La rueda

La rueda is a cuban form of salsa that is performed in a circle. The men dance and spin thier partners and then swings them on to the next person. As a woman this means that someone is always there to catch you. Each person takes you in and grabs you and holds you only tight enough to keep you spinning in that moment and then lets you go. You spin on to the next partner who catches you in turn. 

I feel so freed by this experience. I am indulging in Salsa to practice this metaphor of letting go. A metaphor for my new life. I am no longer dancing with one partner. I am no longer being held tight. I am being spun and then sweetly caught by the next man in the circle. 

I attended a halloween party last night. The man who was my first went with me. Two days earlier we spent one last day and night together. A day adventuring on sheer plunging beach top cliffs watching the sunset, the night tangled up under the sheets. In the morning we drank a cappucino and declared ourselves friends. No benefits. Just friends. The halloween party was the first to test out this new reality. We started the evening together talking and then slowly spun from person to person seperatly in the crowd. Dancing small talk. I peered at him from across the room as women flirted and chatted with him. We are friends. We ended the evening discussing our options. We would each now spin to the next partner. His choices were clear. A dark skinned girl from london wearing a hat wanted him in that moment. He would take her. I would keep looking. 

May the next person catch me as I spin, may they not let me spin out. May they let me land softly. 

Tomorrow I will rueda again. I will practice in the salsa movements the feeling of being held by strangers for a moment and then letting go. Always letting go. 

I am just a prairie vole

The prairie vole is frequently used in studies to emulate the nueochemical experience of humans. The prairie vole much like humans tends twords monogomous pair bonding. They do ocassionally divert from this, displaying behaviors that parallel that of human's such as divorce, seperation and infidelity. 

One study examined brain chemicals emitted when prairie voles were randomly given a partner and made to share space with them for a specific duration of time. Apparently, bonding chemicals emitted make the prairie vole exhibit a preference for those he spent time with, even when later given the opportunity to choose more genetically suitable mates.

So here I lay, the prairie vole being fed the brain chemicals that nature gave me to ensure successful pair bonding. I don't want these chemicals now. They are no good for me. This is only my randomly assigned partner. I don't want to get stuck.

He was my random selection. A research participant. I chose him to take my virginity. Not my real virginity but to break the spell of seventeen years of monogamy. 

I chose him because he was there, because he was kind, and just funny enough and smart enough. This is what I needed. An emotional respite. A clear understanding that sex and human connection were still possible for me. The brain chemicals were not part of my bargain.

The first time I laughed the whole way thru. Finding it unbearably funny that I was kissing a stranger. The sex was not akward or difficult and was surprisingly normal. I was not insecure or shy in most of the ways I had imagined and worried about. It was good even. 

The second time, the chemicals showed up. I started to feel something deep in my belly for this stranger. This stranger of a different race from a different continent. Who I has only met on five seperate ocassions. 

We layed in bed by the hour contemplating the evolutionary biology of prarie voles and how to resist the chemical reality we were being flooded with. Strategies were discussed. Less time together, no socializing just sex, or maybe a time limit. We settled on nothing.

By the third time I could feel him trying. Pulling away, just a bit. It made my belly ache or was it my heart? It made me realize that the chemicals are half the fun. They envelop you, wrapping you up in closeness and wellbeing. They are why we do this. To feel close to another human. 

I don't know when I will see him again or how I will keep from getting stuck for another 17 years with just some random selection. Four short dates being enough of an entoxicant to render me helpless. 

I have decided not to worry, to let go, to stop thinking and just feel it all. I have learned that resistance is futile. I will just enjoy the high. For now. 

Someone else's laundry

I am wearing a shirt that is not mine. The laundry gave it to me by mistake. I can't give it back to the rightful owner so I am wearing it. 

Not long ago it was worn by someone else. A woman. I maybe even have passed her on the street or stood behind her in line at the supermarket. 

I should be bothered by this proximity with a stranger. The wearing of a strangers clothes just washed. I am not. 

