Freedom Dance

Just back from celebrating with friends in the mountains.  Went to a lovely music festival and shared some love with some good people.

I'm experiencing a lot of freedom today.   And I love my freedom.  Certainly, I still have many chains that bind me to the illusion of pain and suffering but dang, my wings have taken flight, once again.  I am still sad and disappointed over what has transpired between K. and I, but we are processing through it and I'm a lot clearer than I was a few days ago. Plus I'm not taking things so personally in regards to what is up for him cause ya know, we all have our issues and he's working through his just like I'm working through mine.  Just like we all are.  I totally support his process even if I don't necessarily like or agree with the way he chose to present this to me.  But I know he did the best he could, that it wasn't an easy thing for him to do, and that he didn't want, doesn't want, to hurt me.  I know he loves me.  And I love him.  Love is good.

The bottom line is that I am so glad that this all transpired just the way it has and I know there are many more chapters of this story.  Also, I've been hovering of the brink of the abyss for awhile now and K., simply gave me the push I needed to take a great and fucking scary fall into myself.  And I thank him for that.  I think about the only other thing I'm going to say here right now is that K. is not having an issue with perceiving me being old, fat, and smelling bad.  Ha.  Praise the good lord for that!  Always sweet music for a girl's ears.  ;)  If that was his issue I'd just have to say fuck him and move on...well after I had another good long cry of course.

I think I will try to describe what's going on for us, for me, in regards to all of this, by sharing some quotes from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.  In regards to allowing myself to fully experience my emotions:

When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.  The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell. 

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us. 

Nevertheless, when the bottom falls out and we can't find anything to grasp, it hurts a lot...Love of the truth puts you on the spot.  We might have some romantic view of what that means, but when we are nailed with the truth, we suffer.  We look in the bathroom mirror, and there we are with our pimples, our aging face, our lack of kindness, our aggression and timidity--all that stuff. 

How we stay in the middle between indulging and repressing is by acknowledging whatever arises without judgment, letting the thoughts simply dissolve, and then going back to the openness of this very moment.  That's what we're actually doing in meditation.  Up come all these thoughts, but rather than squelch them or obsess with them, we acknowledge them and let them go.   

After a while, that's how we relate with hope and fear in our daily lives.  Out of nowhere, we stop struggling and relax.  We stop talking to ourselves and come back to the freshness of the present moment.

So yea, anyway, continuing my practice of staying in the freshness of the present moment.  Acknowledging my hopes and fears in regard to K., and moving on in this beautiful dance of freedom.

Happy Freedom Day everyone!!!

When Things Fall Apart

My husband texted and told me that he thought I should read When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron and my husband is a smart and intuitive man so after making myself a cup of coffee and checking on my straw bale garden (which isn't doing very well) I sat down and read the first chapter, Intimacy With Fear.  The tears are back.

I already knew that I'm a courageous woman.  Duh.  Pema says, "When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew.  When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow."

My journey with K. has always been a spiritual journey.  Sexual too,yes.  But my sexuality and spiritually are so intertwined there is no separating the two.  So when he said he was no longer sexually attracted to me, I interpreted that and him saying that he is no longer attracted to being on this intimate spiritual journey with me.   Telling a lover that you are not sexually attracted to him is one thing.  Breaking up with them is another.  I'm very unclear about what it is he wants.

My heart calls, always urging me on to persevere through difficult situations such as this in my intimate relationships.

When things fall apart...I think I need to experience the crumbling.

So much more in this first chapter but I need to dry my tears and wake my grandson up and make him pancakes.  He has swimming lessons in an hour!

Love and Fear

Awake again too early after hours of tossing and turning.  Good solid sleep evades me.  My mind is restless.  My heart hurts but the numbness that saves has settled in.

 It's like the rug as been pulled out from underneath me.

Yesterday was a good day all things considered.  I worked my last day of the summer at the college and I'm so relieved to put that behind me for awhile.  I picked up my grandson after work for an overnight visit and took him to see Green Lantern in 3D.  It was tough for me to sit though but he really enjoyed it and I feigned pleasure afterwards as he went on and on about his favorite parts and asked me about mine.  A couple of the themes in the movie were will versus fear and running away from the things we love which gave me something to occupy my mind while the silliness ensued on the big screen before me.  I also pondered love and fear and how it's impossible to do both at the same time.  I've surely been vacillating back and forth between those too polarities a lot these last few days.  After the movie we enjoyed a nice dinner on the outside patio where my husband plays music every Thursday night and then stopped by for a visit with my son and two grandkids who are here for the summer from out-of-state.

