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

Feel Free to Smack Me Anytime Now

First it should come as no surprise to you that I'm now going to be posting more often over the next few weeks because I have papers to do.  Oddly posting though procrastination seems to be the mental equivalent of going for the run to calm my nerves, it gets some of the ants out of me.

So on that note, today's post and the reason you can smack me.

This online business has made me realize I like being single.  For the love of all things pink and sparkly where are all the good ones for me?  I am not saying that online dating is full of duds, I means I know there are duds, but they are everywhere.  Which as an aside is rather unfortunately because if they could all be relegated to the interwebs maybe life would be more peaceful.  But this is not my point.  I know I'm unique, and I mean that in all the positive and not so positive aspects of that word.  I really cannot date Americans - though yes if you are counting CEF, X and the majority of my currently peer selection fall into this category.  I don't have a problem with Americans, I have a slight issues with their lack of health care and their bloody backwards ideas about marriage, birth control and war, especially war, being that I am a pacifist.  So you add that plus the graduate degree I'm pursuing which is extremely polarizing in the religious community I am apart of and fishing in for my "future someone," then tack on the dysfunctional body and even more complicated and dysfunctional past, especially the lack there of my v-card.  Which taking another aside was lost not by my choice initially and then it was freely given to AB and X.  I don't have any qualms with that part of my life, with those choices, but I have come across men who believe that I beyond damaged goods for those choices, that I've passed myself around.  Which quite frankly is a completely sordid load of NLLL in my opinion.   So whatever, the point is not to say I'm broken and a mess.  I guess, the issue is the same as it was 5 years ago.  People, including myself, are too damn complicated to be online dating.

So basically I've come to the opinion not only is it a load of NLLL, but that X is still the best one out there.  Yes yes and this is where I have to also say and how exactly do I and X maintain a relationship? We cannot and such is this whole bloody crock.  I still love a man who is wholly unattainable.

Even worse I cannot even claim the following for my actions:

Oh well.  Back to the books.

Living on the Other Side of the Line

For all intensive purposes I am currently living below the poverty line.  I knew I would be when I started graduate school.  I knew that things would be tight, at times very tight.  I did not expect that they would be this tight.  I had to contact my church this week to ask for help - after almost two months of wrestling with the idea, knowing that despite how ridiculously tight things are right now, that there are always those who need more than I do.  I have a home right?  I have heat (well sort of - my landlord is stingy in that regard), I have some resemblance of health and more importantly I'm the only mouth to feed. Well in asking for help I'm realizing how socially shameful it is to be on this side of the line - regardless of how you get here. There are strings, lots of strings, and questions and judgements.  All I conceptually understand are well meaning, but they hurt.  They hurt a lot. They imply - they imply that I should have known better.

I guess this is also me venting at God too - I know I try to keep my faith out of this blog - but I guess in all this hurt, is the question of where is the provision? And if this is the provision why does it hurt, why does it come with shame and guilt attached to it?  Isn't that counter to everything that is who you are?  Funny somewhere in this I know there is an answer - just feels beyond reach at the moment.

This is not a hand out moment but may be a moment to remember that when you judge a person on the other side of that poverty line - the world on this side is full of enough hardship without that and for better or worse I now know that first hand.

Have You Ever

Have you have ever met someone who intimidated you - not CEF intimidation, but a wow you're amazing, you're so _____.... I had a conversation with a male friend about this.  This friend is not the only guy to do this to me,  DD was the other once but considering my mouth goes bone dry in his presence I have given up trying on that.  I've always sort of believed that it was a good sign - not the bone dry mouth - but the element of awe.  I am not talking about a disproportionate amount, but rather the person having abilities you don't have and want or want to grow in, someone who compliments you, encourages you to grow.

For example - I cannot dance and I cannot get up in front of people and do anything let alone sing or play an instrument.  I have sung in front of hundreds in another language too - but let me put it this way I probably looked like I was going to hurl the entire time.  The lack of dancing is probably a combination of insecurity and coming from a family where dancing was verboten - especially dancing with a boy.  It didn't help me one bit that I went from a public elementary school where dancing consisted of standing holding each other at a respectable distance and moving side to side to a private school where no one danced because everyone knows that dancing leads to sex.  Actually a lot leads to sex and it isn't just dancing... sigh - to bad they didn't consider all the other ways and teach some practical instruction around that... but that is another blog.  So bottom line I dance at home with the blinds closed and no one else around...

Those aren't things I necessarily want to grow in but I do want to find someone who supports me and challenges me to grow... I don't know if someone who intimidates me is the place to start though apparently I have the same effect on men - so maybe I need to get over my fears in order to find someone brave enough to handle me - rather than dealing with the men who think they can just corral me.

