The Right Things

I told the psychologist who I pay yesterday that I am doing all the “right things:”  biking, lifting, working in the yard as much as possible, working part-time, seeing my friends, and today I’m going to my cousin’s house so my son can play with his second cousins.  She told me chop wood, carry water is the right approach, and it is.  But, do you know what is even more important?  Getting good sleep!  I feel like a million bucks right now.  I also have a good distraction in that woman who I don’t see really, but who I got a good charge out of hanging with last Wednesday.

I want to be clear, because my only gay friend who I see often gave me a lot of shit about her.  I am not a cheater, and hope that a couple of years from now I am at their commitment ceremony.  However, I’m around if they decide that they don’t have that future thing.  I’m doing my thing an waiting for a girl like her who catches my interest, because I’m ready to be vulnerable and put it out there to try again.  Like John Cusack says in “Say Anything,” “I want to get hurt.”  I’m not a masochist, but I do believe that you have to put it all out there to really keep a lasting love.  I’m willing.

Girls

So, I had “coffee” with her yesterday…  Because I get up before 7 everyday and at 5 August – May, I don’t actually take in caffeine often after 10, so I accidentally got there super early because I cannot tell well what the time riding will be when I use my new bike, which is very fast, and then I ate a bagel and drank water and waited.  After she got there, she asked if I wanted anything, got herself some tea, and sat down.  We didn’t talk about business.  I think that she was cognizant of that toward the end of our 1.5 long meeting and she quickly began paging through her binder and highlighting what they did.  Hmm…  She also said, “It’s obvious that you workout,” and didn’t tell me that she had a girlfriend until she was leaving.

Her eyes are gorgeous.  What a beautiful shade of green!  She also has the straightest, whitest teeth and wonderfully contagious smile.  I have to admit that her full lips are nice to watch when she talks.  I have to be honest, I was very glad that she has a girl.  I’m so fucked up about my ex, who I haven’t seen in a long time, and probably it will be two months before I do see her (meaning since the last time that I saw her).  We can explore what we are meant to, but I would be smoking pissed if my girlfriend had an hour and and a half long coffee with some girl who she had obvious good chemistry with and she made a reference to her body.  Let’s recall that she also looked at my boobs when we met at the beginning of May.  Good ego boost.

I need to disclose that I have spent 14-years of my life with Pisces.  I also had a coming out affair with a green eyed professional with the most beautiful mouth in the world (2nd Pisces).  This girl who I am getting to know is NOT a healthy clone of the drunk (also a Pisces.), it’s just the hair color and the soft butch presentation.  The drunk was like my ex.  She was full of shit most of the time and had a sales presentation.  I used to have that, and can affect it when I need to, but the drunk uses her presentation to to control conversation and people in certain respects.  This girl is soft and warm.  She is funny too and open and honest.  I felt funny that she knew very little about me, so I told her about my ex in the street when she was leaving.  I liked the way that she used my name when she left.  I tend to overwhelm Cancers, but I think that I wouldn’t with her and hope that we can hang out socially soon.  We are not business colleagues.

Nobility is going to be my approach.  I am curious when her girl moves for work what shape that will take for her.  I told her my experiences with six-states away, but her girl really does want to settle here.  We shall see how they navigate distance.  We shall also see what it feels like if she and I hang out solo when her girl moves.  I will have to exit after a few hours every night if we are going to meet one on one.  I will also have to honestly deal with my attraction–which as I have dated long enough to know is fed mutually–if it grows.  I don’t know.  I just know that coffee was interesting.

Incredulous

I am that way because I am highly intuitive and know people prior to them showing me their hands, or even if they don’t want me to know them very well, I still have an accurate sense of who people are and how they will move through situations.  In addition to a good gut-level sense of what is what, I’m also an observer and save questions for times that I really need to ask them or want to get the focus off of me.  She and I are highly unlikely to ever be together again because I tripped some serious shit in her.

