The Quell of Loneliness (get it?) February 29, 2008

Someone whose blog I liked very much has deleted it.  My head spins – why?  Where did she go?  Away from potentially critical, questioning readers?  She’d been miserable in her marriage and in relationships in general, started on a journey of self-discovery, and then met a man via this medium whom she decided was the answer to all her questions.  Many people congratulated her and wished her luck, but one or two cautioned her that she seemed to be repeating history.  I guess my fantasy is that she didn’t particularly want to hear the naysayers, wanted to remain blissfully ignorant and throw herself into the (unquestionable) joy of the beginning of a relationship without the buzzkill of cautionary tales.  And maybe she will, in fact, be blissfully happy.  Maybe for some, it’s possible to change a tune without learning a different instrument.  I’m probably jealous, more than anything.  Yes, I want what my higher power wants for me, blah, blah, blah, but I’d also like someone besides my sponsor (though she’s been right so far about everything else) to tell me that life will keep getting better and that I absolutely, positively will meet someone and be capable of a loving relationship.  Because most of the time, I honestly don’t believe it.

Being with my mother and the goddamn Blackberry that’s surgically attached to her thumbs for twelve days didn’t help matters any, to be sure.  I’ve never been so lonely in someone else’s company, yet here I am, sitting next to her, seeing the world and dying to talk to someone about all of it.  We might as well have been driving through Elizabeth, NJ for all she paid attention, yet we were driving through the streets of Mumbai and Manila, past local culture and sights unseen.  For sure, my recent ease in my own company helped me tremendously, but it was still incredibly lonely.  It made me miss B: suddenly I’m back to looking for her on Facebook, Googling her…someone with her name, living in her area, won honorable mention in a squash cooking contest.  A f–king squash cooking contest?  All she could cook when we were together was macaroni and cheese from a box and fried eggs.  So I start wandering down the road of “has she grown up?,” “should I contact her?”  Yuck, yuck, and yuck.  At least I know better than to listen to myself at this moment.  It’s just little drops of the drug, still stored in my veins somewhere, come out to haunt me.

One thing I WON’T do to quell this loneliness is sleep with boy C again.  All it did was make me miss women even more than I already did.  How do straight women deal with 5-o’clock-shadow-burn?  Or with all that hair?  If only I felt as much of an ease flirting with women as I do with men, I’d at least find someone to sleep with.  But that probably isn’t the answer, either.  I need to get back into my groove, to fill the emptiness myself.  I need to do what I think – correctly or not – my blogger-in-absentia was unable to do, to become truly at ease in my own company so that being with someone else never again has to mean abandoning a part of myself.  It’s a wonder I’m not emotional cheesecloth after being with my mother for twelve days: let me give myself the time to return to my former level of contentment before I start making any big decisions.

Journeys February 14, 2008

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days, and while I want very much to recount some of what went on, I’m also in a first-class lounge in London, on the first leg of my trip with my mom, and part of me just wants to be in the moment.

But some stuff happened that I think is important to document here.  C spent the night on Tues. night, as much due to the weather as any sort of lukewarm desire on my part.  The first time we had sex, I think my body was so hungry for touch that it could have been nearly anyone stroking my skin and I would have responded.  But the second time (Tues night), my head just wouldn’t shut up: I didn’t want to explore his body, didn’t particularly like the way he was touching me (it wasn’t bad, but it would have required a fair amount of coaching to be orgasmically effective), didn’t get very wet, and had a tough time staying present.  The wonderful thing, though, was how it made me realize that whether I’m lesbian or not (I’m not questioning that, per se, it’s just not the point here) I so-o-o-o-o do not want to be in a relationship right now, with anyone except me.  This new comfort in my own skin has been so hard-won, and now there are guards at the gate, making sure no one gets through.  He could have been my dream partner (he isn’t, but he’s lovely and kind), and I still wouldn’t be ready.  We talked about all of this, and he was extremely understanding, and we left on very good terms – I will look forward to seeing him again.  I’m just relieved to have given myself the space to figure out how I feel, and to have discovered this.