You spent the week with her in another city, sharing a bed, sharing space. You will see me tomorrow possibly. I will hug you, share your space. You may tell me you love me as you did before you left. 

I spent the weekend pondering if you ever wanted me back, would I be able to share you like a shirt worn by someone else, just laundered. Would my phyche be able to ever get past this? This use, this wearing, this closeness. 

Once in the evening you came wearing her sweatshirt. I asked where you had gotten it. It was hers. I cried. Her things on you. It hurt so much. 

You just texted that you are back but didn't invite me for coffee as you said you would, only that you will pick our son up from school. I want to die. I understand why people feel this, that they can't bear the pain and they want to jump off of bridges. I did this damage. I pushed the first domino. I pushed us down this hill. Now I am a divorced mother. We never even were married. 

I went on two second dates today. The spanish guy who owns a vespa shop in Barcelona and the Australian journalist. I like both of them for company. For an hour. For a meal. This is supposed to help, this company. 

It really only reminds me of my loss. 

How do I replace this lifetime shared. I have to trade you in for someone else's shirt? For someone else's laundry? 

Suspension of disbelief and other magical thinking

A friend just told me of her new relationship. That she is in love, moving in, signing a year lease on a vacation house. She informed me that despite having spent only six weeks in his company, despite him having just ended a seven year relationship just two months earlier, despite having had only a long distance relationship for months, she was in love. Because I am a logical person I wanted to tell her she wasn't thinking this thru. I wanted to tell her that in all fact she doesn't know this man well enough to be in love. She can't really even understand the depths and complications of the relationship he just removed himself from, maybe isn't totally disentangled from. Skype doesn't transmitt the smell or feel of dirty laundry left on the floor. She has no idea what the future brings, but she is willing to fall, to let go. To totally suspend disbelief to the point where it doesn't exist. This is what love requires, this magical thinking that makes you ignore the bad in someone. 

The other night I went to dinner at this same womans house. This was the kind of scene one could only find in Bali. The house was oppulent and rustic at the same time. The table was piled high with freshly made balinese food. Classical music playing in the background. There was brief banter about whether the servant cooking dinner would join us at the table. This conversation and its surrounds was a stark dichotomy with the stringy haired hippy sitting in front of me. These were the kind of hippies who had money and servants and time to arrange well apointed sceances. 

The dinner progressed and the conversation quickly turned to gurus. These are people who have them and believe in them. There is apparently a hugging guru. A fat lady from India who is known to hug 1000 people in a day. There is another who gives strict instructions about whom to marry and when. 

Apparently what people want from these gurus is to be told what to do with thier life. Apparently if you give over control to them they will run your life completely.

I understand this need. I understand wanting someone else to take the steering wheel. To drive for awhile. 

Being frozen, afraid to make choices for fear that they will be wrong. This makes everything impossibly hard. I wish I believed in hugging fat ladies as the solutions to my problems. I wish it was that simple for me. 

Believing in fat hugging gurus to know more about life than you or believing the guy you just met could be your soulmate. It is all the same. It takes ignoring most of what is in from of you. It takes selectively liking and seeing only certain bits. This is a skill. One that has been honed by most people. This is how I am broken, this is the ability I lack. I am a realist. I see the messy bits, the trainwreck before it happens. 

I think this is why the romantic beginings of relationships are impossible for me. I will never be able to suspend disbelief long enough to fall. 

Conflicted clusterfuck

A friend described my life at the moment in this way. A conflicted clusterfuck. I can't move forward. There is no backwards. It is a traffic jam, a constipated baby, a dry river bed waiting for rain. There is no movement. None. 

Some one just told me a story about the traffic In Jakarta, the capital city in this country I call home. Sometimes the traffic jams are so bad that they last all night. Women are in the streets crying because they can't return home to thier children. They are just stuck in the street surrounded by cars that can't move. Each can't move because the other is there. I didn't ask but am left wondering, how is this resolved? What happens in the morning? I believe that the cars must eventually move. Slowly inch by inch, and then eventually picking up speed untill everything is freely flowing. 

