Back after some thought… and other stuff…

I’m still trying to figure out the concept that because I wasn’t particularly interested in the hot yoga instructor, this made it seem an even better idea for me to sleep with him. Physical craving is a powerful thing. What’s funny is that although I was attracted to him in a sort of objective “wow, he has a great body” kind of way, he definitely wasn’t sending particularly sexual energy in my direction. The most obvious advance that he made was asking if he could kiss me. From there it went the way it did. It was fun, it was great. He’s a really good kisser, and I’m an extremely sensual person. The inner monologue, the voices, simply switched off and allowed me to enjoy sensual pleasure. Mmm…

Last night my lovely yet slightly angst-ridden friend came over for dinner. It was a delightful last minute affair — I had food, she brought wine. We sat and talked for hours, and then after all, we started kissing, and things progressed in the most gorgeous way. Her skin is beautiful. I’ve been attracted to her for months, thinking about when we would possibly cross that line, sort of knowing that it would happen eventually. It is another illustration of how beautiful it is to be with women I care about. The possessiveness doesn’t exist. The night simply is. It’s beautiful, it’s about pleasure. It’s so simple. Yet it’s practically impossible to replicate when it comes to men. Or at least it has been for me.

What is it that drives our bodies? I feel as though I have flicked a switch. I hadn’t had sex in about six weeks. I was feeling rather pleased with my ability to keep my panties on. I had also stopped thinking about it as much. Yet at soon as the drought ends, as soon as I get a taste, it’s all that I can think of. Enjoyable sexual and sensual pleasure. The yoga instructor was fantastic, my friend was wonderful. Stroking, and tickling and touching. Extreme sensation. Heightened by substances, yes, but beautiful nonetheless.

I am still determined to find a way to enjoy a physical relationship with someone and not let it get complicated and imbalanced. I’m not sure how possible this is, although I would really like to try. I have half a mind to send the yoga guy a message asking him what he thinks about going there again in a sort of fun, no strings attached kind of way. I can’t guarantee that feelings won’t develop, but if we’re honest about how we feel and what’s going on, then where’s the harm? Maybe I’ll begin drafting that now.

I am still enjoying a few days’ peace before the havoc begins. The next six weeks are going to be manic.

Waiting

I so felt like I had it all together and here I am fretting about something that’s completely out of my control.

I feel like such a girl. In the worst possible way. It’s silly because I’ve totally figured out how I feel about the Catalyst, about how much I totally messed it all up, and what I want to tell him. I just want to spell it out to him. I don’t even want anything from him — aside from a little time. Am I kidding myself? And the last thing I need right now is to be sitting here at home thinking about it.

I made such a mess of my life this past while. I suppose it makes sense. I was in a totally codependent relationship for three and a half years. You can’t walk away from that and be totally together. So I tried to hide behind the Catalyst in the same way as I had been with the Big Love and it didn’t work. He called me on it so I ran away. It took an attempt at a non-romantic relationship for me to realize the extent to which I try to hide behind people.

So now I don’t want to do that any more. And I totally regret how I acted when I was visiting the Catalyst in the BVI. I mean, obviously I needed the time to figure it out for myself. But now that I have I feel like a bit of an idiot. Plus, I realize just how much I really do still love him. Yeah, I can try to deny it to myself, but why do that? More of this running away bullshit. So now I’m sitting here, wishing that he’d call but also knowing that he very well may not. And I need to accept that and just suck it up and get on with my work or whatever else it is that I really should be doing rather than wishing that the phone would ring.

I’ve reduced myself to a teenager. So unintentionally.

Funny. He mentioned that it might be nice for me to change his name from the Catalyst, but I don’t think he realizes just how much of a catalyst for change he really has been in my life. It’s kind of amazing. Just because he’s a Catalyst doesn’t mean that he isn’t a whole lot more too.

Bleuch. I also want to go out, but everyone’s busy. What can you do, eh?

