Rough day.

Doesn't help that I'm spending my evenings up and wandering, not getting enough sleep.

Have to push myself into the ground, of course. It's what I do, what I've always done. Push and push until you crash, recover, then do it again.

Didn't have a nightmare about GV8 last night. That was... good. Unexpected. It's so hard to play out the different versions of the same thing, watching echoes of past relationships creep up on me, consolidate into the last ex.

In the dreams, I'm nothing to him.

In the dreams, I'm less than a stranger. I'm "someone he knew, once". Someone he thought he loved. Someone that was worth his love and attention. And then he looks at me in the dream and realizes that I was nothing. An infatuation, a symptom of foolishness. Not worth the most basic of human caring.

Back to those fears again.

Always devaluing myself. Always doubting. Always taking my value from the man who I spend time with, the man who I do my best to please.

It's better now than it was.

Still not 100%.

And it's hard to untangle the strings of actual lust from the strings of internal motivators stemming from other sources.

I have one man right now that I would willingly take to my bed, with near total confidence I would do so out of caring and connection. Being a couple thousand miles apart, though, means my bed is going to be empty for some time.

I'm coming up on my first cut-off. I said no new partners until a week after GV8's and my anniversary. Next Monday. I thought, by then, that there could be a chance that I'd be okay enough to start engaging again.

But I was wrong, and I'm having to move it to the next cut-off. August 1st.

I don't think I've ever gone so long without sex since I was 16 or so.

But, what? Do I really want to just trip up again? Find some "special" guy when I'm not ready for it, have to start again when it falls apart a year or two from now, when I'm 28 and I'm still at the same spot I was before? That I've been at so many times? How foolish that I keep turning to immediate pleasure, knowing the outcome.

So much easier than dealing with what I am now: tension. Anger. Grumpiness. Anxiety. Mood swings. Barely controlling myself from snapping at those around me.

I caught myself on film today. It was unexpected. I went to Lucha Va Voom's Cinco de Mayo show at The Mayan in downtown. A man with a video camera walked down the line, recording people waiting for the doors to open. I was on the phone with a friend, walking away from the line so I could hear. The timing was perfect. I walked about thirty feet in front of the camera, just for a second or two. They played the whole video just before the show.

I haven't seen myself move in years.

Yes, there are mirrors at the club, but I don't really look at them and, honestly, I'm dancing. It's a given that I'm going appear somewhere between decent and very good.

But I got to watch my walk. Something that I've been working on and adjusting, something that gets commented on and draws attention fairly often. Controlled, centered, internal. Rollingly smooth. The hipsway my family teases me about, saying I move like my cat.

It was surprising. I knew I moved differently, but I didn't realize how noticeable it was. Good to know that my body-awareness is paying off.

The show was good, the dancers, the performers, and, of course, the luchadore. For all three matches, each set of wrestlers were "thrown" out of the ring and into the chairs in front of me, people dashing out of the way, spilling drinks, the girls buzzed and shrieking.

I walked to my car afterwards, bidding C and friends good-bye for the evening. They were wandering off to find food, but I wasn't looking to spend money on things I already had at home. The freeway was smooth and empty, I slid into an easy 80, sometimes 90, letting my wheels take me home. My left-handed driving is getting better, though the awkwardness of using the turn signal is cropping up. Less and less I need to bring my right hand into play to make sure I get those extra-tight curves. I think that, within a month at most, I'll be driving just as smooth with my left as I do with my right.

It's a bit of a reality check for me. Making myself face the likelihood that I'll eventually lose all fine motor control in my right hand. Not anytime soon, but probably in the next ten to twenty years, depending on lifestyle choices. If I learn to do more things with my left, that time will extend, which I am aiming for.

But it's 1AM and my neighbors are slowly staggering home. I hear the laughter in the hallway and that's my cue to get myself unconscious.

He once asked me why I don't live like I drive.

That, I think, was one of the first things he noticed about me: how I drove.

Well, that's not true. Face, body, movement, flirting.

Then he followed me to the place I was apartment sitting that first night, down the freeway. He got out of the car and told me he loved how I drove so confidently.

I do love to drive. It's how I zen, how I express joy and excitement, behind the wheel is where I go to do my best thinking.

The way I learned my right from left when I was a child was by realizing that the driver's side was my left, the passenger's side my right. Whenever my childbrain would stumble over which direction was which, I'd imagine myself in the car and I would know.

My father named me after an engine company. Not because he was a motorhead, but because he liked the name. When he drove us around, I would sit and ask him questions about how to drive, which pedals were which, what to do in certain situations. My childhood was an education in handling a car.

I did not get my driver's license until I was eighteen, though.

By that time, the idea of driving, the changes that would entail from me learning to drive, were much too intimidating. It was only when I started fighting to turn my life around from mooching, self-destructive gutterskank into something resembling an adult that I finally faced my fear of getting behind the wheel.

And it was awkward. I kept to the far right, afraid of the on-coming traffic, cringing at each pass.

I'm sure my father, the one teaching me, was shocked. I was his daughter. How could I not just slide in behind the wheel and have instinct kick in?

Then I hit the freeway.

