Words

I love words.  I love knowing their intricacies and their subtleties and their deep meanings.  I love knowing them and choosing them and stringing them together to make something true and beautiful and raw and real. I love the magick they hold and the power they wield.

Violence; physical force, extreme or uncontrollable force especially of nature, fervor, intensity of feeling or expression, aggression, ferocity, strength, force, passion, might, fierceness, power.

Predator; a carnivorous animal that hunts, kills, and eats other animals in order to survive, any organism that behaves in a similar manner, extremely aggressive, determined, persistent, wild, untamable.

Perversion; the changing of something good, true, or correct into something bad or wrong, or a situation in which the change has occurred, a sexual practice considered unusual or unacceptable, falsification, distortion.

The words that make us uncomfortable are powerful.  Many have meanings that evoke very negative feelings, and many of those words have other meanings. I object to the subjugation of words to only their basest meanings, and I choose to reclaim them and to use them because by definition they are the most accurate to express my thoughts.

Slut; an insult for a woman whose sexual behavior is considered immoral.

 

Because I do not consider sexuality to be immoral the word itself is meaningless to me, it holds no power.  It invokes no emotional response.  That is not to say that there are no words that are emotionally powerful to me.  The word beautiful is incredibly powerful and being called a “good girl” can reduce me to shreds.

Discovering which words have power for me, which words make me angry or uncomfortable, which words I find important to reclaim, and which words have no meaning, no power at all, is an exploration into my identity and my deeper self.  

Why?

Last night I was lying in bed and I couldn’t stop thinking about why?  Why do I feel so hateful towards nice people? Why does it make me so angry when someone says “I love you.” or “You are beautiful.”?    Why do I react with such rage when people are weak, or needy, or identify as victims?  Why do I immediately assume that they are liars? That they cannot be trusted, that they are trying to manipulate, that they want something?

When someone I do not know well says “I love you.” my mind screams “You don’t even know me!”  When someone seems too nice, too gentle, I wonder what they are hiding.  When someone seems too needy, I wonder what their ulterior motives are, how they are trying to manipulate me, or someone else.

I prefer people who push me, because I can push back, or not, as I choose. 

When someone pretends to be nothing but nice, and I do not want to comply by giving them what they want, they always seem to want to place blame and guilt.  “I am so nice.  You should want to give me what I am asking for.” “What is wrong with you that you don’t want to be kind and loving towards someone as nice, weak, needy, hurt, gentle, victimized as me?”

I get to decide how I feel and how I want to express those feelings.  Just because you are a “nice” person does not give you the right to decide how I should treat you. (Obviously every human and non-human deserves to be treated with respect but, I don’t have to like you or give you any part of myself.) I have the right to listen to my own inner voice.

My reactions to those people may be a little extreme but they are also perfectly valid, and I have finally figured out the reason why.   

The person who seduced me for the first time (when I was nine years old) did so by telling me that they loved me, that they needed me, that I was beautiful.  They did so by showing me weakness and gentleness.  And they did so by making me feel guilty for not wanting to love them the way they were asking me to.  They did not push me, they pulled at me. 

I still feel some rage at myself for being so vulnerable to those tactics and so easily manipulated.  And at people who pull at me in that same way. 

I may not have figured out how not to feel this way but, awareness and understanding of these reactions is certainly a good place to begin.

sometimes I feel mean

Sometimes I feel mean.  Sometimes I feel hateful.  Sometimes, when my heart hurts, I feel angry and I want to lash out.  I want to say things that I know will hurt someone. I want to hit someone with more than my fists. I want to destroy someone else, psychologically, emotionally, physically. 

Sometimes I feel this way when I am around people whose behavior or words make me angry, even though they have done nothing to hurt me.  I don’t really understand why, and I do not allow my words or actions to express these feelings towards these people.

I do not like feeling mean.  I do not indulge this feeling.  My ethics and my will refuse to allow this feeling to manifest as behavior.  But I feel it none the less.

It bothers me that I feel this way sometimes.  It bothers me even more that I do not always understand why.  I believe that intent matters as much as feelings.  I believe that my will and my choices protect me and others from these feelings.  

