Addressing the Blisters

So I am sitting at a coffee shop next to a couple of intertwined hippie-children bumming their way around the country and some wholesome, granola-pretty people who "just love Jesus." 

Suddenly I am wanting to write.

But, this is a false-start blog. I already began an entry that I immediately deleted. One about the creative process, my life and thoughts, how I wanted to write when I knew I should be completing one of the eight million tasks scheduled into my life between now and a little while from now, blah, blah, blah. I was bored with it immediately and deleted the whole thing. 

And so, I randomly went to the google box in the right hand corner of my screen and typed in what felt necessary. Confessions from a sex addict.

Suddenly I was reading an account from a man destroyed by his compulsion to masturbate and buy pornography. A man who felt so guilty for his actions that he tried to avoid breathing around women in order to avoid inhaling the smell of their perfume. It sounded crazy. It sounded so sad.

And I couldn't help thinking--I married someone like this. Different of course, in many ways, but similar, too. 

*****

Lately a rash has reappeared on my finger. My ring finger. It began two years ago around this time, three months before I knew I wanted to divorce my husband. My husband who bought pornography compulsively and lied to me constantly. 

I haven't worn a ring in 22 months and my finger is still breaking out in a rash.

I have tried talking about this to people who might be helpful but no one seems to have any good insight about the matter. "Quit wearing your old ring," said a friend when I told him. "That's really weird," said a friend who is a chiropractor. "Are you allergic to your earrings?" she asked.

Of course I said no.

The thing is- I know why my finger keeps breaking out. I know it's because there is material that needs to surface. 

It's not love.

Or at least, it's not love in the sense that tends to make sense. Not love in the sense that I want to reconcile with my ex-husband. Not love in the sense that I miss him from my life. I miss him, sure, but I have no desire to ever kiss him again. No desire to lay in his arms. I feel sad saying that and I miss laying in someone's arms, but I know I will never want to be with him again. 

I know because when I found out he was still lying to me, nearly two years ago, I became immune to him. I didn't want his skin touching mine. I thought about trust before bed and woke up with the word severed on my lips. A word, hanging, suspended in the air, letting me know we had reached the end.

I trust myself to know when something is over. Every fiber in my body screeches to a halt.

And yet, the rash.

The frustrating thing is that this is my subject. I think this is the topic I have to sit with some more. And it is so frustrating because I so want to be done. I hate that I think about how sexual obsession affects people, both the people obsessed and the ones who love them. I hate thinking about how I compromised values for the sake of a relationship. I hate analyzing my own relationship to sex and intimacy and the patterns that originated in my own past.

Most people have patterns ingrained in their brain about sexuality by the time they are five.

I don't want to be the one to figure this out.

I want to be the one blithely living my new life. Forgetting my past. Going on dates. Wearing high heels and walking into the future. Smiling. Happy. Pretending the marriage, like my earlier blog, was just a false start. A random mistake. The accident of a very young woman. Maybe I was just too young to know better.

Instead, my itchy finger is reminding me there are still words that need to be said. The word severed came to me and hovered in the air, letting me know we had reached the end. But there are more words bubbling up in blisters between knuckles and fist letting me know I'm not done.

It so pisses me off.

Maybe this summer I will start to move on. Maybe I will write enough to get away from this subject. Maybe this summer my finger will heal. Maybe this summer, maybe...

 well, I can't say what comes next.

The Clumsy Journey to Wherever It Is That I Am Supposed to Be

Lately startling questions have come into my life.

One occurred while I was sitting on my apartment patio Memorial weekend drinking a beer after work and catching up on emails on my laptop, yorkie-poo at my feet. A friend, one I had been on a date with earlier in the year, joined me while waiting for his cab to come and take him away to a rooftop party downtown. He leaned in to me, open after a day of holiday drinking on a bar's patio, and said "Can I ask you a question?" I nodded. "Are you into girls?" I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. "Because I never see you with any guys. Why don't you have a boyfriend? It's time, you know? You should just try to trust someone. They're not all bad. One out of five. I'd say you can trust one out of five men. With women it's a little different. More like three out of five."

One out of five, I found myself thinking. Yeah, right. 

Another question occurred when I was talking to a friend of mine about feelings and issues and concerns, etc, etc, (all of the stuff I am really awkward and uncomfortable with) and he said, in response, "Why are you so serious all the time?" 

I bristled and steered the conversation back to the topic, but the remark stayed in the soft gray area of my consciousness.

And finally, at work, where I am currently a waitress, one of the regular customers stopped me as I was passing his table with a pot of coffee. This 70-ish gentleman moved his cup to the side of the table and said, "Say, I want to ask you a question. What do you want..." he moved his cup again, "to do with your life?" 

As it was 9am and I was a waitress working on her second master's and holding a pot of coffee and just done with mopping the floor, I didn't exactly warm up to this question. 

In fact- I didn't warm up to any of the questions. Who were these men to be asking me such weighty questions? Did I question their judgment? Their choices in life? Their decisions or lifestyle? No- of course not. What right did they have to judge my life? Or expect more from it?

As I thought about the questions more they irritated me even more. Why do I need to trust men again? Who says I'm serious all the time? Why do I need a plan for my life? And, more importantly, how is that anyone's business other than my own?

