KELLI. Since I was a little girl, I have kept souvenirs as some form of proof or confirmation of things that have happened in my life that I felt were unbelievable at the time. I always wanted proof that the event itself had happened. It was a way for me to look at a material object as a reminder of the event that I associated with the object itself.

When I was about six, we went to the California coast on vacation. I picked up shells from the beach and made sure that the ones I chose to keep were the most perfect ones that I could find. When we got home, I placed the shells in a box and kept the box in the closet in my bedroom. Whenever I thought about the ocean and our trip, I would wonder if it really happened. The more time that had passed since the trip, the more difficult I found it to believe. I would sit and try to remember the scenery, where we went, and what we had done.

As soon as I pulled the box from my closet and removed the shells, I remembered each shell, and where I had found it. I remembered picking each one up, and how I decided which ones, out of all the shells I had discovered, to keep.

This same pattern of obtaining some form of souvenir from a memorable event continued throughout my life. Boys in middle school would give me a note telling me they liked me, and if I wanted to remember it, I would keep the note and place it in my box. If I got a birthday card from my father on a birthday that I wanted to remember, I would place the card in the box. Over the years, the box ended up with souvenirs from almost each year of my life.

Today I still have that box, and I still add objects to it as time passes and unbelievable events happen in my life. If the event was one that was unbelievable, and I wanted it to be memorable, I saved an object I would associate with the event. Something that would jog my memory many years in the future. This box of souvenirs allowed me to look back at my life with vivid memories. Memories that would remain undeniable. Memories that couldn’t be questioned by me or anyone else. Memories with proof.

As we grow older we change. Our lives change. Patterns of living, what we deem to be important, and sometimes even our beliefs change. I imagined, with me, this collecting of souvenirs from my life would never change. When something was or seems to be too good to be true, I wanted proof of the fact that it ever existed.

As a child, I made up memories of my mother. My mother left when I was one year-old. I have no memories of my mother, because I had no mother. I was raised by my father, and to me, my mother never existed.

Yet.

When I was in the early years of my schooling; kindergarten, first grade – roughly that age – I made up memories in my head of things that had happened when I was younger. Memories that included my mother. My mother that never existed. I told myself the stories long enough, and repeated them in my mind enough, that I began to believe them.

I believed the act of collecting souvenirs was a way for me to know that the memory was real. That this memory was not like my memories of my mother, fabricated false hope. We, as people, were no more than a mentally advanced animal. Naturally we took whatever steps we had to that would support our survival. Feeling loved is a large part of what we, as humans, needed to survive.

We yearned to be loved. The perfect love. Women dreamt of being swept off their feet by the knight in shining armor - off to a castle in the distance - to live a life happily ever after. We waited, and we made decisions, and we lived with the decisions we made. Sometimes those decisions proved to be good ones, and sometimes they proved to be poor ones. Inevitably, decisions that we made when we were young, regarding relationships, proved to be bad decisions.

No one meets the person that they were going to marry when they were fourteen years old. Yet, when we were fourteen, we were certain that the boy we fell in love with in school was the person that we were incapable of living a life without. We were in a relationship with that person until we were fifteen, and we broke up. Our heart was broken, and three months later, we have another boyfriend. One that we cannot live without. One that was perfect. The one.

Survival.

When a woman got pregnant, she was committed in that relationship. Generally, women find someone to marry when they have completed college. Or high school. When the time had come that she looked around her and saw that things were stable or still in her life. From what I had seen, this had nothing to do with stability in a relationship, but a perceived stability in her life. The still, stale, stable life caused her to look around for stability in a relationship, and she attached herself to the first person that came along and made her feel as if she was being loved.

And, in time, she learned. She wasn’t being loved. She was being used. Used for sex. Used for sex by a man that also settled. He settled for a woman that provided him with what he wanted at that particular point in time in his life. In time, he too would look around him and wonder.

What was I doing here? Was this where I belonged?

