Date Night...Why Am I Not Thrilled?

I know that solo-date night is supposed to be about celebrating my solitude, enjoying my own company, and learning to rely less on others for fulfillment.  But fuck.  Sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to celebrate when I’m craving The Boss like a morphine junkie…when I’m missing human contact *so* much.

I used to be really good at this part.  My former marriage used to be something I needed to escape from time to time to time to as much as humanly possible.  Our home was a prison made of bars I’d equally helped craft.  I told myself it was the happily-ever-something or other than every girl dreams of, but it was just an avoidance of the reality of who I was, and who he was. 

When I was there, in that, I loved going out by myself.  I could enjoy a museum or book store for hours without a hint of longing or missing of anyone.  I have never been one to balk at asking for a table for one.  I love food and talking with ones’ mouth full isn’t very polite, but I do it anyway, so dining alone is ok.  It gives me a chance to practice my manners. 

I’m not usually lonely during the times when I’m alone…or, at least, that used to be the case.  But sometimes, lately, the feel of my own skin becomes desolate and I desperately want to feel someone else’s skin, and hear someone else’s voice.  I could find someone to spend the time with, I’m sure.  I have an OKCupid profile and everything!  *much groaning and head-shaking*

I could find someone to stroke away the sound of my own voice clanging around inside my head.  But I decided something a few months back, as I was sweeping up the wreckage from another hopeship dashed on the  rocks of “oh fuck, this is real life,” when the winds of change took some interesting and frustrating turns.  I decided at that point, licking my wounds and taking stock of my own careless steering of said vessel, that my focus belonged in one of two places.  I’ve dedicated my energies to The Boss.  Taking care of him, not as a mother to a child, but as a servant to a Master.  And I have devoted myself, once again, to taking care of that “other” person in my life – That red-headed step-child of my energies and best intentions.  And there simply wasn’t room for anyone else to get much priority at that time. 

Yeah I know.  As clichéd and played-out as it sounds, I decided to revisit this self-care stuff.  With much enthusiasm and simultaneous fear and chagrin, self-date night was reborn…apparently. 

Yippee

It started out successfully enough.  I made a promise to myself that going to the movies was going to be a priority for me this year.  I’d only been twice in the last year and I really enjoy film.  So I could spend my solo-date nights seeing the movies that I wanted to see, anyone else’s opinion be damned.  And then I’d enjoy a nice dinner to myself, take a book, or my journal, or laptop, and celebrate my relationship with myself.  This celebration often ended with a lazy but satisfying session with various insertables, electrical devices, and porn.   I like to fuck on my dates.  That applies to solo-date night, without question.

Everything was going really well!  Except…well…I haven’t had solo date night in over a month.  Those feisty winds of change blew again, and through various circumstances both fortunate and un-, I was blessed and positively spoiled with night after night of *actual* date nights!  You know…with a *real date!*  I got to spend several weeks with The Boss, spoiling the ever-luvin’ crap outta him, at my house!  A girl couldn’t be happier.  Fuck.  I enjoyed it.

But I knew at the outset of the visit that it would end, and I had a pretty good suspicion that the transition back to solo-time would be difficult once he went home again.  Apparently commuting over 6 hours round trip daily for work just wasn’t a plan he liked.  (I know, sometimes he is completely unreasonable in his expectations, but I supposed I’ll go ahead and love the fuck out of him anyway…*giggle*). 

Long-distance dating is hard, ya’ll.  And I welcomed a reprieve from the distance in a way not dissimilar to the way a drowning man welcomes air into his lungs.  Only I hadn’t been drowning in my lonely.  But you’d think I had been, the way I pulled him into my chest and filled my lungs and drank him up once more and again…over and over. 

My gods, it was indescribable.  In quiet moments of enjoying my bliss, however, I came to realize a few facts hidden in the deep dark woods of this temporary fairytale situation.  I was grateful beyond words for the time I was given.  And I knew that I would be very sad to see him go, once that time came.  And I knew that someday (please Gods someday…) I’d be more than happy, waiting with bells on and shit, to give us a real shot at some version of permanence and cohabitation and domesticity…

But not now.  Not yet.  Not as I am in this moment.  Four weeks in  and the long slender tentacles of co-dependent need and craving had set in and I knew there is more work yet to be done on this here mess of a soul.  Work that can only be done in the semi-peaceful, agonizing silence of solitude. 

