Is the Universe telling me something...again?

Okay, its horrible having a cubicle next to the one person with the ample supply of Dove chocolates. And normally, I'm not one to take any sentiments seriously, specially wrapped in delicious milk chocolate (with caramel...yum!). But, when a tempting chocolaty morsel interrupts your mundane routine, I guess I should look up and head its advice.

BTW, if you can't read it, it states "Do what feels right". If you must insist individual Dove chocolate morsel :)

Oh...Let me update you on some things.

Heh...I write a post announcing that I decided to quit my job, write nothing about it for months, then leave you hanging because all I seem to do is write about my sex life or my emotional breakdowns.

After I wrote that post, I hung around my previous job for another month. Originally, the plan was to get a job while I was employed. Perhaps it was the stress of going through interviews while wrapping up some organizational projects, but I had a string of rejections despite getting some serious leads. In the end, I left that job in mid May, without any prospects nor a huge savings.

For a month, I was unemployed, getting appointments for interviews, and even took a two-week temp job just to get by. But in the end I received two job offers, both very compelling and enticing environments. I choose a position that was closer to home, and closer to my career goals.

Four weeks into my new job and already I feel like I belong. Everyone knows me, and I couldn't be happier with the fit in terms of environment and position.

I'm not making as much as I used to, but I can pay my bills, rent, and eat.

So I wanted to thank everyone who helped me along the way...M, my references, and some great recruiters who believed in me even though I found this job on my own.

Timing

We are taught to take things by command, to seize the day, to live every moment, as if we had control of every facet of our lives. But the harsh reality is that whenever we are dealing with other people, control is an illusory fantasy found in self-help books.

As is the case of dealing with major life events.

No. I'm just going to speak in generalities. Suffice it to say that, just because you've moved forward, trying to make a life from the pieces shattered from hurt and anger, doesn't necessarily mean that the other person is moving at the same rate. My expectations was never high, but I never thought that at seven months of carving out my own life, I would feel a sense of loss on a regular basis.

I only live one day at a time now. And even with a precarious peace I'm experiencing right now, I know that things will change with or without me exerting any energy to dictate the course.

Although I wonder, did I deliberately became unemployed (thus putting my survival in jeopardy) just so that I can delay dissolving my marriage? I didn't think so at the time. My former employer did comment that with life changes such as a this, you tend to change everything else in your life.

Regardless, its time for me to start the end. I have no excuses...and he is now ready.

For M

As you know, this isn't the first letter I write to you, even in a week when my life seems to have turned around for the better. The last letter still folded on itself sitting on my dresser, one that I will give you, showed my gracious side to the one who really helped me in my time of need.

No, this, I'm afraid this is a bit more visceral. Even for this blog.

So perhaps its ironic that our olfactory sense was a running theme this weekend. A visit to the mall, trying on cologne earlier today. Then when I arrived home, making a decision to write this post. I had seen you just three hours since. My normal solitude greeted me as I opened the door to my apartment. Exhausted from today's social activity, I sit on my couch, too weary to do anything else. The smell of your cologne still lingers on my couch and in the room.

I close my eyes, drawing images from my kinetic memory of our bodies intermingling from our wanton lust. Our lips our tongues hungering to taste each other despite the fact our weekly visits have not waned. Your strong hands sending shivers down my spine as your run your fingers down my side. We both hold each other as if the bottom will fall any moment. And in that instance, it does, for me the movements of our bodies ceases time and space. As we reach the crescendo of our coupling we live in the present, ignoring propriety or (possibly) annoyance of our neighbors. Only thing that matters is that your cock explore the depths of my sex to find ever increasing heights of pleasure.

We joke about how tempered we are in our activities, in both social and sexual sense. How, in our singlehood, we both prefer our quiet mundane life. But as you mentioned, we submit to our sexual needs with frequency and fervency that most people would envy. And I find myself smiling at inappropriate times of the day because a lingering memories of our time together asserts itself.

So I sit here on the couch, savoring the smell of your fading cologne, letting my mind and body wander. For I will I have to get up and make dinner, feed my cat, clean the kitchen. Before the night breezes dissipate what was left of last night.

Love

I've been wanting to write something other than the progress of my new life but somehow I was in the middle of living it and thus any opportunity to write about it passes without so much as a hint nor hide. But I've been thinking about this topic for awhile now, namely because it refuses to go away. The topic is, of course, on Love. Far be it for me to add any type of insight to this, especially since I'm not particularly an objective observer. But this is the internet, hasn't stopped anyone with a keyboard to espouse anything for lack of information or obvious bias.

