in all things, a natural correction
sometimes i gotta catch myself drinking directly from the dopamine hose and remember to breathe.
one of the side effects of being single and "back out there" has been this up and drop kind of mechanism where i am chasing ecstatic experience and the pit feels bottomless and i just want to feed it more and more. there is the rush of connection or power but the half life is brutally short.
i completely understand my body's wisdom in not doing any of this personal work before it was a requirement for my safety, because the layers of myself that i feel are more exposed now, are tender and old and raw. i threw all of that in the hopper a long time ago, covering it with busyness, hobbies, art, community, sex, and validation - a psychic landlord special, if you will, adding a protective shell that did a good enough job long enough until it didn't.
these days, among other things, i am finding myself jealous of people who have had a softer go of relationships, who had the good fortune and i don't know, more attuned parents, and have been able to build something for a long time with a person that feels safe to them. i am in touch with feelings of failure, more to feel and work through, i am choosing to tell myself.
so what a predicament to find myself in. horny like a teen, sad like a teen. feeling too late to something. feeling at times radioactive and at other times more attractive and more capable than i have ever been. a bewildering thing.
how humiliating that the work takes me back like this, to a place i never wanted to visit again. to look clearly at the pain and disappointment, and to wish for a life i have not had. my therapist and i are talking about the role of fantasy in my life. it's a skill that has brought me career success, a book deal, and has kept me alive. and i've told better stories about some of the people in my life than they have actually been, and that narrative adjustment has kept me longer in more pathological relationships. sustaining harm i try to write off or edit around.
so my god, what does it mean to live in reality? i think of the guy i just broke things off with after a few dates because he had created this idealized version of me, and could not focus or attune to me as i am. that was good of me, right? the boy on the other side of my strap, fantasy, not reality? even as a thigh bruise fades and the sheets are in the wash. the rock climber boy that i have insane sexual chemistry with but neither of us are particularly into one another - reality. that old client? fantasy.
i caught myself, is what i want to say, hoisting buckets out of the well of men, drinking too fast out of a fear of future dehydration. and when i caught myself i listened to music and read a book and went to the gym and worked on my manuscript, regulating and distracting with something less intense. because i know how to take care of myself as i am now. even though the old abyss is there, no matter how hard i worked to wipe it off the map. and so it's my job as the adult i am now to add it to the official topography, or fill it sustainably, or plant a hedge around it.
deciding to open myself again to the possibility of being loved is fucking terrifying.
gummygunk
vaporwave
baratheonpilled
2087
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
