I'd rather have a bottle in front of me...

I have to say, this is one of the rare times I don't want to be blogging because my mind is simply too full and I just want to retreat into my cave and not talk to anyone until it goes away, by either zombie attack or lobotomy.

That's right, baby. Brains: come and get 'em.

But since I missed last night's posting, here I am.

By "here" I mean sitting in my bed, wearing an ex-boyfriend's old thermal and shiny blue pajama bottoms with the phrase "Sweet Dreams" printed across the back in a sort of strange italics.

My hair is up in a bun because it's so cold I did not want to wash it and go to bed with hair that hadn't dried fully, so tomorrow is going to be an "interesting" hair day that will translate to me having it "bunned up" all day.

How many more "words" can I put in "quotations marks"?

At the top of my brainmush, is female competition combined with insulting phrasing that is inherently for female recipients, but really only exists to complain about whatever behavior isn't suiting the user at the time.

Which is, magically, how I can be a slut and a cocktease at the same time.

How do I achieve this remarkable feat? one may ask.

Simple. I just have to have two different men looking at me with two different different backgrounds.

The externally active one (meaning, to the person who doesn't understand my slightly odd pairings of words, the one who looks outside of himself to determine what is wrong with "society" and how he is more the result of what has been done to him than his own actions, or even more simply, the one who views the world out of pure egocentricity) will tend to label towards "slut"-themed words.

The internally active one (meaning the one who isn't quite bitter and egocentric enough to enforce his opinions on the rest of the world as The Way Things Should Be) will go towards the "cocktease" or "cunt"-themed words. Not near as aggressively judgmental.

What do they have in common? I'm not sleeping with either of them.

What you just read (or skimmed) above is a fairly common and generalized sentiment.

Men are bitter, angry, hostile, etc etc.

But what it is, though, is a way to control and influence. Girl isn't doing what you want, label her appropriately, get others to back you, have enough status that your label actually matters, or simply get fear of a word entrenched in a group... bingo- behavior will change.

What's worse, and what I've noticed more of these last few days, is when other women do it. Not only do they have to be concerned with their own sex life, but the sex lives of other girls. It's competition and, wow, unhappiness.

As why would a woman who is truly happy with her sex life and her sexual presentation (both socially and physically) care about what another woman is doing, and be anything but supportive as long as the other is safe and happy?

Especially among friends.

And before someone reading this gets the idea that I had some traumatic experience in the last few days/hours/weeks with a girl going off on me, you'd be incorrect. As for a guy going off on me? Not so much either.

Continuing.

I can't tell if the competition at this point is to see who can snag the best man or who can make the others around her more miserable.

I mean, really, that's how you win, right? You get the alpha football jock millionaire high status star and you've won! And then, OMG, you lord him and your acquired status over your girlfriends and they all look at you in envy. Or you make sure that since you're so very unhappy with what you've done with your life, that no one else can be happy and make you feel worse with their success.

I've been reading these MRA blogs about honor and values and how women simply lack them. That's right, kids, women don't have morals. I believe there's supposed to be a genetic difference, some part of the brain that prevented morals (back to the lobotomy, eh, Jones?).

And when I see these women that tout themselves as MRA supporters or anti-feminism supporters, I've just got to sit back and watch the magic.

By magic, I mean grown women behaving like an idiotic school of fish, hanging out in the water, mouths open, begging for the validation of whatever MRA man will come along and tell them that they are special, that they do understand, and that they've got this lovely little doggie bed for them in the garage.

Because these women are actively advocating that they are inferior purely due to biology. That their physical sex is the determining factor on who they are, what they can do, and what morals they can possess.

I can't even read this stuff all the way through.

I'm not a feminist. I don't advocate social change based on my own idea of what society should be. I simply don't have a social -ism or an -ist or any sort of label to apply to my belief set so I can communicate them to others in an attempt at conversion.

Someone tries to talk politics to me? I apologize, tell them I'm dreadfully ignorant, and completely apolitical.
Someone tries to talk religion? No, don't do that either.
Philosophy? Nope.
Sexuality? Oh, hell no.

I'm not going to get into it any place other than online (and for me to step far outside my blog for any significant length of time is uncommon).

Because they're simply beliefs. It's not reality. My believing in the things I do does not make them correct, and it certainly doesn't make them more valid than any other set of beliefs that any other person has. And for me to attempt to force my beliefs on others is an exercise in selfishness and ego-stroking that I don't desire to pursue.

