Okay, Yes, It Was a Miracle

 

The tides of heartbreak shift so fast! Last night, I wrote this draft about miracles, but my mood this morning is kind of just—well that was a crazy thing to try! Why did I think the thing with me and The Shy One could EVER work?! I mean, it did work, in its own halting way, as long as we could manage it, but, really, this?! Nuts.

A therapist told me once, not unkindly, that I may not have the best judgement. She was talking about how I thought I should be a full-time teacher in a pretty harsh school district. Actually though, I’m glad I did that too. Sometimes I do a hard and beautiful thing that smashes me to smithereens, but I come back together eventually, in a new, expansive, not necessarily wiser shape. Once in a while, I break myself. I don’t think I do it on purpose.

But let me stop comparing this cute man who wasn’t a match to the job that nearly killed me. There’s no why except attraction, except curiosity, except love. It’s beautiful how two such badly mismatched people could have tried so hard, for so long. (To me, ten months with an asterisk is LONG.) I was fighting so hard for what he couldn’t give. He tried his heart out to be enough for me, and it made him sad that he couldn’t get there. I hope he felt acknowledged enough, appreciated enough.

A year ago, when I was getting ready for Valentine’s Day and enjoying the last bursts of loveliness with The Good Boy, I would never have imagined the year of love and adventure that was to come! Even the sequel with The Song Sender seems like it was fated, written in the stars—and that guy SUCKED.

Now here I am, with a for-later treasure trove of frilly things, a deep abiding love in my homebody heart for Sierra Leone, (Buy WHY, Frank Ocean song. Just why.) a Hidden Folder full of hotness and cuteness that I never, EVER would have dared to imagine when I started these adventures 11 years ago.

Even that Monday “good morning” text that went missing in the ether, that accidental silent morning that made me cry so hard and so deep about feeling so disconnected, even that perfectly ordinary glitch seems like the most powerful divine intervention I’ve ever witnessed.

How could something that was THIS much of a mess still feel so sacred, so how-it-was-all-supposed-to-happen?

Darn gratitude. I was really trying to be salty. I’m sure I’ll be that too.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Seven

I sometimes wish the other people in the story had just as many paragraphs I could read about their inner lives, but they don’t. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow is now the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow, walking around another city being almost a complete mystery.

After the stupid Beatles letter, about twenty-five years went by. (What are we, Twin Peaks?)  Then, you know that feeling where you run into your (probably gay) first love at a family funeral and can’t stop flirting? No? Just me?

That’s how, about five years ago, I decided that the Boy-Now-Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow needed to be my friend. I got his number, took his picture to go with it, texted to apologize for being such a jerk in high school, was forgiven, then proceeded to do almost nothing about really making friends. I’d invite him to my yearly Christmas party, he couldn’t make it, we’d talk about making other plans, then not make other plans. Each year, Favorite Aunt would join facebook in reminding me to wish him a happy birthday. (If she was reminding HIM to wish ME a happy birthday, there’s no evidence.)

Then this year, a year in which I’d resolved to remember how to make new friends, a favorite artist got a retrospective in his city. I invited myself for a visit, set monthly reminders to actually remember to make plans, and then, to my great disbelief, there were plans.

I’d been thinking of this kind of the way I would any other awkward new friendship, but a few nights before our visit, texting him about museum logistics, I felt a surprising tide of warmth. It felt as though we’d always been making plans, ordinary and wonderful as making plans with Sweetie or Favorite Aunt or anyone else I readily and easily love. It startled me a little that I could feel that much closeness with someone I really didn’t know at all, even though I guess that’s what this blog is mostly about.

The warmth that spread through my body over this really very ordinary exchange reminded me of the feeling I sometimes got during trauma work—something was being gently prised loose, except this thing that had been stored in me wasn’t a hurt or a breakage but a treasure, a hope.

***

***Note: I watched The Unicorn Store right before writing the first draft of this part, but it probably would have been pretty glittery anyway.

Boy, The Unicorn Store really had my number.

There had been some doubt about whether we’d get to see the exhibit we’d planned for, the one I’d written into my 2019 goals, but there he was with tickets when I arrived, peering down into his phone looking EXACTLY the same except for a little grey and a cute beard and looking EXACTLY right for his way-cooler-than-I-am city. I called his name, we hugged, and we breezed into the museum, a little awkward but mostly in the care of bright colors, details, textures, and happy banter.

