While I Normally

Use this blog as a place to post about men and dating and being single and even on occasion the annoyances of graduate school all of which I hope is in some way beneficial, but at times I wonder if there wasn't a way to share more of me while feeling safe.

Sharing while feeling safe is in many ways an antithetical statement. BUT that's a whole other issue.

My point?

I am getting serious again about therapy. I started therapy with the severe intensity that only a Type A perfectionist can muster back in 2008. I did group therapy weekly and I did one-on-one with a psychologist, bi weekly for 6 months, then switching to just the psychologist and eventually down to once a month sessions and a solid 4 years later I am at about every 3 months mostly do to finances (which sucks let me tell you to make the choice of bills over brain). I am realizing though I need to get in an muck about in the sludge that remains or remains hidden still.

And I don't really want to. After the whole MW situation I came face to face with the knowledge that my belief that things were more or less working under the surface was entirely wrong. It's not. I'm not. And while I can make that statement I am unsure if I can make the statement that I still feel broken - that I still am functioning within paradigms that are unhealthy. While I may not believe I need a man to make me feel whole (oh dear AshLee from the Bachelor get yourself to a therapist), it doesn't mean that I don't often hate myself, my body that I do not lament my life decisions, that I don't wish things were different, that I could have the courage I know I need and so on.

So, I have decided to squirrel together my meagre extra funds and sign up for Trauma Yoga Class. My heart may not want to be shovelled through with a tiny spoon, but maybe my body will be willing.

So that's where things are at - I may or may not be posting as much or the tone might change, but change isn't a bad thing now is it?

A Little Music for this Week

I might not but more than likely I will disappear for this week because I am attempting to write a big paper with basically no time between me and the deadline.

X suggested the following music to me today in our semi-regular "Hey I found this and thought of you..." banter.



Apparently she reminds him of me and I will totally take that even though I do not really see the likeness and goodness if I had her pipes ya'll would have a hard time getting me to talk and not sing my way through life.

Let Me Add

As Ms J and my patron saint-ess of awesome, Flo, has instructed us in the past - the dog days are over and we need to shake it off, and to that I add the following, which I might have had on repeat tonight and even *gasped* danced to. I figure if the dancing is not done in public it does not count and thus I would not be breaking the one very verboten rule I was raised with. If it does count, maybe my chignon and pearls can balance things out.

I Still Feel Like I Might...

Pull out what remains of the tequila - all that remains after I made pork tacos this week and cuddle up with it, I already feel like spending time near a porcelain vessel at least this way that would be justified. No, no things regarding the male gender aren't at that point, well not directly. In all the stress to write 3 papers, do an assignment and exegete a passage for a presentation, while working and realizing that all that made me vulnerable for the release of this well so rolling volcano of emotion.

I could vent that volcano that this moment but I feel that though it might be valid it also can well harden in weird places where it's hard to retract and say that's really not what I meant, I mean maybe it was what I wanted, but well damn it I am taking a little time out.

To clarify my nausea has nothing to do with a case of the babies - while everyone I know is popping out babies, that's not a possibility without a medical intervention and everything to do with stress.

I Could

Lament feeling bruised and a little shaken, but I have realized something, I'm not alone in that feeling - I'm not alone in a lot of my feelings.

In feeling like:

Damaged goods - in a religious perspective I am not "pure" though that language makes me vomit a little in my mouth - though I respect those who hold to their convictions even when I do not know what mine necessarily are...

In all the work of therapy I'm still wired wrong - touch, love, commitment all of it still hurts in places I doubt it should, misfires in others and overwhelms me in places I really wish it wouldn't.

I'm undesirable - single and in my 30's, there really has been little to do with being picky in any of this to this point.

I do not know how to channel desire in a healthy way - sure I said I would like to be able to put MW in a box, but I don't even know what that box looks like or what I want it to look like or even if I want to do the whole box thing.

I want to date but I don't want to date and I being the liberal feminist I am being aware that I might have to look in unconventional places while not switching teams - I'm definitely not at that point

I do not know how to have these conversations yet as I realized this afternoon talking with the roommate these conversations must be had,

Just not at this exact moment.

I am not good but I'm not bad, I'm just tired, overwhelmed and in all that I just want someone to hold me and not leave me until I need my space (an introvert's prerogative right) and remind me my fears are only unexplored paths, they are not dead ends or that I've lost the chance to have love, the kind that lasts.

I Wish I Could Ask

MW and friend just left the house after a lovely evening of talking and food consumption. It was all great and quite frankly deeply platonic.  I have been racking my brain for why I feel jealous, why I feel I need him.

I settled on it with the roommate, it comes down to no boundaries. I do not want to nor can I hedge him in, I cannot even remotely expect another visit and nor do I feel comfortable asking how many women he's kissed in the last few months. I would like to for the moment believe I'm special. I mean I know I am but something about Sunday has made me feel less special rather than more special.

Well I'm going to mourn that a little and move on. Sure there are things about him that make me realize that I feel the same about him as I have all these years and yet as I remember a conversation we had almost 5 years ago, I know that what things look like with MW are not as they are.

