It's Up from Here.

I really fucked up during my first week of 2015. I guess I can only go up from here.

I hooked up with someone on NYE. He started paying attention to me the minute i walked in the door. And then the ball dropped and then we were kissing. I think I screwed it up before it even started. And that sucks. Since I've not gotten any wanted attention in awhile. And speaking of unwanted attention...

My ex, the toxic one, you know, sent me a "happy new years" text. I answered. He followed up with a we have to catch up!!!

So we did. I went over to his place for tea. We had tea and sat at the kitchen table and beat more dead horses, hashed out everything from the past. I said it wasn't meant to be. He said, not that's not it. It's b/c of _____. He also said if you would've ____.

But we cannot live our lives this way. The What Ifs. I feel deep in my core that there is no reason for us to EVER get back together. But the levy of that thought starts to leak when my ex says things like that. As if he wants it to happen again. 

At first, I felt really good after our meeting. It was healing, a truce. But now I've been doubting it and I know it can't happen too often. There is a small part of me that will always be in love with this fantasy of him. What if it was real? But it's not. So I cannot see us ever being close friends, because then we will venture into toxic territory. A territory I've been in and want no part of anymore. Even thinking about it gives me a visceral reaction, I feel sick to my stomach.

I'm scared that I'm not strong enough to resist that small chance if presented. Yet, I think it's enough of a sign that I have an overwhelming feeling of dread thinking of us dating. Tea time will no longer be a regularity. I do not want to be anyone's option, I want to be someones priority.

I've done so much internal work on myself this year, for the better. I'm so scared of going backwards, but I don't think you can truly go backwards. I get scared all my hard work will be lost.

I told my ex I was seeing someone even though I'm not. I told him I was seeing a South African Journalist who is my age and is really interesting. Maybe if I say it, it will come true.

I think I've been out of sorts and wild and spinning. I don't feel great, but I will soon. I just need to catch my breath and remember all the lessons I've learned. Remember how going backwards is not where I want to go.

2015 can only get better.

 

Dating as a Millennial: WTF.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Oscar Wilde

 

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Millennials: there are no precise dates when the generation starts and ends. Researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

I went to the Red Derby this weekend. I spoke to a Frenchman for 40 minutes who then told me he was married - "I haf tu mayke a confeshion"- he wasn't wearing his ring.  I then spoke to a very hawt man who took my number and then immediately told me his gf is moving away in two weeks. WTF.

I'm trying to no longer complain about the DC dating scene. But before I stop complaining, I wanted to explore questions I am SO CONFUSED by in today's dating world.

Am I asking too much? 
What I'm looking for is a man who wants to take me on dates, and ultimately, only wants to sleep w/ me, exclusively. I do not want a husband, partner, roommate. I guess what I want is called a "boyfriend."  Not a hook-up, a one night stand, a fling, or "friend-with-benefits".  Nothing is wrong with any of these situations. If I was in that place right now in my life, I'd be into that, but right now I'm looking for more.

Am I old fashioned and unrealistic?
Right now I'm looking for a little commitment. I want to know I am respected and the only one they are sleeping with. And if they do not want to do that anymore, that is fine. I just want to be dumped before they sleep w/ someone else.

Does what I want no longer exist?
I still do not believe I am asking for THAT much. Yes, I am asking for mutual respect, time, love and affection, honesty.  But I guess these things increase in rarity as I get older.

Is this the new normal?  Am I the only one who didn't get the memo/isn't into casually hooking-up w/ no emotions or feelings? 
Some of my friends date w/ no strings attached; meaning they are in casual amorphous relationships.  They never know if the man/woman they are dating is "here to stay," never going to call them again, or if they even want to be in the current state. They are open to any and all possibilities. Maybe if I didn't care as much I'd be there. But right now, I do not want to spend time with a man who "isn't sure" I am worth his time and respect.

Some of my friends are virgins - yes i know, i didn't believe it as first either - and are waiting.

Some of my friends exclusively have sporadic one night stands, nothing more.

Some of my friends are seeking all the qualities of a relationship - minus the commitment. These are mostly my male friends. They want companionship, sex & fun, but do not want to be called a boyfriend and want to have sex w/ anyone else whenever they want. ISN'T THAT SWEET. But - these men are upfront from the beginning. So - I cannot label them as liars. They are honest - at least :(

My friend, M, from NYC described the way I feel about dating beautifully:
"You know that feeling when you've been hungry for a really long time, and then you pass the hunger feeling and no longer feel hungry anymore? The effort to eat outweighs the desire, so you just go to bed?"

