Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

High as a pretty star, don't you break my faded heart.

If I believe in nothing else, I believe in serendipity. I believe in those unexpected moments in life that can lead you suddenly in a different direction, that can force you to see what you were too busy looking elsewhere to notice, that can turn you slightly until you notice a new path you hadn’t been privy to consider before.

Fate or fate.

Knowing I would eventually want to date again, to feel connected to something deeper and more poignant than myself, I reactivated my online dating profile. I immediately had to find three-year-old messages from Rango and delete them, to find his own reactivated profile and block it. I wasn’t willing to dwell on what was before. There were a few passing new interests, but mostly it seemed like more of the same again. Sometimes Harley found it a useful vehicle to remind me that I could get hurt again, ever.

But then…. But then.

Days of talk. Constant, funny, respectful talk. Flirt but no innuendo, no offers or requests for late night sexting. Just getting to know one another.

And then… a great first date. Really wonderful date.

And, thus, a serendipitous moment of possibility. Of opportunity.

Yes, possibility and opportunity with this man, but also possibility that I am, just maybe, worth time and effort. Opportunity to not be the same and do the same that I’ve done before, to slow my own roll and allow connection to unfold organically. To discover someone else but also to discover things about myself, to examine my own new ways of looking at the world, whether external or internal.

Consciously, mindfully, I have chosen not to throw myself headlong into someone else. I didn’t drop my baggage suddenly at his feet and dare him to step over it. I didn’t dig deeply into him, demanding to find his damage and steel myself for what might come.

Though I did caution him that a deep Google search for me would reveal this life, of Stephanie Quinn Jackson, the writer who bears witness to the cacophony. It’s a thing, for sure, to have so much of the last seven years laid out for the world to see. Love and joy and heartbreak and fear, the incessant and sometimes brutal self-analysis that is Muchness and Light. He replied that he would rather not search for me. He’d rather learn it all from me directly.

Even if this goes nowhere, even if it ends after a couple of great dates, I have been privy to the serendipity of possibility of future, of opportunity to not be bogged down by the past, sorting and resorting my own baggage over and over in simultaneous delight and dismay.

But I am also fucking terrified. At this moment, there is an unexpected someone with the ability to hurt and disappoint me. Sure, there are other people I care about who could theoretically do the same, but those are people I already love and trust. I made the choice to accept the opportunity to be vulnerable to hurt, believing so deeply that serendipitous moments should not be ignored or taken for granted. I chose to accept the possibility of hurt because it also comes with the possibility of not hurt.

Dating me offers him the same. There is possibility that I will bolt, revolting against fear in reaction to my past. But where I have been plagued by ghosts so many times before, I have come to realize that my ghosts are my own fears, deep inside me, trying to protect me from future hurt. When I let the past fall away and listen carefully, it is variations of my own voice that I hear whispering, cautioning me that hurt is possible and to avoid whatever might feel like an imminent threat.

My insecurities are real, anchored in a very difficult past, and I am still learning how to calm those voices. He, or anyone who may come after him, certainly has his own insecurities. It doesn’t seem possible to be human and not have uncertainties about yourself that can derail you at times.

What I have come to understand is that my partners in previous relationships have blamed me when their insecurities flared. Sometimes in reaction to my shit, and sometimes in reaction to something I was never privy to, they relegated me to the role of villain, of fallen superhero, and made me the patsy for their own emotional shill. They would tell me I was wonderful and that they loved me, while they formulated an exit strategy. They compartmentalized me and rationalized losing what they said they wanted and loved most, rather than face themselves and deal with their own shit.

But what happened before is not what’s happening now. I get to choose what happens next. My future is not necessarily determined by my history. I am not doomed to repeat my past, because I am still, constantly, learning those lessons.

I didn’t stop trying. I didn’t shut down my heart completely and stubbornly refuse to embrace serendipity. I didn’t kowtow to my fears, and I won’t be blamed again for anyone else’s.

I am worth knowing. I am worth talking to and discovering and sharing. I am worth loving.

I’m worth the risk.

 

 

And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be alright.

Last October, I was recovering from thyroid surgery and pining away for a man who couldn't love me like I needed.  Pandy came to stay with me for a couple of days, to help get my head out of my ass and keep me happily entertained.  With yet another recent snipe from Bounder, we talked at length (ad nauseum) about what my heart wanted and needed. 

Watching movies in the midst of some giggly crazy that always seems to rule our world, Pandy named the next Big Cat to impact me: Rango.

Rango would come from the west.  He would rescue the princess when she freaked out and couldn't do it herself.  He would be afraid but refuse to walk out on his own story. 

Rango would also be big; my ideal was 6'4, 240 pounds, blue eyes, dark hair but balding and shaved, western-European descent.  He would be smart and a little geeky, funny and compassionate, respectful and gentle.  He would be intense and look at me like I'm precious.  He would laugh as loudly as I do and totally get my batshit. 