But I wish I could understand where they come from and maybe even find a way to purge them from my heart, my mind, and my soul.

some thoughts on Autonomy

I have conflicting feelings about relationships.  I want very much to fall in love some day.  I believe in love and in sharing your heart with others. I did mention that I am a romantic, didn’t I?  I like having someone to whom to say “Good Morning!” and “Good Night” and “How was your day?”  I like sharing meals sometimes and sharing a bed sometimes.  I enjoy physical and emotional intimacy and intellectual conversation, the sharing of ideas, hopes, dreams, energy, magick and the experiences of this life. I believe that we as a species are not meant to be completely solitary creatures.

But having a place of my own, having time to myself, having the quiet and solitude that I need to think, to dream, to work magick and to write, is necessary for me and I have worked very hard to attain my independence.  I do not want to sacrifice my time alone or to negotiate with someone else to have time and privacy.  I do not want to check with someone else before going to the lake at night to sit beneath the moon or to make plans to sit and talk with someone whom I love who might need my support.

I want a lover in my life…maybe more than one, maybe not.  I believe that relationships should be based on love, respect and a commitment to show up when your beloveds need you. But I do not believe that it is necessary to live with another, to tailor your lives to revolve around each other to the exclusion of your own autonomy.

The image I have of the love I desire is not the one most people assume when they think of a relationship.  But it is the one that fills me with warmth and hope.  It is the thing I long for, still.  I hope someday to be granted the gift of loving another without reservation, without censorship, without restraint and without sacrificing my autonomy.

on Predators

In my last post I made a comment about how we as a society have done so much to control or even “eliminate” the predator from the human psyche.  That statement felt wrong and has been bothering me all day.  I had thought to correct it through editing but, decided to let the statement remain in its imperfection and expand my thoughts on the subject of predatory nature through a new post.

I have a personal appreciation for the predatory species.  I am drawn to them and feel an affinity for them as well as a great deal of respect and admiration.  My living companion is feline.  One of my totems is a bird of prey.  And I learn from the canine species every time I am privileged to be in proximity to them. 

Most human beings admire predators in the wild, or even live with the “domesticated “siblings of those wild animals.  But many refuse to acknowledge the nature of predators and insist upon projecting upon them gentler and more civilized  qualities as if there was something unacceptable about the predatory instincts of the wild animal.  This human tendency annoys me greatly.

 I believe that we as a species are also predatory by nature.  There are those who have completely rejected the instincts of the predator.  To be honest, I find those particular humans difficult to relate to and to be around.  They have a tendency to bring out the nastier aspects of my personality.  And that is where we come to the statement I had previously made.  We all try to civilize the predatory instincts that we possess.  We do not want to behave as wild animals (although I would still make the argument that in some ways that might actually be an improvement over some of our “civilized” behaviors). 

We invent rules to make us feel less than wild animals.  There are aspects to our predatory nature that need to be channeled in more socially appropriate behaviors.  I will not argue for anarchy or against the rule of law but, I do not think it serves us so well to attempt to ignore or eliminate those aspects of our humanity that give us power and strength.  Our will is a powerful part of our selves.  Instinct is necessary for survival even in the modern world.  The wild inside of us is a great source of vitality and life-force. 

I have a wild nature and I have strong instincts.  I find myself driven to explore those parts of myself.  I desire to engage with the predatory nature of others because my instincts tell me that through such interaction I may come to know my own predatory nature.  But I also feel the need to explore the polarity of the prey.  I need to experience both sides of the relationship. 

Hunger, lust and the drive to express what it is to be alive, these are strong instincts and I will not try to tame them.

the false self

There is a small dark thing that pretends to be a part of me that I refuse to allow license.  That is because it is a false face that turns my nature upside down to hide my true desires.  It is a distortion, and a mask.  It is a sadistic thing that revels in inflicting damage.  Not simple physical pain but, physical, mental, emotional, and psychological damage.  It delights in utter destruction on every level including the destruction of myself.  It is not a true part of me but one that has, in my past, asserted its illegitimate authority to hide the true nature of my desires.  In truth, it is a liar and I believe, the ill-formed and in-human, still-born product of fear. 

