I've got a few things to touch on, but it's quite likely that I'll get to only one or two of them and promptly derail myself and never reach the others.

One of C's two boys decided to attempt to have his revenge on me for my near constant social shit-flinging last night. Which meant arriving at C's house, walking into her bedroom (door open, of course) to say hello to the sight of him going down on her.

I made the minimal amount of required noises of disgust and offense in order to soothe his mildly wounded ego, but it was rather apparent that I was completely apathetic about the experience. I could've walked in on C bouncing on him like a pogo-stick wearing a pink and blue giraffe costume with lactating udders and been completely unfazed, save for the laughter that would ensue.

Next time, I told him, just jerk off onto my pillow and make sure that you're calling my name when you orgasm as I walk in and I will be quite disturbed.

Though only for the sake of my poor pillow, and how long it will take to get the scent of semen out of it.

It... makes me wonder.

The traveling from point A to point B. When we start off, and sex is a thing reserved for adults, reserved for love, commitment, for sluts and whores. It's dirty without a ring, it's dirty if you love it, it's dirty if you add more than the basic positions. Walking into a sex shop causes nervous giggles, blushing, stammering, attempts to act cool. Buying condoms, dashing them across the counter, not meeting the eyes of the sales clerk.

And now.

I hear about people getting burnt out, getting sick of it. Sick of sex. The same tired games. I meet girls my own age who have only been with a couple of men and still giggle when sex is discussed. Getting sex advice from Cosmo. Who think watching porn with their partner is a kinky act, and those girls, god, those girls who think that if their husband is masturbating, it's akin to cheating on them and they feel betrayed.

I remember watching two men pound the hell out of a tiny asian girl, maybe fifteen feet away from me while her friend snapped pictures (what, for facebook?), and feeling only interest. No shame, no embarassment. Several years ago, I would've blushed, tried to act like I wasn't watching, averted my eyes.

Now... I've checked most of my to-do list off. I treat sex like I'm playing Bingo or having a scavenger hunt. Trying new things, experimenting, finding new ways to play. My experience tends to intimidate most of the men I interact with who have any knowledge of my background.

It's odd, how things work out.

Talking with GV8 about the parties he used to throw, how he'd wake up in the morning to people having sex around him, how nice it was, how he'd just join into whatever was going on.

It sounds lovely.

It makes me lopsided. No, not physically.

Sometimes I feel so strong, so outside of everything, capable of tackling the world.

And then, the rest of the time, as you all have seen, I feel like this scared little girl, dipping her toes into the waters of adulthood, trying to face the damages.

I was reading a blog where a few guys were talking about hunting for a mythical, undamaged female, who wasn't jaded and cold by her childhood and dating history.

I realized, reading that, while I am damaged, that my saving grace has been that I am always willing to give it another shot. That each person I've encountered I've allowed, as much as I can, to be a new experience. So, yes, sometimes when I was younger, I'd date or sleep with a guy that was not good for me, that hurt me or used me, but then I'd find another that would help heal it, help me grow.

It bothers me a little, on the flipside, because I do continue to treat every man that enters my life on a sexual/social level as someone new. With all the chances in the world. They aren't like "the rest" until they prove themselves to be so.

Which makes me feel naive, and does get me hurt. But each person is different, is a new experience. You lump everyone in together... it ceases to be enjoyable. You're looking for the same patterns, reading into behaviors ideas that usually don't exist, and impressing your ideas of others onto a person you've just met.

It doesn't work out well.

Hey! Two things! And I haven't derailed! Someone, throw some confetti!

Now, to what is the meat and potatoes of my brain today.

A few days ago, Ms. Birdykins did this post on her patterns of behaviors when relationships ended. Great post.

I've my own pattern of coping when a long-termer ends.

1. Withdraw
2. Write
3. Have a few (about half the time unhealthy and desperate) one night stands to get rebound sex and emotional associations with rebounds out of the way
4. Write
5. Start socializing more, develop several new circles of friends
6. Find a steady lover, typically by means of craigslist (I don't sleep within my social circles)
7. Write
8. Stabilize
9. Write
10. Meet someone new

That is the primary pattern I engage in, and have done so since Raven and I split when I was 18 (the pattern was not created directly because of him or our relationship fallout, but by accident and maintained when I realized it wasn't a bad way for me to deal with it). It's a ten step program. A typical cycle is two weeks of withdrawal, a month or two of casual dating and one-night stands which overlaps with my growing social behavior, and then, when I find my steady partner, that lasts anywhere from a few months to off and on for a few years. Typically, when I meet someone new, I know almost immediately that they are going to be my next serious relationship and become part of a couple with them within two or three weeks.

It really isn't a bad way of dealing with it. Most would say it isn't ideal, but it is my basic pattern and it has worked decently well thus far, though I have definitely tweaked it and adjusted it when each break has occured, depending on my headspace and needs.

There is that damage there, that very tentative healing period where you aren't going back to your original state, but you are seeking for a way to deal with what has happened and why, and then make something out of it.

