Regression, Relationships, and Masturbation

I've disabled comments again. It makes me feel better about myself. Ha!

I came to a few hard conclusions while staring out the train window this morning. I couldn't figure out if it was because I hadn't really slept in the past few weeks, or if it's because I generally get moody when there is no sun... but at that moment, I recognized the heavy blanket of Blah I've been enveloped in lately as misery.

Cry me a river, right? I know. But it's a big deal for me, because I've been struggling to remain optimistic for a really, really long time. I suddenly ran out of energy.

Son, I was miserable. Not for any particular reason, I was just scowling at the scenery like it did something trife to me. Then the domino tipped, and everything fell into place... This is the same Misery that I have been pushing away for years. This is the reason why I've been desperately searching for distractions, and stumbling into bouts of depression or anxiety when I am without them. Weed, men, friends, internet, tv, reading, music. It's time to face the storm bare-assed -- Admit it, bitch, you are unhappy. You've BEEN unhappy. And nobody can change that but yourself.

1) I have been scrambling to be an independent woman since I was 14. Since I first realized that I had absolutely no support behind me, since I first realized that my family was barely able to hold themselves together (much less me), and since I first realized that good friends are as temporary as good weather... I became determined to do it all on my own. I started climbing. This is what took me 7 years to figure out: you cannot be truly independent if you've never, ever learned to stop needing others for support. It sounds so simple ("Yeah Dynasty, I could have told you that") but hey, fuck you. I've fared well when it came to physical independence, but I've always relied on emotional support. I mean, I started so young. At 14, you NEED the people around you. That's why friends have always held the highest status in my life -- they ARE my family. I need them to constantly support me in order to be confident, safe, and secure. I never graduated from that state of mind, because I skipped the entire process altogether. Little did I know.

All the people I've gotten along with in my past were large groups of male friends and small groups of women that were similarly "rejected" by their female peers for reasons that varied, but fell into the same bin. They rejected us because they perceived us to be sluts, or reckless, or plain ol' bitch. We embraced all those labels because if we didn't, we would hurt all the time. More importantly, we knew each other better than they'd ever know us -- the incredible intelligence that spewed from our mouths, the hearts of gold that shone hardest when melted, and the undying loyalty we shared with those we formed bonds with.

In retrospect, we shared the negatives with each other as well. We had the same insecurities. We had the same impatience. We kept ourselves trapped in this alternate universe where colors, genders, and roles flipped to its opposite, its compliment. We took on the "male" role in a lot of relationships. And we were all secretly very unhappy.

This was the one thing all of us had in common -- no matter what era, what clique, what age group these denied women were in -- we were completely, utterly, and painfully unable to trust. We formed bonds with each other to support each other, because we needed a family. We were women who were dying to love, women whose nature it WAS to love... but the only people we felt comfortable giving that love to were each other. We had no concept of soul mate, because OUR soul mates came in packages of curves, heels and attitude.

The fellas. The fellas embraced me like one of their own. It was wonderful, to be able to show the asshole in me that's always itched to come out, and be somehow respected for it. I befriended my first group of male friends at 12 going on 13, when I was going through some hard shit in my life. They took me under their wing and it was almost like I had a band of overprotective brothers. It felt wonderful, and safe, and it was.. family (if you ignored the fact that they would occasionally try to sleep with me LOL). They shaped my first steps into identity. Why wouldn't I believe that straightforwardness and overt sexuality will get me into their hearts? I was perceptive at 13, but I didn't have enough intelligence to apply that into logic. I was just hungry, and this family fed me.

Well, now I'm legally an adult. I went through most of my adolescence believing that I was mature beyond my years, but today I realized that I was wrong. I was simply very perceptive.

Those friends, I should add, were also older than me. As far as I could remember, since I entered high school, I've always been the youngest in every group of friends I became close with. I watched them go through the phases everyone SHOULD go through, and I observed the results rather than experience them. Thus, I came to build my defenses early. I stood by the docks, and never learned what swimming felt like. I only saw what it was to drown.

Since I moved back into my parents house, the mantra I've been repeating to myself during the hardest of its times is, "You are taking two steps back to move four steps forward." So why not do that with it all?