She’ll come down for dinner at the end of next month, and again, I will listen, but I will be shocked if I even get to explain why I thought that we should go to counseling.  Oh well, there really isn’t a whole hell of a lot that I can do.  I do think that she’d like a closer friendship than I will give her, but that’s not going to happen because someday I really do want a partner and keeping her that close is the classic lesbian pattern with your ex providing everything.  However, it is not the whole package and given that I took 11-years off from it, I will be ready for it when I am ready to date.   I have best friends, and don’t want another one with the exception of what I really like about being in a relationship!

Anyway, I was thinking too, when I was listening to a song by Vertical Horizon how interesting it is that we assign qualities of a deity to our lovers.  She does not, in fact, know what I’m thinking.  I don’t think she wonders about it much either.  She is just paralyzed by the fact that I could be lost to her.  I won’t do that.  I will stay in her life, but not at the expense of me.  Warm and honest, and the truth serum is my approach.  I don’t know if we will shift back into each other’s arms ever again, but I would like to have what I always found to be funny, and that is a “healthy breakup.”

Naked

There is this song by the BoDeans that talks about being completely vulnerable, and the song title is the namesake of this post.  I figured that I would get some readership given the obsession with sex that American society has, but really to have excellent sex with someone you are also expressing some sort of vulnerability or connection with the other person.  A friend of mine sent me a Ted link today, which a presentation by a Social Work Professor in TX, and she said that in order to actually connect to another person, you must embrace completely that you are worthwhile.

I am worthwhile, and I don’t feel ashamed that I gave my whole soul and told many personal things that I had not expressed previously during my most recent relationship.  I took risks.  I have grown.  I have refined what I want and my psychologist (Who I pay) told me that I’m getting closer.  I think that I’m there and when I meet her, I will just know, and we will connect and build what we want and can attain.

Possibility

Promise

There are some days that are just harder than others.  The thing that struck me as most odd was the stark contrast to yesterday.  My friend and I literally laughed our asses off and we went for about 33-miles on a ride around the city.  It was phenomenal as was our lunch that we cooked.  Yesterday rocked.  Today was bad.

I got tons of sleep.  I lifted weights.  I braved the heat for three-miles on my bike.  I walked a little.  My friend made me breakfast and I took a cup of coffee with her.  However, I missed my son as soon as I got up and couldn’t stomach going to a Happy Hour solo for some reason.  Then she HeyTell’ed me a couple of times.  I was courteous and wished her a good evening, but I’m not saying goodnight.  At some point, she will have to realize that she is not my girlfriend and that the friend conversion is just bizarre.  Maybe in a year, but seriously, how do you pretend that you don’t get visuals of things that would make me flush from the face down to type?

I’m reminded of the on-again, off-again story that I got in detail that fateful weekend that I just drove home in the middle of the night.  She and her most recent partner did that.  That is her M.O.  It is NOT mine.  When I’m done, I’m done.  No matter what she does two to four weeks from now when she is down here for dinner will not lead her into my bed.  If she wants me, not only does she always have to come to me for some time, but she also has to commit to some couples counseling.  I’ll be shocked if she actually goes to dinner.

I have so many plans tomorrow.  I’m hiding from my cell phone all day starting at 8:30 am.  One of my friends is home before she starts school on the West Coast, so we are having dinner at my house.  I won’t be rude and even be around my phone.  I may or may not check it before I got to bed.  That will make this next day superior.  I’m really a lucky person and know that sometimes there are just simply shit days.  And it’s summer, so the sun will shine tomorrow.

Shift

Not the microbrew; although, I hope that my friend brings a four-pack of it today so we can have it after our ride.  We will probably do about 30-miles today and I’m feeling very, very good.  I am very much with the wave of momentum, and moving forward with my life and made it crystal clear to my ex that I won’t put up with her shit anymore.  She is coming down to dinner in July.

I’m having coffee–the girl made it perfectly clear that’s what it was–next week to work out some details of the committee work that she wants me to do for a state professional organization with the girl whose number I got as a coup.  I will tell you that when initially she had asked me if I was licensed and she said that she needs a secretary, I could only think of Maggie Gyllenhaal on her hands and knees with memos in her mouth.  Hee-hee.