My life is this right now. Nothing moving and no possibility of escape. At somepoint something has to shift. The morning has to come. 

He is getting on a plane with her today. A visa run to kuala lumpur. He shared coffee and tried to fix my computer befor he left. The strength it takes to accept and even love in the face of this is extreme. He hugged me and told me he loved me as we do. Then he drove away. He is not mine. I have to be strong and let him go. He is becoming something, I have to give him the space to become. 

I have given up on online dating. I deactivated my account. Focusing on my relationship status is the wrong thing. This is too insane. 

I will keep dancing and searching out the things in life that are me. I will try to beat back the aloness with a stick. The morning will come, things will start to move again one day soon. I have faith in this. 

Ours, yours and mine

I made fried rice out of the leftovers in the fridge, added an egg. This is yours, I forgot it was. You reminded me that this is what you used to do last time I saw you. 

I painted your walls butter yellow befor you met her. You still wanted me then. Now these walls are yours. These yellow walls. Other people compliment you on them. You say thank you. No credit given, no credit required. She doesn't even know they are mine. That me and your son picked the color with love and painted them for you, using our own two hands while you were away. 

Remember that city in mexico when our son was a baby? Remember all those yellow buildings? We were there. Can't we return to that moment?

You cook our food for her. It was mine first but over the years it became ours. First when I was pregnant and couldn't stand the sight of raw food. Me lying on that old garage sale couch nautious and directing you in the kitchen. You slowly becoming a cook.  

You have pickles on your shelf that you made. They are my pickles. My recipe. Can I take them back from you? I cannot. 

We have these things that are ours. This is how it is. Now you are sharing them with her.

Is that you outlined in a shadow in her Facebook profile picture holding those pickles next to you and her? She doesn't know they are mine does she? 

Then of course there is our son. He is the perfect equal combination of you and me. Yours and mine. Your face, love for books, astronomy and a dry wit. 

My snuggliness and sense of adventure. 

These things are so intertwined, so jumbled. After this many years, we can no longer pull apart these pieces. I am always a part of you and you are always a part of me. I just have to accept that you are now sharing those parts with her. I have to accept this without feeling like a jealous toddler who is unwilling to share my toys. I have to release you. Release all that was shared. Give you away. Give it all away, to you, to her. 

Date #2 and #3

Date number two was an Australian. Wild curly hair and tall but with a stylish conservative button down shirt. He was the first intellectually oriented person I have met in this small town. We had a lovely debate about capitalism and micro economies that was stimulating. This should have been enough all by itself. After a drought of lonliness one would imagine my brain would have jumped at this dance. It was a good start to feed my hope that someone could be possible but not enough to satisfy me beyond dinner. 

It is strange what you sort for in a friend, a lover or a partner. The right combination of things. I kept looking at this man across the table thinking he is smart, a journalist, he is a bit alternative, we are having a nice intelectual debate. What is missing?

Ironically after my first date with the man I spent my whole life with I wasn't sure. He was just nice. At 20 this was enough, to be just nice, or maybe it wasn't. All these years I was unsure if just nice was enough. Now I think that maybe all relationships are grown. Watered and fed untill shared experience makes them real. Maybe there is always a blank slate from the start. Maybe there is nothing else. 

Date number 3 was different. He was brazilian and alternates between working on oil riggs and surfing. I could have been on a date with Vinnie from the bronx, if I could just ignore the portugese accent. He asked me if I ever wore high heels. He liked really high ones especially.

 "I live in Bali," I replied. Heels? I have not even seen them in years. 

I made it thru my coffee, just barely. He was tan and muscular and I had always liked latinos. I could no longer be in his company, not for a single moment more. How is it that this only makes me feel more alone? 

Is funny and charming with some intellegence, a sense of adventure and fiscal independence too much to hope for in one person? I want my old very flawed life back. It was mine. 