I am not judging those who have a sadistic or dominant or predatory nature.  From what I have read and learned in my intellectual studies of the nature of those who identify as Sadist, the infliction of mental, emotional and psychological pain or, damage of any kind, is an abhorrent perversion to them.  Just as true non-consent (rape) is considered an evil thing not to be tolerated.  In much of the writings I have found, even the idea of not having a “safe-word” is completely unacceptable as it is considered too dangerous to all parties.  Burning someone or actually cutting someone and causing them to bleed is also considered to be beyond the “safe, sane and consensual” standard of practice.  We have done much as a society to control or even “eliminate” the predator within the human psyche.

I have been exploring these ideas intellectually.  I have been reading and learning about other people’s feelings about them and about the rules that are insisted upon in the community that explores these experiences.  I have even done some physical and purely scientific (solitary) exploration of certain factors.  Solitary exploration has been less helpful that actual discussion and discussion has taken quite a bit of work. It took some struggle to even speak about these things with people I trust.  I am not accustomed to having to fight so hard to articulate my thoughts on any subject and this in itself has been a learning experience. 

I have, in the past, indulged in chemically induced oblivion, and chemically induced arousal.  I have, in the past, cut myself and burned myself to feel physical sensation and to explore my reactions to it.  I have enjoyed receiving tattoos and my reactions to the stimulus of the pain involved in that experience.  I have also experienced disassociation and “out of body” experiences during sexual situations where I panicked but was not capable of “escaping”.

If I am to truly discover anything about myself; it will require that I actually engage with someone who is not afraid to push me and not back down, someone who has made friends with their “inner predator “as it were.

Many would judge the desires that I hope to explore as perversions but, true desire is not perversion, it is the false self that is truly perverse.

I desire to experience pain and to discover my own responses to that experience, to experience violence, to experience the hand at my throat and submission to another’s control, to know how it feels to submit, and to discover how it feels to struggle against the predator and to fight the panic and force myself to remain in my body and not to watch from overhead, not to disassociate from my body but, to stay present and experience without the escape.

I wish to explore these desires because, that false self has tried so hard to hide them from me, and because I believe that our fears, our secrets and desires hold the keys to our greatest truth, our greatest self and out greatest power.

I lay upon my bed...

Nude by Renoir

I lay upon my bed,

The light turned out an hour ago,

The embers shimmer and glow inside,

The waves rolling off my skin,

Light the shadows all around.

I think of you and in my mind,

I hold your body close.

Although my heart would be for you,

A place of love and healing,

My mind tells me that what you need,

Is not what I can offer.

I focus on your pain,

On my desire to transform

That sharp thing,

Into something else.

As intense and overwhelming,

And consuming as my need.

My body and my soul want you still,

Even in your darkest hour.

To feel your force,

Your frustration and your anger,

Your loss and grief and despair,

Pouring into me,

Purged and purified.

To be battered in your arms,

To feel your violence and your hope,

To feel your control,

And your abandonment of it.

To feel your hands around my throat,

Pressed against the wall,

With no escape,

No choice,

But to surrender to your will,

And be conquered by your power.

Romanticism

I am a romantic.  I have been for this entire lifetime, and I suspect for many lifetimes before this one.  No matter what other way I might define myself, that is a truth that colors all others.  I sometimes feel as though I should be embarrassed about this part of my nature.  We live in a cynical world.  It is not considered sophisticated or even intelligent to be romantic.  Somehow intellect and romanticism are considered to be mutually exclusive.  But I am an intelligent, rational, logical person.  My brain works just fine.  My brain does not get to overrule my heart, as much as it may seem safer to hide my heart from ridicule, my soul chooses to embrace my heart’s desires and to believe in the magick that is love. 

I have, at times, embraced the cynical, cold, hard-hearted logic the world esteems so highly.  I have, at times, clutched tightly to my intellect like a shield against the disappointment and heartbreak that comes from believing.  But, as much as I enjoy the flights of my intellect, it seems to me that my imagination has always been the source of life, of joy, of magick.  I think of my imagination as the creative expression of my heart, as the voice of my romantic self.  Intellect without imagination seems dead to me, or at best, only a half-life. 

My soul is the part of me that mediates between my mind and my heart.  And when my mind wants to be a bully and insist on safety and cynicism, or my heart becomes afraid that what it hopes will never come to pass, my soul chooses to be courageous and to insist upon believing in the dream.  My soul is a romantic.  So is my body.  My body responds to that which moves my heart and my soul. 