So, I’m on this trip with my mom, which in itself is an incredible statement, as I swore many years ago I’d never travel with her again.  One of the most helpful teachings for me in Al-Anon is how to recognize that people are not extensions of or reflections on me – I can like or not like her behavior, but unless it is directed at or involves me in some way, I can detach with love and just see her for who she is.  She’s being very solicitous so far, and we’ve mostly been reading or sleeping, and my excitement about traveling trumps any trepidations I might be having.  It’s exciting to be in the London airport, where B and I were just a few months back, and to be in such an incredibly different, far stronger place.  I’m happy, grounded, in touch with myself, and I look forward to remaining that way as much as I’m able, while eating great food and taking as many pictures as I can.

Illusions of Deficiency February 11, 2008

I think the thing that gets to me is the way I sell myself short without even realizing that’s what I’ve done. For the record, none of what I’m about to write is terribly pretty, but if it can all be seen in light of being someone who’s a self-declared work-in-progress…

C has a page on one of the friend/connections boards, and for no particular reason I just went to it. First I see that he’s added a program that can tell other women he’s interested in them, and vice versa. So, my genetic code issues forth jealousy, however momentary and quickly quashed by the part of my brain that knows I am not interested in a relationship with this man, and that it would be healthier for him not to be interested in a relationship with me. Then, I go to his photos page, and there is, I think, a photo of him and his ex, and while she’s cute and has this impish grin, she’s probably about 30 lbs heavier than I am. Which is wonderful, fine, good, whatever, but what it makes me realize is that any time he didn’t compliment me on some part of my body that he was touching or looking at, I either wanted to apologize for it out loud, or I thought to myself “it’s okay, honey, he’s not perfect, either.” I automatically went to a place of criticism. I have a beautiful body, dammit! It just kills me that I’m so hard-wired to be critical of my physical self, and there are times when my lack of self-esteem can/could potentially put me in a dangerous situation, where I do something risky because I think it’s what I “deserve” or that I can’t ask for something better/healthier.

February 10, 2008

I slept with C.  He came over last night, we had a great time talking and making dinner, we watched a movie and started to move a little closer to each other, and then…

Men are hairy.  Some more so than others – he’s quite hirsute.  But he smells good and has full, lovely lips, and I felt relaxed and grounded and very aware of what I was doing and that it was what I wanted.  And he’s in program, so there was no alcohol imbibed to cloud my judgment or disinhibit me – it was all me, all the time.

Somehow, I’m not so worried the lesbian police are going to schlep out here and take away my toaster and i.d. card: I feel like I’m just letting myself be myself, feel what I feel, explore, and that the less it has to do with rigid labels, the better.  My primary goal is not to get ahead of myself, to not get lost in this or in fantasies of what it will or won’t become.  Do I want to have sex with him again?  I do.  Today?  I’m a little sore, but yes, there’s part of me that would see him again today.  I’m trying so hard to just be authentic, to feel my feelings, but sometimes I don’t know how I feel or what I want, and that’s part of the journey, I guess – learning to know that it’s okay not to know how I feel or what I want.

Boys and Girls February 3, 2008

It’s so lovely to get comments from readers that affirm my writing. Since being real is my overarching life goal, trying to remain authentic on this blog is its raison d’etre, and it’s encouraging when people corroborate that quality about it. Plus it makes me want to write more.