Such a perfect day…

Somehow planning a  day off doesn’t necessarily turn it into a brilliant day. But lazy Sundays that involve brunch and sitting and talking in the sunshine preceding a barbecue with duck and fennel and steak and delicious salad. All impromptu nonetheless.

Lest we forget the parlour games and tennis playing on wii (a first experience for me and highly amusing).

I feel better about myself today than I have in an inordinate amount of time. I don’t know what it is about going for a run and a day of sunshine, but I was so giddy I felt like a fourteen year old. Literally bouncing around. Literally.

Although my paper was ignored, I still have a week to work on it and have a clear(ish) idea…. Well, I’ pretty okay. Um…

Sunshine!

Behaving

It’s very strange. I feel really good about my newfound self-restraint, but also want so very badly to just say fuck it and go out and get drunk, or smoke a cigarette, or make out with someone.

I am rather proud of myself for sticking to it though. I have had all sorts of temptations thrown at me, and I haven’t fallen yet. That said, it hasn’t been very long.

I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly that I really want. It’s tricky because I know that I’m not going to become this righteous, balanced person over night. I am still an extremely sexual little creature, who enjoys pushing boundaries and misbehaving. But I don’t want to take it to the levels I have been. I want to learn how to interact with guys on a non-sexual level. I want to get used to being talked to without all of the innuendo. I want to get rid of the power games. Easier said than done, I think. This is behaviour that’s been going on since I was about fourteen. That’s more that ten year’s interacting that I’m going to have to try to reprogram.

I need to figure out what I’m going to write for this sex column as well. I need to make it really good. I guess I’ll have to spend some time brainstorming for that tomorrow morning. I think I’ll go to the 6pm yoga class and then go to meditation afterwards and make an early night of it. I don’t really think it’s a good idea for me to go to the former coworker’s barbecue. I am trying to stay away from situations involving booze, cigarettes and boys who want to have sex with me.

On a different note, I’m a little confused about the man. I feel like he’s sort of dropped out of my life, and because I’m not working at the club or partying, I haven’t seen him in over a week. And I know that I shouldn’t be stressing about it, but I want to hang out and I really care about him and I don’t know what the deal is. A big part of me thinks I’m just reading into it too much and realistically we’re both super busy with work and his propensity to party a lot has meant that I just haven’t seen him. But I can’t help wondering. I mean… we did spend most of the last couple of months hanging out all the time, and now he won’t give me a straight answer on when we’re going to see one another next. I think that’s the thing really. I just want him to say — yeah, I’d love to have dinner or watch a movie, or whatever. Instead he ignores it. I feel snubbed, and I don’t know if it’s just in my head, or if there’s something else going on here. Meh. I think I’m thinking too much again.

I need to go to bed.

I just had a big argument with myself. It’s 10:45pm. Just about the time to go out. Or to go to bed.

I want to go out. But I know I should go to bed. I think the middle ground is to eat a cookie.

Damn. How sad. I don’t want to be so responsible. Except I do.

Learning

I am daily exerting more control over my life, and with it realisations of choices made come hurling themselves at me, surfacing up from the mucky tarpit of feeling and lost and drowned emotion.

I realise now how much is my fault. How willfully blind I have been of my actions. How much I have relied on others for happiness, and even been angered by them if they will not be who I want them to. I ran away from love because I couldn’t hide my fear of myself behind him.  I demonised someone for not allowing me to mold myself to him, for trying to tell me how it is. It’s a shame. It makes me realise just how much growing up I need to do before I can be ready for anyone.

I want love. That’s really all that I want. I want my heart to feel as though it’s going to burst with love. I feel it to an extent. But I want to feel it in return. I know, however, that I cannot run into and hide in those emotions any more. It’s dangerous and tilts everything. I have felt myself slide down that dangerous incline before, unable to gain solid footing, and upset and hurt when my object of affection was unable, unwilling to rescue me from myself.

I need to save myself before I’ll be ready for love. No matter how much I want it. I need to save myself from the evils of wanton attention, from the dictates of the battered child who is my self-esteem.