He would not be an alcoholic, and he would not be afraid to love me.  He would not hesitate. 

Every date I had and relationship I started, Pandy and I would debrief and debate whether or not that one might be Rango.

When she and I went to the beach in April, she continued pressing me in her Practical Magic way to name what I wanted, based on what I'd already had. 

I kept dating.

On May 30^th, I received a message on one of the dating sites I'd been trying for ages.  The guy was a decent match, very cute, 6'5, and he was asking me about my writing.  The conversation went back and forth for a couple of messages, and then I dropped it and forgot about it. 

School, kids, work, my grandmother's death.  And, as has happened so often in the last year, there was the inevitable back-and-forth with Bounder.    I had a couple of dates, but nothing that was quite what I was looking for.  I finally (yes, finally!) got Bounder out of my heart.  Queen Frostine and Peanut and their kids came to visit for a few days.  With so much hectic happening, I decided to screw dating and just focus on school and the kids. 

But then last week I received another message from this guy.

"So I've been matched with you in two different places.  Knowing that you're not into developing dialog through chat, how would you feel about meeting me for a drink sometime this week or weekend?"

Oh, hell! I thought.  I totally blew this guy off for no reason.  And I love to write-chat.  Seriously?  How rude of me!

I agreed to meet for a drink that night, but I also knew that if it didn't go well, I would be done with dating for a while again.  He told me he'd be the tall guy in the Superman baseball cap and that he'd be hard to miss.  I replied that I was an Amazon with a Wonder Woman tattoo; there was no way I would miss him.

Of course he was late.  I was a few minutes earl.  I was sitting at a pub table when I messaged the Castration Committee at 8:37.

"My 8:30 drink date is late.  You know how I feel about this."

"He better have one hell of an excuse!" Pandy commented. 

"There is no excuse!  Release the Cuisinart!" added Moonshine.

Queen Frostine is always so direct in her assessments: "Nope.  Next!"

But then came a text from him: "I'll meet you inside, assuming I made it to the right place.  It's warm out here!"

I was trying to respond to let him know I was already at a table, when I heard a server greet a customer.  I stood and turned to meet him at the door when I saw him round the corner. 

I caught my breath and watched him do a double-take. 

He had been sitting in the 90-degree heat, waiting for me because he was right on time.  Three hours later, I'd agreed to go out with him on Saturday night.  And Friday night.  By 5:30 the next afternoon—after all-day messaging with him—I'm texted Pandy:

He's Rango.

And he is.  Undoubtedly. 

He got to me by 10:45 Friday morning.  We didn't separate until very late Sunday night. 

He's from Texas, though he has lived all over.  He is 6'5, 235#, shaved head, gorgeous blue-gray eyes that flicker like a storm approaching over the ocean.  He kissed me in the park under Independence Day fireworks.  He bought two new Doctor Who shirts while he was with me at the mall, including one that is just like Max's favorite shirt.  He totally encouraged my need to Instagram the absurdities in my world.  We laughed until we couldn't breathe, and we talked for three straight days.

And while I don't like comparing men and relationships, how did he stack up against the Pandy-induced wish list?

He helped me cook dinner, and he cooked crepes for me for breakfast on Sunday.  I watched him clean up spilled cat food from the kitchen floor.  I lost my wallet on Saturday, and he drove me on Sunday to pick up the boys in South Carolina and paid for the gas and food and fireworks for the kids, because I couldn't.  He met my sons and my ex-husband at the same time. 

He saw me immediately, clearly.  He has lived amazing adventures and wants more, but nothing is so adventurous to him as the possibility of me. 

Rango listens to me intently, like my voice and words keep him alive.  He is holding nothing back.  Every emotion, deep and true, is mine to see and touch.  It was he, in fact, who looked me in the eye—not a text or a phone call—to tell me for the first time that he loves me.  To my face, with no hesitation. 

And from the very first, he bested the kiss that I thought would likely never be topped.

He brought me flowers and a CD when he came for me.  He held my hand and breath-sang to me—a country song that, for so many reasons, would have otherwise made me want to stick my fingers in my ears. 

Rango is enormous.  He has worked to overcome his own weight and health issues and understands mine intimately.  His hands and feet are bigger than mine, and I touched his feet with mine the first day, which the Castration Committee knows is a big damn deal for me.  He is loud and gregarious, patient and indulging.  He picked me up and spun me around and kissed me like no one ever has before.

More importantly, he is present and available and willing.  He holds my hand and rubs my cheek constantly.  He texts me in the pre-dawn hours while I am still sleeping to tell me he loves me.  He sends me links and pictures for things he thinks I will find interesting, and he sends similar tidbits for the boys, who both said he is awesome.  He plays my favorite game of sharing poignant songs, back and forth, trying to explain our heads and hearts through music.  He is taking me to meet his friends this weekend.  He talked to Pandy on the phone and is planning to go with me to see her in a couple of weeks. 

