I don’t know how to say this. There is no good way of saying this because my romantic history is often a case of non-existent, or radically insane. If I tell you some true stories you may faint. I am always close to fainting myself when revealing my romantic (or not so romantic) past, but I’m so used to it by now that the main effect it has on me is breaking into hysterical laughter. Unless it’s 4am. Then I’m prone to signing myself into a rehabilitation center for the broken hearted. We all have our weaker moments.
I started writing this post, or rather made an attempt to write it, sitting all wrapped up in my best friend’s boyfriend’s couch after watching Valentine’s Day (I didn’t pick the movie, my best friend’s BF did…I would never pick that movie, which probably says it all). I felt sort of comfy on his massive couch, wearing his sweatpants, my best friend’s hoody and being half, or almost entirely, hidden underneath a duvet. It’s those moments of feeling utterly comfortable when you decide to burn your romantic history. Start anew. Start afresh. Fall madly in love with something other than the men that can get you in a parallel position by the force of overwhelming testosterone.
So to give you an example, potentially the worst example, of my charming past, let me tell you about erm Mr X. This dude was super intelligent, rich, insanely good looking, fit and so on. I loved talking to him. We could talk for hours on end. He told me he was “self-contained” practicing some spiritual method of refraining from sex unless he fell in love. However, the man had one issue: he was emotionally insane….which made for nice funny writing material, but dude…you did not wanna date him. After we broke up our little fling I heard this story…
He went to Atlanta with his girlfriend. At the hotel in Atlanta he bumped into a girl he usually dated when in Atlanta (naturally you have one chick in every harbor…). This girl had told him she was a virgin when they met (as you do…), but it turned out she was a high-class prostitute (I date you so long as you pay for me sort of thing), addicted to coke. In either case – he was in love with her. He just couldn’t have her and his girlfriend knew nothing about her (it’s always good to have a girlfriend and be in love with someone else. Classic). At the same hotel he bumped into another high-class prostitute (I really wonder what hotel this was?), who, to topple it off, was Swedish. This woman was madly in love with him, as presumably he had been using her services. So there he was, this self-contained spiritual man with two prostitutes and his girlfriend in a wacko triangle drama. The truth? He was a sex addict. Now, if this wasn’t enough, at the time he was also being hunted by a hit man as one of his best friends was dating the daughter of a billionaire, and the billionaire dude didn’t like his daughter dating a 20 year older married man. Apart from that and a few other disasters the man was truly highly intelligent, rich, good-looking and so on….he just came from a very troubled past, which he had tried to solve first with coke, then with therapy and continuously with lies. Neither really worked.
Now, that’s just the icing on the cake. My love life can mostly be likened to a soap opera on tele, where all the characters were really nice (deep down inside), but everything went really wrong (from: “As we said we were doing a house swap (before we had sex) and you stayed the weekend (when we did have sex, which was a disaster), can I now come stay the night and bring my mother as we need to catch a flight from your town tomorrow?” to “My boyfriend told me you were having an affair.” Really? Somewhere there is some sort of misunderstanding here and really he’s a nice guy and no, no, no, no, NO. …and this moment is just not happening to me, because this can’t be my life, because I don’t end up in situations like these, because…I just don’t. Right. “I just got out of rehab with Lindsay Lohan, pretty cool isn’t it?” The rehab bit, fine. Thinking Lindsay Lohan is cool on the other hand…. “I did not cheat on you. That’s just what everyone’s saying.” The Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt my dear…), but it’s not like I’m some bad ass chick that run around sleeping with men. I’m like Miss Saintlihood when it comes to my approach to love (not sex). So why the soap opera? Because I’m scared. Like if you ask me to think the thought of being in a relationship my most prominent feelings would be fear and panic. Somewhere around age four my love life went tits up and so I started believing men couldn’t be trusted, no one could love me and so on. I’ve been drawn to my own beliefs (that little parrot inside that screams: you suck and you don’t just suck men, you suck at men and they suck and everything sucks!!!). Most of the guys I’ve been with have actually had good hearts too, but because of their beliefs they needed to radically fuck up their love lives. Just like me. So whether they really loved me, or not, whether we truly connected, or not…things did not go down in the book of great love stories (more like the book of romantic comedies that didn’t have a happy ending thus far). We destroyed all the potential there was for happily ever after with our own behaviors, stemming from untrue beliefs about ourselves. In truth we are our hearts, in reality we have been acting out our minds, or whatever history told us was true according to our own interpretation (someone get me a translator).
Life age four was not a mirror of who you were, even if you thought so. Life was a projection of other people’s beliefs onto you. Then you started believing their beliefs and acting them out. That way the mirror stayed the same.
So if you’ve been looking at this twisted mirror image your whole life (or listened to that parrot inside screaming “You suck!”), what do you do? I decided to circumnavigate it. Instead of speaking of my past (although it would make a really good comedy) and how emotionally fucked up I’ve been due to x, y, z (believe me – I know a lot of my emotional issues and where they came from. I’ve analyzed myself to the point of ridicule. Freud would be proud.) I will speak of what I love and what I would love. So I love men. I love muscles. I love laughing with someone. I love being made to laugh in a loving way. I love holding hands. I love intimate, truthful moments. I love honesty. I love trust. I love feeling that I am loved. I would love to be in an honest relationship. I would love to be loved. I would love to love. I would love to play with someone. I would love to trust. I would love to be creative with someone. I would love to have a family with someone. I would love to be adventurous with someone. I would love to live the life of my heart with someone who lives the life of his heart. I would love for all those someone’s to be the same someone, as I would love to be married to a man I love who loves me. This way, somehow, don’t ask me how, it generates images of what you truly love. Not the three gazillion fears you have if you are asked to think about having a relationship, or worse: talk about your past relationships.
It’s like this morning – I had a nightmare about visa issues and I was in a dreadful mood, starting to contemplate all the issues with wanting to live in Africa and Cali. Then suddenly it hit me that instead I should focus on what I love. I would love to easily get visas. Cloud gone, sun shining. That’s not to say that a visa will appear out of nowhere, but on a sunny day I happily climb a mountain singing, but on a rainy day I stumble, fall, swear, get wet and angry and may just miss the top for all the fog. I prefer the sun.
Someone asked me the other day: so are you closing the door to your past then? I said no. I’m burning my past (much more dramatic and I never close the door to people from my past, I just choose to see them for the now. The past is very much gone). I’m starting anew and afresh. I’m starting with what I love. I want to see myself and people for who they are today. Yesterday is an unfair judge of both others and myself. Yesterday is unimportant, unless I want to repeat it.
I don’t know if this will work, but I do know I just want to be me from now on and being me means focusing on what I love. If I don’t want something, or I consider it a mistake, it must mean it’s not truly me. It’s something I’ve created by mistake, rather than by intention.
I’ve been extremely happy in the last few weeks, because I’ve started living a life that’s focused on…well, my heart. Instead of trying to be someone I’m not I’m allowing myself to be who I am (including facing up to my less sweeter sides). It’s making me blissfully happy. I feel true to myself. I feel free. I feel like when I meet people they actually get to meet me.
When I’m congruent with who I am and what I want, I’m free, happy and loving. I would love for that to include my love life too.