I'll stroke my ego in other ways. Usually with physical action that requires stroking. (wink wink, nudge nudge)

I was going to continue that above parenthetical remark into the rest of the Monty Python skit, but then realized how disconcerting that would be to anyone who hasn't seen it. Yes, you all disappoint me. Except for you. You can stay.

So, to bring that back, controlling others through words, through strength of words, and then having that reinforced by people who should emphasize with the negativity of those words... no. We assign such a high value to words without even realizing it.

I hate how we cut ourselves down, and then we go to be pet by the person who handed us the ax. I'm not a dog, I'm not going to have my "master" sic me on other people.

And this leads into my concerns with GV8, concerns that I've spent all week trying to avoid, only to have them come up again.

I'm 26. I'm now on my downslope. I'm not getting hotter each year, I'm declining. I have to fight to keep my body healthy and in shape. As much as it's going to get, anyway. I have somewhere between ten and fourteen years where I can reproduce.

And then that's it. Uteral party is over.

That's my window.

Crazy how it creeps up on you.

I have to find someone within the next two years, just as I slide into my late twenties. And then I will be, in all likelihood, finding lower and lower quality males that are willing to accept me in my "declining" years. (Aldonza, I have to say I am imagining you shaking your head at me right now and I fully give you permission to boot me in the head later.)

So I've got two years that are no longer optimal, then I have to marry, go through the honeymoon phase, and then pop out a kid or two, hopefully by thirty-five.

It seems like such a brief window.

And that's assuming that I ever find a man that I get along with enough to consider marriage. Yes, I have male attention. But, as has been noted again and again, I'm a bit... intense. I have to have a man that can handle that, and handle it well.

It drives me nuts to think that, for so many, my desirability is not based on my brain, my character, my too-extreme Disney-like morals, but my appearance. And this is accepted. This is the way it is. And there's validation for it. Attractiveness declines with fertility leaving. Of course, that could very well be another chicken-and-egg argument. Then add in Darwin's idea of sexual selection and twist it up more and there you go. Madness. Sparta. Of course, if I recall correctly, Darwin said females choose, males court, but I think it spins both ways because one has to have power to choose, which means one has to be desirable enough to battle over.

So there you go.

Which means that every day I spend moping over GV8, or spend with GV8 (which encourages more moping) is a day that is wasted. Because he's too old, likely not going to marry, and he's now sterile. As long as I'm hung up on him, I cannot truly engage with another male.

But that's just from a biological standpoint.

When you layer in the psychology, the emotions, the personal growth, the life experience through hypergamy... it swings it back around until we're in this limbo where it could either be positive or negative.

And in the end, it just drives me crazy to think about.

So, with the words of god knows how many people ringing in my ears, I called GV8 to tell him that I couldn't do this to myself. I couldn't keep spending time with a man that wouldn't give me monogamy, marriage, or munchkins.

I wanted him to give me a counter-argument, maybe tell me he'd be willing to drop his sport-fucking outside of swing clubs.

Tell me that our relationship was more important than his sport-fucking.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Instead, he agreed with me. Of course. So not only did I not get an argument, I also lost the high of being the ditcher as opposed to the ditchee.

He's not going to change, I can't ask him to change, sport-fucking is something he's been doing for thirty years and he's not going to give it up, it's as natural to him as breathing. We need to be friends, we've exceeded our "dating window", five break-ups is too many, we need to give up on it.

And I'm sitting there, going "fuck, really?" because now he's taking control of the situation and telling me all these things that I was going to tell him. Which left me feeling incredibly insecure and lacking in validation.

He's way too good at this.

So then I end up pursuing. Not saying that we needed to get back together, but that it bothered me how easy it all was for him, how sad it makes me that he's so willing to give me up for sport-fucking, how rarely he shows his emotions, how surprised that he felt our "dating window" was up. Trying to get that emotional acknowledgment, hating that he's so much stronger than I am.

We were going to go out on Saturday. I called to tell him that wasn't such a good idea. By the end of the conversation, we're back on for a tentative Saturday and I'm here thinking, "Christ, he did it again." Or maybe that should be: "Christ, I did it again."

I'm supposed to call him later in the week to confirm if it's a yes or a no, think on it some.

We talk to each other and... melt.

I got his hackles up a bit, more than once. Pissed him off a couple times. I never used to monitor him so finely, but talking with Roman has made me even more aware of conversational twitches, and the space since GV8 and I last talked allowed me to get my feet under me somewhat so I could play with the conversation, be a little more assertive.

Though at the end I started to crumble. Losing words. Unable or unwilling to articulate the mess in my head.

This is the second time I've considered and decided to take a step away from him.

Each time, I've been blocked by him.

But I think this time, he is set that it is over.