He looks at me like no one ever has, and he tells me I am precious to him.  I can see and feel my worth to him in every single interaction, in every touch and kiss and look and word. 

I had all but lost hope that I would ever find what I staunchly believed had to be out there.  I knew in my head that the law of averages said it was likely to happen, but my heart just couldn't connect and was losing faith.  I questioned over and over what I had done so wrong in my life that I didn't deserve to have the good I knew was looking for me just as hard as I was looking for it.  It felt like my heart was dying. 

And in walked Superman.

I am overwhelmed, and I am relieved, and I am grateful.  Yes, to know that I was right and to get something really good when I needed it, but also because it's him.  It's this man, who is so wonderful. 

I see his specialness.  I see those unique qualities that set him apart from other men, hiding behind the dork glasses and the badge on his chest.  His strength is amazing, but his heart is just as strong. 

While it might have been too much for other women, I'm an Amazon princess.  I have my own enormous strength, my own muchness that has been too much.  I have my own, invisible transportation and don't need him to fly me around, unless I've misplaced my driver's license. 

More importantly, we see the humanity in each other, the imperfections and the frailty and the damage that led us to one another.  We know we only have so much time, and we have each wasted enough having to rebuild from one destruction or another. 

Had I gone out with him in early June, before letting go of Bounder, it never would've worked.  I would've thought he was too nice.  I wouldn't have thought I deserved something this good.  I wasn't ready to accept a blessing.

But I asked for him.  I dared the universe to send me something very specific, and just when I thought it couldn't possibly happen, I got what I needed when I needed it most. 

THAT is the magic I was looking for.

 

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Blind faith, heartache, mind games, mistakes, my sweet fireball, my sweet rigmarole, I want it all.

I'm not here for your entertainment.

A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of my four-day, constantly-tearful breakdown of what established initial patterns in my relationships, I read Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—And Keep—Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.  La Bruja had recommended this book weeks ago, and I finally got around to reading it. 

Holy shit.

When she first recommended it, I did a little quick research online and came to the conclusion that I have an anxious attachment style.  "Anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back."  I realized I mostly have dated and been in relationships with avoidants.  "Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness."

According to Levine and Heller, people with secure attachments—those who "feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving"—make up about 50% of the population.  Anxious ones like me make up 20%, while avoidants make up 25%.  The remaining 5% of the population is made up of anxious-avoidants, and I can certainly include a couple of my exes in that narrow margin. 

But when it comes to dating as an adult, the majority of secure people are in healthy relationships.  They're the ones you know who are still happily married after twenty years.  They're the ones I look to and wish I'd ever had a relationship like that. 

Secure men are generally not on the open market. 

There's a disproportionate number of avoidants in the dating pool.  This is part of the reason I am far more likely to encounter a Fragile Cat when I'm on the prowl myself. 

Anxious people are also more likely to be attracted to avoidants, as if something unconscious in us feels like we've found a missing piece of our puzzle.  Avoidants are usually reflective of a powerful, dysfunctional attachment in our earlier life, often from childhood.  Initially everything may seem really great, but then something happens and the avoidant backs away, which causes the anxious to move closer to close the gap, which causes the avoidant to back away even further.  Both partners are having their fucked-up emotional attachment needs met, but it's a pathological dance of getting close and backing away. 

In reading Attached, I was surprised (and thankful!) to learn I wasn't quite as screwed up as I'd thought.  Yes, I am anxious, though not nearly so off-the-chain as I could be.  (I'm less of an outlier than I normally am.)  Levine and Heller argue that there is a biological, evolutionary purpose and need for attachment.  Just as happens with parents and children, bonds are formed in the brain when we partner.  Synapses and neurotransmitters and a bunch of brain shit that I only understand as a layman come together to imprint that person on our brain as a matter of survival.  As inherently social creatures, especially ones who have sexual reproduction, we need other people. 

When an avoidant backs away from me, it activates that attachment system, and I've learned mostly unconsciously to do things and work in ways that will get a response from my partner, to deactivate that system.  (I'm talking phone calls and texts, not boiling bunnies, though I'd imagine this is exactly where and how stalking begins.)  When I don't get the response I need, it amps up my anxiety, so I step closer again and again until I'm either soothed or I get so worked up that love feels like a huge waste of my life.

Because of these patterns established throughout my life, emotional security is something I need in a different way than secure people.  That doesn't make it better or worse than anyone else—unless you're the avoidant on the polar opposite side of the need.  The avoidant's need for independence, their oft-refused acceptance of needing another person, is a defense mechanism and a way to fulfil their own established patterns. 

The avoidants' defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into more closeness than they are comfortable with.  The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultimately being let down by significant others.  So, in a way, each style is drawn to reenact a familiar script over and over again. 

My secure friends, and certainly my avoidant ones, have a very hard time understanding this.  They don't get why I can't always just suck it up and go on and get over someone, even when they've hurt me time and again.  But when that attachment system is activated and spinning out of emotional control, contact with that person can immediately soothe all of my anxieties, much in the same way an upset baby is soothed by the presence of its missing mother. 

