Looking Back

This weekend I wrote another chapter for my book. I started questioning how far into my life I am going to take this. Typically a memoir spans a certain time period or focuses on a series of events. It should essentially have a story to it, a purpose, an explanation if you will for who you are and why. I am finding if difficult to place more importance on one part of my life over another. My childhood and my adolescence, the two areas I am covering, are so drastically different but blend together to create who I am now. Each has a significant impact and each equally noteworthy. Until I wrote these pages, I had no idea the impact these times in my life had on me. When asked, I would have said my younger years had little mark on the person I am today. But in actuality, it has everything to do with it.

Many people blame their past negative experiences for their self destructive patterns and behaviors. Professional victims I call them. I have always been so determined to overcome my past that I essentially went completely opposite with my thinking. I have never blamed my disturbed mother, the pedophiles in my life, bad parenting or cruel friends for anything I did or thought as an adult. I made a vow to myself to be a rock, to never give in to my sadness or fears. And while I never played the victim, how I handled it very well may have been worse.

Looking back on my life I can see where the need to stand strong overshadowed allowing myself to feel. In an attempt to feel no pain or anger, I essentially felt nothing. Keeping secrets and shame to myself kept me from my freedom to love properly. I walked with my head held high, untouchable by those that could hurt me. However I was untouchable by those that could love me too.

In reading my old journals and reflecting on my past there is a lot I had forgotten. Selective memory has always served me well, or so I thought. In having to relive these moments lost in time, I feel empty for the opportunities missed. As an adult I can see where sharing, being honest, and allowing myself the vulnerabilities all this time very well could have changed who I ultimately ended up being.

Don't get me wrong, I am in a good place now. However I probably could have gotten here a whole lot sooner if I would have allowed myself to feel.

Validation

I like validation. I need validation. I know its a character flaw, but honesty is not. So, yes, I admit, I need to know that I am wanted, needed, useful, appreciated, and hopefully someone certain people feel they cannot live without. But sometimes the need for validation holds me back from doing or saying things that might not warrant such validation. Validation comes in a lot of forms. For me, I prefer the non verbal type, particularly in bed.

I have always read that you should talk to your partner during intimate times, that you should say what you like, what you don't, what you want and where. And while I agree that communication can be very helpful in finding a really nice intimate connection, I find holding conversation during sex a kill joy, unless of course the conversation is raw in nature. I am very aware of how my actions effect my partner in bed. I pay attention. I use all of senses to make sure that I am finding that connection not just having sex. Part of my lovemaking stems from my self esteem issues and my need to make sure I dont do something they wont like. Another part is my constant drive to do things 100% all the time. If my mother only knew her warped desire to have all things perfect shaped my love making skills.

Validation for me in an intimate setting comes in the form of moans, whimpers, lubrication and orgasms. It appears in body language, new experiences and returning to old favorites. There are a lot of clues that I look for and use to create a better experience. If my partner is not enjoying themselves I have failed. As a matter of fact for most of my life I didn't even enjoy being touched. I placed all my value on what I could do for someone else, how I made them feel. Their pleasure was my validation, and secretly it still is the most important thing in that moment to me. However I have learned to allow myself the pleasure derived from being touched, even if most times I still feel as though it being done out of obligation.

Occasionally my wife does something while we are intimate that I have never said I truly love. I have never told her that when she does that, when she reacts to me like that, it validates me like nothing else right then. I don't tell her because I am afraid she will do it just because she thinks I like it. I don't ever want her to do something just because she knows I like it. I want it to happen because she feels me and she is reacting to me.

Last night as I was cooking dinner I replayed a moment in my mind. I remembered the last time she reacted in that way and I remembered how I felt. I wanted to turn to her and say "I really really really love it when you.......", I wanted to share what I was thinking and how it made me feel, but I didn't. I didn't dare risk the possibility that next time the validation occurred it wouldn't be honest.

I notice

You bring me coffee in bed each morning......even if I am awake first

You send me an Email before you do anything else......even when I forget to open it before I do anything else

I find my clothes washed and folded on the bed.....and sometimes sigh when I have to put them away

When I cook dinner, the dishwasher is clean and empty.....as it is every evening

You bought me warm snuggly pajamas.......just because I didn't feel well

Each day I receive a text at noon......even when you think you are the last person I want to hear from at that moment

Sometimes I think I am the one that isn't appreciated......

Where is the humility?

We all enter into relationships because we need something. Maybe we need companionship. Maybe we need to feel loved. Most often, its a combination of reasons. For me, its because I need the way I am needed. It took me a long time to realize that is what I was ultimately looking for, and probably walked away from a couple of times already. My perception of experience told me that doing things for someone was a sign of weakness. That by doing so you were agreeing to boot wiping on your back.

