A word about the title....

The title, "One of the Jugglers", came out of a conversation I had with my cousin during my journey from Washington state to South Carolina.
I had just been asked to leave the home I shared with my girlfriend/partner and our three-year-old son after my addiction and affairs became, quite accidentally, public.
With the car packed with the clothes and possessions I had, I was on my way to visit my mother and step-dad hoping to have some time to get back on my feet and get clean and earn my way back into my son's life.
Reconciling with Karen was out of the question and rightfully so...she deserves better.
During the 2300 mile drive, my cousin had caught wind of my situation and called me asking what had happened.
A side-effect of my addiction becoming public was a new found sense of openness where there hadn't been one before. I don't claim to have become completely forthcoming overnight, but certainly more than I had been during the last few years.
I told her very frankly that an email of mine had been found which led to other emails and saved photos and a litany of information and material that made it very clear to Karen that I had not only been completely unfaithful and a liar and not at all the person I had led her to believe I was during the course of our six year relationship, but that I might be a complete deviant.
I told her some of the basic details, including the fact I had been cruising Craigslist and adult dating sites looking for thrills and hookups.
I had told her that it started off as voyeurism and curiosity but the metaphor occurred to me during the trip while I had a lot of time to think about the situation I had created.
"The difference between being a voyeur and a participant is the difference between buying a ticket to the circus and being one of the jugglers," I told her.
I explained that when you're buying a ticket, the circus is all show and spectacle...it's fascinating because it's different and unusual. It's being exposed to things that aren't in your every day life that make it special and unique.
When you're one of the jugglers, it's normalized. You're surrounded by people for whom it's normal as well. When you're one of the jugglers, the bearded lady isn't some freak to look at with curiosity, wonder and fear...she's just Betty...she works here.
So, without realizing it had gone from buying my ticket to becoming part of the circus, and it didn't seem strange because I had surrounded myself with people for whom casual sex, threesomes, role playing, BDSM, and any other manner of activities that used to be the stuff of my frustration-borne fantasies were part of their every day lives.
The 'circus' seemed to hold a lot more appeal than the staid, suburban lifestyle that I was becoming a part of.
It would cost me my jobs, home, family, self-respect and untold amounts of emotional damage doled out to those who had the bad luck to care about me before I realized I would give anything to have that life back.
This blog is not an indictment of the 'alternative' lifestyle. For those who can incorporate the new and the different and the libidinous into their lives and relationships and still maintain control, I salute you. For me it became such a distraction and waste of hours and hours of time when I should have been doing other things that it would be laughable if it weren't so sick.