#lady dates

[staceybombacey]

[nevergonnafallfor-blog]

Lady loves

Last week I had some lady dates with some new ladies in my life. 

One, is a coworker who also happens to live in my neighborhood, so I introduced her to the neighborhood bar where I take all the boys (and ladies apparently).

The next day, as we stepped into the work elevator together, she informed me that we had a 6-hour first date, and that it was great.

After that, I hung out with a friend whose husband I happen to be good friends with from college.  She’s been in our group of friends since they got together, but we’d never really spent time alone.  I find her and her husband to be a spiral of negativity sometimes when we’re all together, they just always find a LOT of stuff to complain about.  They are also incredibly self-aware, smart, socially conscious and enlightened people, so I get the things they get negative about, and don’t hold it against them (too much).

But, me and her hung out alone, and we talked a lot about our evolving attitudes towards love.  I know she’s in an open marriage, since her husband has brought it up to me before, but she confided in me about the situation from her perspective.  She was a virgin before she met her husband, and she was molested when she was 12 by a trusted older brother of a best friend (I used to have a crush on him! she exclaimed, indignantly).  And I opened up to her about the boogeyman, and how I trusted him.

We both talked for a long time, and afterwards on the subway ride home couldn’t stop hugging each other.  This led to another revelation, that I can’t date in a way that is at odds with my personal beliefs.  And my personal beliefs are that all girls are my sisters, and we need to be there for each other, and we can never ever let any man/woman/trans significant other make us compete for their affections.  

The other thing I realized is that I’ve been sharing about the boogeyman a lot, considering that I used to have these kind of confessional discussions with girls a lot.  The one where they tell you the thing they think is wrong with them, the thing that will keep them from love, and it’s usually some abusive story.  And never before did I also open up about my thing.

And recently, I’ve been opening up about my weird sex thing [read: being molested] a lot.  With boys.  And in some superficial way I feel a nice release right after, I would think, you really know now, I’m letting you know a part of me that touches on every other part of me so you can start to really see me.

But, I need to be more selective.  

Sharing with this friend was an actual release, an actual burden being let go of.  She listened intently, offered comfort, her own story.  More than that, she started to understand, innately, the people I’ve dated and why.  The way they hurt me, and then the real way they hurt me.  She began to understand why everything was changing for me, and changing in this moment.  Just like I understood why her husband became her everything to her when they first got married, and how she still needs to work on separating herself and being full-fledged.  On her own.  And how the prospect of having sex with someone you don’t know, and may not even like, is prittimuch the scariest thing for us, because we’re a hairs breadth away from feeling violated.  Especially after what we’ve been through.  And how brave it is to even keep trying.  

It was that shared understanding, the understanding of, I see where you’ve been, and how that shapes who you are, and where you’re going.  I see that but it’s not EVERYTHING.  It’s just a small part, like your brown eyes, and mood swings, this palpable hurt child who doesn’t know who to trust, she’s always behind the curtains, pulling on some strings.  And when you show people that she’s there, and they don’t even try to get it, she feels doubly betrayed.

This is a discovery process too, because sharing it with uncaring boys was brave at the time, a LOOK AT ME, EVEN IF YOU DON’T CARE YOU CAN’T UNSEE THIS, but now I know that I need to share that part of myself with a person who will try and understand.  

I realized this week that I need to stop hating the process so much.  The process of trying to be a better writer, or trying to move up in my career, or even the process of trying to find a love that uplifts me more than it degrades me.  Of course it’s painful, but that pain is hopefully that cocoon around me, the one that said I would never be enough or loved just as I am, shattering and breaking. Maybe one day it’ll stop being so painful, and it’ll just be.  

But maybe it’s that pain that makes the absence of pain feel so so sweet?

[all-seeing-v]

On a lady-date with my bestie to see Chicago!!!

[lovefromtherun]

last night i had a really nice time with some really nice ladies.  i need to remember that sometimes all you need is friends.  that is the foundation.  the rest will come in time.

[feministforthewin]

First date tonight after not dating for a long ass time and its with this really fantastic woman and I am so excited and nervous. 

[getwished]

Today I got tickets for Paramore and tickets for Tonight Alive.

:)