Category: Uncategorized

what I want

The other day I saw a friend, a male friend, a friend with whom I am on hugging terms.

We hugged hello, then we hugged in appreciation of my fresh-out-of-the-oven-melt-in-your-mouth-buttery-sugary-delight, then we hugged goodbye.

Somewhere in there, his scruffy face got buried in my neck and there was a bit of a nuzzle.

And now, all I want is sex.

That intimate contact of warm breath on my attention-starved skin has pried open the lid on Pandora’s Box.

And holy Toledo world, watch out.

I want to have fiery, hot standing up sex in a dark alley.

I want to have languorous afternoon sex while a summer breeze gently caresses our skin.

I want to have tender, sweet sex, and tear your clothes off sex, and fun funny sex, and morning sex, and middle of the night sex, and playing hooky sex, and car sex, and and and…

Shitdamn.

And I currently don’t even have my sights set on anyone – this is a general itch that needs scratching – not one of those situations where I’m feeling horny due to the pheromones exuded by one specific person.

(in other words, I’m not likely to be having sex in the immediate future)

Not that just anyone will do and I’m not quite at “Hey, make me an offer,” but if the right person walked into my kitchen and gave me a steamy sultry look, it could end up being baking table sex.

Oh dear lord.

Guess I’ve got to stock up on batteries.

 

 

Utah vs Colorado

I went to Moab this weekend to have dinner with my son.

What I am aware of when I go to Moab, is that I don’t call it going to Utah.

When I “go to Utah” I am going for desert and solitude and nature.

When I go to Moab I’m going for an urban experience, so the two barely feel like the same place.

When I am there, as beautiful as it is, I feel incredibly disconnected from the rocks around me; I’m distracted by cars and people and coffee shops and parking spots and sometimes even schedules.

But my boy is there, so there I go.

Tourists abound – it’s like a monstrous bus opened its doors and dumped out thousands of passengers then went away and came back with another busload.

The people are there for thrills, Arches, and shopping for Red Dirt T-shirts.

We have tourists too – they’re here for ruins and train rides.

The thing I notice the most about the adventure tourists is that they tend to be really uncomfortable in their bodies – these are people who do not spend a lot of time outside connecting with the dirt beneath their feet.

Everything in Moab is about the adventure; boatingbikingclimbing4-wheeling. It’s a scene.

My son loves it – he gets sick of the crowds, but as a river guide, he is right in the thick of the action – he’s part of the energy that creates the scene.

It’s a world that I used to be a part of but no longer am. I am conscious of bringing a little bit of country with me when I sit down at the dinner table at the restaurant owned by the boating company which caters to people in hiking boots and brand new Keens.

I used to feel so cool when I was a guide there. Now I’m totally not cool and totally okay with it.

After dinner, as I was leaving town, I thought about the fact that I no longer fit into that scene and I realized that after close to 23 years in a rural ranching community, I am very much a Colorado gal.

Albeit a Colorado gal from New Jersey.

2 hours away from each other, my town and my son’s town are like night and day – I feel like a hick – unsophisticated, working class, an intimate participant in the landscape of my home.

We work hard and get dirty a lot ’round these parts. W e are comfortable in our bodies because we use them and because we have a connection to the land.

On my way south to my very remote camping destination, I stopped at a used gear store on my son’s recommendation and my observations were proven correct.

In Moab, people buy pearl button shirts and straw cowboy hats at the same place they buy climbing equipment and wetsuits.

Hip, trendy, cool.

Over here, on this side of the border, we buy pearl buttons and hats at ranch stores.

Utilitarian.

 

 

I lied

Remember when I said I didn’t miss mountaineering?

That’s not true.

This storm tonight that is circling (it feels like) around my house, brings with it torrential rain, lightning streaks across every corner of the sky, and thunder, so loud and so immediate, it chatters the teeth.

This storm has awakened cravings to be up in a high basin: safe, but not too safe, closed in in a mid (a floorless, tent-like structure, used by old school outdoor educators everywhere), drinking tea and eating chocolate, while watching small creeks form next to my sleeping pad and obsessively counting the seconds between light and noise.

Some of my favorite memories involve storms in the mountains.

So I guess sometimes I do miss it.

pissed

I am fucking pissed.