Many individuals find it hard to follow through on their wish to break up, even after they've tried more than once to do it.  Anxious people may take a very long time to get over a bad attachment, and they don't get to decide how long it will take.  Only when every single cell in their body is completely convinced that there is no chance their partner will change or that they will ever reunite will they be able to deactivate and let go.

One of the things Levine and Heller stress is that emotional dependency is not bad.  It is, in fact, a natural part of a healthy relationship to make your partner's needs more important than your own and vice versa.  It's okay and normal and good to elevate someone else's needs above your own when you are healthily in love. 

But I have this history of addicted men.  Alcohol, drugs, sex—I've seen and dated and slept with them all.  I've written before about how I am historically and enabler.  So what about codependence?  Isn't becoming so enmeshed in another person that your boundaries are blurred just dysfunctional?  Doesn't dependency on a partner make you lacking or broken or just fucked-up in some way?

Not necessarily.  

Need and addiction are not the same thing.  Codependency exists, and it is especially relevant in the realm of addiction.  The addict uses their substance as a tool to maintain emotional distance.  They drink or get high or sleep with other people as a way to cope with their own damage, and that often means they are actively inserting something between themselves and their partners.  There are other biological factors that come into play with addiction, as well.  The times I have refused to leave because my partner needed me to take care of them—whether to pick up their drunkenly-abandoned car or make excuses to their boss or friends about why they weren't showing up or to clean up whatever mess they created while they were fucked up—that's where the dysfunction of codependence can actually be applicable. 

Just because you need someone, that doesn't mean that you are addicted to them.

One of the things Attached recommends I do is date a lot of people, to go out with several at once.  That way if an avoidant sneaks (bombards his way) into my circle, I am reassured by the fact that I have someone else over here who wants to go out with me.  It's no big deal that this one fucked up, because there's someone else who finds me attractive and wants to spend time with me.  Historically, I am not a multi-dater, but I'll see how it goes. 

So I put myself back on the market. 

Friday night, I had a date with a new guy.  I'll call him S, because I don't want to reveal his name and—as you'll see shortly—he's not worthy of a jellicle name.  We met nearby at a billiards bar.  We had a couple of slow drinks and talked, though we never got around to actually playing pool.  He was cute and smart and funny.  We sat on the patio of the bar talking about sociology and music and dating as adults.  We walked around for a while, still talking and laughing, and ducked into another bar for a last drink.  I even messaged the Castration Committee while I was peeing that it was going really well. 

With about thirty minutes left in my night, that first kiss was looming.  Okay, you'll get a kiss, and it sounds like there's a chance you'll get another date.  I was looking forward to the prospect of seeing him again and getting to know him better. 

Cut to the chase, and he turned into a handsy ass.  Now, I'm no prude.  While I've been mulling imposing a Three Date Rule for sex, I have never been one to live by such social proprieties.  That doesn't mean I've slept with everyone I've been out with, and certainly not always on a first date, but I am comfortable going quickly down that path if I feel the situation is conducive to such intimacy.  Yes, sometimes, it's just a one-nighter.  I had to be home in an hour; this was not going to be one of those nights. 

For the first time in a really long time, I felt like a 16-year-old piece of cheap meat.  I felt stupid and also insulted that I was being offered a quickie in the backseat of his car, parked down a dark side street.  Again, not a scenario I'm unfamiliar with given my history, but I am not that girl anymore.  I'm a grown-ass woman.  I am worth far more than what this man was clumsily and uncomfortably offering me. 

And after writing two weeks ago and talking with my therapist this week, it was like I was watching this from above, from outside my own body.  For a moment, it felt like Stephanie was sitting there with Quinn as this recently-nice man imposed himself on us.  I could feel myself now, knowing this was just insulting, but I could also feel Quinn sitting silent and petulant, wishing he would just take his rough hands and slobbering mouth off of her. 

Something in me clicked and shoved him away quickly.  I got out of the car and said I needed to go.  I walked back to my car, a block away.  I texted Pandy to let her know it had gone awry but that I was okay. 

This is where I will also interject that I called Bounder.

In the now-14 months since we met, dated, broke up, dated again, broke up again, slept together, slept together again, dated others, slept together again, et cetera, we have continued to have this weird connection.  One of us reached out to the other, usually via text, at just that right moment when the other seems to need us.  We still sometimes dream of each other at the same time, as we'll find out a day or two later. 

But in all of that time, with all of the men I've gone out with, Bounder always seems to know.  He has never failed to text me while I'm with someone new, sometimes at the most inappropriate moments that I don't see until after the fact.  He's never failed to reach within than four hours after I've been with a new guy.  Whether he smells my perfume on the wind or has a bug in my phone (no, he doesn't), he just knows.

It is unquestionably the dance of an Anxious and Anxious-Avoidant.