I woke up this morning from a seemingly very long dream about, in part, a wholly unsatisfying sexual relationship with this older (late 40s, early 50s) man. It took place in this bizarrely Victorian (yet for some reason I think he was Italian) setting, and I think my clothes were of a similar time: what I remember most is him touching me between my legs just to see that I was wet, but not doing anything more, and my feeling very frustrated. I want so much to have a healthy relationship with sex and my body, and I think that ultimately anything is possible, but for the time being it would throw me too off-course to have sex, I’m pretty sure. My most relaxed sex was with a male B, someone I met online after I broke up with C (damn, there are a lot of Bs and Cs in my romantic/sexual life) and before I met (female) B: maybe it was because he was a guy and I didn’t really have a lot of investment in it, but he also knew how to go down on me and made me come the first time he did it, much to my utter and total astonishment. Uh oh, am I repeating myself again? Blog amnesia: it’s a terrible thing. I was incredulous, really – it was partly that the way he did it worked for me (putting his mouth upside-down on me so his lips and tongue were on the shaft of my clit rather than underneath it), but was that all? I think about contacting him sometimes, but he wanted to pursue a relationship with me and I knew that wasn’t going to be in the cards. I just don’t think I can be in a relationship with someone whose body I don’t/can’t love. Why am I even questioning this? Because it’s available. If women knew I was gay, if people’s gaydar went off for me and women paid attention to me in anywhere near the volume that men do, I don’t think I’d be considering men at all. I really like my looks (yay! I can finally say that!), and I’m not about to cut my hair into a mullet and turn in all my cashmere for oversized flannel just so I can be recognized as a lesbian. There’s nothing political about my attractions, either – I’d have no problem being in a relationship with a man if I wanted that.

Another thing that really got to me about “Juno” was how simple she made it seem to figure out who we’re in love with. I do think there’s no question that if I’d had better relationship models, better examples of love in my childhood I’d have gone after healthier relationships. It makes so much sense that the person I fall in love with and want to spend the rest of my life with is also someone who a) thinks the sun comes out of my ass, as I think it was stated in the movie, and b) whom I think is just the coolest person ever. And by cool, I actually mean warm. And interesting, and loving, and loyal, and funny, and expressive, and communicative, and articulate, and smart, and grounded, and optimistic, and self-reflective…oh my. I know I’ll find that person and that what is important to me has really shifted over the past couple of years; that if I’m ever to find a life partner I’m on the right track now, but it’s difficult for me to imagine. I suppose it’s not a bad thing to have experiences that remind me I do sometimes want to be in a relationship, even though I much prefer being content with where I am to feeling any longings for something I not only don’t have but am not in any way ready for. If I’m truly buying this Higher Power notion, I need to believe that it will happen exactly when it’s supposed to.

February 3, 2008

I just got back from seeing “Juno,” and it left me so melancholy. I don’t know whether it was the movie itself that did it – the girl is loved unconditionally by her family and her boyfriend, and as a result she’s allowed to be this quirky, unique kid that I never, ever got to be. Who the hell would I have been if I’d had parents who could separate their shit from their children’s and not blame me for all their shortcomings and failings? I was told by an astrologer (I may be repeating myself) that I “chose” my family in this incarnation because I needed to be held back – my insecurities prevented me from using my power (whatever that may be) sooner than I was ready to. I am seeing myself blossom, that my ability to heal is my gift, and living by example is how I will continue to help others heal. I know I am on an incredible path, that I’m right where I should be, that it couldn’t be happening a decade sooner or an hour later.

I dropped the “gay bomb” on C today – we didn’t end up talking about relationships at all last night, and the evening was nice but a little stilted for me, hard to not jump into my old question-asking, polite-to-the-hilt self. I didn’t know how I felt, and maybe that was okay, but he came over today after the meeting and it was very relaxed: we were just talking and something came up where I would naturally have mentioned one of my exes, so I just said “This is awkward and I have no idea if you knew this, but I’m gay.” And he responded, smiling blithely, “no, I didn’t.” He was very calm about it, but I knew in that moment that I’d disappointed him, and even though it felt good, felt right to have told him, part of me wanted to say “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to kiss you sometimes or that I wouldn’t like to be crazily fucked by you (he doesn’t really seem the type, but looks can always be deceiving).” I know sex wouldn’t be the right thing, that at this point in my journey it would be too confusing and destabilizing – that’s the other potential reason why I’m (I was) not feeling so great – I haven’t felt lonely in some time, and it’s not a good feeling. We can grow adjusted to almost anything, I think, and I don’t have any desire to disrupt this adjustment. I wish I could just have sex and then “reset” myself.