There’s something that was said a long time ago that still really resonates.

“If I love you, then why do you need the attention of so many other guys?”

I don’t know. Why do I? And how can I be confident enough in myself to learn to reject that attention, even if I’m not in love?

Willful blindness

A sliver of light seeps through the crack

illuminates possibilities

reveals choices made.

Hollowed out in the knowing

regret for willful blindness

things spoken too long past

self-inflicted wounds that won’t heal

Crossing lines into muddy water

Apparently boundaries are there so that people will stay within their confines. This is a concept I rarely adhere to.

Last night Emo and I went to grab dinner. In discussion of why my life seems to become so messy so easily and frequently, he presented me with the concept that my desire to cross lines coupled with my inability to say no means that I do and will always get myself into tricky situations. The reason there are norms and clear delineations of what is and is not acceptable is to keep people in check. To make people’s lives “normal.” Problem is, I don’t want to be normal. I have spent so much time thinking about the lines and making a concerted effort to cross them, that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to being careful of them. When I was younger, certainly, I was afraid of what might happen if I deviated and crossed over into the grey area between what’s seen as reasonable behaviour by my peers, my elders, and what’s seen as deviant, unacceptable. But now I’m in a place where even my parents seem to accept and enjoy the fact that I’m an explorer, that I’m not willing to say that something is bad until I’ve seen or tried it for myself. But I may have taken this to an extreme. In my search for what’s right for me, I’ve crossed so many lines that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find my way back to that solid ground upon which most people plant their feet. I want some stability. I want to break conventions but I also want to be able to embrace them if that’s what I feel is right for me. Lately I’ve not only been breaking them, but I’ve been making them impossible for myself to take a hold of. I love exploring — I’m really glad that I’ve spent the last couple of months trying to figure out where my own lines are, sexually, romantically, emotionally. But I’ve realised that I’m pushing myself outside of my comfort zone into dangerous areas where I’m extremely vulnerable. I need to learn to take a few steps back from time to time and find a space that’s amenable to me. It doesn’t mean that I have to stop crossing over. I still prefer the grey area to the black and white of convention. But sometimes sitting right on the line is good too. I don’t always need to push myself so far.

Then there’s the other issue that Emo raised. The one of being incapable of saying “no.” Tough to admit, certainly. But yeah, I have a really hard time saying no. Why do you think I’m so busy all the time? Granted, I enjoy filling up my time (it means that I spend less inside my own head!), but a good part of the reason why I’m so busy all the time is because if someone asks me to do something for them, with them, I usually say yes. If I don’t already have something else I’ve promised someone else I’d do. It’s not really a healthy way to live life. I need to start saying no to other people and yes to myself. I say this now, although I know I’ll have a hard time following through, but this needs to be the summer of me. I need to do things for myself. All of the stuff that I really enjoy. Actually, not even all of it. Some of the things I enjoy. All of them would be a repeat of my usual self-evasion tactics.

Why is it so difficult to listen to oneself? It seems like it should be the most straightforward thing, and yet it’s the one that I struggle with most in my life. As long as I remind myself daily of my goals, keep my solid friends close by and continue on this attempt to wean myself off of male sexual attention, maybe, just maybe, I’ll find some solid ground. It’s still a bit muddy at the moment.

I think I know who the cheeky monkeys are.

Funny how things just drop into one’s lap sometimes to explain otherwise inexplicable things.

The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle:

Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses

it swings from one desire to the next,

one conflict to the next,

one self-centered idea to the next .

If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life.

Let this monkey go.

Let the senses go.

Let desires go.

Let conflicts go.

Let ideas go.

Let the fiction of life and death go.

Just remain in the center, watching.

And then forget that you are there.

***

I’m not going to be extreme and say that I can make a complete turnaround, but yes, I do think that the cheeky monkeys I need to watch our for are the manifestations of my ego. My ego loves stimulation. But these past couple of months have proved to me that too much ego is a recipe for disaster.