I'd even joked on Friday afternoon that I wasn't blowing off this first date with S just to go sleep with Bounder.  (It wouldn't have been the first time.)

I hadn't even left my house for the date when his text came.

Totally innocent response to something else from days before.  I was leaving for the date when I saw the message.  The man is uncanny, really. 

And I didn't shut down this thing with S because of Bounder.  He really doesn't have the power to cock-block my dates from a distance.  I wasn't caught up in the idea of him that night; I was completely engaged with S until it turned weird.  (Let me stress here that at no time with S did I feel unsafe or in any type of danger.  I was simply very, very uncomfortable.)

My voice shaking and low, I called Bounder to tell him thank you for having never made me feel like I owed him anything.  Honestly, I was thankful it was a late-night voicemail and that I didn't have to talk to him directly.  For all of his faults, for all of the times I have done this fucked-up pathological dance with the man I love more than any other ever but who is such a heartbreakingly-close-but-terrible fit for me, he never made me feel sexually worthless.  In fact, as I was working through some pretty ugly memories and trying to get past some things, he was incredibly, beautifully patient and supportive with me.  He failed me in a lot of ways, but he never, ever made me feel anything but beautiful and wanted for exactly who I was, not because I should or might be something else, not because there was an expectation.  And that, in and of itself, is its own kind of love. 

So I'm still learning how to step differently, how to dance to a different beat.  It's not like reading this book would suddenly make me not maladaptive.  But it did open my head, giving me some insight and tools to work toward the healthy relationship I likely never would've possessed, had I not started this process of intense self-analysis and re-discovery. 

As shaken as I was when I walked away from that uncomfortable moment, I know I am fully engaged in this process.  I'm not watching from afar, checking out emotionally to just let things happen to me.  Healthy or unhealthy choices are my choices, and they aren't dependent on what Cissie or Quinn might want, though their needs are sometimes still my needs.

I drove us all home and to bed.  Alone.

And as La Bruja commented on Facebook as we talked about this date, "The good things that I see from this: 1) material—duh; 2) nothing happened and you're fine; 3) when you meet the right man, and some hot guy starts flirting with you while you're in line at Starbucks, you won't wonder if you missed any fun experiences by not dating more. You'll know you've got a great thing going and that 97% of all the guys who flirt with you would not come close to measuring up."

 

Never let your fear decide your fate.

I hate math.  Hate it.

"Maybe it feels the same way," my 13-year-old son math genius said, when I lamented outloud.

"I wouldn't blame it," I replied.  "I've done nothing but badmouth it since I was 12 years old."

That's about the time it started.  Pre-algebra.  I'm okay with arithmetic, even solving for basic variables.  But give me rational expressions, and my brain just kind of shuts down.  I'll struggle through the homework, think I have it, and totally bomb a test.  The problem is that I never really seem to get why I was wrong.  For years my math grades were comprised almost entirely of partial credit. 

College algebra is part of the reason I never graduated.  Only part, I stress, because I know damn well that my choices had a lot to do with it.  But when I was already inclined to blow off class and get into some other trouble, it was all too easy to blame my mutual hatred of algebra for keeping me from doing what I needed to do. 

I was complaining on Facebook about my hatred of polynomials.  I have three friends who are both geniuses (truly) and math teachers: Moonshine, Boogie Shoes, and Mathilde. 

Mathilde, who teaches college math, had this to say in the course of our discussion:

It's true that there are many different levels on which one can "get" it, and you can feel like you've gotten it when you still really have a fairly superficial understanding. (It's a bit like the difference between being able to drive a car vs. being knowing how to fix the engine when it breaks.)

Of course I have some professional expertise here, but lately I've been thinking about this on a whole different level as I watch the different ways that my son and daughter approach math. They're both good at it, but they have totally different reactions when they hit a wall. It's really driven home for me how important it is to PLAY with it, look at a problem from all different angles, see what you CAN figure out even if you don't know how to get all the way to an answer. Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it. There are a zillion different ways to approach any particular math topic, and the more of them you explore, the more solid your overall understanding will be. I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.

Don't be afraid to fuck it up, because you learn the most from coming to understand HOW you fucked up, and how to fix it.  I really believe that that willingness to get your hands dirty and engage with it is far more predictive of success than whatever your innate talent may or may not be.

Best.  Advice.  Ever. 

It's how I try to live every other part of my life, so why the hell would I let this be my undoing?  Why would it be okay to let a required math class or two be the one thing that could stand in the way of completing the degree necessary to move my life forward? 

Had I graduated from college in 1994 as originally planned, I would've likely gone on to work in my originally-chosen field—Mass Communications.  I would probably have still married DH, though we would've been living a different life.  I very well might not have had the boys I have, who could only have been who they are because they were conceived in their respective moments.  I might have something different and just as wonderful, but it wouldn't be Max and Tricky, without whom I can't imagine my life. 