PU's and Dating

My PU, as he's referred to around here, and I have an improving relationship but it's not conventional because I never was a "conventional daughter." I was the take care of my brother, make dinner, do homework, serious child.  I didn't like boys (in my PU's opinion - but I did think boys were cool just so we are straight on that) and boys as far as I believed would never like me.  I never went on a date in high school, kissed a boy (had to wait until 2nd year of university and I really should have waited longer) and I went to grad/prom alone. 

I have no issue with this being my teenage story because the guys I went to school with were my friends - in the end I preferred being their friends and still being their friends, like BI.  Given that arrangement I think my parents got lulled into the perception that their daughter was either asexual or like a Disney Princess who being single her whole like miraculously stumbles upon a man of good moral character and breeding and in 10 to 30 minutes accepts a marriage proposal and it's all said and done.  Yet neither is the case - and they've had their struggles with that.  Some in part was my "fault."

Dr. A (My Mr. Big) was the first man I brought home in any respect - he was 15 years my senior and we weren't formally dating.  My parents didn't quite know what to do with themselves.  Thankfully for them he skipped town with a coworker.*  After that it was CEF who was thrown at them more or less - a hey so I'm getting married, here is my fiance and that's the end of that.  Well that policy was stupid, flawed and in the end caused so much strife that it was the final straw in my parent's marriage - August 08 was fun times all around our home.

So... after months and months of therapy etc - see previous posts for all the therapy reasons - my DrBrain says you need to start dating.  WHAT?!! I don't date.  I do the Disney princess and fall into a perfect relationship.  Apparently that is not how things work.  So I started with OM.  My PU didn't know about OM, and why did he need to - OM was a bust**.  Then came AB and simultaneously BV and then AL, BB.  AB in the end was the only one he ever knew about. ***

So what is the point in this sharing moment.  Well my PU doesn't know how to deal with the knowledge their were others, other than AB AND that there will be more in the future and I have FB and Dr. C to thank for all this.  No Dr. C and I are not or ever have discussed that topic of dating - but the presence of a man has left my dad scratching his head.  I guess to him I'm his little girl and little girls don't talk to boys.

Note:

*I hold no malice to either - they are perfect for each other, though for their reputations/friendships sake they could have done it differently if they had wanted to.

** PU knows now, stupid FB, I had at the long discussion about the Olympics had to spill how OM and I knew each other
*** He has never met AB oddly enough

Photo : http://www.flickr.com/photos/focus_in_mind/2328162855/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Attn: East Coast Women

You apparently are not aware but you have an eligible bachelor in your midst.  Seriously.  I know everyone says all the good ones are gone but I believe while there might not be huge quantities left - there are some.  This one is even a doctor to be... kill two birds with one stone er shinny rock - snag a good guy and get your mother off your case for all the years you dated those emo man-children/aspiring *cough* er going nowhere musicians.  Who?  Well if I handed you his info then how would I know you worked for it.  Silly ladies, he is out there - keep looking and I'm sure you'll find him.

Hint - He comments on here once and while

So I am Here Again

I had the privilege of hearing a local writer speak today as part of the class I am in.  She echoed what Arundhati Roy says about writing - we have a duty to occupy a space where there is under representation or the wrong representation.  I have known that about my life story - I know I need to write it out as there is a significant under representation of the long term effects of abuse - the fear, the anxieties that always seem to sit just below the surface - there but not.  It has been a really long journey to this point - 2 years and counting.  Some days it still breaks me, some days that which is always under the surface is not happy being unseen.  Today is one of those days.  Oddly enough I had Make it or Break it on while making dinner, and this song came on.  I started to cry almost instantly.  I am a crier in many situations - this one though surprised me and maybe it's all the stress of school and packing finding their release.  But...

I felt like it was not just that, it was more.  I run because running is my way of reminding myself I am up to the challenge - what I thought would destroy me leaves me stronger.   It reinforces the positive belief I can walk away from the pain of the past, and walk towards a future where I know myself, where I know my strength, my value, my beauty as me, my uniqueness.  I know those on the surface sound superficial and vain.  But they are not - they are the things that we all deny ourselves.  We whether we are abused/abuse survivors and just going through life - we - men and women, deny ourselves the sacredness of who we are, of our voices, of our journeys. It also reminds me I can do what scares me.  It is like a flashback of the last two years - pain and fear can be overcome for something beautiful even if you want to puke from the anxiety when the gun goes off - it is a slow process - it is a process that is so so worth it.  I find it hard in these moments not only to remember the above, but to remember the distance - the growth, the goodness in the journey.  The demons I still carry can be my muse, they can be used for my good rather than my harm... Yep so while I go off to have a cathartic cry I leave you with some profound lyrics: