Longing

I’m homesick for a home that hasn’t yet been built
That has no foundation
Except for the tears that I’ve spilled
A home where my dreams start to breathe
And my wild things can dance
And twirl in the wind
And believe in romance
My heart aches for a place that’s been only a whisper
A thought I haven’t had but can clearly remember…

— Deanne Tiffany

Friday Thoughts

I’m not confused about what I want. What I want is to quench my thirst for life. Not having the glass I want to drink it out of isn’t going to stop me from cupping my hands and drinking it from a raging river.

-elephant journal

Window

The view outside my home office window.  A 101 on patience.

My Top 3 Sex Related Problems As A Woman

Let me start this out by making a couple wild generalizations about sex.

First, we’re all having it.

Of course, that’s not actually true; some of us haven’t had it yet, others are going through a drought and some choose not to have it at all. But in general, it’s a widespread phenomenon. Which is good, since it’s what leads to the propagation of the species.

Second, while it’s an extremely common experience, we don’t really talk about it.

We don’t talk about it with each other (as in, the actual people we’re having sex with), and we don’t talk about it with others, even those we’re close to. Again, yes, there are exceptions to this, but generally, not so much.

I humbly submit that this is a major issue. Because it’s easy for things that are kept hidden or secret (whether accidentally or on purpose) to lead to feelings of shame, confusion, and hopelessness. Plus, what we don’t talk about, we can’t get support with. And we need support in this area; sex and sexuality are fundamental to who we are as human beings.

So in the spirit of more openness, I present my top three sex problems, as a heterosexual woman:

1) Men being too rough with their hands.

I’m a pretty experienced sex-er. I’ve had a lot of it, with a wide variety of men. But I can count with just a few fingers the number of men who were good with theirs.

That’s right, I’m talking about fingering.

Even the word sounds kind of… violent. It presupposes that the “goal” or “point” of the activity is penetrative—for you to jam your finger up my hoo-ha, often in a simulated version of intercourse.

Okay! Just a few problems with this. First, most of the time when I play with myself, I don’t get all up in the inside. I don’t use a dildo, I use a baby bullet, which is just a very small vibrator that actually never goes inside me.

I stick with stimulating the clit, which is way above the vulva (the opening of the vagina).

Second, even if a man does get that The Clit Is It, he often applies so much direct pressure to it that it hurts. I feel bruised and notice that my clitoris gets numb; it loses sensitivity because it’s been so overstimulated. Again, when I play with myself, I do so gently, especially at first. The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings; no wonder it’s so sensitive!

Before I get admonished for not speaking up about the issue at the moment, I want to say that I do say something a lot of the time. If he starts out so rough that it hurts, I often say, “Gentle gentle gentle!” Or even as it’s starting (before the pain), “Listen just so you know, the lighter the touch, the more I feel.” But I find that a lot of the time this only works for a few minutes, and then it’s back to the jabbing.

Part of the reason this is such a problem for me is that I find myself distracted. I’m trying to protect my body while also accommodating the person I’m with (not shaming him about what’s not working). So not only am I not turned on, I’m actually anxious. I feel my stomach twist into knots when a man starts putting his hands down there because my body is so trained to expect pain.

As I write that, I sense just how sad it is. I also find myself curious as to whether other women have a similar experience.

2) Initiating.

Honestly, I prefer for a man to initiate sex with me. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. We all have preferences, and that’s mine.

But I feel like I’m not good at initiating… ever. And that feels like a problem.

What holds me back? In a word, fear.

Fear I’ll be seen as wanting too much.

Fear I’ll be seen as slutty.

Fear of rejection.

And one more that’s a little harder to describe, but perhaps the most true: fear of “making him” feel obligated.

I intellectually grasp that any man I’m with would probably love for me to initiate. But when it comes to actually doing it, I hesitate. I don’t want me initiating to have him feel like he has to have sex with me. I want him to be inspired to do the dirty with me, not do it because he should.

Realistically, this says far more about me than about men. It says that my psyche often interprets someone asking something of me as not requesting, but demanding. So I think my own request for sex will be interpreted as a demand—and I don’t want that. Since I don’t trust that my partner will “be able” to give me an honest no, it feels safer to just wait for him to ask me.

Do I feel obligated when it comes to a man initiating with me? If I’m very, very honest, yeah, I kind of do. I don’t always allow that feeling of obligation to “win”; if I really don’t want to have sex at the moment, I speak up. But most of the time, if my partner wants sex, I’m probably going to say yes, and not always because I’m totally in the mood and really want it.

Again, I’m curious as to whether other women have a similar experience.

3) Finding men who are both cocky and heart-y.

I don’t mean cocky as in arrogant. I mean literally cock-y: men who have a strong relationship with their cock (their sexuality). These are men I feel would be able to truly take me. They’d push me up against a wall and mean it. They’d pull my hair without asking for permission. They’re comfortable with what I call “fuck energy”—the desire to just fuck someone.

Listen, I’m a strong woman. I can get shit done. But while I have a lot of masculine energy (I can do, create, make things happen), when it comes to sex, I want to be in my feminine. For me, that requires a man who can be dominant in the bedroom. I’m not into hardcore BDSM, but I do want to feel like I’m not in charge; instead of having to lead, I get to be ravished.

At the same time, I want to be able to feel a man’s heart and know that he can feel mine. I’m not talking about needing him to be a therapist or something; I just mean feeling connected on both a sexual and emotional level (even if it’s just for one night).

In other words, I don’t want an insensitive bro who’s solely fucking me so he can check another Tinder swipe off his list, and I equally don’t want a sensitive new age guy who can talk about feelings but has disowned his “fuck energy.”

I find I end up attracting either one or the other, and that’s a problem.

The fact is, most of us learn about sex in bits and pieces as we grow up, either in hushed conversations with siblings or friends or from pornography. It’s not the easiest thing to communicate about, so it’s easy to just not. But that’s a disservice to both ourselves and others.

I think having the sex we really want (in or out of committed relationships) starts with getting real about what doesn’t work for us—what we struggle with.

So I’m curious:

What are the top 3 problems you have when it comes to sex? What blocks you from pleasure, keeps you from enjoying your body and/or the body of your partner?

I wonder if more of us share the same problems than we think. I wonder whether men and women share the same problems.

And how much better would the world be if, on a regular basis, we all got to have stimulating, sensual, spirited, soulful, scintillating, satisfying sex?

Author: Melanie Curtin

Bullied

What Is a Planet Today?

According to the new definition, a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has to dominate the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Pluto has been demoted because it does not dominate its neighbourhood. Charon, its large “moon,” is only about half the size of Pluto, while all the true planets are far larger than their moons.

In addition, bodies that dominate their neighbourhoods “sweep up” asteroids, comets, and other debris; clearing a path along their orbits. By contrast, Pluto’s orbit is somewhat untidy.

© National Geographic

Pamper

Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride.

-Joanna Baillie

Leaf

“I’ve still got a place for you in my heart, just not my life.” 

As much as you mean to me, the time has come for me to finally remove myself as one of your options.

The truth that I have come to believe is that any man who really wanted to be with me, wouldn’t be conflicted about it—he’d be all in.

Simply for the reason that I’m a woman worth being all in for.

But you never could quite decide what I was to you—and while I think you did know more than you pretended to—it doesn’t  matter so much what we think or feel, it matters what we do.

And you never did a damn thing when it came to me.

The reality is—indecision can be a decision unto itself.

I used to become frustrated with you because I could tell there were no easy answers and that there was always more to our story-line than you ever let on.

I spent time wondering about everything that lay unsaid between us—but I don’t anymore.

Because I said all that I needed to, and whether you did or not isn’t something I need to spend time losing sleep over.

And the closure I sought from you—that never came—no longer haunts me, because I’ve accepted that loose ends are just part of who we are.

I’ve learned that sometimes there are no endings—and that’s okay because I know now that I can still find a new beginning.

I won’t sit here and disgrace our history or promise that my lips will never again touch yours because I will never assume that I know more than whatever divine force governs this world.

But the only thing I do know is that at this moment in time, you don’t want to be here in this place by my side with your arm around me—and so, I’ve decided to pursue things with someone who does.

You wanted me to move forward and move on, so I am—right into the arms of a man who doesn’t make me second-guess his interest and who doesn’t shut down when I ask difficult questions.

The thing is, I don’t really even know what we were because you could never find the words yourself.

And although you never asked me to be yours—you also never really closed the door on us completely.

But this time—as much as I care for and respect you—I cannot remain in this place any longer.

I can’t keep asking if you’re ready, to be honest and to address things like adults, only to be shut down once again.

My heart is tired—and a woman can only be pushed away so many times before she actually makes the choice to walk away.

The thing that hurt me the most was how you made it seem as if I coerced you against your will—acting as a siren, beckoning you to demise along my curvy coasts.

I was never your downfall, but perhaps I was your kryptonite because even Superman has a weakness.

I don’t know if you have ever admitted the truth to yourself or if lies still taste that much sweeter.

Because you are the artist in this masterpiece, and therefore you only see what you want to—or what you are comfortable with.

Regardless of our tangled loose ends—and no matter how many tears I may still shed over you—I can’t be an option for you when you decide you want to find yourself again.

I don’t expect you to care because you’ve made it clear that you already have moved on.

Yet I still have to wonder that if through all your bolstered convictions, you were trying to convince me or yourself more.

Although I know that I can no longer be one of your options, I don’t actually know how to do that—because somehow you’ve become a part of my heart without me even wanting you there, and so now it makes it difficult to discover how to exactly remove you.

All I know is that no one has ever brought me to my knees, simply by looking into my eyes, like you have.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring—all I know is that you can’t (or don’t) want to be here, and there is another man who does.

A man who I still can’t picture touching my body, simply because I haven’t yet been able to erase your name from my skin.

One of the saddest parts of all of this is that I know I had the same effect on you—it just wasn’t convenient or “supposed” to happen.

But our eyes don’t lie, even when our hearts try to.

And so, with every step I take away from you, I sometimes take two back.

You are the most delicious struggle to move on from, but I am trying.

So I travel a little bit further every day, until maybe someday I’ll get far enough away that I can convince myself neither of us felt anything.

And it won’t matter if it’s the truth or not because I know that with time we can convince ourselves of almost anything.

However, before I leave this place for good, you should know that I meant every word I’ve ever said to you.

Especially when I told you that I love you.

Because I know that no matter what has transpired, I will never regret telling you those beautifully simple words.

With each step I take, I send you my sweet succulent love, not knowing where my path will lead me.

It’s possible it will lead me into the arms of the man who’s been waiting for me to find him all along—or it might lead me right back to you.

Because the pain and confusion of leaving loose ends mean that you know quite well they’re still there, left untied and waiting, in case this time—you decide you really do want to tie it up, once and for all.

“Some things just need to be let go of. If it’s meant to be you’ll find each other again.” 

Relephant: Via Kate Rose

Crumb

Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It’s kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.

–Robert Crumb

I’m Letting You Go (Again)

I’ve lost count of how many times I let you go—
and forgot how many times
you found your way
back to me.

And every time you come back,
you leave again—
and then,
I have to let you go…again.

You’re like a balloon I unleash into the sky
and somehow,
you keep floating back to the ground—
to my ground.

They say the essence of love
is to let the person you love go.
They say if you love them,
let them be.

And while I agree with this insane notion,
I must admit it’s challenging—
it’s tough
to see you go,
and it’s tough to see you come back.

I wish you would either disappear
or perchance—stay.
But having to deal with both
is like having a bullet ricochet in my soul.

And now that you’re here again,
I can already feel the loss coming.
I can foresee your back turning
and your shadow fading.

I can foresee myself
letting you go—again,
and having to deal with the reality
that I have no choice.

I have to accept the fact
that there is no reason
or logic
to our so-called love story.

I’m letting you go, again.
I’m unleashing you into the sky
one last time.

However—

I wish you’d lose your way back to me.

If coming back means
I’ll have to let you go again,
perhaps it’s wiser,
better,
less painful,
if you’d just stay where you are.

I’m letting you go, again
because—
do I have a choice?

If I can’t keep you with me,
the least I can do
is let you be free,
without me.

And if you come back
and do not find me here—
know that now I’m the one
who needs to disappear,
because…
I can’t deal with letting you go,
again.

Author: Elyane Youssef

Truth Slap

The deeper you are, the harder it becomes for you to find someone who wants to have a relationship with you. You can go out on a lot of dates but at some point the relationship fails to progress any further and that is mainly because of the intensity of your depth. Not every man is strong enough to handle a deep woman. Here’s why:

1. A deep woman asks deep questions. A deep woman will probe further into your life and ask questions that you may not be prepared to answer. Even on the first date, she will dig deeper and ask personal and philosophical questions – she will never enjoy a shallow conversation.

2. A deep woman is honest. Too honest – often blunt. A deep woman takes her integrity seriously and one thing she believes in is honesty. If you ask her anything, she will tell you the truth and she expects the same from you.

3. A deep woman knows what she wants. Or who she wants. A deep woman knows right away if she likes you and doesn’t need to date around or explore her other options to be sure of her feelings. Her heart only beats for a special few people and she knows them right away.

4. A deep woman wants a deep relationship. She wants long conversations about your life, she wants to hear stories about your past, she wants to understand your pain and she wants to add value to your life. She wants a real relationship that goes beyond going out and having fun.

5. A deep woman is not afraid of intimacy. She is not afraid of getting closer or risking getting hurt in the process. She doesn’t think it will entrap her freedom or make her vulnerable. Her depth and intimacy go hand in hand and she will always cherish the beauty of intimacy in relationships.

6. A deep woman sees through you. She can see who you really are and what makes you vulnerable. She is not the one to hold back from pointing out what she sees in you or how well she can read you. Even though it makes you uncomfortable, she wants you to know that she understands you and that you can be yourself around her.

7. A deep woman craves consistency. She gets turned off by inconsistency or flaky behavior. She desires a strong connection and a solid bond and she knows that consistency is the foundation of that bond. A deep woman will not participate in the dating games.

8. A deep woman is intense. She may be slightly intimidating because she brings intensity to everything she does. Her emotions are intense and so are her thoughts. She will never be indifferent to things that matter to her – not everyone is strong enough to handle her intensity.

9. A deep woman only knows how to love deeply. If you can’t love her deeply, she will walk away. She doesn’t know how to casually date someone she’s really into or be friends with someone she has feelings for. A deep woman knows when someone can’t meet her halfway and she will slowly detach herself from anyone who is not willing to give her the deep love she is looking for.

10. A deep woman won’t wait for you. She will not wait for you to make up your mind or watch you be hesitant about her. She is strong and passionate and will not waste her emotions on someone who doesn’t appreciate their depth. Even though she is looking for a special kind of love, a deep woman is not afraid of being on her own.

Flavorful

They say variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor. That’s why maybe people become unfaithful sometimes? To spice their lives?

You Never Loved Her- You Just Didn’t Want To Be Lonely

Perhaps you’ll never be able to utter the truth, but the reality is that you never loved her.

I suppose it’s just a matter of perspective, because how could you have loved her when you never truly saw her?

She became just a salve for your brokenness.

You leaped into her with the vivaciousness of a predator setting its eyes upon its prey, but never did you stop to think about why you wanted her—or even more so—what would you do with her if you actually got her.

She never was meant for you; she never was anything more than a placeholder for something better. Although, even as the stars fall around me now, I doubt that you see that because the truth is you are still scared of your own shadow.

See, there are women like her, women who change the world with their delicate fingertips and lips that move like cursors over the blank pages of men who have been too scared to write their own stories. So, she will do it for you. She will give you meaning where you previously lacked it, and she will create such a beautiful catastrophe of contradictions that somehow you will forget the reason women like her exist.

Women like her exist to help bridge one chapter to the next, to shake up the status quo, and to translate the feelings and thoughts you’d never imagined would find meaning within the looking glass of a soul that was used to being closed.

So, it was easy to think that you fell for this woman, this enchantress of uniqueness because she made you feel things you never felt before.

But, we don’t ever treat love like you treated her—as being disposable. They say we can’t ever truly lose what is meant for us, yet that isn’t a free pass to treat those we love carelessly.

Sometimes, we only lose people because we forget to try to keep them. Not in our pockets as trinkets from a life well-lived or even a life lived from loneliness or despair, but to hold them close to us in such a way that there was no question of how much they meant to us.

She sees the truth not in your eyes, but in your actions.

They say that you don’t ever let true love go, and so perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to think that it was never love because if it was, you’d never have let her go so effortlessly.

So, perhaps it wasn’t love, but it was loneliness.

She was never meant to be someone that made life easier for you; she wasn’t put upon this glorious earth to somehow satisfy your craving for a warm bed. We could blame her too and say that she should have seen all the signs, but maybe she was just blinded by love and simply assumed you were as well.

There’s no reason to love a woman like her, but then again, maybe the hardest truth is that there’s also no reason not to. She might be one of these special souls amongst us whose only purpose on this earth is to simply love and be loved.

Yet, either way, whether she was nothing more than a soft place to land, or if she had captured your heart differently than anyone else, the simple fact is that you let her leave. She was packed away in your old and ratty suitcase of inconvenient emotions quicker than the scent of her faded from your bed sheets.

 

She might have fulfilled her purpose, after all, you know deep down that you’ll never be the same again.

This woman who was never supposed to be anything other than a substitute for what you really want somehow changed what you decided you were truly looking for. But, the reality is none of that matters because as you read this, she is already moving on.

She’s drifting further away, and the only sound she hears is the echo of your loneliness bumping hard and fast against her ribcage as she ventures further and further from your arms.

There are a million ways to show that we love someone, but in the end, it’s only apathy that shows we don’t. I know that it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but if you truly loved her, she’d still be yours. Now, all that you hear is the faded silence of your own condemning choices to lead a life void of intimacy.

The truth is that you’ll assume I’m referring to the way her bare skin slid against yours, and that is, of course, the feeblest of disillusionment, because just sex will never be a sign of intimacy because intimacy is so much more than sex.

But your walls felt good to you, or at the very least they were comfortable, and so you made it easy to forget the feelings that were beginning to bloom and instead buried them under mountains of fear and doubt. When we find a love like hers, we have no choice but to let it change us—and you weren’t ready for that.

Why pretend it was love when in the end it was apparent it was only loneliness?

~Via Kate Rose

Disobey

How to Write Bad Poetry:

Start with: SCISSORS

Scissors are very good cutting your prose

into pieces (as well as fending off mobs of real poets).

It works better if you start with

some imagery, such as simile

because if everything is there

in the first place that makes it like

a childhood craft project:

mindlessly cutting and pasting

fragments of thoughts,

searching for meaning.

(a cliché by the way works well,

And may I mention

Add some tension

through predictable rhyme

how simply (time, climb, rhyme! no wait….) sublime!

Don’t even try to count syllables, meter is forbidden. Ridiculously longer lines

Followed with

Short lines

For a

few lines

Really annoy people.

Choose whatever pet peeves

are in season, which leaves

Random

Words

Distributed

Across

The

Page

or web speak (LO and bad spelling,

Rules of Punctuation; whats that

It sounds as useful as putting

St*pid stanzas in my work.

I CALL IT FREE VERSE,

HATER!!

Don’t forget to sprinkle drama liberally:

 

Spellcheck wounds my page,

Like razor blades

cause they’re made

For cutting things ‒ duh.

I can hear my page sigh

I wish I could die

The world is black like my

black boots thigh-high

 

Create rhyme even if it’s grammatically incorrect!!!!11eleventy-1!!

Do you think they’ll notice?

Who created the rules, does anyone know?

Hi-ho, philosophical contemplations below

with my rhetorical questions!

(Is that a Pretense of Pretension?

unseen irony?! OH, NOES!

I did that last climax so fast

I forgot to close my brackets!

 

End with:

TWO FORKS.

Chances are it’ll give most people the shits (bad pun!)

but the forks don’t help with swallowing bad poetry. (and again!)

Chances are your worst critics will call it quits!

Instead, they will stick the forks into their eyes go postal, have suspended computer privileges and will only have rubber safety utensils from there on in.

That way you’ll never know how bad your poetry really was…

Shame, really.

Storage Note: Best kept bottled up in an air tight container as Bad Poetry Stinks.

(found this among my old documents)