I'm realizing how much I've been depending on my relationship with Lover Who Is Not My Lover Two (really not resonating with calling him this and think I should stop.)  He's been standing in the center of what has become an important part of my life,  and now he's no longer comfortable in that position.  This place I've found with him and his...has served mostly as an extension of my joy, but as I'm becoming more aware of now, has also been a refuge from the storm.

It's not like I don't have my husband to depend on.  He is my rock, my heart, my home.  My life depends on him.  But ya know, I'd found another comfortable place to rest my head and now the pillow has been pulled out from underneath.  I feel liked a toddler who is being weaned against her will, "I know this will be hard on you and I want you to know that Mama still loves you, but no more nice warm milk from the soft tit. Here's a hard cup to drink your cold milk from." My immediate reaction was wanting to rest my head on R.'s shoulder and have her hold and comfort me but she isn't around.

My mama's dying has been hard on me.  My mama isn't dead.  She is dying.  She is living in both worlds.  My eldest son is going through an especially rough time right now and his immense pain is breaking my heart.  Then my daughter's cancer.  My friend dying of prostate cancer.  And I really miss my Lulu who is in Guadalajara with her father for the summer.  I worry about her.  When K. hit me with this it's like my house of cards came tumbling down.  I'm a strong woman too.  I can shoulder a lot of burdon. I keep on keeping on.  But I feel on the verge of crumbling.

And I have a damn good, happy life...

A Nice Snuggle

Writing here these last couple of days has been so helpful in processing such intense emotions.  I've felt so relieved ever since writing that last post--really released a lot.  Plus my husband sent me a very touching email after he read it.  My pain upsets him and his words were very sweet and soothing.  I haven't cried all day since first reading rootsdown's comment to one of my previous posts early this morning.  Boy have I havee been triggered in a place that has some gnarly and tenacious roots shooting down into some dark woundedness.

My heart is very vulnerable and open at this moment.  My feelings are vacillating between love, fear, anger, sadness, annoyance, hurt...love.

I worked all day but had a nice break for lunch and took a long walk.  On my way home I stopped by Lover Who Is Not My Lover's office--not to be confused with Lover Who Is Not My Lover Two.  He was on a business call so I curled up on his couch and took a little nap.  When he got off the phone he came and took my boots off and curled up on the couch with me, intertwining his legs with mine.  We shared a soft and gentle space, catching up on one another's lives a bit.  I haven't seen him in awhile and wanted to connect, plus I needed a friend to snuggle with.  I didn't tell him about this drama I'm going through right now and really didn't want to talk about it at that point so I was relieved that he didn't ask about K. because he usually does.  

Feeling Smeagoly

The truth is that the sexy me as been feeling trapped and stifled inside all the fat I'm carrying on my body right now.  My clothes don't fit, and I've been feeling uncomfortable in my body.  Standing in front of a mirror has been miserable.  And once again I'm faced with the reality of how much I depend on the men in my life to help me feel validated and sexy.  Fortunately, I've had a lot of affectionate men over the years that have been willing to accommodate that need.  I get my fair share of compliments and expressed desire directed toward me that it keeps me afloat when my inner Golem attacks.  But I have a tendency to want it from one particular man (needing it from my husband is a given) and that currently would be LWINMLT.

I have a fond memory of a lover who always dated big women.  I paled in comparison to most of the women he was attracted to.  Talk about carrying lots of extra fat around on their bodies, they had it going on.  What I really loved about being in bed with him was the way he viewed and touched my body, especially my belly.  He would grab a hold of my tummy fat and I could sense the extreme pleasure and satisfaction it gave him.  This man was young, smart, talented, and handsome with a firm sexy body so that made it all the better.

Sex with my husband is like that.  He has always been loving and accepting of my body along with being verbally validating.  I was comfortable in my body with him from the get go because he made it so obvious how attracted he was to me.  Of course, I was quite thin and feeling very sexy in my body when we got together so his validations just added to my already positive body image.

