What is it about your partner looking at others that makes you feel awful or less than or not good enough, hot enough, rich enough, young enough, skinny enough, or horny enough?  This feeling used to kill me.  I would wonder why my partner looked at other women, texted other girls behind my back, and watched porn every day.  Was I not the most important, hottest, most interesting thing my guy had ever seen?  Reflecting on how my young brain used to think about love, I can’t help but giggle.  Poor, poor girl.  I would combat my feelings of rejection and not feeling good enough by flirting and texting with other guys, watching porn, and dressing sexy to get the attention I wanted.  And you know what?  It all felt great.  It felt great connecting with other people while still being in a relationship.  It felt great knowing I was still wanted by other people.  I would come back to my boyfriend feeling refreshed and sought after.  It started to make more sense why he searched for validation elsewhere.  Also, we had started falling into a pattern.  The sex was always the same, the conversation stayed the same, the activities we did were always changing but the company stayed the same. Dishonesty and sneaking around were the only things I looked forward to; they kept me interested, my adrenaline pumping and fed my need for more bodies to touch and hold.   

The monotony of monogamy is what gets me every time.  Every time I started getting close to someone, the fear of sameness would wash over me.  It starts to feel stale and outdated.  The fear of being held down and made to listen to the same music, the same tv shows, the same stories, the same sexual positions every night, the same friends, the same house, the same room, the same bed, it all just felt like I was being made to suffocate for the sake of love.  Why does love feel like suffocation to me?  Why does love feel like a loss of freedom?  Why love at all if it means giving up every part of me?  

I have mentioned in previous blog posts that being in an abusive relationship is what made me question love.  If I loved myself, why would I let someone treat me the way my abuser did?  Well, I have recently discovered that I am a masochist.  I derive sexual gratification from my own pain or humiliation.  I was confused because I did enjoy the controlling and degrading sex we had in the bedroom, but the abuse of power and control bled into the relationship outside of the bedroom.  That’s where the fight for loving myself started.  I’ve been on a journey of undoing all of the stories about love that don’t work for me. How did I end up falling for this crazy fucking unhealthy relationship and a child I was not ready for?

It hit me hard the other day.  It hit me so hard I almost passed out.  I fucked up.  I fucked up really really bad.  I’m so behind.  Talk about having your freedom taken from you.  Having a child is the ultimate dream snatcher.  I hate saying it like that, but it’s true.  You have to put a huge chunk of your life on hold while you make sure your little one doesn’t kill themselves by walking into a busy street or swallow a piece of food that’s too big.  But what she has shown me, is love.  I never really knew what it was until I met her.  As hard as it is being a single mom, a freedom seeker, and a free lover, I get it now.  I see that love is much more complex than flowers, chocolate, and good sex.  Love consists of a whole ton of communication, patience, hate, annoyance, regret, impatience, unbelievable exhaustion, and frustration.  Love is so fucking complicated and I like complicated.

The conventional way to love makes me want to run.  The sameness that plagues many marriages and families is what keeps me single.  I can’t do it.  The same problems circling over and over again.  The imprint on the couch from someone sitting in it so much.  The imprints in the bed from the same bodies laying in it night after night.  This sounds like a nightmare to me.  Okay, enough bad-mouthing monogamy.  I know it helps people feel safe and that their love is true.  It’s reassurance that your partner only wants you and they’ll do anything to prove that you are the love of their life.  They’ll marry you, make you promises, have your children, work the job, and devote their life to their family.  Mmm, this does sound really safe.  But again, my fear starts to poke through the dream.  What about my ability to connect with others and feel others’ bodies?  I can’t do that with one person for the rest of my life.  This fear has been in me since as young as I can remember.  I couldn’t understand why someone would want to be with one person for the rest of their life.  There are so many beautiful, sexy, crazy, kinky people to meet and so little time!  

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m trying to meet and make special connections with many. Not a singular human to fulfill every one of my desires.  I look back at my young self and I giggle again.  She thought she was so important, so different, so desirable that no man would ever want to wander off and leave her.  It’s cute because I was the wanderer.  I was scared that my partners weren’t enough.  For whatever reason, I thought the nuclear family was the healthiest family.  I’m constantly poking holes in that narrative and I’m liking the light shining through.  I love the dream of the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect parents, and the perfect kids.  But again, it is just a dream.  Some people live it, most do not because “perfection” is living completely free from all flaws or defects.   I can’t think of anything less human than “perfection”.  

My goal was to be perfect, to live perfect, to look perfect, and to act perfect.  That dream quickly faded when nature and reality threw its ugly hand around my neck and ripped off my clothes and called it consensual.  I saw the world finally.  I wasn’t protected or safe.  I was wild and thrown into uncertainty.  I was given a chance to hurt freely, but it’s perfection that kept me drugged up, quiet, and numb.  I wanted to live in a dream world where nobody got hurt, no one used me and I never used them.  All I wanted was to be seen fully and loved fully, so I embarked on a journey to find that in all the wrong places.  I looked up at the bottom of a bottle, I looked between my legs and down the rolled-up dollar bill.  This all led to the one person that made me question it all.  The person that made me do the unthinkable; sobriety, a child, and finding my truth; my self-worth is not dependent on the exclusivity of my relationships. I am more than capable of giving myself the love and support I need to feel safe and taken care of.     

I question all of my feelings now.  Why do I feel scared of commitment?  Why do I fear relationships?  Why do I fear love?  Why do I fear so much?  It’s okay to fear, my dear.  Without fear, communication, patience, hate, annoyance, regret, impatience, unbelievable exhaustion, and frustration, you’re a robot.  Without all of this, love would be easy.  But remember you’re a human, an animal, and love is fucking complicated and I like complicated.

So I dream differently now.  My dream is to love unconditionally and to be loved back.  Not for the sake of love, not to feel safe because I am someones one and only, not because I am the most important person in someone's world, but to be loved fully for who I am, all of me, and to love someone for who they are, all of them and, most importantly, love myself for who I am, all of me, imperfections and all.