The father of my child, my partner in all things life sat and waited in the school parking for a parent teacher meeting. We had driven on a motorbike together for one hour without talking, thru balinese ceremonies, traffic. Him fuming and smoldering over the fresh knowledge that I had a date, that in fact I was dating. This my only recourse from running into him and his girlfriend while buying bananas. It still felt like a betrayal somehow. 

"Let's just drive to the airport and get on a plane and never come back to this godforsaken Island that ruined our life" he said in a tone that lacked conviction. I imidiatly thought of real life. "We have property to sell first" I said. That was the wrong answer. I am still my practical non romantic self he declared. 

I don't believe its what he wants. I am not sure it is what I want. Not sure the genie can be put back, that the pieces can be glued back together. Would I respect him anymore now than I did then? Would I be able to get over his physical intamacy with another woman? Probably not. How can I be sure?

He is caught enjoying his new life and still missing his old one and feeling guilty about the dichotomy. I am stuck alone with no way forward. I am stuck trying to get thru 15 minutes of coffee and hoping that the next one will make me want to at least stay for dinner. What would someone have to be like to make this true? 

First dates

A man whose profile picture is him sitting at a desk cleaning guns would like to go out with me. We live in Indonesia, guns are highly illigal. No I will not go out with him. I will also say no if you have tattoos, are holding a beer or are flashing a hang loose sign. Also strangely if you are surfing. Odd I know. I think surfing could be fun but somehow if this is your profile picture I don't want to date you. I can't really say why. 

Last night was my first date. Online or otherwise in 18 years. I thought company with anyone would be nice. An attractive gentleman, who speaks three languages, has a masters degree and likes to travel enjoying the sunset with me. This should be preferable to the aloneness that has been stalking me daily for over half a year now.  Turns out I was wrong. 

What makes someone tickle certain spots inside your soul? Spots that makes you want more of them. More just over coffee or more that makes you want to bring them into your bed. This is a topic that now seems so nuanced and complicated as to be unsolvable. I don't know the answer for myself.

This gentleman didn't tickle anything for me. Not my mind, my heart, or my loins. He drove in a taxi for over an hour to have drinks with me based on some photos and a brief description of my life. God bless him for at least making me feel wanted for a minute. 

We each had a coconut. We enjoyed the jungly view that is Bali. It turned out that the restaurant I chose was the location of a speaking engagement and a honeymooning couple joined us at our table. Then minutes later, the genteleman I am scheduled to go on a date with the following night) who I had not met online but in person) showed up. He blindly stumbled into my date unaware that this was my scheduling conflict that made me push him forward another night. Awkward, but I suppose unavoidable when trying date en mass in a small town. 

I sat thru polite resume like converstation with my date and included the honeymooners in smart discussions of religion in Bali. I played by the dating rules that I have been advised of by those that know me too well, flaws and all, and love me anyway. Let them do most of the talking, don't talk about divorce or kids or other relationships. Keep my phone off and in my purse. 

In the end I knew within minutes that there was nothing wrong with him but he did nothing to make me want more of him. He was not funny, or intellectually challenging. He didn't even overpower me with some masculine trait like ordering my drink for me. Something that allthouh my feminist self finds dispicable my hormones find hard to resist. 

So with this, when my phone rang I broke one of my rules and answered it. I faned an emergency to leave. It turned out it was the father of my son calling about kid birthday plans tomorrow. I took the moment to tell him I was on a date and allthough this guys resume was better, he was not funny nor smart. Both of these areas are what make him and I still want time together even now. Funny smart conversations are part of what tickles me and makes me want your company. Unfortunately, there is more too. It was the intangible "more" that started the domino affect that brought me to this first date. I should have tried and and made him jelous but I didn't. It brought the missing back. That dreaded missing. 

Tomorrow night is another night, another date. I allready know how this one will go. But I am going to be generous and contemplate if there is something more there. Eventually with sheer numbers of dates eventually I will want to stay thru dinner, right?