My feelings about dating are this EXACT analogy. I want to meet a nice guy but I do not want to try online dating. The effort and work one puts in "finding" someone is not something I am currently up for. I just want it to happen on it's own. But does that even happen anymore in this world?!
 
I have never used an online dating app or website. I am scared of them and also I do not want to date that badly. I don't have the time to invest, so why am I complaining? If I don't have the time to search, maybe I don't have time for a relationship?

Also right now my life is drama free. And that is something I want to continue.
I whine about all this a lot and I will try to stop. But it is hard when what you want isn't available to you.  Like anyone, I miss the affection or attention of a man. It's icing on the cake. But I need to remember how good the cake tastes w/out icing.

 Sometimes I worry I will become desperate and eventually lower my standards. I hope I never do that.

Anywho - my new goal is to continue dating myself and not worry/whine about dating. Here's to DAY ONE.


To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Oscar Wilde

Bee-friending

Bee-friending yourself

The apiary is a small one, which only a select few know about. It’s located in the courtyard of a monastery.  You can see the monks walking around, or visitors who’ve booked a weekend to get lost from their lives.  There are no cell phones or laptops allowed, and the rooms have no clocks. Yet, no one is alone at the monastery and everyone depends on one another for encouragement, love, food, and peace of mind. Like the bees I tend to at the monastery, the monks and visitors depend on each other to make a thriving community. The stronger the hive the sweeter the honey.

A year ago, I sat on the DC metro thinking about what it would be like to live here.  What would a new life in DC look like?  What kind of friends would I have and where would I get my haircut? I’d have to leave everything I had built to find that out. 

As I was flying back from DC to Austin I got the call.  I was offered the job and four weeks later I was migrating from Austin, Texas to D.C. After three years of living a sweltering, magical existence in Austin, scarfing down breakfast tacos and causing a ruckus on east 6th street, my time in the city had come to a close.  The thirst I felt in Austin was getting drier and I needed to search in another direction. I loved my friends, but they could always fly to come visit me. I had no family, mortgage, or paramour.  I left in three weeks.  If it didn’t fit in a box it was sold on Craigslist.  If it couldn’t be sold it went to the curb and was promptly gone the next morning. Austin being a city of transients, everyone there likes a good deal.

Bees leave their hives for many reasons.  One type of flight is called a “foraging flight” in which the bee flies out of the hive in a random direction in search of nectar, honeydew, pollen, or water. I was seeking sweeter nectar.

I left with a bang. My last weekend I managed to have a fling with the co-worker I’d been infatuated with for a year. It didn’t help that he wasn’t single, but the intensity felt in such a short period made my takeoff that much more charged with rocket fuel.  I felt I had come to Austin how I was leaving it; open to change, slightly heartbroken, confident I was making the right decision.  For the second time in my life I was ready to live in a city where no one knew my name.

The first few weeks you move to a new place are thrilling, exhilarating. You walk around the streets with a smile on your face.  Every face entrances you; every building arch you’re enamored by is one you’ve never seen before.  The inevitable daily drudge has yet to muck up this new city you live in, and for those first few weeks all you can see are the possibilities, the promise, places you never knew existed.

After the first three months faded, real feelings began to set in.  Not the fun ones. I felt achingly alone.  I’d moved before to a different city without knowing anyone, but this time I felt hollower on the inside. I missed the fast fling I had left in Austin, even though I knew there was no way it would’ve worked out with him anyhow.

A week later I got into my first bike accident ever.  In Austin I had lived as a commuter cyclist, with no car for three years and never got in an accident.  This accident in DC seemed even scarier since I wasn’t wearing a helmet. There I was, glass and blood coming out of my forehead from the cut above my eyebrow, dribbling down my favorite late-summer slip dress onto the Adams Morgan concrete beneath me. I could hear the shrieking ambulance sirens approaching.

It was harder to make friends in DC.  Unlike Austin where I had had a grad program acting as a crutch for early friendships, here it was different.  No community to lean on.  Who was I in this new place?