I was trying so hard to be a grown woman that I never had a chance to be.. a girl. I didn't complete phase 2, and I jumped straight into phase 4. If there's anything about myself I've learned this year, it's that I am not one of those people that can do that. I can't enroll into a Spanish 6 class and "figure out" the content of Spanish 1 through 5. I cannot become a runner unless I master jogging first. I HAVE to start from step 1, I have to thoroughly understand and complete step 1, before I can proceed to step 2. Otherwise I will be unprepared. Otherwise I will fail. I've been fighting my own limitations.

I need to complete phase 2. I need to explore the little girl in me again. There are things about being a woman I've mastered -- the art of fellatio is sadly my finest example -- but dating? Cooking? Socializing? Ettiquette? Fashion? Humility? Shit, I've just avoided it until now because I claimed it "wasn't my thing." But I'm manning up goddamn it -- I've been too pussy to explore those fields. I just insisted I didn't need them because I thought I was comfortable with who I was.

Lies.

2) Dating. The topic of dating and its importance has been floating around everywhere lately. So of course, being the person that I am, I grabbed onto that thought and wrapped my life around it, to see how it fits. Well, it didn't.

I've never really dated before. From the moment I lost my virginity, my experiences with men have either been FWB (friends with benefits) or "relationships." There was barely room for courting. There was no dating. Even in my relationships, the longest which was 5 years, we skipped right past the nervous fluttering stage of "getting to know each other gently" and launched into interviews, revealing stories, exposing our worsts. We always saw each other in our comfortable clothes. We woke up to each other as much as we could. We didn't go out. We "settled down."

Honestly, I think I kept it that way. If I really wanted something different, all i would have had to do was ask, and every one of those men would have done it for me. They would have taken me out. Invited me out. If I gave more, I would have gotten back more. But I guess I was "comfortable," or rather, I thought I was. I guess that was my definition of "relationship." I guess that's why I was never happy in one.

None of my boyfriends and I "dated." We be'd. We would get so comfortable, and it would stay that way and stale. We'd watch tv, we'd smoke, we'd fuck. We'd spend all our time at the other person's house. We'd catch a movie, but only because we both want to see it. We'd go out to eat, but that would be because we're tired of sandwhiches or takeout. We'd fall into that "being alone together" category -- you know, the one where both of you are in the same room swimming in "Not Awkward" silence ('peaceful' isn't what I'd call it) at all times -- within the first month. It seems that my relationships were more about securing another beam to my support system, and not about finding someone that truly made me happy. Not about making my partner happy.

Well, I'm done with that.

I was thinking about my past -ships. There is a guy that's been my FWB for the past couple of years now, we've seen each other on and off. We'll call him Tribe. Tribe and I had these really great moments... there were times where we'd talk for hours, just lying on our backs; our heads would be pressed together while our feet stuck out in opposite directions. We'd absently play with each others fingers and just tell mad stories, spin off of each other's jokes. We had the same fashion sense, humor, sarcasm. We followed each other throughout history without even knowing it. Apparently, we went to the same junior high school, had the same art teacher. We went to the same high school, but I didn't really know him then either. I caught a glimpse of him my junior year, and crushed hard for about 3 minutes. I never really saw him again. When our worlds finally collided, I got nervous. We slipped into an FWB scenario after establishing a friendship, and soon we were just lovers, nothing else. When I tried to spend some time with him outside of the bedroom, plans kept changing so I decided not to push it further. We stopped messing around for a large span of time, but then we bumped into each other at a train station neither of us frequented often. Turns out, he worked across the street from me. Things picked up again where they left off.

Now, I didn't pursue a relationship with Tribe because I was with someone else at the time, closing the second half of my 5-year. He didn't try to pursue one with me either, so I figured it was a mutual understanding and left it where it was. I had no problems having feelings for someone and not letting them know how deep it ran. Perhaps it was because I had a fear of testing the beams, lest the whole structure fall -- maintenance has never been my strongest facet. Either way, I was single for a year before I entered into another relationship, and between that time we were still pretty distant with each other. We talked, and luckily our schedules were constantly conflicting. Out of respect to my boyfriend I chose to phase him out. On top of that.. there was something missing. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that what I loved about Tribe would still not be enough to make me completely happy.

Fast forward some time later and it turned out that Tribe HAD wanted to be in a relationship with me from the start, but by then it was too late. He thought that it was not what I wanted, and he didn't want to ruin what we had by asking for more. By the time he confessed that to me, I was already happy in the relationship I was in, and I told him that it wouldn't be right to leave it. It broke my heart that we were both wading in the same ocean, wishing that the other would come rescue us all along.

