waiting is not a verb

As I would have at 22, I now vacillate between elation and dismay at my own stupid impulsivity that I almost never opt to contain, even though I have learned it is, in fact, possible, and something I never regret when I actually manage to do it.  The vacillation is the punishment and the reward.  I want both, and deserve only the latter.  But they are a set, at least for the time being.

I would like us to go away again, get away from everything that is pulling me.  But that isn’t likely now, and not for awhile.  I believe I need to refocus.  Tomorrow my family is leaving to go camping overnight, which leaves me inclined to stupidity when left unsupervised.  I could ride the Peloton and drink water and cuddle puppies.  Or I could drink wine and make terrible decisions.  Whatever.  It’s like the decision isn’t really mine to make.


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Look, how she rubs her hands.

There is a soap or aftershave or cologne or scent-of-something that is sticking to me, not at all unpleasant, but unfamiliar, and has lasted beyond my shower, which makes me wonder if it is only in my mind.  People always walk into my office and tell me it smells good, what it is?, (clove and lavender), but I cannot smell it anymore because I am in it all the time.  The same is true of my tea (Bengal spice) that I can not detect but others often comment upon it.

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This morning we intended to go for a hike but there was an event happening that made it impossible to park the car where we meant to, so instead we went for coffee and a muffin, which was another pleasant option, but the whole time I was just waiting to come home and have sex.  This is the time in my life when I should be having less sex drive, but the opposite is happening.  I wonder why.  It is terribly distracting.


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in the works

Everything starts to settle - to some degree.  But some things remain inalterably different in the landscape, and my body responds to the difference reflexively, while my brain moves in slow motion. Sometimes my dogs instinctively hump one another, although they are all male.  And when I intervene to disentangle the victim from the perpetrator, the perpetrator frequently does not notice that the object of his affection is gone and continues to hump the air around him, hips acting independently of all his other senses that should help him realise that there is no point.

This is how I imagine myself now, vaguely humping the air and the legs of furniture as I stumble around blindly wondering what the hell is going on.  My brain is misty and my body is on fire and this makes it impossible to think clearly or behave rationally.  (I am not trying to.  I have chosen to let my body lead.)

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said gently

I spoke to myself (lightly) about cognitive dissonance in preparation for what was coming; obviously I knew it was coming.  But cognitive dissonance is nothing new or remarkable.  It’s everywhere in my life.  My love for smoking that makes my chest hurt.  My love for red wine that invites migraine headaches.  My love of T.S. Eliot, and fucking in cars, and every other beautiful, fucking self-sabotaging thing that breaks my heart wide open but which I still cannot properly regret because that pain feels like flying.  Because I do not have a proper sense of self-preservation.  Because I never really believe there will be consequences to my decisions.  And maybe that is truer than not, because the consequence most often is simply living  with myself, quietly imagining what it would feel like to tear the flesh off my chest, expose my rib cage, pull out my heart and drop it on the kitchen table amongst the breakfast dishes.  Cognitive dissonance is no big thing.


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posture and posing

I find myself on the edge of a decision, and asking myself if the decision has already been made.  (It has, which does not mean I cannot reverse it with effort.)  I'm asking myself if I want to reverse it.  And asking myself why, at this point in life, I would be reverting back to patterns I enacted as a sixteen year old and have managed to abandon for most of my adult life.  It has everything to do with the feelings that go with risk-taking; someone my age is ideally well past seeking this kind of adrenaline rush.  Risk-taking made sense when I was sixteen because I truly felt I had nothing to lose, and in many ways I did not (except my life, which I did not particularly value).  At eighteen I once climbed out the window of a moving car into the window of another moving car on the highway.

I don't take these kinds of physical risks anymore, but I still crave that feeling, that rush of adrenaline that leaves you shaking and elated.  And I wonder why I do, and why other people do not seem to share that hunger.  And I think about the ways I intentionally feed that hunger that seem safer and more socially acceptable, like heating my coffee until it intentionally burns the tip of my tongue, like running until my heart hurts, like biting my lip until I taste blood.  Like most hungers, it grows when I feed it instead of quieting down.

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this awkward kiss that screams of other people's lips

J and R make me feel like a celebrity, because they tell everyone things that make me sound that way.  Last night they told me (and everyone around us) that I am the funniest, the smartest, the wittiest, the kindest, the best...  I couldn't really have paid them to make me look any better.  Not that I need to.  Not that there's any good reason for me to need to at all.  It's like having a drug slipped into your drink that you didn't even mean to try, and suddenly you're addicted.  But I'm not.  This was a one time thing.  

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home.

I've been home since Friday afternoon.  It is interesting how the more times I make the spring break trip to Europe, the easier it is to manage both the jetlag and the fast emotional shifting. Slovenia/Austria/Liechtenstein/Switzerland/Germany.  12 days, 5 countries.  Reverie and exhaustion and beauty and wonder... ... ... 

(RW's boot camp style was less intense this year, and I spent time mulling over whether this was because of TW being less able to keep up, or whether he is growing up.  In any case, it was appreciated.)

Also:
- I spent significantly too much time with AN, which is a strange feeling I have chosen to go ahead and dive straight into anyway.  (Why?)
- I got my nipples re-pierced instead of having a lunch break in Switzerland.  (Again, why?)
- RW made me reconsider my plan to leave my school and apply for a district level position.  He made a great deal of sense when I was filled with wine.  I will have to test his theories when sober.

Being home was an easier adjustment back than it has sometimes been.  No dreams of the streets of Europe this time (why?).  No significant feelings of jetlag.  I was able to do a hard half hour Peloton ride on Saturday, and we did a five hour hike on Sunday (why???).  I loved Lucerne the most - but I am self-aware enough to recognize that I was bathing in post-piercing endorphins all that afternoon, which will have biased my perceptions.

Home also means back to work.  

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