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.