Before the recent relationship, I had something wonderful with a person who is now a really good friend of mine (we'll call him Pretty... although he looks nothing like New York's Pretty, he IS damn beautiful). It was another scenario where the friendship developed into a lovership, and I liked him a lot. This was different from what Tribe offered me; this was a real friendship, combined with the giddiness that most only feel during the courting process. His texts made me smile, no matter what the content. I was always laughing during our conversations. I genuinely craved to spend time with him, I yearned to support him, I found him so pretty and witty and bright. We had a falling out that turned out to be a huge misunderstanding, but by the time we came to that conclusion, we had already slain each other to pieces. I would have loved to be in a relationship with him, but we both knew that it wouldn't be right. I swallowed the heartache and moved on.

But guess what he told me, yall? He said that I was everything a girlfriend should be, and that I was good to him. He told me that he wanted to be in a relationship with me but he thought that it wasn't what I wanted. He didn't want to ruin what we had by asking for more. Does that shit sound familiar to you??? Ha! Double whammy! Lather, rinse, repeat. Wading in ocean, searching for rescue, if only we had opened our mouths.

I have a LOT of learning to do when it comes to relationships. I know that if either Tribe or Pretty approached me today asking me to be their girlfriend, we would fall into that same pattern I've been reeling around in since adolescence. I realized that as much as I liked Tribe (I once believed I could have been in love with him, but I guess even then I recognized that it was simply borderline infatuation), I realized that I don't KNOW him. At all. I knew him on the terms that FWBs know each other. I don't know him as a close friend, I don't know him as a boyfriend, hell I barely know him as a lover. I don't know how good he can be to me, I don't know how bad. I don't know if he reads books. I don't know about his family. If he wants to pursue this with me, even with our history, I will have to ask him to court me. Take me out. Prove to me that it will be worth it. I can't have trust issues and then dive into anything without demanding that they show me I can trust them; that's exactly what I did with my last relationship, and the ones before that.

Two steps back, people.

As far as Pretty goes... him and I are going to remain friends. I will probably always be a little wistful at what could have been, but that's old bones now. I'd love to develop my friendship with him to its highest potential. I also realized that while I genuinely enjoy his person as a whole, he hasn't really done anything to prove that he will be good to me. He's a good friend, and he's a GREAT person. He has a beautiful heart. But I don't know how good of a boyfriend he will be. If he ever changes his mind, of course I will give it a try. But we'd have to.. we'd have to court. We'd have to date. I'll never know until I'm there, because no matter how close we are as friends, it's always different when you add the prefix to it.

This is a huge shift in standards for me.

There should be higher expectations when it comes to relationships.

I will remember that.

3) Spinning off of long ass #2, I will try to exercise will power when it comes to sex as well. Horniness is a human condition. Get used to it. Don't rape someone you could possibly have a good future with just because it's been three weeks since the last time you got laid (true story! LOL!). Sex does ruin everything -- wait, let me rephrase that.

Sex doesn't ruin everything. Sex cements everything. I've noticed that the level of personal development you achieve with someone will pretty much STAY there if you introduce sex too early into the relationship. (Yeah, Dynasty, I could have told you that! Well, fuck you too.) Pretty and I could be light years away from now if we had waited. Tribe and I would probably be cozy and content, if we had circled each other as potential mates and not as potential gushy stuffers from the start. My most recent ex and I would probably be on much better terms, if I had not been so impatient with my needs. So.. the Dynasty is gonna relax. The Dynasty is gonna figure out how to masturbate properly, because FWB situations fuck up if they're ever as intense as mine were. LOL

I love loverships. I really really love them because to me, that's the realest. The problem was that neither my partners nor myself communicated enough to give that lovership a chance to grow. I learned that loverships should be regarded like a temp-to-perm position, not as a fixed state of being. What does it say about you, if you go entry level and never climb up? You either never grow, or you become extremely restless and unhappy. Either way it's a lose lose.

Thank you, all, for that experience. I've overanalyzed it the way I do, and now I will move on to the next phase of growth.

Also, I'm one tentative step closer to making my final decision about my major and school. Stay tuned.