Within my eight year relationship with the father of my youngest child, I never received any sort of  positive verbal validation or proclamations of love.  But I knew he was highly attracted to me sexually and he wanted a lot of sex.  He said that I was the only woman he had very been with that wanted as much sex as he did and he did proclaim his love for that!  Our sex life was great and it kept me in that relationship longer than I should have otherwise stayed.  Finally, when I was in the process of leaving him, he started offering verbal confirmations about how much he loved me and loved my body.  Too little too late.

As I write here now I'm reminded of how private and protective I felt about my relationship with LWINMLT when we first became lovers and it's really the reason I stopped posting on this blog. Of course I've written some about our relationship but not a lot.  There is more I could say along the lines of my body image and  having him as a lover but I find now that I'm still feeling private and protective of that intimate dynamic.  I realize there are things I should disclose to him personally.

Bottom line is of course, I'm so much more than my body.  So much more than my sexuality.  So much more than who is loving or not loving me.  I know this.  That said though, my love relationships, my sexual partners, and my body image, are all tied up in whatever it is I'm doing here in this life.  I feel most comfortable in a thin body.  I feel more at home, attractive, creative, in touch with my true essence, when I'm not carrying around extra weight.  And I feel so much freer.  And of course, even if I am carrying around extra weight, when I'm feeling good about myself and my life, when I'm managing my stress level, staying balanced and in the flow, and connected and happy in my relationships with those I love most, then I'm more able to stay in touch with these feel good parts of myself, regardless.  And I'm not even hitting on the other aspects of getting older that have nothing to do with being fat or thin.  Getting old is not for sissies, I've been struggling here and it's like LWINMLT pushed me over into the abyss.

I know that a big piece of what's going on for me right now is my age old abandonment issue with my father who left before I was born. I identified with being broken and worthless for a good portion of my life, all based on the fact that I wasn't worth it for him to hang around.  I have healed so much of this woundedness on my own over the years, and also within my relationship with my husband.  But I find that I'm still bringing men into my life to help me dig up more of the pain, to be worked through on an ever deepening level.  I feel very abandoned by LWINMLT.  Not totally abandoned.  He is still in my life.  But the way he chose to deal with this issue of falling out of sexual attraction with me really hurts.  I am just so sad.  A let's put sex on the back burner until we figure this out approach, would have felt a lot more reasonable to me.  You know, a temporary sexual hiatus while we assess what's going on and see how things evolve.  I still would  have cried and felt like shit but it would have been a much better route for me. I want to talk more about his insights (or lack of) as to why he isn't sexually attracted to me, if there is a why to get to the bottom of.  I'm left wondering how deeply this goes.   Is he repulsed by the sight of me?  Does touching me disgust him?  I don't really think this is the case but that's where my pain body takes me.  I do want to know just exactly how long has this been going on.  I've worked with lots of couples and I know there are a variety of reasons why this happens in a relationship.  Sometimes it's lasting but more often it's not.  I had my, I'm fat and therefore not sexually attractive button pushed but that may not be his reason.  Maybe it's my wrinkles, my stretch marks, my age, my smell...all of the above, none of the above.  I didn't ask him because I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn't bear to hear more details that might push me over the edge at that point.  We were in a public place.  I wanted his story, his truth of the moment, but dealing with something like this takes more than one setting, public or private.  Maybe he doesn't know the reason, as it is often hidden from the conscious mind.  There are many components to sexual attraction and sometimes it's just not there with another and there is no need to bother with the reason.  I'm sexually attracted to very few people.  But the fact that he was attracted to me and now isn't, speaks to something that has come up within our relationship.  And relationships change.  There are no real binding contracts, even in a marriage.  People get divorced all the time.  And we aren't married.  But we are going on 3 years together and I want more than this.  I want better than what I was offered.  I think I deserve better

I feel like I've been thrown out with the trash.  Or maybe it's more like I've been set out on the curb for a thrift store pick up.  "Surely someone else will be able to use her.  She's not all that bad."  I know that's not really fair.  Or real.  But it's the way I feel right now.

