Recomposition

I've been in a dark, dark, dark place since Saturday. I've analyzed it obsessively in my paper journal, so I'm not sure how much needs to come out here. Suffice it to say that in some ways (many ways, perhaps) I look much more whole, healed, and strong than I actually am. Which is a dangerous place to be at any time, but probably more so when dealing with a person who I like but who doesn't know me particularly well. I'm well aware that at least 85% of this is my shit, in my own head, or it's stuff that no one is really responsible for. The problem is, of course, that I still spent the better part of the last four days feeling incredibly wretched and not doing things like working on my prospectus. (Although I think I might have written some decent prospectus-related paragraphs at like 2:00 on Monday morning during this bizarre and ultimately weird and frustrating text message exchange I had with J....)

I think the main problem of the last several days was simply finding out how far I still have to go in terms of healing. It's frustrating that I crumbled like this, and it's worse because I've come far enough that I also spent a lot of time over the past four days knowing that all of this was completely ridiculous and dangerous but not being able to use that knowledge to hold back the way I responded to everything. Then there's the cycle where I wonder if all of my talk about getting better and meditating and calming down a bit was just a really complex lie. I don't think it is, if only because I'm not sure that zazen admits that kind of distinction, but it still gave me pause. This is a very familiar cycle, of course, going back all the way to childhood and the whole born-again-until-my-little-brother-comes-into-the-room thing that I went through over and over again. (Hm. On the plus side, thanks to the latest bout of wretchedness, I'm no longer obsessing over my brother's wedding.) I'm still sitting, though. And I've been talking to The Poet a lot this week. And I miss him. A lot. Mostly because he is kind. And I can't really explain it more than that.

One of the upshots of this is that I don't know anything about anything with J. and I feel like an enormous idiot for caring. I haven't seen him since the 11th, we haven't had a conversation that wasn't on text message, and now he's in Montreal until Monday. A lot of this started because he canceled plans with me twice this past weekend (which itself was supposed to be the rescheduling of the previous weekend's failed plans), which is the kind of thing that can really fuck up my work schedule, whether or not I'm actually mad about it. I think it's the text message thing that bothers me most. And I like him. And he likes me. None of this was ever about that. But still. I'm really good at first dates and one night stands. I'm actually a pretty decent girlfriend. But all of that middle space...yeah, not so much.

On Sunday when we weren't hanging out, J. told me that he had a dream where he was watching me have sex with another guy and it was really hot, etc. I don't have a problem with knowing that per se. I do think it's obnoxious to start throwing around ideas for threesomes with someone you've only seen naked twice and are in danger of never seeing naked again if you don't get your schedule together. Also, it would have been nice to have known that he was okay with me being with other guys on, say, Thursday. Nevertheless. I'm trying to be good. Like, potentially monogamous with someone who is not married to other people good. And, yeah, okay. Good to know that if things happen with other people, that's okay. I mean, fine. My life works like that a lot of the time. But. It would maybe be nice to have a guy who was more turned on by the thought of having sex with me than by the thought of me having sex with other people.

Thus. My life is still stupid and exhausting. Maybe it will get better. The fact that I am writing any of this means that I'm slowly crawling out of the dark place, as it were. Now I need to write my prospectus for a few hours.