I find my body wanting physical intimacy, sexual intimacy but also the physical intimacy of touching, of skin against skin, of lying beside someone and feeling them breathe, of sleeping beside another body, of conversation and laughter and shared food, of simple companionship, and sharing energy.  This too is an expression of my romanticism.

Pain response

I have been exploring my reactions, my relationship to pain recently.  I am speaking about physical pain, not emotional pain; that is an entirely different thing.  Truth be told, I am in pain most of the time.  I don’t think about it much because it is simply a part of living in this body.  It is not debilitating, it is just a fact. 

There are moments when pain is just a part of life.  There is the pain I can remember associated with giving birth, there is the pain that comes from acute physiological dysfunctions, like migraines, there is the pain I experience each day when I test my blood sugar and when I inject my insulin and the pain I feel when I walk for too long in the woods.  These are simple facts. 

Then there is pain that we seek for greater purpose, the pain of receiving a tattoo for instance.  I enjoy the process of receiving a tattoo.  Not simply for the sake of the art but, the process itself.  I enjoy pushing through it, breathing through it.  I enjoy the chemical reactions my body has to the sustained acute pain of my skin being transformed into someone’s canvas for the sake of commemorating profound moments in my life.

One of the things I feel rather odd about is that I also associate that type of pain with sex.  My sexual experiences when I was young, even into my twenties, were painful.    I honestly thought that was the way it was for everyone.  I remember being rather shocked to discover that wasn’t the truth, and the first time I had sex and didn’t experience pain was really quite confusing. 

A friend loaned me a tool recently so that I could safely pursue this idea in a more scientific fashion.  It is a small mat with little plastic spikes that will not pierce the skin but causes a sensation of lying on a “bed of nails” as it were.  The pain is sharp and burns hot for as long as I choose to rest upon it.  It has been very helpful in discovering my body’s reaction to sustained pain stimuli.  It has also been helpful in discovering and pushing past my body’s “pain threshold”. 

The chemical reactions my body has to tattooing seem to be replicated by this particular practice, and one of those reactions may indeed be sexual.   This is yet another situation where my mind tells me that this isn’t “normal”.  But discovering the truth about myself is more important to me that being “normal”.

exploring the dreams...

There was a moment during my second degree initiation ritual when the Dark God, the Sage, placed his hands around my neck.  He held me there, for what seemed like forever.  Thinking back on it now, it may have been the only time during most of the ritual when I was in contact with anyone but the house. 

The reason I mention this is, that moment caused some unexpected reactions.  It was intended to frighten me, to elicit an adrenaline spike, to heighten my senses.  Adrenaline can become any emotion that a human being is capable of experiencing.  That was the intended result.  And it was successful in that it did result in the release of adrenaline; it did heighten my perceptions. 

But that was not the only result.  I also became sexually aroused.  I have only spoken about this with one other person until now because, I find it rather disturbing.  My mind tells me that reaction was inappropriate.  There was nothing inherently sexual about the ritual.  That I reacted that way is confusing to me, being someone for whom sexual arousal is a rather rare occurrence, at least until recently.

But my body keeps reminding my mind of that moment, of that reaction.  I keep coming back to that moment and to that feeling.  In my most erotic dreams, there is a hand at my throat.  It is usually the hand of someone I trust and it is never threatening but it is always arousing.

Other images and sensations reoccur often as well, a blade piercing my skin, a trickle of blood, my back against a wall.  My logical mind, the one that tells me to conform to the rules, tells me that this is an aberration.  But do any rules really apply when it comes to the instinct of sexual arousal?   I feel a bit exposed revealing these thoughts.  That I find these ideas to be more arousing than frightening seems to me to be the kind of thing one keeps to oneself for fear or shame.  But I vowed that I would not look away and so I will not. 

I will continue to explore the images and the dreams.  There is more to explore in the inner world before stepping out into the real world.  

the problem with conformity...

At first, the title of this post was going to be “the problem with feminism”.  But I am a feminist and that is not truly the problem.  The problem is that other feminists believe that they get to define “feminist” for me, and that somehow I should be ashamed because I do not conform to the definitions others hold. 

