I had high hopes for today: after a workshop this afternoon, and dinner with four friends (two gorgeous adults, two gorgeous kids), I planned to go out dancing. But my eyes are heavy, and I haven't even posted this blog yet -- not to mention, there have been no orgasms yet today, on this the fifth-to-last-day of National Masturbation Month (and the day of the Masturbate-a-thon at the Center for Sex and Culture!) -- what can I do when the heaviness of reality settles in on my shoulders for a long-winter's nap, especially now that it's coming into summer? What can I do with the part of myself that has called itself "reality" for close to half my life, that voice filling my heart cavity just now with words that sound like, "you don't deserve any of this. who are you to claim an unquestioned happiness? who are you to decide when to let go, who are you to trust your instincts, your body, your heart?" This part has swelled me up, and I feel ballooned all through my chest, and breathless, as though there's someone sitting on me.
That weight -- it's terror, ok, sure. But terrified of what? Failure is too easy, I think. I think the terror is way more clearly aimed at success. Afraid of getting exactly where I'm dreaming I could get.
This is the image, I think -- when we remove a bandage that has covered a serious wound, some deep puncture or a broken bone, and we expose that skin, that part of our body, that new scar to the sun, to the dirty air, to the world. That new scar is tender, isn't it? It's our body's newest growth. How do I trust that the world won't slice into me again?
I don't, do I. Isn't that the learning? The hurt will come again. The point is to bare my scars to the mouth of the wor(l)d anyway.
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My dear friend says, "will you get out of your own way?"
How do we recognize that that's what we're doing?
We don't, I think is the point. We need others to show us, tell us. We need friends, folks who love us enough to be honest, to turn us toward the mirrors we've been avoiding and say, look. look at that beauty. those wings are ready for lift-off my friend. come on over here with me to the edge.
We -- I need people who love me enough to encourage me to jump, to risk, to fly. I need people who will be there to fall into, who hold all the tears and flailing, who hold my hands even when it means I am digging my nails in to the tender skin of their palms; I need people who will know when to grit their teeth against the pain, and when to pull my fingers away and let me go.
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Just for today, I am ready to stop writing in such close proximity to my own organs. I'm going to go come now -- I don't see dancing in this evening's plans, although, if I had just a bit more energy, dancing would be the day's orgasm, without question.
2.20.12
( prompt: air time )
This is what wants airing, this naked raw emotion under the armor, the stuff beneath where I am so protected with you these days, I want to let it all out in a mess, the heap of me, untended, not folded or neatly presses; let me be uncontained, let the rush push through and notice, after, what clings, what has stuck and stained, and where. I 'll already be gone and after this onslaught you won 't be clean but you will be washed through with all my old wanting, too-horned angers and the fears with teeth that chewed at my belly for years. How long before we let go the nice and plesant raging, before we unswallow before we untether uncatch unhold unbend unleash?
Let's be easy with all these good bodies, and the joy fear terror loss wanting hollow singularity indignation ease hope exhaustion exhilaration that all twines around within us, into our spaces of peace and into our spaces of shame. Here's to breathing anyway. Here's to what home actually looks like: practice.
See you tomorrow. Come just exactly as you wish.
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