I guess I thought that once I finished high school, studied abroad, graduated college, got my Masters, paid my own bills, lived in a city as a single, independent woman, every question mark I ever had in my head would turn into a period. Instead they all just turned into ellipses and I wondered what I “needed” to do next.  What was next on the checklist? I couldn’t move to a new city again. There was no escape plan in that exhausted idea. 

A man! A man was the only thing missing from my checklist. Maybe once I had him all the ellipses would be periods. Finally, I could take a nap and get some rest. If I had only known the ways of the bees months before I wouldn’t have come to this fear based conclusion. In the hive community the Queen bee births all the brood (offspring). She is the sole source of life. Without her presence there is no hive. It is not a patriarchal system. Although the Queen bee does need Drones (male bees) to produce brood, she relies on her fellow Worker bees (sterile female bees) to help her and the hive thrive and stay strong.

Did I mention I have a proclivity for Ernest Hemingway-like men who are much older than me and make me feel like shit about myself? Well I started dating one of those men. He would fix it all. These months of my heart being high-jacked were ones of struggle, no appetite, and tears. All my energy was spent trying to impress him, getting to know him, lusting after him.  I had no energy or foresight to go make new friends. He would be my key to new friends, a new life; happiness. I was constantly trying to convince this drone that I was worth loving. I listened to him talk a lot, but never did much of the talking. I nodded so much I probably looked like a bobble head. I felt like one too. My head wasn’t really connected to the rest of my body so my soul felt like a big jumbled mess, confused between the head and the heart of my plastic existence.

I was being inauthentic.  I remember sending a “Merry Christmas” email to Ernest Hemingway only to get a response a month later saying, “Sorry we lost touch - you know how that happens when people date?” Another bold, searing question mark. I was back at the beginning. I couldn’t take anymore question marks. 

Darwin was bothered that he could not rationalize the fact that sterile Worker bees would display altruism towards the Queen.  Where did this will come from if they were unable to be encouraged by the possibility of offspring? One theory, “Kin selection,” explains that worker bees are more related to each other than they are to their parents. By helping each other, they are helping themselves to produce a strong, thriving hive, in which genes can be passed down for the generations.

 I didn’t need a drone to complete me. What I needed to practice was Kin selection; find a hive to shelter myself from this raging tornado of abandonment. I didn’t know it yet, but by engaging in a community, I would find strength as well as enhance the community’s purpose. This was the only way I’d feel I was helping myself find the periods to the sentences.

Ever the academic as my student loan debt can confirm, I signed up for an urban bee keeping class. Why Urban bee keeping?  I had never been stung by a bee in my life, much less kept a bee hive. I live in an apartment complex in DC with no backyard. I knew I wouldn’t be building a hive my first bee season, but I wanted to learn about bees. They seemed like a blue print for a perfect community. They seemed so in sync with one another and mysterious to me. 

When a new Queen Bee is introduced to the hive, she is lowered into a hive encased in a glass vessel, with a cork made from sugar.  As the weeks go by, the bees get used to the Queen and her pheromones as they slowly eat away the sugar cork.  I desperately wanted someone to eat away at my sugar cork and let me burst free from this glass house I’d been living in.

My class became my colony; the hive from which I entered and was enriched by. Each Saturday I woke up early to get to bee class.  I even had a man ask for me to sleep over at his house after a long night of kissing. I wasn’t feeling him that strongly anyways, but it was fun to say, “I can’t, I have an urban bee class tomorrow morning!” and receive the strangest face ever. That’s how I knew he wasn’t really for me. The bees saved me from another Ernest Hemingway.

I no longer cared about completing my checklist. I only cared about the bees, and questioning the question marks. What else did I want to do now that I had freed myself from a checklist existence? What else was I here to do?

My purpose is not to be the world’s greatest bee keeper. But taking the class got me out of my comfort zone, led me to question my insecurities, embrace new people, and make new friendships. Even if I was a newbie and had no clue what I was talking about when it came to bees, I was now a part of a community. There was no winning or losing and all my hellos were received with smiles when I sat in my classroom chair.

 

Because of bee class I had someone to spend a Sunday brunch with. And not just one person, but a swarm of people. As I sat on the patio that Sunday, sipping a mimosa under the early spring sun in the cool breeze with my new found friends, I realized there were periods at the end of the sentences in my head. And the ones that ended in question marks did not scare me anymore. I had found my place in the hive.