I am not yet good at this…but I will be. 

*I am a woman when you kiss me, a child when you leave…*

I’m pretty sure those are the words to a terrible horrible no good very bad love song.  But they fit, today.  *head-drop*

So if I am a woman when he kisses me and a child when he leaves….then I am positively 15 years old again when he doesn’t text me for 14 hours straight!  But I wish to be a woman at *all* times.  I wish to make him proud in *all* circumstances.  I wish to make *me* proud in all circumstances.

Those winds blew again, and he is back at home now.  Our long-distance love affair has resumed, albeit with frequent fills of the gas tank and many miles put on cars over the weekends…

And as the fates tend to manage, flawlessly, we are both exactly where we are supposed to be.

I am currently alone.  On a Thursday night.  My craft beer and pub-sirloin are half gone and my table is quiet.  There is live music in the loft above me.  I’ve sat with my discomfort tonight, pulled myself through the painful bits.  I haven’t texted him all day, because I *needed* to text him.  I *needed* to have contact and get some sort of reassurance that he hasn’t forgotten me, four days after leaving.  So I didn’t text him.  I am waiting until that need settles the fuck down and simply becomes a *want.*  It’s an exercise in control. 

This will all be fine. I will become the rational, fully functional, enlightened and peaceful fucking person I am meant to be.  I can feel it in my bones…

In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and admit that I just *squeed!!*  like a 15 year old (very much out loud and not at all in my head) when my phone lit up with a message and I saw his name. 

One day at a time? J

But I wasn’t even touching the stove…I was just looking at it…

Sometimes it amazes and shames me how quickly progress towards being the self-confident person I want to be can be stalled or derailed.  This writing is not an attempt to garner compliments or reassurances from my friends.  I know who loves me and who thinks I’m fabulous and I adore you right back.  No, this writing is about sharing a bit of myself and renewed awareness. 

Recently I was having a conversation with one of my exes.  I won’t say which one, but sometimes I wonder why I still talk to him.  So do some of my friends.  In fact, until today, I hid the fact that we still talked from even my best friend.  I’ve outwardly lied about it, in fact.  If you’re hiding something, chances are it’s a bad decision…but I digress.

So, the ex and I were talking about open relationships and poly-models and various issues surrounding non-monogamy, when he said…with perfect tactlessness and abrasion:

*”I only tried to fuck people that were prettier than you.  If I fucked someone uglier, that would be pretty bad”*

Let that sink in for a moment.  Yea.  In the moment he said it, I gave him that “are you fucking kidding me” look and told him it was a hurtful and fucked up thing to say.  He quickly back pedaled and attempted to explain what he meant.  I guess I understand what he was *attempting* to say, but…

You know sometimes in films, the cinematographer will use the technique of opening with a wide, expansive shot of the sky, or space, and then suddenly and quickly the frame will zoom more and more narrow until it’s focused on a single person or building, children playing…or a train-wreck?

I brushed off his words, initially, but in the days following my point of view shifted from this lofty, expansive acceptance (often celebration) of this body of mine I’ve come to love (newfound appreciation for my breasts, large and saggy, much too saggy for a woman who has not and will not bear children; my fleshy parts, thick and curvy, I’d run my hands across them and feel my own softness and warmth, the love that I exude from my skin; my kinky hair; my “fat-girl” pussy…things only recently seen to me as beautiful or valuable…)

My perspective shifted from this wide open space of acceptance and celebration of my physical presence on this earth…to a narrowed in close-up over every flaw and each patch of cellulite.  My stomach had become a welcoming warm pillow to rest your head, and was again reduced to that thing that “gets in the way” when he’d try to tie me, or fuck me…My kinky hair was again too kinky.  He had preferred it straight, unnatural.  My breasts, “could be fixed, with surgery, someday, ya’know.” 

This ex, when we were together, had gotten in my head, planted seeds of fucked up ideas…and watered a few that were already there.  I’ve been working tirelessly to weed them out.  But some roots grow deep, as any gardener of souls or tubers will tell you.  I’m tugging at this deep root and it’s pulling up the good soil with it.  I must stop this erosion of good soil.

I was reminded why he’s my ex, and why my best friend always sounded a little pissed when I did let it slip that we had talked.  I recently learned about emotional masochism and how to use it in play.  The problem is, *this* scene was poorly negotiated and I’m growing weary of it.  Time to call red.