Disappointed

Five hours of sleep after being up for 39.  I've been lying awake for a couple of hours watching my ego make up stories.  I am so triggered.  Why did you ask me if I feel old? I'm pretty flipped out about being old right now.  I'd like to crawl out of my skin.  I haven't cried in 6 hours.  Hopefully my eyes will be a bit less puffy today.  I need to be to work at 7:00.  I don't know what I'm feeling right now.  Sideswiped.  Depressed.  Confused.  Dumb.  Mostly numb.  But Aphrodite is waking up.  I notice her in the background with her "Fuck you, how dare you!" attitude.  She is prideful.  And pissed.   Mostly I'm just tired and my heart hurts.  I'd like to go to sleep and either not wake up at all or wake up having this all be an awful dream.  I'm so disappointed.

The Consequences of Falling

The rain is falling as if the sky is shedding tears in sweet companionship.  I'd call a girlfriend except I know I couldn't talk.  I can cry though.  It seems as if that's all I can do.  I can't sleep.  I laid awake all night, the tears flowing silently until the uncontrollable sobbing would erupt.

A couple of weeks ago I found a lump in my breast and it was quite sore so I made an appointment for a Well Women Health Exam.  I wasn't too worried about it but having it checked out seemed the prudent thing to do.  I've been feeling extra vulnerable in my body lately.  Fucking menopause.   My daughter had a cancer tumor in her leg.  A friend died of prostate cancer.  The appointment was early this morning.  After crying all night with no sleep, I walked into the clinic like a zombie, where they hit me with a slew of paperwork that needed updating. As soon as I sat down to work on the stack of papers they called me back to the exam room with a quick stop at the scales for a weight in.  As if that wasn't enough to make me feel like shit, I was told to strip naked and given two small pieces of rough paper to protect my modesty.   I couldn't even figure how to unfold the damn paper covers  and that got me crying again before my health care practitioner made it back into the room.  Bereft of any ability to cope with her professional incompetencies,  within a few minutes I had her running out the door for backup protection from the crazy lady. When she returned, I was fully dressed except for my bra.  In the end I pulled off my top and allowed her to do a breast exam (I already had enough negative body issues going on that I was bound and determined to forego cutting off my nose to spite my face.) But I declined her offers for other medical interventions including their mental health services.  Fucking bitch.

Lover Who Is My Lover is no longer my lover so I'm confused as to how to refer to him here.  I already have one Lover Who Is Not My Lover.  Maybe I should call him Lover Who Is Not My Lover Too, or Lover Who Is Not My Lover Two.  I am not a Well Woman, that's for sure.  My heart is broken.  Not really looking forward to dealing with this lost.  Fuck.  For the last few days I've been listening to k.d. lang's song, The Consequences of Falling, obviously preparing myself for this, and every line speaks to my experience and what I have been dreading.  "...if I'm alone with this, I don't think I can face the consequences of falling.  As it turns out, I am definitely alone in this,  LWINMLT, is not in love with me.  Well, to be more exact, he is no longer sexually attracted to me.  Wow, typing that sentence sent a pang through my heart.  I've been dealing with the not in love part pretty well up until this point.  You know, just letting what is be what it is, accepting the sweet love that is there and not making up too many stories about the rest.  But I really don't think I can face his new disclosure.

are you breathing
what i'm breathing
are your wishes
the same as mine
are you needing
what i'm needing
i'm waiting for a sign
my hands tremble
my heart aches
is it you calling
if i'm alone in this
i don't think i can face
the consequences of falling
are you thinking
what i'm thinking
does your pulse
quicken like mine
are you dreaming
what i'm dreaming
i can't read your mind
one step towards you
two steps back
feels like i'm crawling
if i'm alone in this
i don't think i can face
the consequences of fallin

Well, those questions are answered.  He is not breathing what I'm breathing.  He is not needing what I'm needing.  His pulse does not quicken like mine.  Fuck.  I got my sign.  I don't have to try and read his mind.  I'm alone in this and I don't think I can face the consequences of falling in love with this man.

In case you've never had the man you love tell you that he isn't sexually attracted to you, I can share with you first hand that it feels really shitty. Damn, talk about a body slam.  As if I haven't been slamming my own body enough as it is.  I'll be 57 years old in one week and I gotta tell you, I've been in a wretched place with my body image and this whole menopausal pack on the fat phase.  Slam dunk K.  You know where to hit a girl where it hurts.