It's difficult.

And it's easier to get stuck in emotion and internally collapse into it rather than watch and see what it is you are trying to do and why.

Because to question that... it's to question years of coping, years of making yourself who you are now, the methods in which you did so.

And I'm not sure which is better. To preserve that sort of half-life, scrambling to keep your feet under you, or to suddenly question everything about your adult self and how you deal with the sex of your chosing.

Because that could do more damage than good, at least for a little while.

It's really hard to question yourself on that level. Basically, if not invalidating who you currently are, then proving that who you are now is a combination of mistakes and misjudgements you made in the past fueled by poor choices and actions.

I suppose that's what makes religious conversions a bit easier. You've done horrible, stupid things, but this particularly deity forgives you and your sins because you didn't know any better. Acceptance for who you are and all the yous that you have been in the past.

Not a bad deal.

When I look at myself and my history of men, I see this tangled girl, sometimes child, sometimes adult, naive in some ways, jaded in others. Always looking for that acceptance, connection, and understanding. Never giving up, never "learning" the things that you think she should, but learning nonetheless. I've never reached that truly jaded, cynical point. I think I should have by now. I've got most of the check boxes marked off that make a Lifetime Channel movie about redemption and love for the fallen-angel type. The whore with a heart of gold.

Gods, when I saw that phrasing "the whore with a heart of gold" for the first time a few weeks ago, I just looked at myself and went, "Oh god, I'm a country western song waiting to happen".

I'm a walking cliche. How sad. How typical.

Even better: how cliche the phrase "walking cliche" has become.

I find it interesting, the things we do to ourselves to survive, and how those patterns come about.

It really is about survival, you know. We're young, we don't know how (or why) to shield ourselves from that first real relationship, so we throw everything into it without holding back. When it ends, if it ends, we're stuck with these pieces of reality in our hands, trying to put them back into some semblence of order, knowing that they've warped under the heat and pressure of that now failed relationship, and they're not going to fit together in quite the same way.

And some parts might even be missing.

But is that really that bad? Warping can create beautiful pieces of art, and through breaks, people can bond.

I'm not... really ashamed of my damage. The things I do to cope, to survive... they don't bother me. Sometimes, yes, it makes me uncomfortable to explain those things to a person I do not think will understand. I hate seeing judgement, I hate that moment where it no longer matters who you are as a person because you are being seen for one sliver of what makes you, what has made you.

I'm told, decently often, by people who barely know me at all, that I'm wrecked or broken beyond repair. That I'm beyond screwed up, that I'll never have a healthy relationship, that I desperately need therapy... something along those lines.

I've seen wrecked. This isn't it.

Therapy would be nice, but isn't the end all. I have to say that I've done a decent enough job, taking myself from the behavior patterns I used to engage in and changing them into healthier activities.

Damaged, yes I am. It isn't a point of pride, but a product of life. Life well lived, I would say. People are like cars: leave them in the garage and they remain pristine. Take them out, take them off-roading, through winding mountain passes, storms, nice smooth pavement... they're going to wear. Nicks, scratches, dents, keys running along their flanks, broken windows, headlights go out, transmission, battery needs to be replaced.

But it was a good journey.


Now C and I have our one-year anniversary celebration tonight. One year of good friendship and crazy stories.

Some might say "do as you feel led". I leave you with "do as you feel led, but examine the hand that is tugging on your leash".

Love without pain isn't really romance...

22.

We're in bed, lying next to each other on plaid flannel sheets, catching up on our breathing after a no-holds barred tickling match. I turn my face towards him. I've never been this happy, this content, with my life, with a man. I've been living with him for a little over two years. He's my life. We talk about marriage, about children. We're happy and growing. I never thought I would find a man who I could truly trust and love. Never thought I would find someone like him.

He looks at me and I smile. Our cat, a chubby black and white male I picked out from the pound the year before, had retreated to the chair by the bed in order to escape our wrestling.

"I want to break up."

I laugh at him, "Right, of course."

"I'm serious."

"Sure you are." He stares at me. He's not smiling. "Wait, you're serious? This isn't a joke?" starting from my throat, numbness starts to overtake me as I watch his mouth for the hint of a smile, "This isn't funny. I don't understand."

"I'm not ready for this. It's getting to that point where I need to propose or let you go. I'm still too messed up. And you're so intense. You're consuming my life and I'm not ready for that. I need to figure out the crap inside my head."

I get out of bed, the numbness expanding down into my chest, and start putting on my clothes. The bed frame that he bought for me as a surprise while I was in Alaska, the matching bedroom furniture I had to get a team to carry up the stairs in the condo to get into our bedroom when he was in New Jersey, the walls my mother, sister, and I painted while he was out of town as a surprise, our cat that he bonded so intensely with, it all becomes a featureless blur spinning out of my vision.

The cold reaches my legs ten steps from the bed and I collapse to the floor, my string pulled out.

This isn't reality.