I walk around a little jaded by past relationships. The relationships we all have experienced at one point or another. The ones where you give everything you have and get nothing in return. There is one specifically that stands out in my mind. One that has unfortunately effected my trust with each relationship after. It was the one in which I let all of my defenses down, allowed myself to admit my neediness and did, did, did for her. That was the one that took advantage, cheated, and left me stranded. A time in my life that I cannot remember the actual pain of, but still see the scars.

Its so easy for people to tell you to get over things. To move on, that everyone is not THAT one. And rationally it makes sense. However when our defense mechanisms kick in, we find ourselves protecting ourselves too much. In the twenty something years since then, my defenses are still trying to protect me from her. Unfortunately she isn't the one in the picture anymore. They are now protecting me from something that doesn't exist. And while I appreciate the armor, I do not appreciate always feeling that I need to be ready to battle.

I can site a lot of moments in my day where instinct tells me to do something, something that may put me in a vulnerable position, but I resist. Afraid of ever looking weak, I don't do and say so many things that probably would enhance my current relationship. In an attempt to be the rock at all times, I am short changing myself the feelings that come with moments of humbling myself. I am not allowing my partner to experience me in my entirety. At this point, so many years later, I do not think it is genuine fear as much as it is a pattern of behavior engraved in my brain.

Why does it seem so easy to incorporate defense behaviors into our lives and so difficult to find the humility?

Dreams

I don't normally try to analyze my dreams. Between the medications I take, stress, and being all over the board in personality and thoughts, I usually assume they are pretty much an extension of my normal chaos.

Lately my dreams have been odd, even for me. I know emotionally I am a bit of a mess right now, and perhaps it is playing out in my sleep. That being said, I am finding it strangely peculiar the vulnerable positions I am allowing myself to find in my latest dreams. If you ask most people they will tell you I am loud, brassy, confident and a bit obnoxious. They will say I am witty, quick to the punch and an open book. They may say I am a little too bold, bossy and sometimes someone to be afraid of. Seldom do they say I am timid, small, quiet, and shy. Never will you hear them say I cant hold my own, that I will back out of a confrontation or admit defeat. You will never hear those words. Unless its from someone who knows me.

I am truly all of those things, the big and the small. However I am most comfortable when showing my peacock feathers. Its safer. I spend the majority of my time in this role with most people. It enables me to keep distance. It keeps vulnerability out of the equation.

The last few days I have felt emotionally defeated. I have been unable to stand up to myself. So I suppose its no wonder that my dreams are taking me to places unfamiliar and what should seem uncomfortable. While the situations in my dream are not typical, the feelings are. They are honest. Certainly more honest than I give away when I am awake. I woke up this morning after an interesting dream and found myself feeling very vulnerable and needy. It's a place I have truly only allowed myself to feel a couple of times honestly. I was surprised by the dynamics but quite comfortable with them.

I know my dreams are not my reality. I know they are not a prediction of the future or even a memory of the past. I know they are simply my thoughts and feelings grouped together into a vivid creation. But they are true. And honest. And sometimes I like how they feel. And maybe I need to take a lesson from them and allow myself to feel and be what dynamics dictate and not what I try to.

Someone I don't miss

I found you in a dream last night
It isn't something new
I think of you when I'm awake
Not how you'd like me to

I picture all the things you did
Your melancholy smile
In dreams you have the tendency
To effect me for a while

My heart feels heavy while I sleep
And you appear to me
Reminders of the way things were
And what they came to be

When I awake I feel the need
To tuck you out of sight
No explanation of my dream
To the one who makes it right

I could let you leave my dreams
And never reminisce
But I think I'd like to keep you there
As someone I don't miss

~eb

Both ends of the spectrum

I went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra last night. I had wanted to see them live for a very long time. Not just because I thought it would be a good show, but because I wanted to 'feel' it. The music they play is such a representation of who I am; two ends of the spectrum coming together to form something there are no words to describe.

I knew I would have a difficult time with the fact that it was their winter show and they would be playing Christmas songs. Christmas songs have a tenancy to depress me. They bring me back to a time in my life that I don't particularly wish to relive. I knew hearing these songs would make me feel sad and hollow and very small. On the other hand I knew they would be incorporating very intense guitar chords in heavy metal ballad form. Raw energy with the ability to touch me at my core. This type of music speaks to my powerful, confident, primal side. The marriage of the two was what I wanted to experience, what I wanted to relate to.

I was not disappointed in my quest. In two and a half hours I felt more emotion than I allow myself to most days in their entirety. I took the sad, let it mingle with the intense and found a really awesome middle ground; something I don't find in many places in my life. I tried to express this to my wife, but believe it or not, unless I write, I cannot speak. Too many years of who I am and what I have to say being misinterpreted or dismissed has made me very apprehensive to let words out face to face.

