Ephemera

So, I’m sitting with Dotty in our favorite coffee shop.  We have met here a couple of times a week to work.  But this is our last time, and I’m trying not to cry but the tears are on the surface.  I'm trying to keep them from falling.  Cherry blossoms clutching the branch.



Dotty no longer has wifi because she packed her router.  The last couple of days I was with my dad, he no longer had wifi, because my mom had packed her router, so I can’t help but see a parallel.

I guess life is moving on.  I know I’m not stuck.  Unlike Dotty, I have a great job in the city, and Dotty only left because she had a really lousy job and her new job will be great (and this is a wonderful adventure for her, and she thinks she’ll come back in 2 years--god I hope so!).  But it does seem that people come to the city to be young, and everyone our age is leaving, except me. It feels like people are growing up, growing older, settling down, and leaving me behind.  The city is for the young or the rich, and we’re not either.  (Now, I should say, I have a great home, which I own, when none of my friends have ever managed to pull off in the city, and a great job, with health insurance and a pension, so it isn’t exactly like I’m this perpetual adolescent and all my friends are growing up--most of my friends would love the situation I have.  Two of my close friends are living with their parents and they talk about coming back to the city when their finances stabilize.  So my feeling doesn’t exactly match the objective reality.  But it still feels that way.)

The undercurrent with my dad is that I hate losing a year or two with him, while he figures this out, because I don't know how many years he has left.  I hate losing a couple of years with Dotty because, honestly, in 4 years, I intend to have children, and so we only have a few years left and single gals in the city.  I want to travel as much as I can right now, because I'm aware of not having much time left.  (Yes, I could travel with kids, but it would be a lot harder.)

Van Gogh painted this, his, in my opinion, most beautiful painting, right before he killed himself.  How could he despair when he saw such beauty?

The table next to us is filled with 6 lovely, older, Japanese women.  They don't speak English, but they are very sweet.  They are enjoying rice balls and oranges and I'm reminded of cherry blossoms and how quickly life goes.  Obviously, I need to climb out of this funk and not just numb myself out for the next 2 years.  I want to clutch to this moment and not let the blossom fall.

Stuck and Blue

When I was with my dad, it was really painful.  I was counting the hours to getting home, and it was such a relief to get home.  But last night I stayed up pretty late helping Dotty pack and the movers are gone and she is here for a few more days, and then that is it.  Dotty is my 6th close friend to leave the city, and I feel like I'm the last one left.  I don't want to make more friends that are just going to leave; all of my close friends have moved away.

But truth be told, I miss hoping things would get better with my dad and I.  Now, there's just the status quo, which is intolerable to me.  Until he is willing to accept that not hurting me is just as important as being "genuine" I don't really see how I can have a 'friends' relationship with him.  And I miss that.  I saw THE ugliest public art sculpture ever yesterday.  It looked like a trash dump.  My dad loves to complain about bad public art, and I wanted to share it with him.  Without my dad, the truth is, I don't really have any men I'm close to.  I have a number of gay friends, whom I really love, but somehow, we've gotten less close with time.  I see one guy about every-other month and the others a couple of times a year.  (Nate's mom had surgery on Friday, and she is still in the ICU, so it will probably be 2 weeks before we get together.  Between his mom and his daughter, he is stretched very thin.  I made soup and offered to take him some, but I think it would have been more stressful than helpful.)

I'm really, really sad.  And I'm really lonely.  I feel stuck.  And I don't feel like working through all my emotional shit is making it easier to meet new people--it is just leaving me really raw and vulnerable.

Accepting What Is

So Nate and I couldn't get together tonight, but he gave me an assignment: play with myself while thinking about  him going down on me.  So I texted him: " It is much hotter for me to think about pleasing you, then to think about you pleasing me. I like the idea of you using me. (I love that you want to please me sometimes--when I'm with you it is hot, but when I'm not, I'd rather think about you)." He texted me: "I know" and repeated his original instructions.

I can't figure out if I really like this, or really don't.

I'm pretty clear in my mind that I have a fucked up view about relationships and my role in them.  I think I gravitated towards kink as a way of making a set of controllable rules around love.  (I really think that the sub in kink should be able to not be punished by always being obedient, and that's what I want.  I want to know he could, but that I please him enough, he doesn't need to.  I want to know that I'll have a reason for not pleasing him, and I want to know that I'll know when he is upset by something, I'll know what it is, and he can punish me, and then forget it.)  And that is rather fucked up.