This woman is a healthy clone of the drunk though.  Down to many physical details, and I need to be circumspect this time around, and she wants a professional relationship.  To be perfectly honest as well, I didn’t even look at her ass when I met her, so that’s not a good sign for my attraction.  I need more lesbian friends.  Also, I want to do tons of professional networking because it helps the profession and because I don’t want to move for internship.

I’m going to crash a women’s happy hour tomorrow too.  My one friend who’s gay can’t go because she is working a swing shift, so I will solo fly.  I want to ride bikes with them anyway and I think that they do other stuff too.  Again, I’m expanding my  horizons and looking around until I find a girl who I want to date.  I’m going in cautiously initially, but when I find a nice and sexy one, I will be open and hopeful.  My heart is free!

Consistency

So, she did call me to talk through a situation.  She also rapid fired a whole bunch of questions at me about what’s been going on and I just described my day and my weekend plans.  She told me that she wanted to talk to me about a professional question and said that she’d “love to pick my brain,” but as we talked, it became obvious that she had weird expectations.  I can definitely consult about behavior problems and what I recommend is empirically validated and will work.

What I can’t do is ignore the elephant in the room and that is that she expects an instant friendship.  That is bizarre.  We don’t have anything and she has never honored a f2f chat with me so we can end things on a better note.  She said about two-weeks ago that it is because she would want to have sex with me.  Well, sex is consensual and I would not want to have it with her.  She is not honest or consistent, and after we hung up she texted several times that she just wanted a friend.  I told her that she has tons of friends and we are undefined.  I also told her that she asked for a professional consult, that she never has seen me in a month because she’s “too busy,” and that I have no idea what we are and what she wants from me.

She’ll contact me again.  I won’t text back.  I will ask for a phone time and directly ask her what her expectations are.  I will also ask her again if she’s in love with me and would go to counseling.  If those questions are no, then we can take a year’s worth of space and then after that time has elapsed, if she wants to contact me, she can.  Just like these past few weeks, I won’t be contacting her again.  I haven’t and I won’t.  I do wonder if I’m in love with her anymore.  Last night was bizarre and there is no way that I would even want to touch her when I’m the covert “friend” who she wanted to catch up with under the guise of a professional question.  I mean what I say and say what I mean and expect that from my friends and want that in my love relationship.

Happy Soltice

So, of course it’s two-days in a row with texting…  It’s an occupational hazard that I have actually, and this request from her is legitimate, and I am glad to use my brain and she can make phone contact if she wants more information than the rather academic stuff that I included in text.  All in her court.  I noticed that she has a close up pic of herself in shorts and a sportsbra for her profile pic right now, so she is obviously adding “friends” quickly for later coups when she is ready to date again.  Good for her.

When she told me that she needs time to sort herself out first and then decide what she wants last week, I took the wish with her name that I had written on a journal page (One of my MH partners told me that this is a method of communicating with the Universe) and burned it.  It lit quickly and burned to about a 2-inch square and when I unfolded that, I noticed that there was no writing left.  So, that is pretty clear if I’m communicating with the Universe.

So, what I am doing is beginning to network with outdoor types of women and I’m attending a going away party tomorrow.  I won’t have had a facial, but I can cover my roots.  Although I don’t feel open to dating per se, I do feel ready to hang out with some new girls.  I want to see if my heart can move again, and don’t want temporal parameters on that, and trust that it will when it is meant to.

Worth it

I guess that’s what I’ve come to ultimately, and it’s that I want to be valued enough that when differences occur or there are some things that need to be addressed in this “relationship” that we just do it.  I don’t want to be criticized and definitely don’t want my son to be looked at like “a psych experiment.”  I think that when you are done, you reflect on things that you let go or ignored.  She actually said that once.  I think she is actually fairly fucked up and still hold that she is the queen of projection and displacement.

I had a dear friend over for dinner last night.  She is actually a lesbian too, and I only have one friend who is close to me who is.  She works constantly, so we aren’t super close.  The occasion was that she is moving out of state–to the West Coast.  It was so great to see her.  I told her that my ex and I didn’t really work and also told her how we met, and then casually chimed in about her having difficulties with my son.  Her huge eyes got bigger.  She told me over and over what an amazing kid he is and how lucky I am.  There are probably many reasons that my ex and I didn’t work out.