When I look inside myself I see a constant battle. A battle between genders and dynamics. I am constantly switching my roles, my feelings, my demeanor. I am always making decisions on where I fit at that moment. I am never 'just me'. I don't expect anyone to truly understand what I felt last night. I wish I could give you all a way to feel it. It wasn't about the music, as awesome as it was. It was about finding comfort in all my energy all at the same time. It was about not having to just feel one way and then the other. It was about feeling everything all at once.

The Mustang

As I was looking at the demographics of this blog, who visits and what they read, I found it funny that the most widely read post was "Strap on, Strap off". I would assume most people that saw "strap on" took it for what it was. Does that mean we are a community of perverts? I hope so.

I vacationed in Hawaii this past summer. Naturally I packed the essentials everyone would need, clothes, toiletries, bathing suits and yes, my detachable appendage. When I buy things, I don't buy cheap. I am a perfectionist by nature and my cock was no different. It truly is an extension of me in that moment, so glass, steel, purple or polka dot isn't going to work. I want it to look right and feel right for my partner, and it needs to be a representation of what I feel and who I am inside. I don't use one to become a man, but I do use one to do what seems to come naturally to me. I am an insatiable female with the drive and talents of a teen aged boy in the height of puberty.

Unpacking when I got home from a fabulous seven days, I realized something was left behind. I would think most people in that position would start adding up the dollars lost. In that first few seconds I, however, felt like I lost my best friend. I suddenly felt incomplete. In an instant my mind ran through a slide show of pictures, memories lost, new ones unable to be made, the housekeepers touching it! I was truly depressed.

I could rationalize that it's just a "thing"; a tangible, replaceable item. It didn't feel that way. I don't bring it to bed with me every time I have an intimate moment, but the thought of being intimate without the possibility of having it if I needed it was devastating to me. "Its a rubber cock for Christ's sake". I tried to convince myself. I spent the next several days with my eyes searching the internet for a suitable replacement. Unfortunately they don't make the exact one anymore, nor do they make the harness I could never part with, despite its rusting snaps from the million washings.

With a lot of research, a heavy sigh, and a wife aiming to please, I chose a new "set". It arrived a few days later in the mail. Being the person I am, I immediately found things to dislike about it. I compare everything now to what was good in my life then, a terrible personality trait, I know. The harness seemed cheap, the cock small. Prepared to be disappointed I brought it to bed for the first time. I felt performance pressure for the first time in a long time. I felt self conscious. I was worried I wouldn't 'feel it' or that my wife wouldn't enjoy it. But I learned something that day. I realized that comfortable isnt always the best thing. That sometimes stepping outside of the comfort zone yeilds great results. After that night I no longer missed Magnum as I had loving dubbed it. I began a new relationship with Mustang,a much better representaion of who I am.

Now if I could just get the images of the housekeepers fucking each other out of my head.

She gets me

Driving into work this morning I was listening to music as usual. There is hardly a song that I hear that cant produce some kind of emotion in me, even if I don't particularly like the song. A pop song was playing at one point and I decided to listen to the words despite my urge to change the channel and find something more soothing to my ear.

The song was typical in that the artist was singing of his appreciation for his girl's beauty. As a writer I know how easy it is for strong emotions to inspire lyrics. Most songs you hear are about passionate love or the failure thereof. I realized that I have never written a song lyric, a poem or anything about anyone in a superficial way. While I have a great appreciation for a good looking woman, I don't write about it, I'm not inspired by it and it has never been criteria for me.

I began to reflect on what it is that inspires the sticky love dripping words I sometimes jot down. And all I could come up with was feelings. I write about feelings. Feelings that run much deeper than anything you can see. I recalled a line I wish I had penned, "her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child I'd hide". That's not about beautiful hair or the appreciation of it, its about the feeling the hair gives you. Those are the feelings that inspire me.

When people ask me about my significant other, they usually want to know where we met and what attracted me to her. Its hard for me to answer the latter because it doesn't have words. It's a series of feelings that can create a series of words, none of which would make much sense in a conversational setting. I end up looking like I am lost for words, like I cant pick out a single thing that would explain my love. The truth is, there really are no words to explain it.

My wife wont win the Miss America pageant, she doesn't have influential friends, she isn't rolling in money, her job is less than high profile, and her car is a typical four door sedan; hardly conversation stoppers. But she gets me. And no one in this entire world but her 'gets me'. No one else would have the strength, patience and selflessness to even try. I cant write about her hair or her eyes or how she shakes her booty on the dance floor. But I can write about how it FEELS when she gets me.

From now on, when someone asks me what attracted me to her, I will simply respond with that......."she gets me".