I could not care less about the opinions of anti-feminists.  Of people who hold beliefs that are directly opposed to my own.  I came to terms with that when I left the spiritual community in which I had lived in the years I refer to as “wandering the wasteland”.

But the expectations of others whom I would consider to be allies, culturally and spiritually, the opinions or expectations of my “sisters” I struggle with, and against, because who I am does not conform to what is expected of me.

I am a girl.  Yes, even as a forty-eight year old woman.  I like dresses and flowers and perfume and lipstick.  I like beautiful things.  I like feeling beautiful. I enjoy being desired.  I am a romantic and a mother and I enjoy being so.  I have never objected to dolls or the princesses from my childhood storybooks. 

I do not want to be limited by someone else’s idea of who I should be.  I am strong; I don’t need to prove it.  It has never been in question in my mind.  I am brave; I don’t have to shout it.  I am strongest and bravest when I am so for the sake of those I love.  I have never seen serving others as oppression.  It is one of the most fulfilling purposes of my life.

I enjoy caring for others.  I take great pleasure in meeting someone else's needs.  I take great satisfaction in loving others.  It gives me great joy to make others happy.  Loving someone, without censorship, without restraint, without reservation, is a gift I hope to someday be granted. 

I like being in the woods and not needing to be coddled but, I am a hedonist in many ways and I do not wish to apologize for the desires of my heart.  They do not make me weak or less of a woman.  I will not conform to the opinions or expectations of those whose agenda is opposed to my own but; neither will I be shamed by the expectations of my allies.

I am woman enough just as I am.  Take it or leave it but, you will not change it.  I will not conform to please another but, I may choose to please another and that is my choice.  No one gets to take that choice from me.  

Why any of this even matters...

Why does who I am matter?  If I know “myself” in most contexts, what does it matter if a part of me remains hidden even to myself?  Is it really all that important?  What difference could it possibly make to anyone?

This past Tuesday morning my daughter gave birth to a baby girl.  She arrived eight weeks before she was expected.  Much of who she is has already been decided…we are all just unaware of it as yet. For the next ninety years or so, she will be exploring and discovering and testing and failing and trying again to discover who she is and how to express that to the world. (I will only be around for the first forty-five or so.)  Some of who she is might be what others expect, some will probably not be.

I never want her to feel that she needs to hide from herself or from anyone else.  I never want her to feel ashamed or afraid of any truth about her own identity, gender, sexuality or spirituality.  I want her to be free to express her love and her beauty and her happiness in any way that she feels is right for her.  I want her to know always just how amazing she is. 

If I cannot embrace my own secrets, my own desires, if I cannot challenge my own hidden truths and bring them into the open where I can see them and embrace them and express them, how can I ever guide her in doing the same?

She will no doubt surprise me, but I pray that I will never fail her.  She is why any of this matters.  I want her to know her Nanna as a fearlessly, shamelessly happy woman who knows herself and loves with warmth, generosity and abandon.

I thank the Gods that I still have time to become that woman.

Sexual Dreaming

Dreams are strange things; they can take you places your waking mind will resist.  They can give you glimpses into your desires and leave you awake in the middle of the night gasping for breath with your heart pounding and your skin on fire.  They can haunt your thoughts for days on end.

I have been dreaming much more of late, the kind of dreams that wake me and that feel so real and so vivid that I cannot distinguish them from reality for endless moments after I wake.  It is, to say the least, disconcerting and has me more than a little spooked, truth be told.

I have had days of this sort of dreaming before from time to time but the past couple of months, it happens almost every night and sometimes more than once in the same night.

I do not know how much longer this will be the case but, I believe that there are reasons for it and I am trying to discover to what they might be.  Not the cause so much as the purpose.  The dreams themselves are often very erotic and I wake with my body in full sexual arousal. 

The people in my dreams are often my beloveds and the situations are so far removed from the reality of my experiences and relationships with these friends that I have difficulty processing them.  Sometimes the people are unknown, in the way that dreams will hide the identity of people but yet, they are not strangers.

I know that my dreams are the product of my own mind and body and soul.  They are not trying to help me understand others but rather to understand myself.  But because I do not respond to strangers, they are populated with the faces of my beloveds.