Of course she texted me during dinner and now has questions in her non-questions.  I briefly answered it this morning and although there is no salutation in text, I said, “Have a good day.”  She’ll never come down for dinner, and I know that I knew that when that is what I offered for us seeing each other.

I told my friend last night that I want more lesbians in my life, and she said, “Why?  They are cliquey and never respect new relationships.”  I told her my partner is not likely to grow out of straight girls who I have known most my life, and she said, “I don’t have any problem meeting women.”  Not that I’m in the market.  My heart is healing.  However, I remembered meeting (kind of) my ex’es’ friends and they were cold to me.  She has a group of lesbian moms who she hangs out with, and I could care less who likes me so I just ignored them.  If I was worth it to her, we’d have hung out with her friends during our 8-months.  We didn’t approach a relationship balanced at all.  I don’t want to contact her, know that she’ll continue to contact me, but will just let whatever fade and trust that I won’t run into her for a long time.  How odd what not only transpired, but what we have become.

 

Suckage

I’m foul today.  It’s also way too hot all of a sudden.  I’m so pissy and mean that I know that I can’t even workout tonight.  At least I got a walk in with my son, but I had to wake him up way too early to take breakfast over for my Dad.  At least we only had to stay at my folks’ house for a couple hours, but with the childhood that I had (seriously) it is increasingly hard for me to feign happiness.  I can do the propriety and respectfulness, but that’s it.

She texted yesterday.  It made me really mad.  When is she going to leave me alone?  It is you, who won’t go to counseling with me!  It is you who can’t answer simple questions.  It is you who started this downward spiral and shitty pattern of push after the first of the year, so now you need to back off any contact, because you have no intention of coming down here to see me.

Damn her anyway.  She started all of this bullshit and says that we both had a hand in it.  Want to know the truth?  We did.  Because I let her treat me like shit for nearly four-months.  Now, I’m just angry and want her to leave me be.

Golden Silence

It’s really golden to not get contact, and I know that because I said that she should come to me if she wants to see me, she won’t.  Want to know why?  I think that I do.  Because if she can’t control the parameters and things are not as she is used to, which is coming to her when you need something from her, she doesn’t feel comfortable or does she want it.

Now, there isn’t any intrusiveness.  I do my thing and she makes no contact.  It’s today that I realize that she won’t either.  She will contact me again in the fall.  When those colors abound and she remembers her son crawling through the leaves, mine throwing them with sticks and dirt, and us sharing that moment where we loved each other very truly and very deeply and looked at each other in another silent moment.  However, that one was different than the emotion that is yielded by silence now.

I love this song.  It is exactly what I’m thinking as of late as I can’t move much due to injury and am both contemplative and full of dreams for my future with the right woman.   I want to just be with a girl, and not overthink, and I definitely want a woman who takes what I say at face value and doesn’t dissect my words.  I have integrity and I embrace truth.  Looking back on my last five years, I have not settled, and I won’t.  There is a girl who is smart, sexy, fit, funny, and is ready to love me and my son.

Momentum

I have some injuries that are external and what is interesting to me is that they both came to the surface today.  Today was the day that she told me that she just needs more time and that she doesn’t have it, so she has no expectations.  I think that is the let you down easy e-mail, but not to put a finer point on it, all I had asked is if she was still in love with me and would go to counseling?  I didn’t ask anything else and I drove home nearly three weeks ago when she was too “sick and tired” to have sex after we hadn’t the night before either.  It’s simple.  She does not see me as a priority.  That’s fine.  I can bounce.

So, my quadricep looks like someone has burst Easter Egg dye under it from the knee up, and my big toe is loosing the toenail on the other foot.  Both of these areas were killing me since last Wednesday, and today, it is obvious due to disgustingness and the pools of blood under the other that they are starting to heal.  I don’t believe in coincidences, so I know that it is me who was carrying around pain and now; although, it still does hurt to walk, I will heal.  I think that I can sit on a bike seat, so a friend of mine and I are going to take a long bike ride tomorrow.