I wish I could have been the one to make that call. He takes control of every conversation and by the end of it, flips me around like Alice down the rabbit hole.

Now I don't know what he wants, what he's planning, and I hate to think that he's done with me so easily. I wish I could see into him like I do others, see that he hurts, that he misses me and hates doing this, as opposed to those words that I hear... but no emotion attached. It would make this so much easier.

He makes me so weak. I let him. I drink him down with Hope for a chaser.

Quickest girl in the frying pan...

It seems as though I'm developing an attachment to someone, or at least the beginnings of a potential attachment to someone.

Someone that isn't GV8.

It's a mixed bag.

My sadness at GV8 leaving me, even if it winds up being temporary, has morphed into a mild lack of respect for him, which I believe I've mentioned recently. When he's reminded of me strongly, through events or actions, he forgets his rules... maybe forget isn't the right word. He discards his rules for the pleasure of my company.

Just tosses them straight out.

And something that I valued in him, the first thing that made me stop and realize that maybe he was one of those few men I truly consider mine (in the sense that this type of man belongs to me, fits with me) was his self-control.

A friend of mine mentioned, when I told her how much I admired his self-control, that it was easy to have self-control when you had no rules for yourself.

I'm finding that more and more true.

I miss him, I truly do. It becomes easier each day, a little bit at a time, to not think of him. But when he does stray into my brain, that gutpunch feeling causes pain and mental doubling up around the source, trying to wad the memories of him in foam, box them up and store them in the furthest corner of my attic.

So I don't think of him.

And I try not to be angry. I try not to think that I opened myself to him fully, was willing to bare pieces of myself that I've held tightly so long, to mesh with him without reserve or doubts... and he said no.

Or, at least, not yet.

How can I return to that? How can I go back to him with open arms? Trust is burnt, respect is damaged, I'm shying away from him again, going back to my wild mustang hindbrain: teeth-bared-eyes-rolling-ain't-never-gonna-to-put-a-bridle-on-me-boy.

How can I expect him to even want me back, with his wild nights ahead of him, the club opening up in two weeks, living the life of a playboy, girls falling on him like they do.

How could he ever look back at me and think that he'd be willing to compromise, he'd be willing to give some of it up, so he could love me?

He's told me so often that he isn't relationship material, but he keeps trying with me anyhow.

I pass his tests. I'm the whole package, he says. The whole package, as far as I can tell from our talks, entails a combination of intelligence, drive, family values, confidence, ability to handle money, constant honesty, and insane sexual ability. I think I'm a bit wishy-washy on the drive and the confidence, but he was mostly okay with it.

Even if he did come back, even if he was able to gentle me, heal the damage between us, do I want a life with a man who won't offer monogamy? Who already donated one STD to my life? Who won't give me children? Who constantly changes his mind and his plans, who is never dedicated to one path if another one arises?

I don't know.

I say that often.

At least I admit it, I suppose.

And then this dark horse shows up, and I end up intrigued.

Makes me wonder if I'm just as bad as all the MRA guys say when it comes to women. Toss someone who smells like alpha at me and I'm spreading my legs. That's the belief, right?

No, I'm not having sex. I haven't touched anyone since The Bassist. My body feels like begging for touch, for an hour in bed with someone with hard, smooth skin and a strong jaw.

I feel disloyal.

Imagine.

I feel disloyal who a man who never offered me physical loyalty. To a man that said he'd call me when he figured things out... with no set date. It could be next year when my phone rings. To a man I may never actually talk to again.

I feel inconstant, easily attracted, easily distracted.

In my defense, I wasn't looking for it.

In my defense, maybe it's a good thing to remind myself that there are the occasional rare males out there that I can actually connect with, so I'm not so desperately hinged on GV8, thinking that he's the beginning and end of my world and letting that dictate my behavior.

It makes me wonder if I'll be able to respect a man again, or how long it will take for that respect to develop. GV8 pushed the bar so high, so far out of reach when it comes to certain behaviors and desired traits, and then... then he fell.

I remember, one of the last times we were together, he was sitting at his desk, looking at me. I don't know what we were talking about, but he commented that he wondered how long it would be before I was disillusioned with him, until I looked back at him like I do so many other guys who didn't live up to my expectations- not of a partner, but of a person, the same expectations that I hold to myself, constantly striving for, even if I don't meet them.

I have high demands of the people around me. The closer they are to me, the closer I allow them to me, the higher the demands rise. Those expectations aren't financial, or social, they aren't about wardrobe or who drops the most names. They center around honesty, integrity, self-awareness, ability to communicate, lack of external judgement, self-control, ethics, honor, perception, compassion, emotional stability and intelligence.

