River's Blog

What I know is...

... not a heck of a lot.

But I do know that he does plan on leaving after graduation, and that he was warm and understanding and compassionate ... and honest about his own thoughts and feelings about my response to this fact.

There's much more to the story, but these are the essential shareable facts.

One salient fact is that I no longer have or use Big Stories to protect me from my grieving over such losses. (Even if the loss is of a dream or hope.) So the waves of sadness are just huge, deep, soul-shaking. I have no defense against such feeling/s. I am becoming very tender and innocent in my old age.
 
... not a heck of a lot.

But I do know that he does plan on leaving after graduation, and that he was warm and understanding and compassionate ... and honest about his own thoughts and feelings about my response to this fact.

There's much more to the story, but these are the essential shareable facts.

One salient fact is that I no longer have or use Big Stories to protect me from my grieving over such losses. (Even if the loss is of a dream or hope.) So the waves of sadness are just huge, deep, soul-shaking. I have no defense against such feeling/s. I am becoming very tender and innocent in my old age.

How do you preserve this tender innocence my friend? I find myself at a loss not to harden myself as I age right now. I wish to have such tenderness and joy in my heart, yet I feel I must protect myself...
 
How do you preserve this tender innocence my friend? I find myself at a loss not to harden myself as I age right now. I wish to have such tenderness and joy in my heart, yet I feel I must protect myself...

I could say "It's not easy," but even that is becoming more and more untrue. I'm just losing the capacity to not feel what I feel, not be who and what I am, not own and be authentic in relation to my own obvious this-moment experience...." Being "vulnerable," genuine, authentic... gradually ceases to be a daring and courageous choice and becomes ever more an inevitability, and unavoidable fact.

We don't ultimately "choose" this path, this life. It chooses us, and if we are fortunate, we'll surrender to it and ride the wave all the way home. We can resist a little, for a while. But the path will have us ... until there is no longer even the idea of a path... and it all becomes choiceless because being ourselves never really was a choice from the very earliest beginnings. We always are what we are. And when we welcome it all it transforms everything, heals all of it.
 
I will not fear love.

How do you preserve this tender innocence my friend? I find myself at a loss not to harden myself as I age right now. I wish to have such tenderness and joy in my heart, yet I feel I must protect myself...

I found myself awake for several hours during the night last night, and so I did what I often do these days when awake in the night. I lay on my back and breathed mindfully, deeply, opening myself to whatever sensations may arise. And this time I also explored some questions, but I explored them in a new way I'm just beginning to learn. This new way of questioning is different in that it's as much about feeling as words and ideas. It's also open to unexpected possibilities or strange or even startling insights. It's not an intellectual kind of questioning. It's more like trying to see what is going on inside--what's really there, and it asks to be shown what may be concealed or hidden within.

As I breathed deepy into my heart area with focused mindfulness on sensations in this region of my body while opening to such possible knowings or insights, I felt points of sharp pain in the thymus / sternum / heart center. And I had a whole parade of flickering insights into how I've always had fear around love and loving ... and how I'd try to protect myself from hurt through the construction of stories meant to corral love into something known and manageable ... stories meant to offer protection.

I brought big curiosity to this feeling of need for protection and realized I don't want that habit any more, that I'd do ANYTHING to stop doing that -- stop trying to protect myself around love. Especially through stories about how other people are -- which stories I seem to have believed (on some level)
would protect me from feeling pain around "love". But it wasn't really pain around love in relation to others. This is the radical re-framing which is just peeping into conscious awareness (a fragile, new, emerging felt insight).

Underneath stories I have told to myself about other people's unavailability for love lay still other, and hidden, stories which were causing ME to be unavailable for love. I'm bringing these hidden stories into the light of awareness, feeling about them, and releasing the contractedness and fear they inspired and maintained.

I've decided to catch myself in the act whenever I contract my heart in fear of loss or rejection -- and then to bring love into my heart -- and into my relation with others -- instead. I've decided to dig up the burried stories and bring them into daylight... and heal them with my love.

I will not fear love. I will not fear my tenderness and vulnerability. I will celebrate these instead. I will be courageous!
 
Thanks Reverie

:)
 
I saw him at the coffee shop today -- a place I introduced him to and where we usually hang out when we hang out together in the morning (which is one of the few times he's available to hang out as one who works full time and goes to university). We had not arranged to meet there. I knew it was possible he'd show up. He knew it was possible I'd show up.

Days (whole days) had elapsed with not a single text message or email from him. This had not happened in the roughly two months we've been hanging out.

The radio silence must have been related to the strange transition we're in from platonic friend to almost lovers (or very temporary lovers) to platonic friends again. He had indirectly accused me (indirect, so uncertain) of pressuring him to be my boyfriend. I guess this simply means, to him, that any words to the effect that ... well ... "I love you" will be heard as such a pressuring. He said it indirectly by saying that his last boyfriend had not "pleaded" with him, but simply asked "would you like to be my boyfriend?" He said "yes," they "smooched" and that was that.

I've never pleaded! I've merely not hidden my feelings. I've expressed them. But not in a constant drum beat.