We had never hung out together so far from Favorite Aunt (though in a way it didn’t feel far from her at all…) so I thought it would be weird. Objectively, it IS weird to make plans with someone you knew for six months thirty years ago, or, more accurately kissed and loved but never really knew at all.

But really, as we moved from room to room catching up (in between times of me getting in trouble for taking too many pictures) nervousness and oddness gave over to a silly joy that had its own momentum. The sensation, which I’ve felt a couple of times before, was one of my heart unlatching, of becoming unseparated from him, from art, from myself, from love, from every beautiful thing that has ever been in the world.

(Is all)

It was both the old-friend sensation of no time having passed between visits and the mystical feeling of meeting a muse. It was both picking up where we’d left off (wherever THAT was) and noticing a labyrinth-string that I’d been following all along.

As much as I would have liked to be some imaginary cool, restrained person, I couldn’t really stop myself from becoming a high tide, an effervescently glitter-shining sea of exclaiming, gasping, giggling. It was both a Very Big Deal and the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Stuuuuck! But, Cuddle Party Tomorrow!

I took a few weeks away from The Kitten Calendar to let some healing happen and get caught up on my mountain of school work. During that time, a lot of parts of my life have really been coming together—I was placed at the school of my choice for student teaching, I’m finishing up two years at a wonderfully productive job, and my first full-length collection of poetry just went on sale for preorder—there’s even a person WHO IS NOT ME in charge of promoting it—as a poet, I find this incredible. I’m in school this summer, but I also scheduled enough poetry teaching to keep myself inspired and entertained.

So my life is coming together, all except the dating/adventuring part. That part feels stuck and very lonely. There isn’t even the suggestion of a possible masculine person on the horizon, and I’m beginning to lose faith that I’ll be attracted to a non-Sweetie person again. I’m still (ack) sort of pining for Bill and I’m still seething at Fireguy and co. Those things are just not getting better fast enough. I still get scared, attacked feelings when I think of going out into the BDSM world—there’s nothing like that on the calendar. Maybe I should just put it on there and get on with my life.

One bright spot on the body front has been that I’ve gone to a couple of Tantric poetry workshops. I’ve gotten over the idea that the Tantra folks’ll think I have bad energy; at least I have made that kind of progress. The Sensual Poetry teacher combines movement with writing in a way that tries to let the body have a voice—I really appreciate that.  She has us write letters from our body to our mind, from our mind to our body, and so on. Once, she assigned us to write a letter from our genitals to our brain, and my poem amounted to my vagina yelling at my head a bunch for taking all the penises away. Yep, my head does do that. My brain wrote a letter apologizing, but my body is still pissed. More than a decade was way to long to make it wait, and my body’s afraid that it’s settling in for another guy-free decade. Oh body, I really am supersorry.

I intellectually know that Bill was far from the best I can do, and even if he HAD been the best, he didn’t end up wanting me. I know that Fireguy’s shenanigans don’t necessarily exemplify all of BDSM. I know that if I went to a BDSM event, I would not be in danger. It would be more like a safe little bubble, with DMs there to help me if I called red. But right now, I’m facing a wall of fear about it. I’ll get back there some day, hopefully sooner than later.

Sometimes (not often, but lately) the frustration even keeps me from enjoying Sweetie. I get worried that if I settle in too much now, if I get too happy with her, before I know it another decade really will have gone by, and I will be even more of a bundle of repressed penis-craving nerves. I’m doing my best to fight all these fears, to pay attention to Sweetie and all of the other things in my life that are working, but jeez, dudes, where are you? Technically, I can probably wait forever, but I don’t think it’s such a good idea.

Tomorrow, I’ll be returning to my body adventures project by attending a cuddle party. I’d love to get past some of the barriers I’ve set up for myself and just play with trust and contact a little bit—I would love to spend at least a little time cuddling a guy, feeling that trust, smelling that guy-smell, it would be really nice. Cuddling seems a lot more intimate, more personal, than spanking, so we’ll see if I feel comfortable enough to try.

I guess what I realize after slogging though this litany of fears is that part of this is a project, yes, but some of it can’t be. The love part, much as I hate to let it go, has to be left up to fate. Fate’s who I’ve got to submit to, do you think I can do it?