15 Delightful Foreign Phrases About Love And Relationships

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/15-delightful-foreign-phrases-about-love-and-relationships

my tribe

i hate it when people bail on me.
moving to a new city is so much harder than you think it will be. i figured since i did it once, the second time would be easier. but sometimes i feel like it's just as hard.
i can't wait for when i finally find my tribe. i think i've found some of them already.
i have to remember to be patient.

one thing i've learned in the past year is that this cliche is true:

quality relationships take quality time. you can make fast friends, but it is the amount of time and how open you are with them that makes them worthy friends, friends that will be there for you. this goes for romantic relationships as well.




PHOTO CREDIT: Daasanach tribe girl - Omorate Ethiopia by Eric Lafforgue, via Flickr

back in the saddle again.

 



on Friday night i had spoken to my mother on the phone and told her i was giving up on dating and that in order for me to ever be asked out on a date again, I'd have to move. She told me i was wrong but i didn't believe her. refused to.

i went to a friend's birthday party. I wore a chili pepper red colored mini skirt, black v-neck tshirt, my new brown leather jacket, lacey tights and my Florentine leather boots. i looked hot. I finished it off with red lipstick.

Saturday night as i was drinking an abita purple haze i saw a REAL man walk into the bar. He was not of the typical DC fare and i think that's why i thought he was so hot. He had a lumberjack beard, tousled hair (perhaps from his motorcycle helmet?), and i could see tattoos peeping out from his vintage leather sleeved jacket. He had thick silver rings on and was sitting at the bar with his friend. SO OF COURSE I SAT on the empty bar stool next to him. And ACCIDENTALLY brushed up against him when someone was trying to push me away to get to the bar.

We chatted very casually for 15 minutes and shared a shot of whiskey. he then said,

"Well, I'm about to leave with my friend here. I dunno if this is too forward or not, but I'd like to get your number."

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
the sexy man wanted my number.

He slid over a bar napkin and i wrote my digits down. And i got a text the next day :)

The second guy i met at the bar was equally charming, but not as intriguing or non-DC. He was a clean-cut all American male which i also like. He was funny, cute, and NOT GAY OR MARRIED. Lately dating in this city I run into two frequent roadblocks: Gay or Married.

The two men i gave my number to were neither MARRIED, GAY, or IN THEIR 40s!!!! BLESSED VIRGIN THANK YOU GOD.

The whole night was a small step for my confidence and a huge leap for my dating life.

COUPLES ARE BORING.

COUPLES SUCK.

tonight i was out with my trivia team and my one trivia mate brought his gf. i like her and they are fun. but tonight we started talking about dating. it was 2 single people in the group and 3 coupled people. We were a bit outnumbered.

both me and the other single person stated why dinner is not a first date option, more of a 3rd date option. 1st dates are for casual stuff; drinks, bowling, origami making, podcasting, YOU KNOW.

3rd dates can be dinners. You don't want to eat awkwardly on a first date. not sexy. at all.

The couple insisted their first date was a dinner date. well fuck them.

I also said how on a dinner date i would prefer the man to pay for my dinner. ON THE FIRST DINNER DATE HE NEEDS TO PAY FOR MY DINNER. if he can't or doesn't want to pay for my $12-22.00 pasta dish he can go fuck himself. I AM WORTH far more than a $12-22.00 pasta dish. After the first date we can ease up and split checks, but the first REAL dinner date is important to me. ALSO all my favorite and most caring ex-boyfriends ALWAYS paid for my food the whole time we were dating. IMAGINE THAT.

I was called out on this practice as well. i was told i was NOT FEMINIST AND ANTI-EQUALITY. 

COUPLES ARE STUPID.

i was also told a classics story that most couples tell you. Since they are not in the dating scene they don't understand what it is like to date, how to act. I was told i needed to ask more men out on dates, be more aggressive, approach men.

Personally, i'm not opposed to approaching a man to start a conversation, but i do not want to ask him on a date. I'd rather talk to him, flirt, see if he's interested. If he is interested he will ask me out. IF HE IS NOT, HE WILL NOT ASK ME OUT. and that will save me time. I've asked out men in the past and whenever i've done that it's ended shittily. why? BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T INTO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

COUPLES SUCK AND THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. 

just keep doing your thing. there is no right way to date and you cannot tell the future. 

i'd rather be alone & happy than married & miserable. 

