Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Erstwhile

erst·while (adjective):
former; one-time. "she looked forward to reconnecting with her erstwhile companions at the reunion"

I changed my tagline today, from "the blogged life of Galiana Chance, phone sex operator" to "the blogged life of Galiana Chance, erstwhile phone sex operator"

And then I cried a bit.

Thankfully, a good friend was here, helping me do the tedious copy/paste part of updating all my listings. I wanted to state clearly that I'm no longer active. I wanted to include a link to some Flirt friends who can be trusted to take good care of callers. I can't update all my listings without confusing myself. Thankfully, in addition to being unafraid of HTML, he gives amazing hugs. I was well-held.

It's been over a year since I was able to sustain the concentration to take phone sex calls, even from people I know, even from callers I connected with deeply and enjoyed tremendously. The realization of my inability to perform came quickly. The acceptance of it did not.

So over the past week, I've directed my excellent friend to clean up my contact info, check my recommended Flirt friends to make sure they were still active, update my listings, fix broken links. Y'know, stuff that needs to happen when you go inactive.

Erstwhile.

I love the word, erstwhile. It's elegant, isn't it? A little dreamy, even. It seems so much softer than "former" or "one-time" or "ex". It's certainly better than "can no longer be a ___ no matter how hard she tries". No. That's a terrible tag line.

It's bizarre. I thought I had come to terms with the loss. Well, probably I have, but it's one thing to admit it to yourself, another to admit it to people close to you, but it's another thing altogether to make it official.

If it were someone else going through the same thing, I would almost certainly tell her, "Oh, darling, the day you change your subtitle to 'erstwhile', it's totally okay to cry."

I will try to update again soon with a far cheerier post. But I needed to mark the occasion here.

/mark

Well then. Erstwhile it is.

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