It's a lot, I know.

I strive towards those traits. I respect those traits.

So I look at myself and wonder why this is happening. If I'm being weak by allowing it to happen, if I'm guarding myself from the pain that GV8 will inflict when he lets me know he can't compromise his life style for me, if I'm giving myself a platform of objective reality, if I'm cheating on my lack of intimacy rule I've set for myself, if I'm using him as a crutch to feel not so alone as I deal with all these changes in my life, if I'm a disloyal and inconstant whore, if I'm just as bad as all the MRA guys would say, if it's all about that alpha-related tingle, if GV8 will just add it to his mental list of reasons he should not be with me, if this is really as weak as it sounds.

Lots of ifs.

One instinct.

My brain runs wild and I balk. Rare connection, ability, blessed ability to talk, to discuss ideas, to find someone who will be honest with me with their feedback, no rose-colored glasses, no white knighting. Knowing I'm just as wrecked as them.

What am I going to have to give up with these actions?

Which domino will start the chain of events that will unravel this thread?

How much can be held against me, and how much can I hold against myself?

What am I doing? Creating self-loathing or saving myself?

Probably the former.

So weak. Still so weak.

For you I turn wine into champagne...

Sometimes I wonder if the morals I so steadfastly cling to are simply a way for me to cope with the world. A way of retaining some sort of identity.

I found, when they were challenged a few weeks ago and I allowed myself to slip in a fit of lust, I found myself wondering who exactly I was. It made me question my concept of myself and the way I have built myself, my so few grasps at trying to understand who I have become and what I have been, to the point of knowing that if I no longer followed that, what I would love to call but truly know otherwise, internal moral compass, I would not be what I consider me.

I would be someone else.

We have a concept of self, some theories state, that is created by a division of self versus not-self. That we identify who we are based on who (or what) we are not.

We look at others around us, at objects around us, at ideas around us, and examine them as a child examines a new toy, to determine if they are or are not something that adds to our not-self, or one of the few things that adds to the self.

There are things I think I know about myself.

I know I feel as though I lack self-definition. I do not know who I am, where I belong, or if I'll ever meet others like me. I know I feel as though I have been through so much that I have a hard time being myself around others because I know it will cause confusion and uncomfortability, so I am constantly play-acting. But I also feel as though the things that I've done in my life, and the things that have been done to me, are not so extreme that I was pushed over the edge into that group of people that are, beyond all, radical survivors.

I feel constantly alone.

Not lonely, usually.

Just isolated. Walking in a world at a different speed than so many others, never quite linking up. Occasionally, I will try to be myself and talk to "normal" people, and I find myself wondering why I even try, knowing the eventual result.

I know I unsettle. I know I can intimidate without ever meaning to. I know the majority of people cannot relate to the things I say and the things I believe that I rarely would say.

I created this blog to have the space I needed to exercise (exorcise, depending on the day) my beliefs, my stories, the things that go on inside my head when I interact with others, things I cannot discuss with the people around me because I know that it would bother them, that they would not trust me, that they would constantly question me.

Which happened recently, actually. One of my male friends was forwarned, by me, that I have certain social tendencies. And, for nearly the last year, he was be watching me, growing more and more uncomfortable, noting things that others would not until, a few weeks ago, he finally confronted me about it.

Sometimes I hate this mix I have, this emotional vunerability that I have tried so hard to rid myself of and this cold, calculating, sometimes destructive beast.

It would make things easier if I was more one than the other.

One would think I would loathe myself. Part of me for the weakness I have, the easy infatuation, the overly sensitive nature. Part of me for the things I have done, the things I would like to do.

I rein it in with my moral net, the guidelines I set forth to define me and stop me.

People don't understand. I'm nearly religious about it.

But you end up hurting so many people, so many people, some dearer to you than yourself. And when you stop, you look at the wreckage behind you and you can choose to rebuild, or to burn the foundations into char.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlowe ends up back in Western civilization, and he cannot stand, cannot understand, the people around him. He loathes them, he laughs at them, he knows they will never comprehend the things he's seen and done, that words could not convey that self-knowledge that comes with the reversal of identity, the reversal of his external world, and thus his internal self.

He becomes wrecked and haunted, a shadow of a man, even more so than his Western ideal, Kurtz, had become. Poisoned by the workings of Kurtz, poisoned by finding that the man he had grown to idolize had fallen, and what could make such a man fall... first he turns to attacks (for one way of resisting is to attack) and then he recognizes the darkness in the civility around him.

Then he fractures.

And then he breaks.