Day 8: Tsunamis

Hi there! Did you miss me? I've missed you. I'm sorry I've been away so long. This post has taken a while to bubble, simmer, and be ready. Today, I want to get naked with you. Like, really naked. Not the kind that removes the tangible clothing shell, but the kind that actually leaves me exposed. The kind that brings you into me. The kind that connects you to my skin, my liver, my undefinable me. The kind of naked that probably won't get you off. It doesn't get me off, anymore. And that's the problem. This month is supposed to embrace self-love, celebrate it, bathe in its stickiness. In trying, (yes trying! can you imagine trying to love yourself, rather than just doing? - maybe you can), I'm not bathing, I'm drudging through muck and murk and a whole lot of sticky that's more like pond scum than the sugary sweet that gooks at the tip of my fingers after the loving. I cry after sex now- partnered sex, self-sex, it doesn't matter, I still cry. I cry for my lover, because I don't think he actually wants to be there anymore, between my legs, where he used to fit, but has a hard time squeezing his face or cock into now. Obligation sucks. I cry for myself. Pity's worse. And self-pity, fuck, self-disgust, is the 7th circle of hell. Liquid nitrogen cold in the core, like the Devil with Dante. But yet here I am. 

The idea of having sex makes me nauseous, makes me anxious. Dwelling on the how, the maneuvering, the positioning, the what might feel good for both, what might feel good for me, mostly what might get him off or if he will. Why am I so worried about getting him off? As if sex is the only thing keeping him around. Jesus. But I remember what it was, what it used to be, how it used to be. Before, when he fit me. When I fit myself. Could reach all parts without lift something, moving it out of the way, working to stretch down and around. My hands have become forklifts for my body, not the gentle caressers and committed lovers they used to be, I want them to be, I need them to be. Before. When I wasn't competing with who I used to be, and just was. There. In the moment. Existing and happy wrapped in his arms, in my own.

But the idea of not having sex- not making love-, makes me hurt. On a level so profoundly, I'm not even sure my fingers know how to describe it. I need that connection. Physical as it is, emotional as it is, soulful as it is. The thought of not being wanted, by your lover... by yourself. That clings to the lining of your gut, curls up and bores in. It's toxic.

Why am I even bringing this up? This project is about self-love, about self-sticky, about SELF. Well, maybe it's part of the healing, the getting through the loathe to get to the love. All of it. But it's also because it affects how I come, or if I come at all. Not just the physical abilities of stretching my arms over a belly I never used to have and don't know what to do with. Or breasts that create their own mini grand canyons in my shoulders with their bra straps. Or in between thighs that have grown into their own redwood trunks and legs that never seem to open wide enough to get through them. But because this is what I see, in my head, if I can't find that one fantasy to hold on to. This is the silent film that plays in the background, black on a white wall, motioning and clicking its way into my attention, until I can't focus on the fantasy and I focus on the reality. And the feeling, the feeling that before had sprung so easily, that shot so triumphantly from me, is lost in the madness of disappointment and anger and self-doubt, and unloving. The idea of pleasuring myself (or being so), of being worthy of pleasure in this body, when I so obviously (at least in my own head) can't return that pleasure, can't return that appeal, the allure, it eats me. Consumes, breaks down, regurgitates, then starts the process all over again. Like cud in the four stomachs of a cow, but never actually passed through. I've always been a people pleaser, a caretaker, devoting my energy and my importance to the feelings and thoughts of others. So what happens when I can't please? When I'm not pleasing?

This was the epiphany I had at 4am Sunday night/ Monday morning. Unable to sleep, laying belly down, hips propped on the floor next to our bed, quiet tears staining my face and my pillow, trying to get off while my boyfriend slept soundly three feet above me. This was why I couldn't bring myself to masturbate Friday, or Saturday, or most of Sunday. But there I was, when it clicked. Feeling deconstructed and handless. Trying to envision myself in a fantasy, being pleasured, being with him. And it wasn't working, and my mind kept slipping, back to that old silent movie, the click click click of 8mm film more focused and sharp and demanding than the digitally enhanced porn I tried playing in my brain. But I was so damn determined. I needed to feel good, even if it was only physical, only temporary. I needed it. At 4AM on the floor, I deserved it. So I switched gears, left the fingers and grabbed the big blue turbo vibrator (7 levels and types of clit stimulations and one powerhouse of a rotator for the inside- though I never really use that particular function), switched pornos and focused on me doing the pleasuring. Of me using my mouth, sometimes just as a disembodied head sprouting over the side of the bed. Or of me, in my old body, my 4-years ago body that first brought love I wanted to me, dancing and touching myself for him to watch, for him to enjoy, to yank and squeeze and stroke himself, watching the old me, pleasuring him until he exploded, in my mouth, on my chest, all over me.

And then the real me, the current body, current mind me, exploded with the him in my head. Massive, wave over wave from my solar plexus down the arteries in my stomach, through my torso, coating the sides of my uterus then out. All over the sticky head of my chattering blue dolphin, a torrent of ocean swells being pushed out of me. And when the tidal wave stilled, and I thought I was done, a slight movement, maybe even a residual spasm of a muscle, and then another, unexpected but welcomed orgasm, rippled quietly through and out. Then finally, I closed my eyes and I slept, in the pool of my own slick, electric and humming against my thighs and belly.

This is not a disclaimer or an apology, but I am putting it out there:

I also tend to get exactly like this, just before my period. I'm a PMS'ing mess. Not that I necessarily want to be the first to walk hand in hand with the idea that women's hormones rage during menstruation (or just before) and that that's the reason for all our "irrational" behavior, but it DOES fuck with my self-worth and bubbles everything I try to suppress, or get past, right back up.