Not that I blame him.  I mean, what was the poor man to do?  If he's not sexually attracted to me anymore, what else is there for him to do but tell me?  He obviously didn't relish disclosing this little (huge) piece of information to me and it was a truth I was not happy to hear.  But the truth is, I'm not sexually attracted to my own self right now.  I'm quite aware that I'd be more physically attractive if I were holding less fat on my body.  But you want love to see beyond that.  I'm fairly full of self loathing.  And now to add to that, my feelings are hurt.  My ego is bruised and busted.

I told him I never trusted "us".  I guess I've always held some trepidation.  I definitely hold some post traumatic stress from when he contemplated breaking it off with me two years ago.  How could I fully trust my relationship with a man who never told me that he was in love with me? At the same time, our friendship was deep and I had grown to trust his love for me and I was holding big appreciation for his presence in my life.   I hold confusion about the difference between "loving" and being "in love" with someone anyway so I just accepted his love for what it was, without needing to put a label on it.   He is kind.  He is truthful.  He is a good man.  A sweet lover.  I had let go of many of my attachments about how I needed to be in relationship with him and I was simply allowing myself to be happy and content.  Comfortable.  Mostly.  But I suppose that I was secretly hoping that he had fallen in love with me and would come around, sooner or later to figuring that out.  I feel like a fool.  When he told me that he wanted to have a "candid" talk, I knew, in one way or another, what was coming.  Although after my immediate tachycardia I told myself not to jump to conclusions.  I imagined a number of different possible topics.  Maybe he even wanted to tell me that he was in love with me, that he was "dreaming what I'm dreaming".  I didn't imagine hearing his words telling me that he was no longer sexually attracted to me.  I've never had a man tell me that before.  It stings.

It's weird, as k.d. says, "one step towards you, two steps back, feels like I'm crawling".  K was a wonderful lover to me in many ways and I'm feeling pretty fucking devastated to lose this aspect of our relationship.  To face this reality, that he isn't physically attracted to me, doesn't want to make love with me,  doesn't want to fuck me.  WTF am I suppose to do with this information?  It makes me angry too.  My sexuality is a huge piece of my identity.  Who and what I am.  Jesus fucking Christ.  Talk about the ultimate rejection.  God fucking damnit.  And the truth is that I constantly held myself back from him sexually too.  It was obvious that he didn't desire me as much as I desired him and I chalked it up to a difference in our libidos, and the fact that he holds his sexuality differently than I hold mine which is always in the forefront.  His is more compartmentalized.   I was always hungry for him but I learned to control my cravings, waiting for him to make the first move, always stepping back, never wanting to pressure him.  I consistently felt like I was crawling in our relationship.  And the crawling wasn't bad.  I wasn't complaining.  And I'm not complaining now, about how it was.  I accepted him for who he was, how he was.  Instead of wanting more, I practiced wanting what he gave me and I was pretty much satisfied with that.  But I don't know how to begin being satisfied with this.  I am complaining about this.

And I never got to get my tramp stamp tattoo and surprise him with it when he took me from behind and fucked me.  He told me that's how he wanted to discover it.  I waited too long.

I've always said that we fall in love with who we fall in love with, and then we create a relationship from there.  Our lovers are real people, acting out their own karma, living their lives and trying to get their needs met to the best of their abilities, just like we are.  When we love another, we have the choice of either loving the real person or loving a fantasy, a made up story that we create in our mind about who and what that person is and how they will meet our needs and make us happy.   But real people don't always come through for us the way our fantasies do.  They improv in the roles and scripts we make up for them.  I'm so let down.  I invested so much of heart and body to this man and he never fully claimed me in my totality.  I knew that.  And I knew not to trust that he wouldn't do what he just did.  Why am I so insistent on falling in love with unavailable men?

I'm alone in this and I don't think I can face the consequences of falling...

Fuck.