Just because I didn't get what I'd planned, just because my journey took a different path than anyone anticipated for me, that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile or in any way less than what I'd envisioned.  In so many ways, I am more fulfilled as a woman and a soul than I ever thought possible. 

I have the very real task of learning the skills necessary to get a real job, to take care of me and my boys.  I have to relearn a lot of things I should've mastered a long time ago.  To choose not to do it is to be ungrateful, again, for the opportunities I've been given and have made for myself. 

So I can't be afraid to fuck it up.  I will likely fuck it up.  But I will choke down the disappointment and dust my hands off and try again.  I will look closely at what I did wrong, which variable threw me off, and I will try it again and again and again until I can pass these tests.  Maybe not with flying colors, but certainly with far more knowledge and insight than I had when I started. 

And on the other side?  There's an entirely different life ahead of me.  It's not where I thought I'd be, not where I originally dreamed of being.  But it will be goddamn good, because I got dirty and fought like hell to make it that way.  I'll still struggle with math.  I'll still catch my breath at the sight of a polynomial, and sometimes it will remind me of what my intentions had been when I was 20. 

Then I'll remind myself that here and now is the only place I can live—not then and certainly not when.  And I'll know that I can, because I bulldozed my own walls and powered through to an unexpected and promising future.

 

The chains that you break to be free, well they tear up the ground when you drag them around.

Oh, my heart is a brutal, tempestuous little bitch sometimes—trapped in the delicate, fragile teapot of my head.

I'm now three years into Muchness and Light—November 25^th will be three years exactly—and this forum has been as cathartic for me as my therapist's office, though substantially cheaper.  Sometimes I find myself covering old ground again, about love and those life lessons I have tackled so openly during this time.  When I realize I'm circling back to something I thought I'd exhausted before, I realize there's a reason, something I didn't get right the first time.

There's always some catalyst—a new drama or relationship or end of a relationship—that sends my heart reeling and bouncing around the confines of my head.  My dad would likely make the "bb in a box car" analogy.  The cacophony between my ears sounds like a thousand simultaneous, murmured conversations with the bells and whistles of a pinball machine dinging above the din. 

It's overwhelming to me sometimes.  How could it not be too much for anyone else?  How could it not exhaust someone else, to let them take a shot at the flippers?

It has become part of my established, public persona that I am a lot to handle.  My online dating profile even warned men that I can be intimidating, that I'm "loud and voracious and a ball of batshit blond energy."  I've received hundreds of messages, telling me how they appreciate my honesty and that they'd like a shot at channeling that energy.  Five minutes later, when it's clear that they assume it means I just want great, casual sex, I'm generally done with that conversation. 

It's not usually that much different in person. 

When someone takes the time to get to know me, though, they do get to see my softer side.  I'm really very sweet and incredibly affectionate, and I am fully capable of being quiet and still when the moment demands it. 

As confident as I am in who I am, though, I'm also very insecure in how other people deal with me.  I can get my feelings hurt far more easily (and often) than I'd like to admit.  In fact, I often hide that from the person who has lashed me, knowing it's usually not an intentional assault against my fragile façade.  I'm a lot of personality, which means my heart is a big, easy target.  It's that much harder to miss when I've taken it off my sleeve and am just carrying it openly in my hands, like a shield made from an oversized box of Valentine's chocolates.   

I'm not entirely fearless in my pursuit of love, no matter how brave I may be.  I'm not afraid to let people get close; I'm afraid to let them stay close.  I've been out with a lot of men in the last year.  Less than half of them have gotten a second date.  Of those that have, less than a quarter have gotten yet another shot.  I tend to throw myself out there and then yank myself back from the brink.  In all fairness, it has usually been because I could readily tell those men weren't for me, and I didn't want to waste my time on those fruitless endeavors. 

When I meet someone I truly like, someone for whom I develop feelings, it's very hard for me not to assume that they will disappoint me.  I have a definite pattern of finding emotionally unavailable men and trying my best to forge a relationship with them anyway.  It goes back to my childhood (What doesn't?  Ask my therapist.), and I can pinpoint the unavailability in each and every one of the men I've been attached to romantically.  All retrospectively, of course.

In my moving-into-the-new-year post from the end of 2012, I wrote this:

I do not want unavailable men.  Maybe that seems like a no-brainer, but I have this tendency to attract such beings into my life.  Whether logistically or emotionally, I am magnetically attracted to the men who are least likely to be able to share their life or mine.  Maybe it's something about their being inherently broken—a fragile cat.  They're soft and pretty and purr when I pet them, but they can't give what I need or want in return.  I don't want that anymore. 

So why the hell do I keep going back to that?

My heart knows better in theory but not in practice.  My head knows it's stupid to even glance at a fragile cat.  But I do it all the damn time, as if one day, just maybe one of them will break that pattern and not be quite like the rest. 

Hot Pocket chided me in her drawling, gentle way that I need to get it into my pretty, thick head that I deserve to be happy with good things.  I know this logically.  I am human.  I'm a good person.  I have done nothing so unredeemable that it makes me undeserving of love. 