She was shocked (again) when I said, “OK.  Glad that you have thought through as much as you have time for.  Best wishes and have a good summer.”  She wants to hang out, but I know that she won’t because I sure as hell will not drive up there and know that when the plans are not hers that she will not follow through.  I would be astonished if she came down here for dinner–although I am an excellent cook–so in a couple of weeks she’ll say, “Meet me halfway for a bike ride,” and I will tell her the truth.  It seems stupid to put your bike in a car, waste gas, and then have to drive back.  I’ll use the ample trails that I have which begin feet from my door, and I also plan on doing more road biking with my son’s Godfather who can mentor me.

We shall see…  I am pretty sure that I get her.  I’m going back to hang time to get over her.  Remember in “In the Bedroom” when the father’s hand heals?  Maybe when most of the purple fades from my wrecked thigh or I have new growth on the other injury that I’m sporting, I can say, “It’s over.”  Right now, I hurt, am still moving, but will be nothing but honest with myself.

The Right One

I wonder if anyone truly keeps a relationship together.  I know one happy married couple, and they moved from here with their one son in 2008, and they have since had one more, so my boy and I lost some wonderful playdate potential when that occurred.  They still seem happy given posts on a social networking site, but I don’t really know because the days of our walks around the park and then coming home and watching our boys play until her partner got off work in the summer are over because they have been gone 4-years.  I knew another happily wed dyad, but they were in mediation last Thursday.  She fell out of love with him and he is behaving really badly now and has decided to sleep with her former best friend.  Their divorce will probably finalize before 2012 is gone.

I could have remained in that state of unhappiness.  We were not intimate and we were either silent or we argued, and this pattern lasted about 4 or 5-years, I believe.  Two separations and the final one was permanent in 2007.  That’s not what I’m looking for though, and I’d rather have some lasting connection that also includes sex.

She told me that we could talk f2f.  Having been angry with me because I don’t contact her much, she had left me a why bother VM while I was cleaning up on Sunday.  I had taken a quick 15-mile bike ride to warm up my body and then got back before church and jumped in the shower.  So, we talked for a sec when I called her back, and I said that I would call her in the evening and asked what would be a good time.  She told me that she couldn’t say and just to call her, but she wound up calling me when I left my kickball game early.  We made plans to see each other by meeting in between.

About two-and-half-hours later she cancelled because she said that we didn’t have a toolbox for seeing each other and that nothing has changed.  It hurt.  In fact, I’ve been crying off and on at intervals anyway, because that’s what I do now, and that is hurt.  I found out later that she was worried that we would have sex in her car, and doesn’t want that element.  I definitely gathered the latter on Memorial Day weekend.  I don’t even fully enjoy social stuff and would rather either be alone or talking with my son.  One of my best friends took me out, and then we went back to her house too on Sunday.  She is cooking dinner for my son and I tonight, but I’m so weary of this dance after nearly 5-years.  I’m ready to cook and be cooked for and live with a girl.  Joan Osborne says, “And you ask me to convince you that you won’t blow away.”  That’s a tall order…  Maintaining love and connection.

I think that keeping a relationship together requires honest and open conversations that probably should occur a couple times a week.  What I’ve noted is that I piss a girl off, and she tells me about it later after I’ve already fucked more things up.  With the drunk, we didn’t really fight, because we were quickly stagnant.  We didn’t really have any passion.  I do understand that passion comes with a price, because you will fight like that too, but I’m looking for the ability to move through conflict and to just say, “Let’s do our best to stay together in this rather wild world.”

Waiting game

If you say that you are going to consider something, by now, it should mostly be considered.  It’s been 10-days, and she thinks that she can tell me that taking what I wrote paragraph by paragraph is a new way, but it’s really a new way to push and pull.  That’s what it is, because frankly, it’s a new approach to keeping me in the queue.  The thing is that if some girl touched me, I’d shrink away, so it’s not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but it does matter in terms of my feeling like I’m the one she wants.  I worry that I’m not.