Pieces slid together in my brain and I understood the flow. It was perfect, it was beautiful. My driving instructor let me tear loose on the freeway, then ended the lesson early and bought me lunch, as there was no need to continue.

Things just made sense.

And that bled onto the hated surface streets.

So, last night, I finally braved returning to the club that I met GV8 at, in order to move past the associations, move past the fear that I would walk in and see him with another girl. I drove through the heavy beach fog on PCH, then cut inland until the air was clear again, parked several blocks away as the place was overflowing.

I went to the club, I watched a girl in a g-string and nothing else crawl around on the floor, picking up roses with her teeth while being caned. I stepped past the man cuffed to the leather horse, being whipped, the girl on the medical table, legs spread and thighs red from impact, and sat with friends.

I did not do my circuit, looking for someone to entertain me for the night. I did not try to seek to ease my discomfort at being at the club in another's desire. When I was hit on, I let it be known that I was off the market. When a man I was introduced to continued to glance my way, even when being very obviously flirted with by a cute black girl, I made sure to shut him out, sitting on the arm of a couch, legs crossed at the thigh, wrists crossed in my lap.

I did not flirt, I did not tease, I did not engage.

I left my friends only a few times, to get out of hot rooms and to get water.

Not to find someone to distract me.
Not to find or incite desire.

Dress was casual, make-up was light, the necklace GV8 bought me on our pre-Valentine's Day date resting just below my collarbone.

I left a little after 1AM.

Hopped on the same freeway in the same direction that we took when he followed me down that first night.

Thought of him shutting his car door and walking to me across the street from the apartment. Of him complimenting me on my driving. I was flattered at the time, but the more I learned of him, the more I came to realize exactly how much of a compliment that was.

I drove home from my parents' this evening, glancing down at the speedometer, realizing that I've put about five thousand miles on this car, and I'm finally starting to get used to its blind spots, which are so very different than my last car, which means I'm back in my casual driving territory of 90MPH. I don't even notice when I get there, it feels so natural.

He asked why I can't live like I drive.

There are certain fears that torment me, anxiety that floods my system, buckets of self-doubt that shut me down so hard.

But not behind the wheel. Behind the wheel, I'm at peace.

I don't know why it's so hard for me to bring it from four wheels to my own two feet.

... ... ...

I'm doing something every night this week. No break, no rest, booked solid. I've got pieces of a desk I'm trying to build strewn on the floor in front of my fireplace, hamburger patties I made for dinner for my parents earlier this evening in my fridge, laundry that needs to be put away, and I continue onwards.

I keep trying to remind myself that I need to stop thinking of him, that I need to stop letting this emotion crowd into my brain, so I can focus on me. That when everything is right with me, it'll bleed out into the rest of my life.

I do believe that.

Been talking with someone lately, another person all torqued up from childhood and life trauma. Reminds me of how much we cling to the identity of who we are, that we are unable to let go and be healthy. To heal.

Whatever healing is. Whatever healthy is.

Who decides that? The self. But if the self is unhealthy, then who decides what is healthy? How do you know when you aren't healthy? How do you know when you are?

Backstabber, backstabber, backstabber...

I'm not actually listening to the Dresden Dolls right now. But, somehow, that song is stuck in my head, and has been since yesterday. Maybe a sign?

I'm frustrated. I feel stoppered up, words just bottled inside me and I wish I had someone in my life that I could talk to without having to constantly explain myself or my though processes. I usually don't mind explaining things to my friends, my odd twists of logic, my survival/strength-based worldview. It allows me to clarify things for myself, communicating that to other people, and get feedback, input, general critique that I can toss around in my head for days.

But, as I've mentioned, I've been talked at. And talked at some more. And when I finally was able to talk a little, with C on the way up to the club on Saturday, I felt like I was only addressing surface issues.

I don't feel lonely, just, as per the usual, alone.

I do have great friends, wonderful, loyal friends that I love spending time with. But it doesn't take too long for me to wear out, for me to need so desperately to get away and get back to myself, be alone so I can relax. So I can be a little more me.

It's why I love driving so much. Racing along the freeways by myself, 90 miles an hour, listening to whatever suits my mood, thinking, enjoying the extension of myself in car form, knowing that I shouldn't take corners so hard, shouldn't whip myself around on onramps, but I do it anyhow and eat through my tires much too fast.

That was one of the things that attracted GV8 to me when we met. He followed me back to the place I was crashing at, and as soon as we parked, got out, "I love the way you drive... so confident."

And I am.

A few months ago, someone slammed into my driver's side going much too fast for the intersection we were in. I saw him coming, saw that his car would physically impact my body, adjusted quickly so that he would hit the backseat door instead of mine, and then controlled the spinout to avoid the traffic around me, finding a curb to slam into to stop my car.

No panic, no screaming, no pants-wetting.

You see the situation and you handle it.

$5100 later, my driver's side backseat door was no longer concave.

If I had freaked, if I had allowed myself any panic, things would have gone much more poorly.