But in my heart, I don't know that I'm worthy of the affection and attention of a man who truly loves me.  Everything in my past has shown me the opposite is true.  The people who love me most will disappoint me and hurt me more than I ever could imagine. 

It's unfair of me to have those expectations of a new person, and it runs the risk of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy.  If I am constantly waiting for them to back away, perpetually on the edge of heartbreak, I am much more likely to flinch and flee at the slightest provocation.  It also places an unfair strain on them, to be living under my super-observant, watchful eye. 

Somewhere along the way, I have to learn to be here now, to let the present be not only what matters most but what influences most.  I've let go of most of the hurt of the past, but it's impossible for me to forget about it all.  What I can't do is expect someone who has no ties to that to live in trepidation that one of my ghosts will haunt them. 

And every time I think I've laid those ghosts to rest, when I am finally able to rest, the rattling of their dragging chains clangs through the commotion in my head and sends me caroming toward the opposite wall of the teapot, where my heart dings against the crackleware and the echoes feel like a constant death knell. 

There's a comfort in seeking out what you know, in finding respite in what's familiar.  Maybe that's why I feel snug within the confines of unavailability.  I can rail against the men who compartmentalize me, who put me in the proverbial box that I purport to loathe, but I am all too willing to climb inside, crouching down excitedly until I can burst through the top like a girl in a giant cake.  I do love the anticipation, the waiting to see how they will react when I am suddenly and dramatically exposed.
 

In reality, they almost always freak the fuck out when it happens, when I am fully and completely me.  They make that face of surprise, with a glimmer of oh-my-god-it's-just-too-much before they wipe it blank and try to hide their apprehension.  That is the pinpoint of unavailability. 

I can't and won't change who I am to make them more comfortable.  I've discussed this many, many times—it's dishonest to me and to them.  I can adjust and hold back a little bit, trying not to inundate them with my muchness, but when my heart gets invested, the floodgates will part and set the deluge upon them. 

That's when it becomes sink or swim for us both.  I keep looking for the cat who can swim, who can disentangle me from the ghostly chains and bring me back to the surface, even when I know I'm the only one who can do it.  But somewhere there just has to be someone who thinks I'm worth that battle, doesn't there?  Doesn't everyone deserve a love that will fight for them, no matter what? 

So I keep fighting like that for the men I love, even when I know they won't fight back.  Maybe I'm hoping it's kind of like karma, that if I put enough out there that I will eventually have to get back what I've given.  Like a cosmic love dowry--it takes a huge investment to get what you want. 

Until in comes, I'll keep dancing and jumping around, waving my giant, red heart and offering my delicious confections to passers-by.  Surely one of them will appreciate it, someday. 

I don't want good, and I don't want good enough. I want "can't sleep, can't breathe without your love."

A few months ago, while discussing my ongoing list of things I'd want in a man and/or a relationship, Growler said, "You might have to settle.  You may have to be willing to accept 85% of what you want, if everything else is worth it."

I talked to Absolem about it a couple of weeks later.  "Oh, she's right," he said, complete seriousness on his face.  "You'll probably have to take less than what you want, if you want to be in a relationship.  Though I don't get why you'd want one, when you can have so many."

I reactivated my online dating account this week.  After I reviewed a few dozen potential new matches, the site told me I was too picky and should loosen up as far as my standards were concerned.

Even Queen Frostine urged me to go into my next relationship without such high expectations.  Her point, she stresses, is that I should be able to learn to be happy within the confines of who I'm with, for who they are, rather than constantly comparing them to the past or to my ideal.

"I love living in Chicago," said my well-traveled friend, "but I also really love San Francisco and London.  I could totally live in either of those cities just as easily as I live here."

"Sure, but you'd always miss some things about Chicago," I pointed out. 

And then there's Bounder.  He says he knows he can never be 100% of what I want or need, 100% of the time.  He wants to, has the desire, but not the capacity.

Well who the fuck can?

It's romantic to imagine a man could love me so much that he strived every day to be everything for me, especially one who could see me and reach me and touch me inside and out the way Bounder (and even sometimes Absolem) could.  I'd like to think that DH tried, but right now I'm still too caught up in the aftermath to really see it clearly. 

But romantic or not, it's fucking ludicrous.

No man will ever be able to be 100% of anything for me and certainly not all the time.  That's an unreasonable expectation to place on another individual.  We are beautifully flawed humans, and to demand perfection from someone is asking to be disappointed or worse. 

All I ever expected from the men I loved was that they be there how and when they could, and that they do it fully and openly and honestly.  By the time I really loved them, I knew who and what they were.  I knew their histories and their fears and their double-edged swords.  I knew the potential of their hearts, and I just wanted them to work toward that, both for me and for themselves. 

I never thought that was an unreasonable expectation.  Apparently I was wrong. 