It is uncomfortable to experience our darker desires and even more so when it involves our most trusted beloveds.  But the desires we hide from ourselves can be the keys to understanding and claiming our greatest power.

I will continue to strive to understand these keys to my own self.

Identity or Who Am I?

Painting by Susan Seddon Boulet

In most situations, I have a pretty strong idea of “Who” I am.  Most of the time, the person(a?) I experience or express is related to who I am with, what my relationship is to them, what role or responsibility I have to them.  

Am I sacrificing the truth of who I am?  No. 

At work I am a banker, a helper, a supervisor.  With my family I am daughter, sister, mother/aunt, nana. With my Coven I am sister, mother, daughter, priestess, witch.  In each of these roles, I have responsibilities.  

Sometimes I lean on my loved ones, sometimes I need to put their needs first and support them.  I will not put my desires before my beloveds well-being. Priorities are important and will determine what role I allow myself to take, or need to take in any given situation.  Honor is a very important part of who I am and who I desire to be.

I have been talking to a young man recently who is beloved to me and to whom I have some responsibility.  He is someone I trust and he has been very supportive as I explore (intellectually at least) some of the more uncomfortable parts of who I might be.  I have asked him to be a safety net for me if I choose to step out and explore in the real world and he has agreed.  That I can do.  I can ask him to have my back.  It does not put our relationship or my responsibility to him at risk.   

My own exploration is important to me and I will continue to push forward to discover what may lie beneath the surface but, I will not sacrifice those parts of my identity that I value most highly.  I choose not to.  Being a person who loves with  honor and strength and wisdom is just as important as personal discovery.

I have desires to explore and to discover and I will not sacrifice them on the altars of fear or shame but, to be someone who cares for the well-being of those I love, is the person I desire to be.

What I Know Now

What I have learned this past year is that most of my beliefs and fears have been inaccurate.  I have, through repeated experiments with people that I care for and trust, and whom I believed to be strong enough and skilled enough to protect themselves from any damage they might suffer as a result of contact with my energetic self, learned that I am not in fact dangerous to those I touch nor to those who touch me.  I have learned that my fears about being incapable of responding to another sexually are not real.  I have learned that I am capable of giving and receiving profound pleasure.  I have learned that in order to experience these wonderful gifts of this physical body, trust and emotional and energetic connection both with myself and with my partners are absolutely necessary.  I may not be monogamous or strictly heterosexual, and there are other aspects of my nature that I need to explore but, I would not be exploring them at all if it were not for those beloved friends.  For them and the joys of this journey, I Give Thanks.

the beginning

This is the post I most questioned putting out there.  Not because I have not dealt with it but, because it might make others uncomfortable.  But I believe if I am going to share this journey of exploration with others then, pulling punches is not a part of the deal.

That being said,   if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.

I believe that my sexual behavior in the past has lessons to teach me in the here and now.  The more I understand my past behavior and experience, the more I can understand my Self and where I might find the truth.

My first sexual experience was the summer before I turned nine years old.  Yes, it was actual intercourse, no it was not rape, or forced, or coerced in the way people usually define those words (and yes I understand that sex with a child is by definition rape and I would take a sword to anyone who committed such an act if I knew about it but, being the child in question I never saw it that way).

The incident itself was not as traumatic as one might assume.  It was confusing and part of that was the response my body had to it.  It was pleasurable, even with the pain and the blood, I experienced sexual arousal (need?) and a sexual release (at least to the extent that a nine year old body is capable of).  As a result of those feelings I had emotional reactions as well, confusion being the foremost at first but resulting in shame, fear and rage. 

The most traumatic part came later.  The person involved was a family member, who was seventeen years old and more damaged than I could ever be.  In the year following, he experienced overwhelming guilt and self-loathing in addition to the desperate need to be loved that motivated the act itself. He made three near-successful attempts at suicide that year.

Meanwhile I was overwhelmed with confusion and rage and as nine year olds will do, I associated my feelings with his attempts at suicide.  Magical thinking is normal for children of that age.  They do not understand consciously the difference between feelings and intent.  I believed that I was responsible for harming him.  That being with me in that way had damaged him, had in fact wounded him, that there was something inherently dangerous inside me.  I believed that for the next 38 years.