I still remember feeling the spin, seeing the cars to my right, knowing that the man who hit me would drive me into them if I did not do something, gas the car, go into the 180, check over my right shoulder, hair flying, see the curb, bring the car around, nail it, not even bothering to think about what would happen if the speed of my car would tip me over and onto my passenger side. Just a knowledge that that curb had to stop me, and if it didn't, if I tipped, I'd handle it.

While scary, I was thrilled. Thrilled to know that my instincts, my ability to keep calm in emergencies, and my father's constantly drilling on driving manuevers when I was younger... it worked. It came together.

Mario Kart probably helped some. Just sayin'.

Anyhow, away from driving, back towards original goal.

Well, there's not a goal set. But back towards topic declared.

I'm lacking in people like me. There's the one girl, my friend, and I do need to visit her. And there's one or two people I've seen in the blogosphere where I blinked and said to myself, "Yeah, they got it."

It makes me remember that dream I had a few months back. I was hanging out with friends in someone's apartment, and Hardwood Floors walked in with some chick, some beautiful girl with my coloring, but different body, and so young and naive.

I was hurt but I didn't show it. I congratulated him on finding a girlfriend, he hugged me, and I went back to talking to people.

But then someone started fighting and I left.

I went down the stairs of their apartment, to the ground floor, and started walking. Directionless, whatever caught my eye, until I saw some yellow flowers on a large bush peeking out from behind someone's house. I walked up their driveway and found a wide dirt path, which I followed. The dirt path continued up a slight hill, and suddenly I was in the country, a few old southern-style houses around me, and so much plantlife. I walked under something resembling a willow, its lean branches hanging down in front of me, filtering the sunlight.

I felt so at peace.

And then I looked around.

There were people. There were these wonderful, bestial people. Men and women lounging about, all of them sorts of predators, people who engineer, people who hunt, who are wild and damaged. But the area we were in was a sort of peace zone, where none of them had to perform, had to attack, had to be doing anything other than rest, recharge, and stop hunting for whatever they sought.

I feel like I've started writing some hippie blog entry. Bah.

As I stood there, watching and at ease, Hardwood Floors came up the path behind me. Told me that he ditched the girl, that she would never understand him like I did, that he'd constantly have to hide his nature from her, that he'd never feel happy and complete, never feel accepted, never let down his guard in case he frightened her.

I believe I told him, "I know."

Heavy petting ensued.

And I woke up.

It's hard to... be with other people sometimes. It becomes this mismash of who you are, who people see you as, and who you want to be seen as. I try so hard to give people a more complete picture of me, but I keep getting pigeon-holed, I keep feeling as though only one side of me is there and that, as more and more people in life deny the other, maybe the other doesn't exist.

Maybe it's just in my head.

People who know me... I'm always this strong, confident, mildly confused woman, sexually confident to an extreme, comfortable in my skin, intelligent, and gentle. Introspective, introverted at times. Cautious until comfortable, it has been said.

But they weren't there when I played with Jake. They weren't there when I flaunted my other lover in front of him, when I played on his weak points and drove him into a frenzy of self-loathing and tears, until he was repeatedly slamming his skull into the hood of his car because he was not worthy of me, because I made him feel worthless with my words and actions. Because I could. Because I wanted to.

Even after that, he begged to be allowed to stay the night, just to cuddle with me, just to be with me.

Even after that, he proposed.

I was 17.

I got so high off of that night, off of hurting him, off of getting him to hurt himself.

I was an angry, disconnected child.

Now I'm a disconnected adult. I think that, maybe, I compensate now for all the damage I did to others in the past, by being so nice all the time. Atonement for an atheist, how amusing.

It's still there, though. That need to hurt, that need to self-destruct. It's no where near as strong as it used to be, not even close. But it's there.

I try to tell people this. Not the stories. But when someone tells me how wonderful and nice I am, when I overhear someone telling another how great I am, how low-drama and non-crazy I am... I have to stop. I have to wonder what they're missing. I have to wonder what makes it so when I see Wolfboy and he sees me, we recognize each other. That first night I met him, coming up on eight years, I knew him to his core. He still can't get away with lying to me and he hates that fact.

I'm going to try to get used to this. The alone. Not having a person I can sit down with and talk, compare notes, relax. Someone I don't have to pretend for.

The first step to all this is becoming alone.

A week ago, I started wearing what looks like a simple wedding ring. It was a gift from my parents, a small sapphire surrounded by smaller diamonds. Very minimal, just my style, should I have wanted a ring with jewels in it. I'm more a plain band kinda girl, but... eh.

But I've been wearing it. The nice guys who would never mess with a married or engaged woman keep their distance. The assholes who would... they're easy enough to deal with. The concern here is not the assholes, the ones who do not respect other's bonds, but the men who actually would. Someone with my retardly moral code, someone worth dating.

I'm distancing myself. Even thinking about stopping things with Ev. I am going to go see The Bassist's band play this week, and we're going to curl up and watch a movie on Sunday, but I've already resolved myself to a lack of interest.

September 5th. A year of singledom.

Once I am truly good being alone, able to control and discuss with myself my own internal drama, confident in myself, knowing that I need no one to make me happy, to validate me, then I'll know that I'm ready for a relationship.

Until then, this ring stays on and I continue to do what I am so good at: keep my heart out of the game.