Don't tell me I'm wonderful and deserve more.  Don't tell me you wish you were able to do these things, to be what I deserve, because I am special enough to be worth that.  If I have that value to you, then honor that.  If you love me and I am so deserving, then make the attempt to live up to the potential I see in you, that you say you see in yourself.  When you err—hell, even when you fail—if there's still potential and value, then keep working. 

My heart would not have seen yours if it weren't so very special, nor would it have loved you if you weren't worth my own hard work and effort. 

So it might be nice to imagine that prince among men, who would care for me and fill in the gaps I can never quite seem to fill.  The one who could kiss me like no other and love me no matter how hard the day was.  Who could be there at night when I both need and want him.  Who understands my sense of humor and appreciates my intensity, who loves me not in spite of my batshit but because of it.  The one who could love me for me and not for what I can do for him. 

That is the ideal I have to relinquish.  That's where I have to settle. 

I can find a playmate, a great lover, an outstanding kisser, someone who's sober, and maybe even an Irish guy who is bigger than I am.  But all of that in a man who can really love me for me?  That'll never happen.

I've met a lot of guys this year who were great, cute, and very nice.  But the kiss just wasn't there, for a variety of reasons.  Maybe they were too soft or too messy or too whatever. 

"Can you live with it?" Basket Case asked when I lamented recently about one in particular.

No.

There is so much in a kiss, so much truth of a person in how they move their mouth against yours.  Floppy, wet, forceful?  Too slow or too fast?  Chronic bad breath?  Do they touch your face or bend you into their kiss, rather than meeting you halfway?  Do they ever let you take the lead?  Eyes open or tightly closed?

In my life, the ones who've done it right, right for me, are the ones who've been least able to meet my expectations, even when I've lowered them in compromise.  If they can make me breathless with their kiss, they will eventually knock the breath out of me completely. 

It's not about kissing frogs to find my prince.  He doesn't exist.  And even if he did, I'd be too busy with the frog in the crown, just because his kiss could fool me. 

Really, Cupid?

Last week, I was talking yet again with Queen Frostine about my post-divorce love life. 

"Hot Pocket says I'll meet someone—the right someone, but I don't know when or where that's gonna happen," I told her.

"I'm not about platitudes," she replied.  "Maybe you'll meet someone, but you might not.  I mean, I doubt that's the case, but it's possible you'll never meet a right person again.  It probably won't happen in a bar or somewhere similar.  You need to try some new places.  Maybe you should try online dating."

"Oh gawd no!"

"Why not?"

"I don't think I'm that desperate yet!"

She went on to explain that she knew several people who'd had great luck with it.  I was dubious at best.  I did go that night to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for Cocktails in the Garden.  While the new Imaginary Worlds installations were amazing, all of the men I talked to were either gay or with their partners and children.  A couple of guys did look me up and down—with their significant others sitting right next to them.  (Seriously, guys? If I see that, I can promise you she does, too.)

I was home by 10:00 that night, eating cereal and watching television while I cried. 

I could've stayed in bed all the next day, feeling utter repugnant and rejected, but I went that evening to meet another friend, La Bruja, for happy hour at H. Harper Station.  She and I went to high school together, also with Queen Frostine and Growler and so many of the inner circle.  She's also divorced, though for longer than I have been.  She's dated far more than I have.  I mentioned the online dating suggestion.

"Oh, you should totally try it," she encouraged. 

She went on to tell me which site she thought was best, how to go about setting up my profile, why I should answer at least fifty of the profile questions, etc.  She also had some great stories to share about her own experiences. 

I also knew this was something I wanted to research for a character in a planned Junkture book. 

So yesterday I went to the site and set up my profile.  I included a couple of pictures that I've used publicly before—nothing racy or exceptionally personal.  I was very honest on my descriptions of myself and my interests.  I took the position that I would be my normal, brutally open self.

My message inbox started to fill up very quickly. 

"Hi I wish you lived closer I really like you."

"hi, did you have a fun night?"

"I think I fell in love!  Fell for that beautiful smile!"

All day this went on.  A few I replied to, though sometimes just to tell them no.  Some seemed mildly interesting. 

"Hey there lovely.  Interested in a younger guy maybe? ;)"

"Would you care to chat with me, gorgeous?"

"Wowwww.  Sexy.  Yes please."

"Wawww, very nice pics u r so beautiful ;)"

Oh, look!  There's a BLOCK button!

I could go on for days about this, especially as the process unfolds.  As I started to share some of these posts on my Facebook page, friends excitedly asked if I'd be including this in my next book.  Some of it will be, obviously, but there's just so much of it that I'd never be able to do it justice. 

So I've decided to start a new blog about my adventures in online dating. 

I will still be here, regularly, and I'm sure I'll make reference to Really, Cupid? fairly often.  But there is far more to me than what someone may see through an online dating profile.  I still have issues to work through, and Muchness and Light is the place I write about my journey and my rediscovery of my muchness. 

Feel free to join me on Really, Cupid? and follow along.