Roman Geisha

last night i went to a birthday party. then the whole party went to a bar. at the bar i was approached by an older, Roman banker. It's as if God knows my biggest temptations. We flirted all night. Talked about Italy. Then we started talking about relationships. Then we found ourselves at a 24 hour diner because there was still so much to talk about. And then we talked about his marriage. we left the diner and both walked towards our different lives.

Nothing happened but good conversation. It wasn't about dating, sex, or exchanging numbers - that never happened; it was about talking to a stranger and the enjoyment of that. But i don't know why I entertain unavailable men. Was I a Geisha in a past life?

It's something I'm working on, and it makes me hate bars and it makes me hate dating in a way i never have before.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

I read an article about genetic memory: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510

It got me thinking about other things, like past lives.

I spoke to a close friend of mine a few weeks ago. We determined if we did in fact have past lives, we knew exactly who we were in those lives. I was an Italian Prima Donna opera singer at some point. I'm positive. Why, you may ask?

 

• i am in love with love
• i love to sing, and am quite a good singer actually
• i love theatrical drama
• i love character driven stories
• when i was in italy, it felt like a new home to me
• i am obsessed with italy in general
• i am obsessed with italians 
• i love art, art history
• i am sassy and can be a bitch if need be
• i usually have ridiculous, insane love affairs

The friend that spoke with me on the subject believed she was an ex-groupie from California in the 1960s.



She said she didn't fear life struggles as much, because she knew she had lived life once before, her past life.
"Don't you get that feeling, like, 'Well, it worked out before so it's going to all be fine again.' "

I think i can relate to that. Also -
isn't it odd when you get an "at home" feeling in a brand new place, like you have been there before or are from there?

And what about when you meet someone, and feel as though you know them, even after only speaking with them for a short time. I'm convinced at least two of my past lovers I have known in a previous lifetime. Stuff that I felt and things that happened between us were just too coincidental to ignore.

Isn't it in the Disney movie, "Sleeping Beauty" that illustrates this concept of love so well?

I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
Yes, I know it's true
that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
the way you did once upon a dream

The opposite could happen as well. Predetermining your taste for a place or person due to an uneasy feeling or energy you sense from them.

This unexplained comfort/discomfort could just "be" the way it is. But the Cosmos seem so deep and mysterious, I think there is something to the concept of past lives, past journeys, a past experience we are not fully conscious of.

party prose.

my favorite sort of night is when you have a glass of wine while putting your makeup on. but not too much wine, because you don't want to put on too much makeup.

you go out to your favorite bar. with your friends. and then other people show up that you don't know and you exchange names. everyone is friendly and talks and gets along.

everyone likes hearing what you choose to play on the jukebox. everyone likes motown so you play motown. everyone likes Sam Cooke.

you continue on with beer because that's what you started with, or you move on to whiskey. and moving onto whiskey is usually always a bad idea, but you chose to do so anyway. you are little older now, so you know to sip it and it won't be as bad as you know it could be.

everyone gets sick of the first bar and you go to another bar. the second bar is never as good as the first one, but you needed to leave the first bar. right now you couldn't say why you did if anyone asked you.

someone is restless like you and invited everyone back to there place. it is not yet 12am but everyone still wants to go back to someone's place. some of you go and some of you take cabs home together to make love, and some of you go home alone to watch a movie, eat drunkenly and bitch.

you go back to the house, because you are restless and still want to meet all these people and talk about their lives and talk about how they see the world. this all sounds better while holding a glass of wine. you sip that too though, because you want to enjoy every sip, every word that is coming out of this new person's lips.

the lights are lower in the room you all sit in. slowly, everyone goes off to bed, except for you and an attractive man. you stay up and talk. you exchange stories, know where he is from, what he did in high school with his friends - however nerdy, although you don't find it nerdy you find it endearing - who he is or who he is not in love with, his favorite drink, what he likes about women, what he hates about women.

he is fascinated by you and everything you say and you can tell he wants to kiss you. but you both don't do that because all this connection is too comfortable to mess up this late at night. so you fall asleep on the couch and the next morning you walk home and you see him in a month and you feel like he forgot about all of it, but you look at him like you didn't.