But, in a way, kink is the prize that came with my fucked up cracker jack of a world view.  If I didn't have kink, I would be one of those women who wants sex once a month, rather than once a day.  If I didn't have kink, part of me would die.  The reasons that kink are in my life are probably in the DSM.  But "treating" kink doesn't affect those underlying reasons, and I would lose a lot if I lost kink.

I would like to figure out my big-picture crap about relationships (I will be loved for what I do, not who I am; men are mercurial and will only be with me when it is fun for them; as soon as anything gets tough, they'll leave) and still have the kink side.  Somehow, making it from an intellectual analysis to a visceral state of feeling/knowing seems very hard for me.

I can't tell if Nate is trying to change my sense of desire "want something more normal" or if he is trying to give me a little more agency.  Or maybe he gets off on the thought of him going down on me.  I suppose that is actually possible.  Ocram's Razor....  Deep down, though, I think he wants me to want things for me. He has finally stopped trying to buy me stuff every time we go out; I'd much rather he wanted to go down on me than buy me shoes.  I'd still rather please him, though.  Less pressure.  I'm better able to control the results and do what is demanded.  I really hope I'm not just so fucked up I can't be in a relationship with a stable man because he wants to be nice to me (when I'm nice to him).

Just another post about a woman fretting about her weight

I gained 3 pounds over Christmas.  I was doing so well for the first 4 days and then my travel scale died.  (I think it is just the battery, but it is one of those button batteries, and I didn't get another one.)

I gained 3 pounds last Christmas too.  That was why I bought the travel scale.  I never got those 3 pounds off last year, so I want to love all 6 of those pounds, please.  (The funny thing is that everyone thinks I've lost weight this year.  It may be that I'm a little leaner and my posture is a little better with all the pilates, but it is very odd because I have had multiple people arguing with me.)

In addition to my spinning classes, I've signed up for a running class and a weekly bootcamp class.  I will also be taking a variety of other classes.

But I'm also coming to a very different place in my sense of self.  While I want to lose those 6 pounds, I think, maybe, that's it.  Ideally, I'd like to lose 8 pounds (including the 6) because that would make it an even 60, but who am I kidding?  If I lose those 8, I'll want to lose another 10, and another 10.

This article really hit me hard.  I guess I can't really say I've maintained my weight loss, because I'm 6 pounds from my thinnest, but that still means I've lost and maintained 52 pounds.  Which is something I really don't give myself credit for.

I try to imagine what my life would be like if I actually accepted my weight as it is.  I would stop buying all these clothes that almost fit (and they fit everywhere, but my bust, which is not a place I'm carrying a lot of extra weight).  Would I actually be able to be comfortable in my own skin?  Can I make a goal of losing those 6 pounds, but not trying for more, and also really being comfortable in my own skin?

If I didn't want a partner, I'd be happy the way I am.  Nate thinks I'm gorgeous, which is lovely.  I'm still comfortable wanting to lose those 6 pounds, but maybe that's it.  Maybe my real goal for this year is to be physically active in ways that are joyous and enjoy myself the way I am.  And world peace and an end to climate change....

Defining Love

I'm finally home, and glad to be home, even if I am home alone.  It is good to have autonomy, which I really do lose at my parents, with no car and no public transit and just life.

I've come to the conclusion that my dad and I define love differently.

For me, when I love someone, I want them to be as happy as I can.  If I do something they don't like, I get kind of frantic and hysterical, trying to make it right.  I'm meeting a guy from CM for drinks tomorrow and he wants me to pick out a place and I'm so flummoxed, because I so want to pick a place he'll like, and I have no clue!  (This is not a potential partner--he lives farther away than Bobby; we've been corresponding for a year, casually, and he is in town, so we'll have drinks, but nothing serious.)

My dad feels like being kind and careful with me is currently in conflict with his sense of inner, genuine self. This is so foreign a concept to me, I can't even understand it.

So how the hell do I deal with it?  How can I have a relationship with my dad where I have to do the taking-care-of me, rather than expecting him to try not to be mean.  (I should say, that he has said, at times, that he really doesn't want to criticize me, but he will mess up; at other times he seems to be really resistant to agreeing to censor himself.  I have told him that if I have kids (which I will probably try and do in 3 years), he cannot be critical of them and he has to follow through on what he says he'll do.  No telling them a drawing is lousy and no promising a trip to Disney Whatever and then changing his mind.  And he gets that for kids.  But he didn't get that for me when I was a kid and he doesn't get that for me now.)