I also was clear that I'd go on loving him whether our connection was romantic or platonic -- or whatever it may be. Maybe he's not used to having his platonic friends say "I love you" to him -- but all of my close platonic friends tell me this; and I tell them those words too. For me, love is love is love is love -- platonic or "romantic" it's just love. One kind involves (for me) cuddles, being naked together, lots of touch and kisses and ... well, yes, probably some sex too. But I do not love my platonic friends any less than I do my "romantic" companions. I just love them differently.

I'm rambling here.

It was ... so much ... sitting there with him across from me at the coffee shop this morning, each of us working on stuff on our computers, sipping coffee, chatting only a little -- and not talking about the ... well, it is not an elephant in the room exactly. We just needed to be non-verbally communicative with one another this morning. Just sit with one another and feel that it's okay. That we're okay. That life is okay. That all will be well.

I'm STILL in love with him, though. I suspect I always will be.
 
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I just got a nice email from him. He apologized for having been out of touch (which wasn't really necessary) and said he had been sort of holing up away from everyone, just needing a break from everyone. It wasn't just me, he said. And he shared some things about himself ... which helped me to feel that our connection is still alive and well. Sigh. Thank goodness!
 
Just in case anyone is wondering...

The reason I don't talk much about my 20yearsSweetie is because we're so lacking in drama. (There is not a lot of news.)

Ours is a very mellowed, aged wine. We are very good friends, and infinitely deeply rooted and bonded. There just isn't much to say! We love one another utterly, spend almost all of our nights together (cuddled up through the nights), eat together, play together, talk about everyting, collaborate on projects.... Nothing is missing here. Nor is it a relationship full of sparkly excitement and newness. I've been the more passionately intense one. He's as stable and smooth sailing as it gets. We compliment one another this way, and he keeps me from smashing up against the rocks so much. I offer a bit if mad sparkle. Sometimes it's the other way around.

I can use his real name here. No problem. His name is Kevin. He's the very best of the best. :)
 
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Saint Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.


© 1980 by Galway Kinnell
 
I Do Not Love These Wounds

I do not love these wounds because they were given me by god.
Or because they were meant to be or inevitable.
Or because they conceal an indecipherable Meaning
Way down deep Somewhere.
Or because of some mythical past life or godforsaken I Ching or Tarot
Crackpot. Not because of a palm reader or Church Preacher or Devil Worshiper
Or my astrologial chart. Or because of fucking Karma. Certainly not because of Karma. No. First, I earned this love by long suffering and lostness without
Magical Sailboats whisking us into Heaven.
Then I grew weary of my tightly clenched Prize.
And now I love them only because I can
And because of the simple peasant gold in them.
 
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Here is the whole paragraph from which that lovely quote was derived.:

"Love is always a matter of learning how to live in an unknown land. It is not just translation or about being secure in what one knows, but about learning how to give a true gift to what one loves by learning what it loves. Love is always about learning the Nature of things."​
 
This afternoon I see that I've simply been "through the ringer" when it comes to dating, hanging out... or wanting to meet someone else / new. I've had so many dashed hopes that any idea of hope seems rather pathetic at this point. I don't want it to be a "story" if it is one; and I don't want to make it into a "story" if it hasn't hardened into one already. But I can say I'm very tired of the routine, indeed.

There are those who believe in this thing called "the law of attraction," in which it is supposed that we're all directly involved in "creating our own reality with our thoughts / feelings." And I'm sure there is a kernel of truth in that, but I tend to interpret it psychologically rather than in terms of hocus–pocus or abracadabra mind magic. I know that if a person believes X is not possible for him or her, it generally won't be -- because he or she will not allow it to be so. But I don't believe that if I believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause leaving a billion dollars in a briefcase on my front porch that there is some kind of damned "law" of the universe which must make it come true.

If I believe you don't like me, I'll see you as not liking me -- even if my belief is false. That's psychology, not Fairy Princess Magic Pixie Dust. And I'll likely push away people who DO like me if I wrongly imagine them as finding me pitiful or ugly. Again, psychology.

Ahh, f*%ck it. It may simply be I'm living in the wrong town (though I can hardly leave here -- given what I've got going which I'm committed to). Or maybe I'm in the wrong culture? But I can't seem to stop wanting there to be another love in my life. So ... Ahh, f*%k it. :(:p
 
I'm sad for you River that it is hard for you to find what you seek in love. I hope that you are able to find somebody else to love who loves you just as much in return.

I tend to interpret the whole "creating our own reality" in a psychological way too. :)
 
Thanks I.P. :)

I'm VERY lucky. I have LOTS of loving friends, and some of them I can cuddle with too. When I count my blessings I have to acknowledge that I've been handed (and welcomed) so very many of those.

Funny thing. I'm missing fresh sloppy kisses, anyway. They're the BEST! Cuddles with these are the bee's knees ... and make my knees weak. I adore it when I can't stand up 'cause my knees are wobbly. :D

I have Kevin in my life, and he's so extra super special to me ... but after twenty years I seldom have much knee trouble around him and his hugs and kisses. A man wants to get drunk on something other than tequila or wine now and then, as it blows out the liver when overdone.
 
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I never would have guessed that so many people would be so quick to dismiss a person's affections simply because they are polyamorous.

I want to celebrate polyamory, but it turns out to be a rather arid place to dwell. I had not thought.... I did not know.

I want to live on PolyPlanet. This one is a bit too narrowly crafted for my heart, flesh and bones.
 
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