Hormonal warfare

Tags

Anxiety, Desire, Eye contact, Happiness, Hormones, Intimacy, Positive, Red wine, Senses, Sensual, Sex, Spring, Tapas, Waking up

I’m like a little seed, dusty and dry but full of potential. A seed that’s been sitting in the garden shed in the dark for a very long time. Waiting. With no reason to think there was a way out from that unnatural yet safe place I’ve sheltered in, weathering the storm of recovery.

Perhaps the change of season has something to do with it?

For rather suddenly I feel exceptionally alive! It’s Spring, not yet Summer. But the weather is becoming reliably warmer and more beautiful. There’s a flavour to the air. A warm caress on the breeze. Cascading blossoms of every colour to take in with the eyes and nose.

It’s almost like I’ve never used my senses to engage with the world before. Not properly. Not like this. I can feel every hair follicle on my head. No situation is without intense sensory involvement.

Could it be… could I be… finding some happiness? Possibly really waking up after this seemingly endless numb-out?

There are difficulties still, but they take center stage less and less.

However there’s one issue that currently looms larger than any other.

Sex. Intimacy. Or the lack thereof. I posted about this topic a few months back.

Once again comes into view. The first trigger was the boy who’s recently been paying me some attention in a coy kind of way.

That situation created a lot of anxiety for me. I didn’t know how to respond at all. Especially if someone’s not being up front. I can barely hold a decent conversation with the guy, as sweet as he is. I guess that means it’s simply not right anyway. Surely if it was, it would be much easier. That doesn’t stop the anxiety running ten to the dozen though!

And I’ve just begun to realise how often I go out of my way to avoid eye contact with men I don’t know.

In that respect it was tough starting my new job, in which I have to deal with new people every day at the moment. New clients to talk to regularly. Some of them are men. It’s been a swift learning curve though, so I’m grateful for that.

And yet… gawd, there are periods each day where I’m totally and completely overwhelmed by my desire to be, erm, getting it on!!

I have the hormones of a teenager.

Except for one very minor blip, there’s been nothing on the radar at all in the last three years. So I’m apparently stuck in this way a little… because I can’t wilfully lift out of this issue with the same effort I’ve applied in almost every other area of my recovery.

I’m afraid of getting what I want, and I want it badly… but I also don’t know how to get there. And if I do get there, I’m not sure if I’ll feel safe and secure.

Amusingly, I think all that sexual energy is being sublimated into other areas of my life. I nearly lost it completely over dinner with friends on Friday night. Granted, we were eating some of the most delicious tapas I’ve had in years. I was also drinking some pretty spectacular red wine… it was very intense and sensual.

I’m just grateful for the mercies of meditation practice that help redistribute the rest of that energy!

~Svasti

In a whirl…

Tags

Batman & Robin, Confusion, Dating, Lady Luck, Men, Mexican stand-off, Murphy's Law, Relationships, Writer's block

My brain feels like a schmooshy mixture of brain, goo, mist and haze. Add a dash of confusion and its all whirly.

I’m still battling this cold/ear infection/burst ear drum. Also, there’s that bunch of stories wanting to be told. They’re confusing me at the moment however, and its blocking up the pipes again. Sigh. They want to be longer and more mindlessly detailed than I want them to be. And they refuse to be edited. So, I currently have a number of unfinished pieces of writing and we’re having a bit of a Mexican stand-off.

Which is not so bad really, except for the desire I have to create, express, to publish more bloggy oddness.

But right now my focus is a little skewed because I’m waiting to hear if I managed to get a job I really want (whilst trying not to get too attached to the idea of having it).

And… I *think* a boy might like me… which is REALLY confusing…

My life is a series of question marks at the moment. Cartoon ones, like those that used to appear over the heads of the villians in the Batman & Robin TV series. Will I get the job I want? Or like Catatonic Kid, is my relationship with Murphy really that ironic? I do wonder about that. Actually, I wonder if Murphy and Lady Luck have battles over who I really belong to. It seems a bit that way sometimes.

Then there’s this boy. Well, I suppose at my age I shouldn’t be calling grown men “boys” any longer, but its a habit that’s stuck.

He’s someone I used to work with, and I’m unclear if he likes me or not. I mean, in my experience, unless you’ve become good friends with people you’ve worked with, they don’t generally try to stay in touch once you’ve left the place of your mutual employment. And you certainly don’t go out of your way to invite them to your birthday drinks, giving them plenty of notice of the date etc. But we’re not that close, and he’s done just that.

Towards the end of my trip in Thailand, I logged on to check my emails. Like alot of people I work with, he’s a friend on my GTalk (we’re geeks!) and he started chatting to me. Since I’ve been back we’ve had a couple of other online chats as well. Then last week he invited me to the birthday drinks he was organising for himself. I mean, they’re straight after work on a Friday, near a place I no longer work at.

In the course of that chat, I discovered by the way that he and his girlfriend had broken up. They’d been together for almost as long as I’ve known him. The conversation was a little flirty I guess. And the idea percolated away there – wow, what if he likes me? But am I just imagining things?

Tonight is the night. But its not a date or anything – there will be heaps of people I know there. And maybe he’s just being friendly?

I suppose I can only go with my gut feel – even though he was with someone else, there was always a bit of a spark between us. I think anyway! Actually, I sort of need someone to spell it out for me if they like me, otherwise I really don’t get it. As a rule, I tend to think men don’t have any interest in me. So I don’t know.

But he did send me another message just today, checking to make sure I’m coming tonight. So I am nervous.