I got a book on the "High Sensitive Person" (which is boring!) and hopefully I can look at some coping strategies.

But the other fact is that I'm not planning on going to my parents' house for Christmas next year.  I don't know where I'll go.  Maybe Bruges. Maybe I'll have someone I want to spend it with. But not my parents'.  And I really don't know when I'll see my dad again.  It may be a while.  He is not in my calendar for the next 12 months, and I seem to be scheduling my vacations out pretty far.  This last year, we got together 6 times (sometimes just for a weekend).  But I'm really thinking a break is in order.  We can love each other from afar for a bit.  I'm hoping this is a stage.  But he couldn't even be consistent with me in therapy.  The last session felt like it really erased much of what we'd done.

So I guess it is on me to protect myself.  Exactly what I'm so tired of doing.

Coming Home

It is midnight on Tuesday night and I am sitting in my childhood home, with all the lights off, except on our huge Christmas tree. It is probably 12 feet tall--nearly touching the beams, which are covered with cedar boughs. There’s no cornucopia of holly on the chandeliers this year, nor are the angels descending from each of the cross beams because my parents were really stressed, and I didn’t get home till late in the year, but it is a lovely Christmas scene.

Of course, there’s no internet, because my mom has already moved to their new home and taken non-essentials, like the modem and router with her. (I define non-essential differently than my dad.)

So, this is the last time I will sit here. This is the last time I will refer to “home” as some place other than my house.

I don’t know why I remain so sentimentally attached to Christmas.  Mostly, I hate it.  But the new house only has 8’ high, flat ceilings, instead of the 14’ high vaulted ceiling I grew up with.  (It really isn’t as grand as it sounds--this house is small and has no attic, but it is nice lines and beautiful light.)  The thought of never again having a big Christmas tree makes me so sad; but I’m not planning on spending Christmas with my family next year, and maybe not for a bit.  I suppose once the niece or nephew is old enough to enjoy Christmas, it will be a different deal; Christmas is for children.  It will be nice to have someone I can give presents to who won’t be pissy about materialism and capitalism and what not.  I love giving presents.  I don’t care if they are handmade, or vouchers for services or tickets to an event; I love giving presents.  I don’t shop much; god knows I don’t need more things.  But when people I care about take the time to think about my life and give me something that would make it richer, I am so grateful. Not just when I receive it; most whenever I use it.  My sister gave me her old iPod docking station, and I don’t care that it is used.  Every time I use it, I think of how thoughtful it is.  I love giving gifts and I love getting thoughtful gifts and the fact that my family (sans mi maman) is too fucking enlightened to deign to accept some material object on a commercialized holiday, hurts me a great deal.

Today was my last therapy session with my dad for this trip (I have a feeling we won’t be done with therapy forever, however).  I wanted to do a do-ever with my dad, and so we met at our house, instead of the therapists office.

This weekend, my dad and I were doing much better, but he came today in a different place, a more stubborn place and talk of “genuine” stuff was back. And I became more and more hysterical. I felt so foolish for thinking I could trust my dad with my vulnerability enough to have him do a do-over. 

For a while, I just knew it was stupid to trust him with how badly it hurt me, or try. And as our time went by, I got more and more hysterical.

When I was in the 7th grade, while I was walking up the stairs, my dad said “No man will ever love you if you don’t lose weight.” And that was pretty devastating to me. So I wanted him, in that place, with me on a stair below him, looking up at him, to say something lovely, to replace that image in my mind.

But even telling him how painful that was for me was incredibly scary. I learned to not be ‘fun to tease’ but the cost was that I don’t share vulnerability with my dad. Vulnerabilities make you, well, vulnerable. It has not felt safe for decades, even if it was.

Well, with time ticking away, I was getting more and more hysterical, and finally the therapist pushed us to go ahead and do the do-over. Dad didn’t say quite what I wanted him to. He apologized for the first time, instead of telling me I was beautiful and lovable, but there were tears in his eyes, and I could tell he meant it. I told him “Now, tell me I’m lovable and beautiful” and he said “I don’t want to have to do that when I’m prompted. I want you to know it and say it spontaneously.” (Of course, the funny thing is, I was waiting all week for him to initiate a do-over, and just tell me, when I was coming up the stairs, that I was beautiful, but he didn’t. I had to ask for what I wanted, which made it mean less, but it was still better than nothing.) And I said “But I need an image to replace the one in my head” and so he said “You are beautiful and lovable. As proven by how much I love you.” And then we hugged, me still standing on the steps, with my arms under his arms, like I was a little kid.

