Touch

I don't mind admitting that it's been a very long time since I've had a significant romantic relationship. Sure, I've dated guys for three, maybe four months, but nothing compelling has ever developed. And while I could easily ponder the reasons for this lack of noteworthy relationship over the past, oh, twelve years, that wasn't what sent me to my blog page this evening. It was touch … or, more specifically, the lack of it … the lack of the simple sensation of skin on skin. Fingertips, arms, toes, lips, heads on shoulders, cheeks on chests, leaning, grazing, caressing.

It's all too easy for me to complain about the ways I suffer from lack of sex, and I have, believe me (and just for the record, no sex is infinitely more tolerable than bad sex). But, tonight my mind was recalling how the simple trailing of a finger inside the palm of my hand would easily and quickly flood my brain with endorphins and how a simple shoulder to shoulder lean could relax my body from head to toe.

It just feels good to touch, and be touched by, another human being.

I pet my cat, but it's not the same.

Trust

Trust is such a challenge for me. I go along believing that I'm trusting someone or something only to find out that I never really did, that I had been silently waiting for the inevitable let down.

I want to trust, really I do. And I try to be open and friendly and even vulnerable. It doesn't require any courage at all for me to bare my soul to others; I can do it without blinking an eye. It's believing that it will make any difference in how open and vulnerable they are in return that is the problem here. And ultimately it's about trusting that they won't betray me in their effort to protect themselves from harm, real or imagined.

It doesn't feel good to admit that I don't have faith in very many people, but there it is. Maybe people are afraid to risk being themselves, afraid of being judged, rejected, belittled. I am, too, but every once in a while I try - I reach out my hand, my heart, my hope. Knowing how satisfying it is to connect with another human being on a truly intimate level, I cannot give up completely.

I know that to be accepted one must be accepting, to be loved one must be loving. Could it be that in my not trusting, I am not trusted? Is it true that my waiting for the let down actually precipitates it?

Have I not inspired faith that I can and will love you when you bare your own soul to me? Can I tell you now that I will, I really will? Is that enough for us to try?

Long weekend

An extra day to lie around in my underwear and read.

Confessions

I talk to cats. Not just my own two, but the neighbors’ cats and any cat I encounter wherever I go. As I walk by, I nod and say, “Hey, how ya doin’,” as though I were speaking to a person. I usually get a meow back in response.

My book buying has outpaced my book reading. But, just knowing that there are new treats on my bookshelves is comforting to me.

I’m bored silly at work.

I love banana sandwiches – they’re best on lightly toasted 7 grain bread.

I don’t miss most of my siblings, who live on the east coast. I was born into one of those Irish working class, drinking, brawling dynasties (I like that word) and the others just never evolved. I’d wonder if I was adopted but I’m the spitting image of my father and I have my mother’s cornflower blue eyes.

I dance in my living room.

I laugh at dead baby jokes. I know, I know … I feel just awful about it.