sensations so powerful.  I see no good reason to deprive myself that way.

 

As for my family, they don’t know Peter Kent, so their reservations about him are without basis.  All they know are their own fears and I can’t hold that against them.  If I were dependent on someone else for my security I might act the same w