maybe

I go through phases. I go through phases for many things in my life. These phases usually cycle. I cycle back and forth from being reasonably content about my body / weight to harboring contempt for the thing in the mirror. I go through cycles of fiscal responsibility--these particular cycles are brief, sometime flipping back and forth three times in a twenty-four hour period. I also go in cycles about relationships. Sometimes I feel like I am ready for one, other times I feel like it is the last possible thing I need in my life. Right now I am ready for one.

In the fashion of such people as my life coach, I attempt to be logical about these things. While logic and reason don't always work in the real world when faced with real pressures and fears this logical life-plan has been rather successful. One thing it has taught me is that I don't logically need a boyfriend. I have the oxygen I need to breathe and a book to keep me occupied, what could I possibly do with a boyfriend? Boyfriends aren't practical. I am a narcissist--who isn't these days?--and narcissists don't get along well with people who demand things of them. Boyfriends demand things of people and that's not nice. Letting someone in requires that I become "okay" with that person asking for time, time to be together and time to be apart. The real problem is that his demands might not match up with what I am willing to give. It gets complicated, and it would likely get ugly more than once.

This unorganized list of reasons not to let someone into my life doesn't keep me from wanting one. My heart aches with desire sometimes. I have never had a "boyfriend." I went about things all wrong a few years ago and that probably left me more damaged than the actual coming out process--that was easy. What is not easy is giving yourself over to be a sex-object in someone else's passion play. Here tonight, gone in the morning, please don't contact me. Talk about contributing negativity to my self-worth. I decided to stop doing that and in a way I decided not to let anyone in. I needed time to process who I was. But now I might be ready. I might already be in love but like Kate Winslet's character in The Holiday this love is unrequited and I don't always know that I know (or he knows) why. But that's fine. I made the decision long ago to keep him as a friend and nothing more. But he will always be some milestone on my road to emotional recovery--the first time love--yes, even unrequited love--came knocking and I didn't run away from it.

My heart is just so heavy. Maybe I don't want to be a self-centered narcissist all my life. Maybe I need someone to care for just a little bit. Maybe someone out there appreciates getting flowers every once in a while. Maybe someone out there still likes mixed CDs and hand-written letters. Maybe someone out there won't mind my head on his shoulders while we watch a romantic comedy. Maybe someone out there...

loneliness on Christmas

Sometimes playing dress-up is far too easy and far too deceiving.  I live six hours from where I grew up in an apartment that I pay for with my paycheck.  After enough of that paycheck flows out to fund corporate America, I have enough left over to fill my empty days and nights (those that aren't spent using my researching, thinking, and paper-writing skills) with more than the appropriate amount of fun.  I own my car (albeit it a paid-for-by-a-check gift from my father), enough technology to keep me semi-current, and a few well-placed designer shoes, sweaters, shoes, scarfs and leather goods.  Except for a few closely-held friends and this online journal that no one reads, I keep my personal feelings and problems to myself.  It is with all of these things that I keep at the end of a micromanaged leash that I can say that at a bare minimum, I leave my house every day feeling a tad more than presentable and the image I project is one of self-confidence and success.

Here's the thing though, it is all a mirage.  I may look and sound like my shit is together, but at the core I feel like I am spinning on a merry-go-round barely able to keep myself on the ride let alone keep the real parts of me (emotions, desires, wishes, obsessions, etc.) from spinning off into oblivion.  Today, my thoughts resound with the phrase "epic fail."  Despite being surrounded by my family, I am essentially alone on Christmas.  I make no secret about the fact that I wish for a partner, someone to share my life with.  I envision something The Family Stone-esque--coming home with a man in tow and having someone to go to bed with, someone special to exchange gifts with, and someone to drive home with.  Not having it is driving me crazy.  My family is driving me crazy and I want classic, old Hollywood love to give my sanity back to me.

Perhaps wishing for something before its fruition is the biggest folly and the most telling sign of my immaturity. 

a hug

The scent of the skin on your neck, like alcohol tinted ivory. The feel of your skin on my lips--utterly human, fleshy and real--pulls me out of my head, pulls me back to reality. That look in your eyes and the unchecked pout of your lips betraying fatigue of the body and the soul. The concept of real. A solid body, a thin layer of skin between my hands and your blood--a real, live boy; a foreign object realized once again. My senses telling me about you but also confirming something about me, sewing up the tears in my soul, putting the pieces back together again. All these things I can't tell you; words that my tongue won't cooperate with when I am in your presence. How could I tell you? It goes beyond logic, that a simple hug signals infinite synapses swirling in a hurricane of ambiguity that makes my heart breathe again.