I do like him. I think he’s cute. And he’s really sweet natured too. He was one of the “safe men” I used to enjoy hanging out with and having a harmless flirt with during the time I was working out how to relate to men again. I suppose I don’t know him well enough to work out if there could be anything more than that. One of the posts that I wrote not long after getting back was about how I can’t be in a relationship at the moment.

For one thing, I simply have no sense when it comes to men, and working out what’s best for me. Secondly, as I mentioned in that earlier post, I find that men tend to flock around me once I’ve returned from retreat – energy sucking men that is. Not that I think this boy is an energy sucker at all.

But whenever I decide these sorts of things, it seems that fate has its own way with me. Its not like I really need more time to myself I guess. But I really haven’t processed all the stuff that goes with getting close to someone again. So… even the thought that someone might like me, and that I might have to face some of this stuff is a little scary.

Right now my life is still in limbo. My sister still isn’t talking to me properly. I don’t have a home of my own and I don’t have a job. There haven’t been any men in my life for the longest time. It would be nice if things started turning out for the better…

And if someone has a good cure for Writer’s Block, please feel free to pass it on!

~Svasti

No sex

Tags

Dating, Depression, No sex, Sex, Trust

Friend warning: There’s a handful of friends who know I’m writing this blog. For the sake of their possibly delicate constitutions, this is a chance to NOT read this post. Some people are squeamish when defining what they consider to be “too much information” regarding their friends’ sex lives. 🙂

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I often wondered if I could qualify for special compensation to claim back my virginity?

Immediately after being assaulted, there was simply no desire for intimate contact with another person. None. Nada. Zip.

Unsurprisingly, for the first six months after, the idea didn’t even cross my mind.

Yet, I’m someone with an incredibly high sex drive. Always have been. Often, I’ve had more interest in sex than my boyfriend or lover.

There was a point where my natural desire for intimacy resurfaced. But I still had no interest in letting a man anywhere near me.

At the same time, I longed for gentle, comforting human contact. I desperately wanted to be hugged and kissed. To have my hair caressed. And not just by friends, but a lover. I desired that closeness, the bonding, the affection and care that comes with such a relationship.

There’s a theory that if you go without sex for long enough, your libido eventually goes away. But that never happened in my case.

According to my therapist, the assault created some fatal flaws in my self-confidence/self-esteem. But like many women, they were never that crash hot for me in the first place.

I also felt incredibly unattractive post-assault. I suppose that’s the depression and shame colouring my view, as I’ve been assured that’s not the case. What I wanted… I also could not want.

Obviously, there were other issues including the ability to trust. Although the assault was physical and not sexual, because Andre and I had been intimate that kind of messed up that area of my life as well. I mean, getting naked, sharing energy, bodily fluids and so on with another person requires a decent level of trust, right? And how could I trust myself let alone another person?

So on one hand (no pun intended!), I needed and desired sex, love, tenderness. On the other, no man had the secret password that would grant entry through the castle walls.

Quite the quandary.

To cope with this bizarre situation, I sought out the company of ‘safe men’. Mostly men at my work that I get along well with, who are in committed relationships. There’s nothing wrong with forming a little crush on men who are taken, right? I mean, I didn’t want or expect anything. It never went beyond a little office flirting. They are strong men with integrity I could hang out with, and feel good around. Feel safe.

They ofcourse, never knew they played this role for me. Most of them still don’t.

But it wasn’t enough. Neither was masturbation. Or toys. Eventually, everything lost its allure, but I was still incredibly horny with no effective outlet.

Initially I could control it, ignore it. Whilst much of the raw emotion was floating around, I had plenty to keep me busy.

Then the unanswered call of my libido grew louder and more insistent. But still I did nothing.

There was a time when I decided I should perhaps consider dating again. So I jumped online (nice way to try and control the situation) to meet a few guys. But it wasn’t the right time. The whole thing badly spooked me, despite the harmlessness of a couple of dates and one or two kisses being all that occurred.

I recall wondering if I could proposition past lovers to ‘help me out’. I was vibrantly aware that my desire for sex was as much about feeling safe as it was about the physical act. I wanted (and still want) someone in my life who will help me through this tricky aspect of my recovery.

I don’t know if I have the right to want this of another person, but I do. Actually, I can’t even imagine the sort of person who would be capable of this work. They would need a rare combination of qualities – awareness, intelligence, sensitivity to both emotional and energetic shifts, the ability to demonstrate a lot of love and care. And most of all, they must be 1000% trustworthy.

It was two years and four months between ‘drinks’ – terribly analogy I know! It was November/December last year, and I thought I was ready. I thought I’d met someone with the above-mentioned qualities. But ofcourse, like everything in my skewed, post-assault world, my judgement of other people is also impaired. And he wasn’t.

Like all good horror stories, I didn’t realise that particular fact until it was too late. We had sex twice. The sex wasn’t even that good. Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled in the past with really, really great sex? Fuck, I don’t know!

I’ll talk more about this encounter in another post. But basically, he was emotionally vacant. Wait, let me revise that and instead say ‘emotionally bankrupt’.

My involvement with him, and the turgid events surrounding that time triggered a new episode of depression.

Its own way, that was a blessing. Because this time, the depression showed up mostly as physical pain, as discussed elsewhere on here. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. There were other symptoms ofcourse, but it was the pain that led me through a series of events out of the fog. Towards my practices, my therapist, and the birth of this blog to name but a few recent changes.

So, I can’t possibly feel anger towards this man I was briefly involved with. I see that situation and that person as just a messenger. And the message was: its time to get your shit together girl!

My Guru says: That which is your weakest point will eventually lead to your liberation.

Perhaps for me my weakest point is sex, because I remain hornier than all get out. Sigh!

~Svasti