I thought I knew what Love was, even when I was leading two separate lives about two years ago. At the moment, its been harder for me to pin down what Love means to me. I guess I can try to describe Love...and for me it's something akin to a black hole. Its a force of nature, expansive in both mass and scope. This expansion is what I think people feel when they refer to "being in love". It fills you...like you can do anything yet make you insignificant at the same time. It is both inside you and outside you, a force that you are compelled towards regardless if you are ready to deal with it or not, looking for love or hiding behind a hard exterior trying to avoid it. However, like most black holes, that expansiveness becomes unsustainable, contracting under its own weight and force, leaving nothing but your own vulnerability.

And after a few months into my single-hood, I had to concede...Love became a casualty like anything tied to my old life and that I was having no part of it in my new life. Oh so I thought.

At first I was extremely hesitant to even face this emotion. Frankly, I had been here before, to feel that expansiveness intimately, only to be betrayed by my own heart. This betrayal has only left me doubtful and distrustful of my own emotions...still am. But I could no more control my feelings as I could control the barriers that presented itself in my old life. So once again I'm having to redefine Love...dismantle my prior history and try to assign new meaning to it.

However incomplete this is my own take on Love and it is thus; You can no more control when you fall in and out of love. You can't convince the other person to love you with the same intensity you put into it. But Love can not be denied. So, given that nature, my compromise is this...to not stop those feelings nor change the situation to what you think it should be. Rather, to love with awareness...to accept the moment even if its not reciprocated. To not think of the timing or where it will lead, but to let it be.

I know, its a cop-out and for the astute it sounds more like "love the one your with". This is where I'm coming from...there are too many people who've never experienced Love, in all its incarnation...and I've been blessed to have been loved deeply. Even though I am no longer with the man whom I thought was the Love of my life, I don't ever regret the time I spent with him. I was expecting this type of Love to come into my life once. But when you are given another chance, should I shun it because I am at my most vulnerable? I don't know. I suppose any self-respecting person will tell me I should let it go.

No matter how fleeting this round of love is for me, or how based on reality it is...I have to accept it regardless of the consequences. It may crush me, or morph into something deeper. I prefer that I was given a crack at it, and have known the object of my affection, fill the void of loneliness if only for a brief time, than not experience it.

Changes

As you can see, I've changed the layout and the look of the blog.

I've also decided to make changes to my own life, I've gave my resignation to my current job. And although, that yes, the economy is horrible and finding a job has been nothing but an exercise in frustration, I couldn't stay.

So, wish me well. Hope that I can be gainfully employed soon.

Infidelity

Unlike the woman who wrote this book, my fling with infidelity didn't lead me to enlightenment, although it lead me to my new life. Neither did I become despondent, although it did hurt someone I cared about, and forced me to question everything about myself. At the time, I thought of one thing and only thing, to have the kind of sexual experience I wanted that was lacking in my marriage.

I will not lie, I felt alive, sexy even during it, even when if the consequences of my actions prayed on the back of my mind. But in the end it was a fantasy, not only mine but his. A fantasy that we can keep this secret forever, that I can live a lie. The other truth I must admit, I don't regret it, well not most of it. I do regret with whom I had the affair, how I hurt myself and my husband.

Does that make me an evil person? A slut? What if I told you that I was atoning for my sins but putting myself in a self-imposed exile? I am...but it doesn't matter. I've been admonished by friends who have had their own brush with infidelity.

Yet, I'm expected to tell you to not do it. I won't. It was never my place to make judgments in the affairs of the hearts. There are never good reasons to do it, but as someone who went into this with her eyes open, logic never enters into the equation.

I know that I am not the only one who did this. But if this post is any indication, infidelity leaves more questions than it answers.

Coming out as a heterosexual

I was having a conversation last night with a friend. Invariably, the topic came up about my sexuality, how I wanted to integrate my sexuality into my life and turn it into a positive force rather than let it become the focus as it has been for the last two years. We began joking about celebrating it, letting it be known that I'm this person. And so we started to plot my awakening...as a heterosexual.

As the conversation progressed, we talked about having a party, having penises party favors, just make affirmations among my friends and family. Then I realized, yes...I do have to affirm it, make a public display of this. I have to come out as a heterosexual. A big one.

For the past two years, my sexuality could not be denied any longer, and I indulged it despite the risks. But now that I'm "atoning" for the wrongs I did because of this exploration, I still must face this sexual journey I had taken, despite the consequences blowing up in my face. I can't leave stop now...stopping now means not dealing with this, not growing.

So...I'm having to go forward...having to redefine my sexuality. But how do I do it so that I can show everyone it is a positive experience for me? During the conversation he kept referring it as a "problem". To be fair, he was trying to describe it as others would see it. Its not a problem, but I'm a woman who freely admits that I love sex, I want it, and I want cock. Unfortunately, I'm suppose to cower in shame for these statements.