The winter after I turned fourteen, I became sexually promiscuous and continued that behavior, except during my two pregnancies, for the next sixteen years.  The behavior was not necessarily motivated by arousal nor by the hope of release or pleasure but by the desire to prove to myself that my beliefs were unfounded. I hid in chemically induced oblivion much of the time as well.  It was also an attempt to keep the demons at bay, to chase them away for a while.  This was, to say the least, unsuccessful at best and self-punishing at worst. I set up people to treat me badly so that I would not care when they were hurt as a result of being with me.  I hurt some very good men that way (even some who genuinely cared and would not allow me to engage them sexually)

It is possible to pull your etheric/energetic bodies so far inside yourself during the act that the other person never comes into contact with them.  It is an instinctive behavior; you don’t even have to know consciously what you are doing.  That for me was the norm. I did not have relationships with the boys I had sex with, and the rule was, I never had sex with the same boy twice.  There were a few exceptions, one of which I ended up marrying.

My ex and I had a good friendship and sex was pleasant.  It was not for the same reasons as before but, it was not because of need or release either.  For a while cocaine was a regular part of my sex life because it is the only aphrodisiac that ever really worked.   I spent a great deal of time in a constant state of chemical arousal in an attempt to feel.  Trust me when I say that this is NOT a good answer.  I also spent all of those thirty-eight years wondering if I was actually capable of feeling, of arousal or release or of responding sexually at all.

My ex husband is a good man and he did his best to love me but, trust was not something I had learned before I left him and as it turns out, that is a necessary part of sexual arousal and ultimately sexual satisfaction.  Not to mention a necessity in a healthy relationship as well.

Some thoughts on Monogamy and Polyamory

Monogamy is the expected ‘norm” in this society.  I had never questioned that, yet it has rarely felt “normal” to me.  I come from a family for which monogamy works.  For my daughter, for my brothers, for my parents, for previous generations (at least from what I can tell), monogamous relationships work.  For many of my friends, who are happy in traditional monogamous relationships, it is a perfectly well functioning paradigm.

I have had a grand total of three such relationships in my life.  Although, the three months when I was eighteen hardly counts and my most recent relationship also does not truly fit the mold because his ex-wife was never emotionally out of the picture.  So I have had one and that did not start out that way.  I met my ex-husband when we were twenty-two years old.  We were friends with benefits for eight years before we moved in together and became exclusive, then engaged, then married.  We were married for fourteen years.  We have been apart for three and a half and we are thankfully still friends but, no longer with benefits, too much water under that bridge to go back. 

In my adolescence and throughout my twenties I was far from celibate but, I did not engage in the traditional relationship construct that is the norm in our society.  I used to think that meant that there was something wrong with me.  I am now reconsidering that perhaps it does not.

Many of my friends are polyamorous.   They have relationships with more than one lover at one time.  Some are married and most are happy.  Being human of course, they are not perfectly blissful at all times but, it does seem to work for them.  I have always believed that love is not a loaf of bread. If I love one person that does not mean that I have less for another. 

One of the things I find uncomfortable about monogamy is that it is so easy to slip into the trap of sacrificing yourself on the altar of the relationship.  The relationship itself becomes more important than the individuals in it.  And it is too easy to slip into the behavior of taking responsibility for your partner’s happiness, rather than your own.

Polyamory has its own potential problems.  My perception of the paradigm originally was that someone was undoubtedly being used, or that jealousy and eventual heartbreak was inevitable.   I have since come to understand that the success of any relationship regardless of its construct is entirely dependent upon the character and commitment of those involved.  All relationships take work, trust, communication and self-awareness.  And of course, Love.

The Parts of Self

The parts of my Self experience the world in different ways.  My mind, my intellect, appreciates aesthetic beauty and that is easy for me to recognize.  The human form is beautiful in its incredible variety as is the natural world.  I appreciate the beauty of artistic expression, color, light, line and movement.  There are so many beautiful sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, thoughts, and language.   A beautiful woman, a beautiful man, is a joy to behold.  I experience these through my physical senses and appreciate them with my mental self.

This appreciation might then become an emotional experience.  It might elicit an emotional response.  This is also relatively easy to recognize.  Even when it turns back upon my body, returns to a physical experience, a visceral reaction.  It is still an aesthetic appreciation.  The human form is aesthetically beautiful.  I have a mental and intellectual appreciation for that beauty.  It may on occasion become an emotional or visceral experience but that is not a sexual one.