Tears start, breathing shifts into high-gear. Ohgodithurtsohgodohgod. I start hyperventilating, something I haven't done since the abortion five years prior. The memory slides into my head of the nurses telling my seventeen year-old self that I would need to slow my breathing or I would pass out and have to stay in the clinic even longer.

I slow my breathing. Remember yourself. Where is that switch, where is that switch he told you would always be there? How do I turn this off again, it's been too long. He said I would always be able to find it. WHERE IS MY SWITCH?

I find something in me, something resembling that cold ennui that haunted me for years. It's close, I reach and I shut down. I'm stronger than this, I've been through worse than this.

No one, however, has caught me by this much surprise.

Using the doorframe, I get shakily to my feet. I'm okay. It's off. The pain is a steady echo in the back my skull but I can ignore it until I get to safety, until I get out of here.

He steps into my vision and I break, the echo turning into a roar that vibrates through my skull, shattering the foundations I so hastily laid seconds before.

I hurt. I'm yelling at him through my tears. I haven't shouted at someone since that night.

My back is against the bathroom door and I can't get my body under control and part of me is screaming inside my head that I need to get it together, that I need to gather my beast to me and get through this because I can handle this if I would just let myself.

He's talking to me, soothing tone, explaining what happened, how he's been thinking about this for the last three months, watching us interact, trying to determine what to do. That he still cares for me, but he needs to focus on himself.

It's a fountain of words streaming from his mouth. I latch on to the cadence of his voice and my tears slow, then cease. I count the seconds of my breath. Three seconds in, three seconds out.

Focus.

I'm calm enough to drive. I toss some clothes into a bag. When I reach my car, I call my mother and let her know that I'm moving back in, and that I'm on my way now.

The next day, my mother, my sister, and myself show up to the condo with bags and boxes. We wipe it clean of me within a few hours. I call him to let him know we're done and he can return home.

I don't unpack those boxes for a over a year.

... ... ... ...

24.

We're in bed together. Tan cotton sheets. We're lying on our backs, distant.

"I think this is as far as we go," he says to me.

"I know."

A single tear rolls down my cheek and I fall asleep.

... ... ... ...

25.

We're standing in our kitchen. I'm moving out in a week. Mostly packed, it's just the kitchen and larger furniture.

"I don't want to lose your friendship."

"I'm sorry," I tell him, though I'm not and we both know that I mean that I'm sorry he treated me so poorly that I will never speak to him again once I am finally out of this apartment.

"I'm going to miss your wit and intelligence. I'm going to miss dancing with you at the clubs."

"Why did you do what you did?" and, again, we both know exactly what I'm referring to with that vague statement.

He leans against the kitchen counter, back inline with the kitchen sink.

"I thought you could take it."

"You thought I could 'take it'," images of me ripping off his head rush into my mind, but my body language betrays nothing as I continue to pack in the dining room.

"Yeah. You're so strong. You could take it. You're good with pain. I thought I could do what I wanted and you could handle it. Apparently you couldn't."

"I'm sorry I failed to see the point of sticking around in an unhealthy situation while you continued to treat me like your psychological punching bag. I'll try to do better next time." Asshole, I mentally punctuate.

The next hour and a half, while I pack, I get to listen to a whining speech from a man I never should have dated about how much he will miss my friendship.

When he goes out of town the next weekend, the weekend I'm moving out, he tricks one of his friends into staying at the apartment while he's gone in order to babysit me so I do not attempt to steal any of his belongings.

... ... ... ...

20.

"You got drunk and cheated on me with two of your female friends?"

"I plead the fifth."

"Right. Well, this is over."

"See you, space cowboy."

He would end with a running joke.

... ... ... ...

18.

When he slammed me in the car door the first time, I thought it was an accident.

The second time, it caught me across the chest.

The third time, I caught it in my hands.

When I ran, he caught me. I bit him. He threw me to the ground by my hair, bits of gravel stuck in my forearms.

When he locked me in his room and held me down on his bed, pressing into me with his body, I got a hand free and took my distress out on his balls. I continued to bite anything that I could sink my teeth into.

... ... ... ...

18.

I was stupid.

Looking so desperately for a man who wasn't like the last one, I stumbled into idiocy.

It still embarasses me to realize how naive I was. To get stuck in a hotel room in the middle of the day with a man I just met? That I was so hoping would erase the taint of the previous one?

I was so innocent. So stupid. When he switched a finger for a cock, I told him to stop. I told him he wasn't wearing a condom and I did not want to have sex and he knew that, I had told him earlier.

I wasn't savvy enough to realize the situation I was in.

He didn't listen.

... ... ... ...

17.

"Flip a bitch," he calls out, then roughly turns me onto my stomach while his friend watches from the floor.

We popped some pills and went at it, them taking turns with my body.

I still cannot get those words out of my head.

... ... ... ...

25.

I'm lying in bed, alone. Black sheets.

Cool pillow beneath me, phone pressed against one ear.

His voice slides into me, "It's like you're designed for pain. Something about you, something about your life, it's like you've been set up for pain. This is how you are strong. This is what people see in you. An ability to handle pain."