Monday, December 19, 2016

Ready for admission

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
 
I know what this song was intended to represent.  There has always been something about this song that whenever I hear it, I absolutely have to stop and close my eyes and listen to it. 
(traffic appropriate of course)

Civil rights...
 human rights, womanhood,
... me. 
We all seek something, we will never stop.  We all want, we all need, we all desire, its what you do and who you are to garner your wishes you want to come true.  And, as we all know, wishes don't generally come true. (thank goodness). 
They come true to a point but not with YOUR specifics is the weird thing.  
How many times have we heard the "just ask and ye shall receive" line?  Or the terms "manifest destination",  "Law of Attraction"?  
There is that whole silly 'balance' thing in the universe so yeah, you can get what you want but do you want it?
 
My most recent epiphany was realizing I can go after the things I want.  Not just the stupid degree for a stupid better paying job that won't leave me a drone, but for everything.  The other part of that is feeling confident enough to realize not only can I actually do that but also know more specifically what I want AND to be able to have enough confidence back that was stripped of me to go get it.  My obligation isn't to some "family" anymore that didn't give a shit either way if I was there making a home.  Not to some asshole who felt (and said as much) that I was there to serve him.  I'm not going to pretend I have everything figured out but I finally feel that I have worked through enough to know I don't deserve to be treated like shit.  Like as a wandering cheerleader for someone else. 
 
I am so amazed at how far I have come and how I represent now.  
Because of this, I make these impulsive decisions that I can feel good about. It's not a matter of justification, its relearning to listen to instinct.  
I'm not even going to pretend I'm not an over-thinker, that's who I am.  It's called "management" in my book.  I've had a fucking lifetime of it, just not for practical life.  I can deal with drug addicts and alcoholics better than I can with everyday society, literally, they are more real to me.  So, in an attempt to just let shit go, I just smile and nod at the general populace and extend my never ending patience.  I mean really, why get pissed off?  I don't know their troubles...
So I got that covered.
 
Now I feel like I'm moving into new territory and I feel like I have TOO much confidence.  To say I feel I might be attractive to someone? To feel sexual? To feel like I have anything to offer? It's all yes, yes, yes and no, no, no.  I suppose it keeps me from being an asshole.  
 
a year and a half single.  Nothing, Nada.
No dates, no invitations, no anything special at all. A couple assholes you meet on online dating sites which really are "I'm here to get laid" sites.  (so absolutely done with that bullshit,organic for me please) 
All of a sudden I am feeling this pull to companionship and I don't know how to handle it. Dating CLEARLY isn't dating anymore.  I haven't been asked out proper during this time.  That boy hasn't picked up the phone to literally talk to me.  As much as I am a feminist, I never pretended to be a dominant. But apparently during the past 8 years or so, times have become such that I not only have to own myself but also be aggressive in dating as well?  Honestly, I thought I was already....
It's not like I'm a wallflower but shit, this is ridiculous. My experience completely, has been boys just show up and girls do ALL the work.  The only explanation is, no one feels you're worth making the effort to step up to you.
 
And apparently the sex thing is confusing as hell.  What the hell is someone with a high libido supposed to do? I'm in a year dry spell and what I want to do is enjoy that aspect without A) looking like a slut they refuse to respect or B) making a man feel if we become intimate it's all or nothing. 

I've come to the point where I want what anyone wants.  I want a best friend I can have awesome sex with.  I want the companionship of comfort and enough static to make manners.  I want to watch that shitty movie while drinking and laughing with someone.  I want to let that someone know, I am solid for anything they need. I want the feedback that says, "I was thinking about you too".   I want to be respected and not invalidated ... ever again. I want to be able to speak my mind on my feelings as everyone else does and not feel self conscience about what they may feel about it.  I want....

To get to know someone intimately that also wants that from me.  and not pretend as in, "I'll do this only because I want to fuck you". Because personally, I need intimacy with my fucking, sorry.  I'm a bullshit detector, I see it too much.

Someone who isn't afraid of labels.

A man to tell me what is on his mind about me without being a dick about it but at the same time, be respectful.  It really isn't all or nothing, It's sex and companionship.
Not either ~ or.

The really stupid thing? 
Trying to find a man I'm attracted to, to be with, was a lot less complicated when I was younger.  Now, if I want physical touch on my skin, I feel like I have to spend so much of an investment just to find out he didn't care about it anyway.  And, I'm over 40. Go figure. 

Well I do.  And I don't go running into the very next relationship to figure that out.  Ever.  Because I don't need someone else to make me happy ultimately.  I don't need a caretaker.  I don't need someone to be my slave/cheerleader. I can take my time.  I am not a predator.  I don't have this inane need for control over others.  

but for fucks sake is it too much to want to be acknowledged at least?