Interacting with another person, one whom I actually know, is another kind of experience.   Generally speaking I experience others through my emotions.  My emotional responses might be affection or repulsion, but they affect how I perceive others.  Those whom I love are beautiful to me.  I experience them through my emotions primarily and I can see the beauty of them more clearly as a result.  I can also see those who are not, no matter how aesthetically pleasing they might be to the world.  My emotional response to someone I care for is real but, it is rarely a sexual one.  While I have experienced a sexual attraction to someone I care for, I have never felt sexual attraction without an emotional connection. 

It is more difficult for me to recognize the difference between emotional and energetic responses.  I believe that the sexual attraction I have felt for a loved one has been due to my energetic response.  The emotional connection has always existed first but, my energetic reactions seem to determine if I respond to my loved ones as mother, sister, friend, daughter or “lover”. 

My energetic response that results in sexual attraction does not seem to be determined by the gender of the other person nor their sexual orientation.   So how do I define my sexual orientation?  I read a definition the other day of a word I have never been exposed to.  Demisexual is somewhere between bisexual and asexual.  Maybe I do not need to actually define it.  I believe that I have primarily heterosexual preferences but, I have found myself at times sexually attracted to a woman whom I know and care for.  I have even had erotic dreams about other women on occasion.  But I do believe that for me, emotional affection and energetic responses are the crucial factors in the equation. 

One of the many things I need to explore is what exactly can take me from sexual attraction to that most elusive state, sexual arousal.  But that is for another day.

some thoughts on gender

I am a Female human being.  I have never doubted that.  Truth be told I am a feminist.  That is to say that I believe I have as much right to legal status, education, property ownership and self-determined destiny as anyone.  But more to the point, I am female not only biologically and legally but internally.  I have never felt conflict between my biological gender and my true self.  There are those that do.  

I believe that the mind and soul and heart of a person is the place that the truth of gender lies.  I believe that no one has the right to an opinion regarding another human beings gender identity.  If someone identifies as female, they are my sister.  And that is something worth rising up to defend.  If someone identifies as male, they are my brother and they too deserve to be defended, the male of the species is noble and honorable and deserving of respect. 

I know where I stand and who I am regarding gender.  But that is not the entirety of the issue.  There are aspects of gender that the world consistently has an opinion about and those are not so easily ignored.  As a woman I am relatively “normal” in the eyes of the outside world.  I appear to be a middle-aged, privileged, educated, middle-class, suburban, white girl, monogamous and heterosexual.  “Nothing to see here people, she conforms to the norm.”  Perhaps slightly odd politically (I am a Libertarian and have been since I registered to vote at the age of 18).  Feminist of course, aren’t all American women?

But I do find conflict in that “norm”.  Because I love dresses and I loved playing “mother” and I found power in the stories of the women in my story books.  And because there are parts of my nature that I am discovering that do not fit how the world sees me, that do not fit the expectations of an educated, feminist, female of my generation.

It is those conflicts that I need to explore and to reconcile.  Not to the outside world but rather with my own identity.  Because somewhere along the way, I bought into the expectations and I am no longer willing to reject my true self in order to comply, in order to avoid conflict.

Through the Door

This is a new journey for me.  It is a journey of discovery and exploration.  I have no idea where it might lead or what I may discover but I promise I will not look away.  This is a journey into my self, my soul, my heart and, most importantly, into my desires and the identity of my own sexual truth. 

I have an entire life to explore and a self to discover.  I feel as though I am just beginning to learn who I might be and while I may feel as though I am fourteen years old, I am not.  I am a fully grown woman of forty-eight.   I am an adult with free will and no one to shame me or tell me who or what I should or should not be. 

This place of jumping off the cliff into the unknown of my own sexual identity is exciting and exhilarating and terrifying.  And I vow that I will not hide from my desires nor sacrifice them upon the alters of shame or fear.   I will not look away, I will not shrink from the desires of my very soul.

I will be as open and as honest as I can be about my own journey, while respecting the privacy of others.  You are welcome to do the same through any comment you wish to make.

Blessed be.