Will Wonders Never Cease February 1, 2008

God, there’s so much I could write about. It’s raining ice up here, 70 miles from NYC, so I’m still in a bathrobe and hoping just to get some things done that I’ve been meaning to over the past few days. Among them is writing in this: it clears my head and makes me think, and while I haven’t gone back to read my posts in a while, I think it will ultimately be a wonderful record of this incredible journey I seem to be on.So I’ve been invited over to someone’s home for dinner tonight: a cute, funny, male someone, and I’m trying to let myself have all my feelings and questions without needing the answers until I’m ready for them. He doesn’t know I’m gay, I don’t think, and I know I ultimately prefer women and women’s bodies and that I have no desire whatsoever right now for an intimate relationship with anyone of any gender, but I do miss penetration and sex and kissing and all the good, lithe, fun, sweaty stuff that comes with the package. Would I sleep with him if the unfettered opportunity arose? I don’t know. I suppose I won’t know until I’m there and I see how I feel. He’s in AA, so there won’t be any drunken debauchery, nor will I be able to either blame tipsiness for bad decisions or allow it to push me past my own shyness. I think I need to just walk into it with an open mind and hope that it’s fun, regardless of what that fun entails. And I’d better shower soon in case the power goes out .

Moody is My Middle Name December 20, 2007

One thing being in this particular 12-step program is teaching me is to be constantly aware of all that I’m grateful for. That especially during times when I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed or just unbelievably cranky, the thing to do is to start reciting a spur-of-the-moment gratitude list, even using the alphabet if that gets me started (not being grateful for the alphabet, but thinking of something that starts with A and getting as far as I can). I’ve written about this before, but mornings can be really hard for me, and even if the day before had tons of high points, it’s no security against waking up agitated and overwhelmed again the following morning.

So this morning I beat it back by doing “esteemable” things – I made my bed, straightened the kitchen (it’s fucking incredible to me how instantaneously cluttered my kitchen can become, especially right after it’s been cleaned. It’s only a matter of hours before I spill something on the floor, or leave mail strewn across the counter, and the whole thing looks just like it did the day before), and baked some concoction that started with a Betty Crocker spice cake mix but then included amaranth (my new favorite ingredient), protein powder, and some other creative licenses. I’m tempted to go get a piece and see how it turned out…talk about interactive blogging – I’ll be right back…

Yumalicious. Big, fat, happy, yum. I am by no means a health-food person, and I only eat what tastes good to me, but this amaranth stuff, it’s just so cool – it’s supposedly the most complete protein in existence in the plant world, and it’s crunchy like roughly-milled cornmeal so whatever you add it to just has this little crunch to it, with no real change in taste, but with every crunch you’re reminded that you’re eating something with extra protein (even if it is a Betty Crocker cake mix at heart). Ode to amaranth.

I don’t really mind being single. It’s infinitely less complicated than being in a relationship, and after stumbling upon the mediocrely-written but still very hot imho “Insatiable Desires” blog, I had a whale of a masturbation session that left me giggling and breathless, so it’s not entirely celibate, either.  Much of the time, I really like my own company, and when I don’t, I pick up the phone or get in my car or turn on the TV.  I lead a very, very good life – I think I’m immeasurably lucky for a 37-year old, in terms of my self-awareness, my level of relative peace, and my success, both financial and professional.  Leaving NYC has helped me find a balance – it’s made me less materialistic, less time-crunching, less hostile.  Not that I’m a hostile person – I’m almost unrelentingly sparkly, actually, but getting bumped by crowds and treated rudely by store staff and seeing what the combination of overcrowding, materialism and anonymity does to people’s manners short-circuits my affability in a flash.  Up here, people truly are kinder, take more time to help one another, and it seems everyone really does smile more.

Whether it’s Buddhist or 12-step-based, the key is to not lose one’s peace of mind even in the face of life’s curve balls.  Because there will forever be curve balls.