An interpretation

So, the Big Love came over this morning and we talked a bunch about the meditation/dream from the other night.

This is what I came up with:

The ocean is the void. It’s the void that I feel I’m being sucked into, that I’m terrified of. The void is need, it’s fear and it’s cold and numbness and suffocating. The dead people in the void are my needs — the ones that I can’t handle facing, the ones that I ignore and pretend not to have. My needs have become toxic. I don’t want to get sucked under by them.

The beach is where I am now. It’s not exactly safe, but it’s not as dangerous as the ocean. It’s unprotected, and it’s close to the water’s edge, so I’d rather not be there. The closer I get to the water, the more terrified I become.

The shack on the beach is an empty shell. There are dried flowers hanging there, so someone used to live there, but right now it’s just a skeleton. It’s safer than the ocean or the beach because it’s protected, but there’s no glass in the windows, so I’m not really protected here. I think the shack is somewhere I need to get to. I need to rebuild it. I need to be closer to the void, to face my fears, my needs, but still be at a safe enough distance that I’m not going to drown.

The forest is the safest place in the dream. It’s warm and I can hide there. I can find a spot to sit in and I can see whoever is coming. There is a safe path from the shack to the forest, so I can definitely come out of the forest as soon as I’m ready. When I walked through the forest I found a boardwalk which led me to some little dormitory-style houses. There was a sign outside that said “Watch out for Cheeky Monkeys.” The first dormitory was empty. The second one was empty of people, but there was a sleeping bag on one of the beds and a pack on the floor beside it. I curled up in the sleeping bag and went to sleep. I have a tendency to hide in other people’s sleeping bags. I have a tendency to hide behind other people because that’s the only way I feel safe. I need to find a way to get out of the forest, to bring whoever’s sleeping bag it is with me to the shack on the beach. To show them the place that I’m going to rebuild and tell them that I don’t need their sleeping bag, but they’re welcome to come and stay with me in my beach shack once I’ve rebuilt it. Until then, I’m going to try to be okay without their sleeping bag, but knowing myself and my propensity to run toward other people and away from myself, I have a feeling I might wake up in other people’s sleeping bags from time to time while I’m rebuilding the shack.

I forgot about the boat. There was a little rowboat on the beach. It only had one oar. I think I should make another oar and go out on the boat. That way I’m not actually in the water, I’m still safe from drowning in the void, but I’m facing it, getting closer. Maybe from the rowboat I can call out to the dead people and ask them how to bring them back to life. The dead people are my needs and I want to know how to listen to them. I want to talk to them and hear what they have to say.

Lately, I’ve been hopping from sleeping bag to sleeping bag. This is a bad habit. The Big Love offered his to me, and I hid in it for three years. Then I realized that I couldn’t really breathe in there, and I hopped into the Catalyst’s. But then he went away and when we were together again, I realized that he didn’t really want me in his sleeping bag — he preferred for me to have my own and sleep beside him. This would have been a much better thing to do, but I wasn’t confident enough for that so I ran away from him. Then the man came along and he opened up his sleeping bag to me, but there were conditions. I was happy with the conditions, hell, I sort of created the conditions — that other people would be in there sometimes, and that I’d only be in there from time to time. Except now I’ve realized that I don’t want to be in anyone’s sleeping bag any more. I really like the man, but hiding in his sleeping bag is really stupid. He doesn’t actually want me in there. And I don’t really want to be in there either. With him, I’d much rather be running around having fun. I’d rather not have anything to do with his sleeping bag.

So what I really need to do now is get my own sleeping bag and rebuild the shack on the beach. And every day I need to go to the water’s edge and talk to the dead people in the sea and hear what they have to say. I really want to figure out a way to get them out of the void. One day, eventually, I will dip my toes into the void to see how horrible and cold and toxic it really is. But not for a while. I think I need to rebuild the shack first. Each thing in it’s order.