My Own Fodder

Inspiration for writing comes with a cost.  I become my own fodder.  And the story of my life unfolds.  On one hand, I'm a messed up, emotionally immature person just like everyone else.  A flawed human being trying to find my way.  On the other hand, I have my models that I emulate.  My heroes that I aspire to follow.  The ones that serve others with open-hearted gracefulness.  The creative, successful, happy ones with love that sorta oozes out of them.  I glean from each one, picking and choosing the qualities that serve me best.  I copy them.  I pretend.  I fake it until I make it.  And over the years,  I've found that I have made it in some ways, that I've arrived--if not setting any records, I've at least crossed the finish line in a respectable time.  I've discovered that in some things, I'm my own best model, that some of what I've learned has become second nature, that I've gained a fair amount of emotional maturity and wisdom myself.  And with this, I know how little I know.  And I know how I'll never really "get there".  This is a life long journey. 

Here's the fodder for this writing. Recently I experienced a trigger that set off some post traumatic stress (PTS).  I panicked.  I blew things out of proportion.  I listened to the stories my wounded ego was telling me.  I felt the emotions that had been released in my body.  I didn't really believe the stories but I still laid around with my feelings hurt, feeling depressed and sorry for myself.  To top it all off, I was embarrassed.  I'll be 56 years old in one week and experiencing these uncomfortable emotional gyrations annoyed me.  I felt silly--that at my age I should be over having these these ridiculous reactions.  I should be more mature.  More enlightened.  And I knew it would all pass soon and I would be relieved of my ego running amok, but soon wasn't soon enough. 

The original trigger was Lover Who Is My Lover not wanting to spend time with me because he was too tired.  I understood his tiredness was legitimate, and regardless, he certainly didn't owe it to me, to choose to spend time with me in that moment.  But my feelings were still hurt.  After all, I was exhausted myself and I still wanted to spend time with him.  But underlying my disappointment that he wasn't giving me what I wanted, was another tender spot, which his denial to meet my needs of the moment uncovered. 

There was a large gathering of woman that I had not been invited to.  Many of my women friends were there and I was not.  This particular gathering has been going on for many years and I have never attended.  Over the years, I had been invited several times but it just never worked for me to go.  Eventually the invites stopped coming and I'm not sure whether my lack of participation offended the hostess or more likely, I'm simply not in her mind much as she is a person I seldom run into.  It's probably a bit of both.  Whatever the case may be, it's never been something I've thought too much about, it wasn't a big deal to me...until recently, when I got the inkling that I wanted to be a part of this gathering. The obvious problem is, I haven't been invited.

One thing that is so ridiculous is that I'm so not left out.  I have an abundance of friends and I'm invited to more gatherings and parties than I can reasonably attend.  I really have the good fortune to get to pick and choose between many options.  My life is abundant with friends, gatherings, and being a part of.  I'm included and loved.  It's not like I'm sitting at home alone, bored.  Ha.  I was the other night!

I mentioned PTS and sometimes it kicks in.  There have been times in my life when more often than not, I was sitting alone at home, bored.  As a young girl this happened to me a lot.  I was alone and felt friendless much of the time.  I was often left out.  I had a fairly sad childhood and I was emotionally neglected.  I had an over abundance of unmet childhood needs.  So this trigger happened and I was overly upset.  I knew I was experiencing PTS and that my reaction outweighed the circumstance but there is was and no reasoning with the emotions I was feeling.  I felt abandoned and that was that.

So I sat with it.  I slept with it.  And I woke up with a lingering, depressed sense of it.  And then Lover Who Is My Lover called and we talked for a few minutes and I noticed it was gone.  I didn't tell him what I had been experiencing because it felt silly, my truth of the moment that wasn't true at all.  Besides, it's awkward to talk about those things on the phone sometimes.

But later in the day I thought that I should share this with him, allow myself to be vulnerable and tell  him about my silliness and the role he played as my trigger.  Part of me found it necessary to expose myself because I'm hesitant to do so.  I have a little PTS around telling him my emotions and causing him stress with my drama.  We have a little past here...but I don't want to buy into my fear of telling him the truth.  I want him to know me as I am, even though it sometimes scares me to reveal myself.  So I wrote him and told him my wounded ego story.  And he hasn't responded back yet.  And so now I notice that fear of self exposure, about being an imperfect person with flaws and PTS.  Well, welcome to the human race.  Welcome to me, Lover Who Is My Lover.