I think it make a difference. I don’t know, and won’t for months. I’m working really hard on moving from the blog to life, from my intellectual knowing, to my visceral feeling. But I seem to be aware of things long before I can actually feel differently about them, and oftentimes I don’t make that shift at all. But doing that with my dad, having a redo of one of my strongest childhood memories, makes it easier to say goodbye to this house. I’m so exhausted though. And I’ve been counting the hours until I can go home.  Until I can curl up with my cats and enjoy my bed and maybe make out with Nate.  I am going home.  Which now has only one meaning.

Happy New Year

It is 12:03, on January 1st.

I’m am sitting in an overstuffed chair, in a little nook, in my favorite room in my favorite hotel, overlooking the ocean.  (They don’t have wi-fi, so I don’t know when I’ll post this.)

2012.

Maybe the Mayans are right and this will be a new cycle.  I hope so.

In the last couple of days, I realized, perhaps, why I am single.

I love my dad.  There are many things about him that give me great joy.  But I cannot depend on him.  I think, to some extent, I have always felt that I have to please him for acceptance.

Long before I came on the scene, my parents had an agreement.  When my mother found out she was pregnant with me, she broke that agreement.  She broke it without consulting my dad, without apology, with a fierce certainty that I was a child, and that was that.  (I should say, both my mother and I are fiercely pro-choice, but I have already made that choice for me, and I do believe that informing several men that that taking that choice out of play made them make a choice not to be with me.  But that is for another posting.)

My dad deeply resented that, and deeply resented me, until I was old enough to smile at him, and then he adored me, until I was old enough to disobey him.  (I should say, I only know this because my dad felt deeply remorseful and shared it with me in hopes it will help me work through that stuff.)  In other words, I was not loved by a man just for me, but for what I did, and I was only loved as long as I was obedient.  Which sounds an awful lot like the paradigm I have re-enacted with bdsm.

Nowadays, my dad is wonderful in many aspects.  Really extraordinary.  But he isn’t consistent.  His word doesn’t really mean much.  He will be critical of me, often out of the blue for things that I never considered (like too much eye contact--what father does that?)  He will make plans spontaneously, and when I plan around his spontaneous plans I'm hurt when he breaks them just as spontaneously.

So, while I want a partner, I somehow or other expect more than my dad could ever offer someone.

My ex asked me to marry him. Twice.  And thank god, I said no.  It took the thought of being stuck there for the rest of my life for me to get out of the situation.

I think that I yearn for all the good things my dad has to offer, but I would never settle for someone that would treat me as my dad has treated me (or as my dad has treated my mother).  With Bobby, I had this instantaneous connection.  And Bobby was inconsistent.  In my experience, he implied things he wasn’t ready to follow through on.  I don’t feel that instantaneous connection with Nate, but he is consistent and loving and, within reason, follows through on what he says (and apologizes like hell when life means he can’t do what he said he would).  And maybe that is why he doesn’t ring the part of my soul that Bobby rang.  And maybe my task for this new cycle (if the Mayans are right) is to find ways to access that part of my soul.

My favorite hotel has blank journals in every room, and guests fill out the pages.  A couple stayed in my room before me; the man wrote:

Today there is much to be thankful for: the white surf on the gray sea and an open window. 

The ring on my finger means I was married yesterday. 

I see my bride running on the beach, the hood of her coat falling back.

And I imagine that I hear the laugher of the child held within. 

I am happy.

Dear universe: please send me someone who will hold me in his heart the way that Philip held his bride. Let me meet that man this year, and let him be the kind of man who would cherish my favorite hotel, and introduce me to all his favorite spots.  Let him be introspective enough that I can share my meanderings, if not this blog, and let him be dominant enough that we can let go of the meanderings and have incredibly passionate, hot sex.  And let him be a good father to our future children and a good playmate for our inner children.

I don’t know if there is a god (well, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a personified deity; but maybe there is some force in the universe that us humans can only understand through personification), but if there is, god, I beg of you to send me a partner.  I’ve prayed it in my head for years, to no avail.  I beg of you to help me find someone to match me, tame the little animal inside and play with my child.