How dare he do that to me, to us.

This is fucking bullshit.

And there’s no way that this one can be blamed on me.

I let him know that I know; after all of this time, he clearly he thought he’d gotten away with it.

No more.

I even stepped off the high road a little bit and you know what? It felt good.

The thing I believed to be most true about him was that he had more integrity than any other man I knew, which, in turn kept me secure in our relationship because he had too much integrity to ever cheat.

Whoops.

So the problem for me, the place where I keep getting stuck, is in believing/accepting/admitting that he is no longer the person with whom I was madly in love.

And because I don’t interact with him at all or ask about him or even lay eyes on him, in my mind he’s still the person I believed him to be: an exemplary man.

So then it goes without saying that if he is still that exemplary man, then he must really really not give a shit about me OR I’m not worthy of anything better.

But I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now.

So it’s confusing and surreal.

And it’s fucking infuriating.

definitions

ruminate, v.t. to chew the cud; to chew again what has been slightly chewed and swallowed; to muse; to meditate; to think again and again; to ponder

obsess, v. to preoccupy the mind excessively. To have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic

betray, v. to hurt (someone who trusts you, such as a friend or relative) by not giving help or by doing something morally wrong

Oh to be able to quit obsessively ruminating about the betrayal

no words

In the last almost-year, I’ve seen him twice.

In a town this size, that’s saying something.

Of course, it’s helped that I’ve been avoiding the place(s) where we’re most likely to cross paths.

But I’m sick of avoiding, sick of anxiety, so I’ve been venturing out, knowing that at some point, we’d bump into each other.

And I’ve wondered what it would look like when we were in the same place at the same time. So much shit has happened, so may feelings felt, but it’s all been just for me; it hasn’t been because of any interaction between us.

Especially this latest piece of information. Knowing that he hit on our friend changed everything for me – like I’ve said, it freed me. But that major shift, although it has everything to do with him, hasn’t included him, and I am in such a different place that I haven’t known how I would react to seeing him.

And I’ve wondered how he would react.

Will he speak to me?

Will I speak to him?

Will he try to talk?

Do I want to hear anything he has to say?

Will we ignore each other?

Will we talk about the weather?

No.

So not interested in chit chat.

Does he know that I know?

Do I want to tell him that I know?

A myriad of scenarios went through my imagination but I couldn’t settle on a way that a chance meeting would play out because so much depended on the situation.

So this weekend, it happened, at the place that I am no longer avoiding.

I walked outside and he was talking to my son. When I approached he looked up and I realized…

I don’t have a fucking thing to say.

I nodded – acknowledged him. But nothing made its way from my brain to my mouth. It seemed like too much work.

I thought, “Meh, I’d rather just stand here and space out.”

It wasn’t reactive or manipulative or pointed – I just couldn’t be bothered to make any effort.

So, one more anxiety-provoking milestone out of the way.

 

what that tidbit did

That little tidbit of information that I received…it has unlocked something for me .

Thank the lord.

There’s the anger. I have been angry a few times this past year but it’s been a FUCK YOU! anger; anger mixed with anxiety, stemming from heartbreak and the desire to beat someone’s head with a rock.

Not really.

Now it’s kind of a calm anger, more of a fuck you feeling; anger mixed with relief.

I have been waiting a long time to actually feel it. I’ve known on an intellectual level that I should be relieved, (and angry) but emotionally, I haven’t really had it for a sustained chunk of time.

I feel like I’ve unloaded the burden that I have been carrying this entire time – that somehow it was my fault – not the breakup, but the aftermath. He told me that the problem was that I kept losing my shit with him, which unfortunately, I did, but my response to that is, Dude, why did I keep losing my shit?

But now, I have this forgiveness for myself; I was not wrong in thinking that I deserved better; this really is him, this is who he is – it isn’t because I lost my shit; and no wonder I came unhinged.

I am not going to avoid anywhere, anymore, and I’m no longer willing to be ignored.

The friendships…I didn’t lose them, they lost me.

It was a fucked up situation and at least I can say that I kept my integrity. And that frees up a lot of space on my hard drive.

I really hope that this is it, the wrapping up of this year, this era, this saga.

This epic adventure.