But in the end it is all too late to consider anything beyond my bed.

Scratch That

If you're quick on the posts you might have noticed that one has just disappeared.

Why?

Well there are a lot of reasons and none of them have to do with the name related to them and more so as I'm listening to Bruno Mars and tweeting - you know all the important things you should be doing when you have a paper to write.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and I'm single.

I've actually only been officially dating someone for one in my whole life. One in the almost two decades when it apparently counts that you have someone in your life.

The funny thing is I have lots of people in my life that I love and that love me. If anything all these years of digging around in the shit of my life has fertilized that amazing gift - amazing people. They fuel me, they wrap their arms around me, they cry and laugh with me. And they do it every day of the year, not just on the one day that roses reflect a fraction of the worth of relationship - sexual or otherwise.

So while I could ruminate over the desire for a good snogging - heck we're all there at some point, or multiple occasions in the 365 days of the year, not just a specific day. But in the end, like I've said before about relationships - the good ones, the good ones are the ones that fuel you - they're the ones that make you feel like you're dancing on rainbows or whatever happy is to you. To me, I imagine it will be equal to the day I find a gluten free doughnut that tastes like a real doughnut. Fatty dough fried in more fat and topped with sugar you are my idea of brain explosion, knicker dropping kind of love. Yes I have weird standards, but considering that gluten free baking is still a little meh, that's my Everest.

My point?

Tomorrow if you want that snog or you just want to kick the boy you just found out is dating a classmate because your friend found out in a very accidental and awkward way remember this too shall pass and while we're speaking of passing things I'll hand you the chocolate or the wine - your choice because I love you and heck that's got to count for something, even just a little something.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpaxonreyes/5442938096/

A Case of Empty Bed Syndrome

I posted a long time ago about this issue, here.  Most days I am too damn tired or just emotionally disconnected from that aspect of my sexuality, often intentionally delineated because I do not have the space and time in my life to wrestle with it and its feelings. But this morning, even last night, as I laid down all I wanted was someone in my bed, to hold me.

It is hard to deal with but thankfully often easy to forget in the swirl of papers and everything of the deep security of that human contact, of any really deep human contact, especially that from a man. And I will even say it's a little frustrating to be reminded that I do really need it and that it can make me feel all sorts of things I don't know if I really want to at this time. I don't blame the reason for these feelings. But it has given me big things to consider. Like why I felt guilt, like I was cheating on X. Now my brain and heart know it's been a very long time since X and I were a couple and I know he's not coming back around, and as much as I love him, he and I are slowly drifting apart in time and life - what either of us truly needs we are neither.

Now I know there will be questions of subplot/background, I will say only that MW stopped by for a visit during one of his many intentional wanderings across the country. It was crazy to think of the circumstances we had met under all those years ago in the Fall of 2007, even crazier to think that the date that ended with a handshake and a slightly bruised heart for me, became a great supportive friendship where hugs are safe place and a place of growth.

That growth? I realized something sad and profound about myself, the size of my partner/interest has since CEF, and even before him had a significant weight in my life. Not their weight but their height, their presence. It's this small place of fear that still somehow has a voice that says if he's bigger than me, he can hurt me. I realized that this semester when a new student being friendly struck up a conversation with me, and all I could think was you're too tall and at the same time why the NLLL am I scared.

I guess I'm always a work in progress - and who knows maybe that's why the space in the bed next to me is empty - it's where my brain needs to reside on mornings like today rather than the warmth of a safe man.

Postscript: Apparently I forgot to mention that now I'm fighting off the needies? The conscious understanding that what I want and what I need may be fine but the expectation that someone else can, should or even be asked to address those needs is beyond unfair... putting the head before the heart before the other h words too

Awesomeness

I recently gave in to Songza much to my roommate's despair - I love the 90's music. Quite practically the 90's blew for the most part - teenage awkwardness and family drama, BUT the music has happy memories for me. That is one gift my PU's gave me, an intense love for music, especially for the purposes of remembering happy memories. For example I could tell my roommate the time and significance of each song that came on the 90's School Dance mix. But I was able to top that with the Boy Band mix.

Now I have a confession to make, I am still at my heart, a 15 year old BSB fan girl, and I might have all their music videos memorized to the degree that I could even at my age repeat the dance steps and we all know I do not dance. Oh the memories. BSB's second album tour was the first concert I went to alone and it was at the height of a very prolonged crush on an older boy. Oh the stories I could tell. Those boys, all the boy bands represented what I wanted - someone to acknowledge I was alive and maybe even more so that I wasn't as ugly as I felt. I wanted a way in that moment to feel all that they were expressing. Thankfully now the angst is gone and I can just enjoy the cheesey-ness of it all and remind that inner 15 year old fan girl that she was and still is awesome with or without the NSYNC declarations.

But on that note I needed to share this song, which was one of the first and last slow dance songs I have danced to - my teens and even adulthood were spent in no dancing zones, so oddly this song holds a lot of memories. I could even tell you which boy it probably was too...