My dog yips softly in sleep December 17, 2007

Lesbians are mostly thought to have cats. And believe me, I do. Cat, that is – only one, because actually I’m allergic and I have a small lap that wouldn’t accommodate more. But I have a dog, too, a 50-lb poodle-lab mix puppy (please, I beg, don’t use the term labradoodle. He’s a mutt that doesn’t shed much, that’s all) which makes me more into one of those outdoorsy-type women, hiking the Appalachian Trail with her dog. I’m so-o-o-o not that. The truth is I’m much lazier than I’d like to be, and if I could take a pill that would make my body feel tired and exercised, I’d do it most days. B and I had a lot of sex, even toward the end, and I was in the best shape of my life then. I like sex very much, though I can tend to be a bit too much of a performer and not really as present for it as I’d like to be. I know I’m very good at it, though I’m not sure there’s an objective metric on this: I’m extremely sensual and touch-aware, and I think I’m also on the high end of creative and uninhibited, so that has to count for something. Orgasms are hard for me, and they were even when I wasn’t on an antidepressant (or when that antidepressant was Wellbutrin, which is supposed to actually help sex drive)…actually, let me be more specific: the first orgasm is hard for me to reach, but then I can have one after another with very little stimulation, until I’m silly putty on the bed. Or couch. Tables and floors interest me less – I’m a bit of a comfort hound, and sexy as the idea’s been, I get distracted by the unyielding wood against my hipbones or shoulder blades.

Sometimes I question whether I’ve truly had mind-blowing sex, whether I even could, and if so and I haven’t, what’s missing. Attractions to people tend to grow for me over time: the more at ease I am, generally the more genuinely responsive my body can be, so the notion of a long sex life with a life partner is actually very inviting to me. I don’t honestly think I’ve sought out partners who were that attentive, who not only got to know my body but then did the things they knew I liked. For instance, I’m crazy insane for having my feet, neck and ears touched. But B paid very little attention to those parts of my body. She was actually enormously pussy/clit focused and yet, until maybe the second to last time we had sex, was never able to figure out (even with my guidance) how to make me come with her mouth. I love sex, I miss sex, but I am fully aware of how complicating it can be, especially between women. When I got out of my last relationship before B, I slept with a man for a while, and while I came every time, several times, and liked him well enough as a person, touching and tasting and looking at a man compared to a woman is like Turkey Hill lite vanilla ice milk (actually I think cum smells like bleach, which is a smidge less savory than vanilla) versus Haagen Dazs’ Mayan Chocolate. There is simply no comparison – in feel, in texture, in smell, in appearance. Don’t get me wrong – some women don’t smell or taste all that great. But to me, the smell of sex on myself and my female partner has got to be the sexiest, most distracting scent on the planet.

How in God’s name did I get here? And how can I leave? It’s not painful at all, actually – if anything it helps me pine less when I don’t idealize how we were together. Nor do I want to demonize the relationship, but it is my goal to see it fairly so that eventually I can know what parts of it I’d like to emulate, and what really wasn’t a good fit. We weren’t a good fit in a lot of ways, yet the ways we were were intoxicating – like a best friend in sleepover camp who you’re allowed to be incredibly affectionate with (girls are lucky this way) and you then realize you’re actually ATTRACTED to her, in love with her, which takes this fabulous best-friendship to a completely different level, you actually get to have sex and watch movies naked under a blanket and wake up in the morning with the person you talk to about nose-picking and dreams for the future. But the fights were horrid, man. I’ve never been involved with someone anger-phobic before, and every time my mouth wasn’t turned in a smile she would absolutely flip out, say she “needed time,” and flee in one way or another. But it was always my fault – my expectations were too high, my needs too great, my insecurities too insurmountable. It’s true I didn’t feel safe with her, and the less safe I felt, the more unsteady and unpredictable my behavior became. We were as bad for each other as two people could be when it came to the rockier parts of our relationship: she set off my stuff, I set off hers, and suddenly we were in it only for ourselves, protecting our own precious territory instead of walking onto the other’s battlefield with swords sheathed. We weren’t ever mean, but we both felt enormously unsafe, I think.