Maybe his last one was a "one in a million"  for various "crazybitch" reasons but you know what?
I'm more than that. 
I refuse to be treated as anything less. 

I have all kinds of patience.  What I don't have....
well I can't wait to write about it when I get it and don't have to wonder about it anymore.
In the meantime, 
Say what you need to say. 
To anyone you need to say it to. 
Just be real.

 
 

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Suicidal Tendencies

A few years ago I sat in my gynecologists exam room and we were monitoring how my estrogen supplements were working for my period issues.  I was having a super PMS filled, heavy, painful time every two weeks.  It was working fabulous in that I didn't have to suffer as frequently.  She asked "How are you feeling otherwise?" and I remember like it was yesterday. I already had tears welling up ready to spill down my face, my nose swelling with a push of either pain of the heart or snot, perhaps both.  I wanted to press my face into this woman's chest and have her embrace me as I told her I was afraid.  That I was scared, ashamed, that I thought to blame it on my new medication but all I told her as I fought to get the words out over the sobbing I knew was there, was that I felt suicidal. 
"I feel like an emotional wreck and I absolutely cannot handle this on my own anymore.  I have suicidal thoughts."

I didn't want to admit it to myself because at the time I was supposed to be in a stable relationship, had a family to worry myself with, a job I was trying to build up clientele with.... I had too many other things to worry about, there was no way I could be so upset about my own self, I didn't feel I had any more self to give.  As if I was all used up, spoken for, how could I possibly be missing something with my life so full?  There was nothing I could fathom that I should have been upset about other than all the health issues I was being tested for...

My doctor nodded and smiled kindly to me, asked if I was wanting to try some anti-depressants and I nodded yes. 
So began my second journey with medication for moods. 
The first time being when I was about ready to divorce my husband.  It was taking a toll on me to try to be everything to someone who didn't want me.  For someone I wasn't built to be with.  I stopped taking them because it made me blank.  For someone who has spent (then in my late 20's) twenty years with a constant babble in their brain, to have it just stop, was very uncomfortable.  I was well aware of the fact that I was feeling nothing when I knew I should be feeling something about anything.  So came to be yet another time in my life where I said fuck it, I'll self teach myself how to deal with this crap, as usual.  The therapist at the time wanted to just give me a prescription and send me off.

I don't know how it is supposed to be, how to teach your child about their emotions and how to deal with them, with life.  I hope I am doing ok with my own, but children defy you no matter your advice because, lets face it, sometimes you have to learn on your own.  Looking back though, I don't think ideally leaving a 9 year old to self-harm is an ideal way for her to learn things. 
I was self inflicting before I knew what it was.  It was instinct and I don't know how. 
It was me sitting in my bed at 2 a.m. while my mom and her friends played Yahtzee drunk and on speed, loudly in the next room all night while I had school in the morning and only a curtain for a door dividing us.  Crying so hard I could feel how swollen my eyes were.  Trying to drown out the adult noise with my fingernails scraping up my thighs until I bled.
So what?
Big deal?
So the adults were partying, its not like I was in harms way.
Except by this point I had witnessed enough to know that things could go south at any minute during these "festivities".  I had known men would beat their wives/girlfriends in front of children they thought weren't watching.  I knew my mom was at a bar the night she was beaten and raped, left for dead. It was having to leave the house so fast to go 'kill time' at a park while he cooled down and I had no shoes to run around on tanbark.  I still hate that shit...
I had no control over my situation and I knew it. 

For most of my life I knew more about other people than they knew of themselves.  Myself included.  It's pretty much a survival thing when you are dealing with drug addicts and alcoholics.  You have to learn to decipher who is real and who is a ghost.  Who is checking out and who is honestly there.  I spent a lot of time in the shadows watching adults and making correct predictions.  It's second nature to me now.  But what does a child do with all that going on while trying to deal with the fact that this is family?  You can't talk to a drug addict about feelings.  They are selfish.  It's like a law.  You have to take each day, hour, minute as it comes and just be prepared.  Your feelings don't matter, whats the point in releasing them?

You bottle it up until it explodes.  Either in a form of self destruction, hate, anger, defiance.  Choose your poison.  It never ends positive.  Your not Scarlett O'Hara telling no one in particular you'll never go hungry again and making good on your promise.  It's always a hellfire of rage and resentment because what came to be, shall pass.  Sometimes not without trying to take you down with it in the form of finalization. 

Things were out of my control not too long ago and I knew it.  I didn't feel there was an answer. I felt I was treading water.  Always busy, always tired, always feeling sick and always feeling I wasn't doing/being/offering enough. Being told on a continual basis there is something wrong with you and being denied constantly the things you want to do or experience makes one feel less worthy as well.  Which was what brought me almost sobbing to my gynecologist that morning.  A huge feeling of being out of control and not knowing what to do about it. 

