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.

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 .

Transitional Objects January 27, 2008

I’m thinking about getting voice recognition software. I’m a quick hunt-and-pecker, but I wonder if my thoughts would go down differently if I didn’t have to wait for my fingers to catch up to my brain. Though I do like the tap tap tap on the keyboard, and I’d much rather learn to type quickly by touch, but will I, after all these years?

I have a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head. Sometimes I miss having someone to fuss over – to clean the house for in preparation for her arrival, to prettify myself, shave, smell nice for. I miss the drama of flirting. I attended a book group on “Eat Pray Love” this morning, and one member of the group was talking about how David was just a “transitional object:” that he was there to help catapult (my word) her out of her marriage and onto whatever was next. I started thinking about B in those terms: is that why the relationship only lasted a year? It happened a mere six months after C moved out of my house, and C and I were still sleeping together even in February of that year, I think, so I really think it’s possible that I jumped into the relationship with B in order to make a full break from all that was so unsatisfying with C. It only matters because it puts the relationship with B in a slightly different perspective – that she wasn’t really a serious relationship candidate, but more of a symbolic stand-in of sorts. And she did introduce me to my spiritual teacher (Al-Anon), and she did crack me wide open so more light could come in – she served her purpose incredibly well. But I don’t want to be a dog at the dump with a can stuck on my nose – I don’t particularly miss her, and I am realizing all the ways the relationship was a compromise for me, but I don’t have anything to replace it with at the moment except for excruciatingly cheesy episodes of “Beverly Hills Bordello” and “L Word.” I so so so so don’t want a relationship right now, and I know I can’t even choose well yet, but there are moments when I miss the lust, the electricity, the excitement, the…do I miss the distraction? Wow, less and less. I am becoming so much more comfortable with my life – even the fact that it’s a Saturday and I’m completely content to be home by myself, writing, reading, napping. I don’t feel lonely, I don’t feel afraid of being left alone with myself. A book called “The Joy Diet” was recommended by someone in the book group (even she conceded it was an awful name), and apparently one of her remedies is spending time with yourself and being still. I don’t know if she means meditation, but I do see that the universe can speak to me much more often and more clearly when everything around me is quiet. Just this afternoon when I arrived home, I was squatting down to put something away in my kitchen, and my cat clambered up onto my knees (one of my favorite things that he does). As I’m sitting still and petting him, I start looking around, and I just happen to notice that there is a leak under one of the radiators. How else would I ever have noticed, until it actually became a serious problem?

See, a friend just called and I didn’t even feel like picking up the phone. Sometimes people are a lot of work, much as I might love them, and as I’m becoming more at ease in my own skin, I find that being with myself is kind of fun and easy. Not to mention my dog just put his nose by my lap and my cat is flanking me on the other side.

I wonder how many days I could not shower and still not be disgusted with myself? I’m going on at least four days now, and with my hair up, you really can’t tell how long it’s been. At what point could I just not stand the smell or feel of myself anymore? Will I shower today, or wait another day? Stay tuned…

The Truth About 35+ January 16, 2008

is that it’s a woman’s chrysalis time: someone could have warned us, but it wouldnt have made any difference. can you imagine some beautiful, wise butterfly approaching a caterpillar and saying “yeah, that leaving the coccoon thing? it’s gonna hurt something awful, but you’ll be so much freer after it’s over.” big help. we have to be broken down. cracked open, terrified and in unbearable discomfort in order to make truly life-altering changes, otherwise why in god’s name would we do it?

Back to Life, Back to Reality January 7, 2008

Isn’t it kind of funny that the next lyrics are, “however do you want me, however do you need me?” I’m reading the blogs of all these incredibly neat women in their 30s who are “waking up,” in a sense, realizing they are living lives that feel inauthentic in a variety of ways. I wrote to one of them, “do you think this is what happens to women between 35 and 40, but no one ever told us?” I feel very lucky I don’t have children or a spouse I need to step back from in order to find the contours of my own skin – I do think it can be done, but I’d imagine it’s harder to stick to your guns when someone else is persistently there asking if you wouldn’t prefer theirs. Or simply assuming yours and theirs are one and the same.

Every day, I get to ask myself what I want to do, and by and large I get to do it. I’ve started getting back into bed in the mornings after feeding my dog and cat, and reading/napping for a couple of hours. I still get up at 9:30 so (who am I defending myself to?), but I am finding I’m not nearly so overwhelmed by the mornings when I know I can get back into bed for awhile. I’m now reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver, and when I got up this morning, I came to the computer and bought cheese-making cultures online (www.cheesemaking.com). It’ll be my cause of the moment, I’m sure, but the notion of living more softly on the earth by growing my own produce and making my own cheese (and maybe bread one of these days) is kind of exciting to me. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll likely have buffalo wings for dinner tonight, or something equally inorganic, but I adore food and the process of making it, so the notion that I could literally feed myself from my own larder is exciting to me. And what better use of my time and space now that I’ve moved outside the city in pursuit of a healthier existence?

One thing that has begun to change for me is that I’m enjoying my own company much more. Truth be told, I’ve always liked my own company once I got past the terror of it, but now I think I’m easing more and more into comfort with longer spates of time on my own. When I think about gardening and cooking organically, though, I definitely think about a group of friends sipping wine and cooking together – by myself it feels too lonely. Not to mention the cleanup’s a bitch when I’m alone. I don’t yet have a community of friends my age here…yet. I’ve generally preferred the company of older folk, partly because that’s who I’ve met through my program, and partly because they’re far less of a threat to me – I can be myself with them (and okay, also feel like a bit of a star) without a sense of competition. Yuck. I don’t feel competitive with people my age who are invested in authenticity, but I haven’t found many in my lifetime, of any age, and most have not lived close by. How would I find more such people, I wonder?

The best time of my life was at a summer college program for juniors in high school. It was the first time in my life that everyone wanted to really talk and be close and be real – we would have daily pile-ups, where we would all lie on each other’s bellies and talk for hours. We saw “Harold and Maude” and cried, made Cat Stevens’ music the unofficial soundtrack to our days, tie-dyed every white piece of fabric we could find, and just loved each other with a completely innocent yet utterly intimate and authentic love I think I’ve fruitlessly searched for ever since. One difficult thing about being lesbian (for me) is that it automatically categorizes contact between women as sexual, making non-sexual affection hard to ask for or realize. It’s really only been in this last year that I’ve been able to give and receive hugs or back rubs without any self-consciousness or worry of someone “taking it the wrong way” – I’ve had to become self-confident enough to know my own designs and not care what someone else assumes. It was an utterly paralyzing thing, especially for someone like me who craves affection, who would have hugged my friends with abandon if that fear hadn’t always gotten in my way.

To find out who we truly are, to fill ourselves all the way out our edges rather than being shaped by the inverse image of others’ molds, that is a worthy journey. What makes me laugh? What turns me on? When do I feel like the “real” me, even if different situations elicit different facets of that identity? Can this blog continue to be a place where I’m able to explore and express that real self? How do I find others in the company of whom I can still nourish that evolving identity?

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.