And whether he leaves physically or he leaves mentally, he would leave. I have seen it happen to friends, family, and schoolmates. Men strayed, they wandered, they cheated. Mentally, emotionally, or physically, it would happen. And, in time, it would progress from whatever it was into a physical separation of some sort.

My girlfriend’s husbands or boyfriends had lunch with other women. They texted other women. They would meet another woman for a coffee or a drink after work, and called it business. They developed a relationship, of some sort, with another woman. In time, because of the repetitive exposure, the woman became interested in the man. And, because she was in a relationship not at all unlike the relationship that the man was in, she began to believe that the guy she was having lunch with loved her. He felts for her. And those feelings were different, he actually loved her.

And she agreed.

And they cheated. Because a man was after a new sexual adventure, and the woman was seeking the perfect love.

They were trying to survive.

They divorced.

And now, they were in a relationship. A relationship destined to lose. Because it wasn’t meant to be. It was two people doing what they had done before. Settling. A man settled for a new sexual adventure, and a woman settled for what she believed to be love. I believed that those two components were what most relationships started out with. A man went on a new sexual adventure, and a woman believed she was in love. What made the relationship work, or what made it last, was when two people settled. When they threw their respective hands in the air and say, I am done. I was done looking. I was done trying to find something new. I was done making changes.

I was willing to settle.

Settling equaled love.

I didn’t believe in love. Not between people that weren’t family. I believed that my father loved me. I believed that his mother and father loved him. But I did not believe that there were many people in this world that were actually in love. I believed that most people on this earth that were together have settled. Settled for something that was other than what was the most likely thing to make them as happy as they could be.

Erik made me as happy as I have ever been. The things that he said, the way he touched me, how he treated me, and how I feel when I was full of his cock. I couldn’t imagine, for the life of me, another man having the ability to make me happier than Erik. The trick, regarding keeping Erik, or anyone like Erik, was continuing to give him a new sexual adventure every time he turned around.

Sex was the most important part of any relationship. It was the portion of a relationship that drove us. When the sex went to hell, the relationship goes to hell. When a woman stopped having sex with a man, there was something wrong. There was no longer affection. There was no longer attraction. But something was definitely wrong.

When a man stopped having sex with a woman, there was something wrong. He was either having sex with someone else or he was getting ready to. There was no longer an attraction, or he had become sexually bored.  Bread and butter sex was just that.

Bread and butter.

If we were able to survive on bread and butter, and I supposed to some extent we were, how many of us would be content with a bread and butter diet. Living a life that was otherwise perfect, with bread and butter as the only available food. Breakfast - bread and butter. Lunch - bread and butter. Dinner - bread and butter. Next day - bread and butter. Next year? Bread and fucking butter.

Or.

The same life that was otherwise perfect. Breakfast - yogurt, grapefruit and oatmeal. Lunch - turkey sandwich, Greek salad, and an orange. Dinner - grilled chicken, rice pilaf, and grilled vegetables. Next day - Bacon, eggs, Chinese stir fry, steak, sushi…

Which life would we choose?

Diversity. Diversity satisfied our ever changing minds. It allowed us to become satisfied. To become content that we were receiving what it was that we wanted, or needed – without life becoming stale, stagnant, and repetitive. It kept life adventurous. The not knowing. Just like when we were children.

I wonder what’s for dinner?

When we were in school. What’s for lunch?

Being in a relationship and knowing what’s for sex was a recipe for disaster.

Diversity.

I had always obtained my diversity by being diverse with my partners. I ran from man to man to man, never getting attached to any one man - knowing that eventually, I would be bored with any one man that I settled for. Knowing this allowed me to be honest with myself, and as a result, I was never in an actual relationship. The sexual diversity came from having a different sexual partner at every turn in my life.

There was no such thing as love. There was sex, affection, and satisfaction. With those things came pleasure.

Erik provided me with those things. All of them.