I don't like to feel as if I am in 'recovery' because that implies an inane sense of damage I had within myself, but progress isn't quite the right term either.  I use recovery though because 'time of reconciliation' is a little formal.  Regardless of definition of time used, I am now at a point where I am no longer in need of anti-depressants and it is a point of raw fulfillment. 
(Kinda big news for an addictive personality like myself. WOOP WOOP)

Saying and knowing you are worth something are two different things.  Not having a daily reminder from someone basically saying 'almost, but not quite...' and knowing I am true are the difference. "Well M., it's not like you couldn't have known that then."
We'll talk to that point after you have had someone little by little, day by day, week by month by year try to bury you because you weren't the person they wanted you to be.
I can't even fathom right now....
what a stranger I had become in trying to accommodate and please. 

It's been a bit of a stressful time for me.  I hate the holidays. It's my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years by myself.  Its a reminder that eleven years ago my mother committed suicide on Christmas eve.  It's being reminded every single fucking year you are NO reason to be celebrated but god forbid you fail to recognize someone else. As much as I want to say I don't give a fuck about the holidays, I do. So I do my best to ignore them. This way, no fucks are given.

I'm not done though is the thing.  I won't be until... well, until I'm done I suppose.  I have nothing but time really.  I take care of my responsibilities, I make sure my kids are thriving and healthy and not at their expense of having to live with someone who hates them.  I find myself walking this incredible, amazing, tightrope of extremes.  I can feel everything and nothing.  I have everything figured out and nothing.  I care and I don't.  I love and I hate.  It's black or white and above all, it's grey. I'm a participant and a voyeur.  The weighing of wants and needs, comparing history with history.  Speculating on future and placing bets. Coming to terms with loneliness not being a punishment, just another emotion.  Losing judgement of others while still knowing their soul.  Being
comfortable with listening to my instinct. 

I still feel that pull of feeling like I want someone in my life to share things with but it's not a priority by any means.  Quite the opposite (unfortunately?).  I'm scared to have that.  I lost so much last time, it's just not a risk I feel is worth taking.  To give someone so much of yourself and to be told regularly 'close, but not right.'  In my all too frequent daydreams (habitual in nature) I have found myself feeling physically repulsed by the thought of being intimate with someone.  I have pretty much flip flopped with my emotional sense in that I can share the deepest part of my soul with anyone non-nonchalantly but to have a physical encounter at this point makes me have a panic attack. 
I can't figure that out at all right now...
Perhaps its because the last time I was flirted with by an attractive man, I was drunk after a few cocktails and his....wife intervened.
Classic man.
Men who I have been with in the past and who didn't want to pursue things with me then but whom are making attempts to now, don't count.  That is the biggest insult, and I have enough of that.
(amazing how when your single these guys come out of the woodwork)

Every night I have dreams of trying to find my way.  Be it in the streets where I grew up in California, in some cross country trip to a cave, some forest trail, a river trip.  I am avoiding places I know in my head I am not wanting to go because of my past, real or imagined.  Trying to get to somewhere and feeling half confident I know where I am going but still blind.  Being aware of the challenges and ready to accept the outcome even not knowing.  Feeling in my soul what awaits me if I veer off path.  Being ready for that confrontation.  Knowing I take responsibility for my actions which makes me leaps and bounds more emotionally prepared to face this life unlike the weak I judge.  The water in my dreams is always clear and calm, always to my surprise and the toilets are always clean and ready to use.  I am still a leader and still fearless but emotionally putting whomever I am with before me.  I still have the sexual rejection in my dreams of someone who is utterly incapable of being attractive and I find every night finds me trying to navigate blindly which, pretty much is exactly how I feel at any given point. 
I feel uncomfortable in that any time I am around another man I find even partially attractive, they feel this need to constantly bring up other women. "Hot" women, or "sexy" as has been described to me countless times.  I don't know if it's because I am felt as just another dude sitting around passing a j or because there is an insinuation that I should be stepping up my game.  As if that is the reason in a room of single men, I am able to be so bluntly conversative about other women, because I'm not appreciated as an attractive one. Seriously I can't be considered as a potential....
Clearly I can't now put out a flirtation with someone even for a fwb thing because clearly, I don't make the cut. 

No matter really, I suppose.  I have my work which is booming, my kids that are thriving, school that propels me and Buddhism which levels me.  I crave attaining the jhana where I don't crave companionship and the craving only holds me back.  Its a vicious cycle.
I will get there when I get there.
I have nothing but time.