As I got riled up I started writing a blog in my mind about the audacity of these questions and the pretentiousness of the people asking them. The blog would end, of course, after analyzing this situation with a I-am-woman-hear-me-roar type of triumphant closing. Something like I like who I am and how I am content with my choices and I don't want a boyfriend and I'm not too serious and my life will be whatever it is meant to be and it will be perfect in that sense.

But then I realized the mental blog I had written would not work.

It was a lie.

The truth, if I dare to write it, is that I bristled at these questions not because of the people asking them. Not because I felt I shouldn't have to answer to anyone. Not because I had an answer to each of the questions.

I bristled because they are questions I ask myself. Or questions I would ask of myself if I were brave enough.

The truth is that I do want a boyfriend. The truth is that I am scared to trust again. The truth is that I do wonder why I have to so seriously analyze my life all the time. It is like I am hyperaware of all of my many imperfections all of the time. And the truth is I don't want to be like this. I want to go back to a life where I don't have to work so hard to be honest. Sometimes I think I might prefer the life of complacency and permanent mild dissatisfaction. Why not settle? Allow myself to drift into a relationship with one of the men I have gone on first dates with--the men with checklists who after a thorough two-hour interview almost visually decide things could work out between us. The men who are looking for a certain accessory to add to their individually crafted lives. It would be easy. I could stop feeling lonely. We could date and then live together and then get married and have kids and share space and exist in sort-of companion style life. All I would have to do is adjust to his life. 

Or--I suppose I must look for another option--why not try to trust someone who does know me for who I am? Why not let someone see me as myself?

The truth is that this is the scariest situation of all. Because the truth is that I am the sort of woman who accidentally almost starts her paper coffee cup on fire while heating it up in the microwave. I am the sort of woman who rebels and adopts the mantras of self-help books in the same minute. I am the sort of woman who takes herself seriously, who worries about making the same mistakes over again. I am the sort of woman who would get into a car accident before she would share her feelings. I am the sort of woman who has a dirty shower and snores and feels confused and doesn't know what she's going to do with her life and trips sometimes over the cracks in the sidewalk and who wants to let someone into her life again but has no idea how to do it. 

"Why don't you go talk to that guy?" my apartment friend said to me on Memorial weekend, nodding at another man drinking a beer and watching the baseball game from his chair. And so I did. Not because I was particularly attracted to him or excited to meet him (in fact I sensed a checklist from 20 feet), but because, when all is said and done, I am also the sort of woman who keeps trying. 

It's bound to get easier with practice. I hope. 

What I Am...

What  I am is sitting in my apartment and typing on my computer, eyes heavy from allergies and lack of sleep, body sore from soccer and running and standing eight hours at a time. I am tight-stomach sitting in my parents’ car on the way to a Twins’ game. I am strange dreams and strange sleeping. I am singing out loud in a coffee shop and cutting up my work, reassembling it in an updraft, a second draft, a current, a magic-wire I’ve plugged into, my wi-fi to the universe. I am smiling to earn money. I am smiling because I want to. I am sitting on a bar stool wanting every guy in the room to want me. I am sitting on a bar stool thinking there is not a single guy here that I want. I am looking at a stranger’s brown eyes and dreading my past. I am wanting so badly to see the future.

I am counting markers lining the lake where I run. Counting down the moments until the finish. Counting the couples walking past me. Counting the strollers. The groups of friends playing volleyball. Counting my single female friends— one.

I am worried about what I have said. What I have shared. What I have written. Who sees what I write. Who hears what I say. So many secrets spill out of corners. So much of me tumbles out into the world. So much held back for so long.

What tumbles out? You, of course. Ex-husband. And lately I realize maybe the until-death-do-us-part never even started until I left. You tumble out of my mouth in words, in front of friends, strangers. And it’s not that I want you back—it’s that by losing you I found me.

I guess I should thank you for that.

                                    Words that Still Hurt:

                                    Porn

                                    Addiction

                                    Lies

                                    Good-bye

                                    Family

                                    Babies

                                    Alone

 

What I am is lonely. What I am is scared I will never connect with a good man. Scared there are no good men. Scared I will forever fall into the trap of cute-fun-guys-who-sort-of-adore-me-for-a-time-before-they-ultimately-prove-they-can’t-love-me.

What I am is ashamed. Ashamed of being lonely. Of feeling sadness. Of being weak. Of being vulnerable. Of needing people. Of not being tough enough on my own. I am ashamed to admit I feel sad. Ashamed I can’t find happiness in the world alone. Ashamed I am not enough to keep people in my life. Ashamed that when I set boundaries, people disappear.

What I am is lonely-when-I-see-couples-with-strollers, but at least I am not lonely-when-lying-in-bed-with-my-husband. I am bruised knees and bruised feelings but I am also singing in coffee shops and singing at ball games. I am scared to want a relationship and scared I will never have one again. I am wanting to look at my past and dreading it. I am laughing and I am surviving and I am laughing and evading. I am smiling because I love you and smiling because I want so badly to be loved. I am severed and turning myself inside out. Or maybe just now outgrowing my shell.

You may not see it.

But this is what I am.

And so far I have no regrets.