Tonight I was reading one of my favorite bloggers...his post lead me here. Granted this is about the lack of language of how a woman "fucks" a man. But even at that primal level, we can't even concede that a woman wants to fuck without resorting to euphemisms. Personally, I love to use the words such as "engulf" and "take"....even "fuck". Even the description of the act of taking a man's engorged penis inside my eager vagina becomes a ground zero discussion of sex and feminism. What hopes do I have of showing my own sexuality in a positive light with the people I love without contempt or pity?

Obviously, this will be a huge undertaking. Yet, despite the hurdles, I know that I must do this. This journey was not started to end at this point.

Ghost

and i guess that's how you started
like a pinprick to my heart
but at this point you rush right through me
and i start to drown
-Ghost by Indigo Girls

No matter how busy you think you are or how hurt or sad you are to deal with your emotions, once in awhile, I catch myself confronting glimpses of my old life.

None more so when I was traveling up to Santa Rosa, picking up and buying a chair I find on Craigslist one Saturday morning. It was the first time I drove up that way, on Hwy 101, on my own, in my new car. The flood of memories didn't really hit me until I hit Novato, as I remembered the rolling hills of the North Bay. I remembered all the trips I took with my husband on the driver seat, going to points up north, where the Redwoods meet the Ocean. I saw cows grazing on the side of the freeway, catching myself saying "moocows" as if he was there with me. Although there was a twinge of sadness, of not being able to share a familiar moment, I felt happy. I had forgotten how beautiful the drive was up here, how somewhat calming to see hills, valleys and fields.

I sometimes feel his presence around me, even if we are no longer physical with one another. It haunts me when I'm particularly feeling vulnerable and alone. And yet, I sort of like it. Not because I long for his touch, because I haven't lost that connection somehow.

Even if we were no longer talking and hated the site of each other, I don't think I could stop the ghost of him, of us, from assaulting me from time to time. And yes, perhaps I will not be in the space to accept it. But I wouldn't want those visitations to stop. If only to remind me of some nice memories.

Fear and Doubt

I had a moment of sad clarity as I saw my husband again last Friday. It was our bi-weekly financial talk and as we tried to relate to each other as individuals he asked me if I had decided if I wanted to get a divorce or just a separation. As soon as I verbally confirmed that, yes indeed, I wanted a divorce a wave of emotions washed over me.

I started to doubt everything I had done up to the point of the discovery of my digression. All of the sudden, I just wanted to erase the progress I had made. To return to my old life, to return to being a wife to my husband. I wanted to erase all of the hurt I had done to him and to myself.

Then another odd emotion gripped me just as those doubts began to fade: Jealousy. I had never been jealous of my husband's attention. For the most part, he never gave me any reason to do so. But that evening, I began to feel jealousy of all the women he will meet, of all the time he will spend with them.

Now I know, that jealousy is a symptom of insecurities of oneself. Curiously, my own fears and doubts gnawed on my own insecurities. Insecurities of failure, of making the wrong decisions, of taking on more than I can handle.

I want to say that it has abetted, but the truth is...is that I'm afraid. Afraid of the unknown, afraid that maybe I really can't make it on my own. And that I threw away my last chances of happiness in a mistaken pursuit of independence.

I have to trust the unknown.

My husband keeps reiterating that he might meet someone who wouldn't approve of his friendship of his ex-wife. And although I think he deserves more than that, I have to accept that he may never accept me as his friend. Of all the things I'm fearful of...it is that possibility.

I have to embrace "failure" and face my fears if I am to learn from my mistakes. The proposition scares me more than being alone.

Home

I am now settled in my new home now. It is fully furnished, albeit a few empty boxes scattered among my new and old furniture. I think its to my liking now.

My routine is now fully established. I get up in the morning. Take a shower. Walk to the bus stop and get on the BART to get to work. In the evenings, I walk or take the bus home. Cook dinner. Get ready for bed, and prepare my lunch for the next day. Even my cat is now used to her new surroundings. She prowls every precious square inch of my little apartment as if she is the queen of her territory.

I am debating whether I should get cable, but the lack of quality programming on both the local and national channels prevent me from making that decision.

As I find myself in a state of domesticity, I find that my mind wonders to that territory of fear and doubt. (I will explain myself in full detail in my next post.) But there is always something for me to do so my mind doesn't stray for very long. As a single woman, I am having to rely solely on my own devices and what would take minutes for a couple often takes an hour alone.

Yes, home is where you place it and this is where I will be for awhile.