I should have taken a picture yesterday.  We had a somewhat harrowing ride up a windy Mt road–at least it was paved–complete with good views, but tons of drop-offs and when my son’s Godmother and my buddy from work got out, we had trouble standing.  We were at the trailhead!  It was also freezing and I didn’t have either set of gloves and couldn’t keep my hat on to save my life.  We took the same windblown ride back down, found a park in a nearby town and did just over 8-miles of a hike.  If I dodge another Mt Biker this summer though, it shall be too soon.  I think that I’ll need to order new boots though, as I did something terrible to my left toe.  If I feel around in the footbeds today in my old, tried and true boots, and they feel compressed, I’ll order some today and wear one pair of socks on Wednesday.

We didn’t go to the top of the little peak.  We were tired and the day was odd and didn’t entail what we’d planned.  I swear if we summit on Wednesday, a snowstorm is going to come rolling through rather quickly.  It was pretty and good girl bonding.  They both told me to proceed with caution.  Here was one of our views:

I don’t want to be cautious.  I just want to know if we can go to couple’s counseling and if she thinks that we could get married NEXT summer.  That’s it.  I’m done messing around.  I don’t want to live alone anymore, as 5-years have yielded tons of growth and transformation.  Now, I am really ready for a partner, and would love to raise two to three kids.

Gentle Cycle

I don’t know how exactly we came up with it when we talked for two-hours last night, but it’s true.  It’s not that we lost sweetness, it’s that we lost being delicate with one another and that certainly is mutual.  I explained to her that navigating January and February, which didn’t have that committed in a long-term feel to me made me unsteady, so it seemed sorted by March.  However, let’s be honest, if it’s June and I’m still grasping for the whys, it is not at all nipped or tucked.

I was talking about being delicate, and I said something like we need that delicate cycle and she made the washing machine analogy about being gentle.  That means that we need to rid ourselves of the old exchange too, and for some reason she hangs on to it.  I don’t get that.  It has that back and forth quality too, which as I have written, I can’t stand.  I get that we are a product of what we have seen and experienced in our family of origin, but I just think that moving forward based on what one wants is healthy and good.

I just come back to the fact that we need therapy to continue.  She doesn’t trust me, and has said so, which is based on an e-mail that I sent at the beginning of last October (before we had even slept together) and thinks that one more bad fight would destroy the chance for a friendship even.  I don’t see it that way.  At some point around the first of the year, she made the conscious decision to push me away, and then when she does, she can’t deal and misses me desperately.  We can work this situation out and learn to communicate well, or we can’t.  If she won’t go, we can’t continue with relationship contact and will need to just take some space.  I will hurt, but love does, right?

Worn Out

I tried a longer than I should have hike with my climbing partner yesterday…  When we got to the ridge line and could see the peak, we didn’t have much left.  There were a lot of factors and his poor dog was actually bleeding on his pads, so we did turn back.  I was pretty rubbery in my legs given the stress that we had to get there, and really too unsteady on the ridgeline to continue, but I always feel incredible with that level of exertion afterward.  Right now, I’m groggy because we had severe storms last night and I was up for an hour in the middle of the night and was sore from hiking straight up 10-miles.  Coffee and doing very little will help, and then with my new found energy, I will clean and pay bills.  I’ll include some scenery here:

I had a good day with the guy who is like my little brother though, and hope for many more over the next two months.  I’m getting back up high on Saturday with my son’s godmother as well.  I ought to have a good focus for the next several weeks and hope that I can take this energy into August with me.

I wish that she would examine with me what can be corrected and get very real about what she wants.  I know that regardless of what would transpire this next year, that we need some professional guidance because of the level of dissonance that she is caught in with respect to wanting a relationship and then being unable to navigate the stress that being in one causes her.  I can’t explore anything with her unless a couple hours a month are spent in couples work.  I’d like to say that I can take her back, but I can’t with her lack of understanding that I just don’t want sex, I want connection with her and can’t see weekly a corpse.