cavatica

So I think I'm okay. I'm dealing with some body image issues and the usual nagging questions of self-doubt, but I've determined that, for the most part, I'm on the exit-end of this yearlong funk I've been immersed in. Good classes. Solid friends. Awesome profs. Still Not King, but how many of those are running around the planet, anyway?

I think the most salient issue to my mind the past few days has been the fact--a perception slow as dawn--that I don't miss sex anymore. I would, for whatever reason, like to be upset by this; going a year and a half without it when the vast majority of my teenage years were spent with it, as well as smaller, starker realizations like "Holy shit, I spent my entire 20th year sans-copulation" SHOULD, I think, be making some baser part of my brain curl into fetal position and weep for sweet, blessed death. But it's not. My friend Joe likes to jokingly ask me if I even remember what it feels like anymore, but the fact of the matter is I'm really not sure I do. And I don't care.

Now, don't misunderstand: I'm not bouncing off the walls about this little epiphany. If anything, my semi-subconscious sense of inadequacy is only further inflamed by the knowledge that my friends have no problem creating new liaisons almost as quickly as they dissolve them, and that a given pair of them are snugly entwined whilest I'm busily trying to stay awake (as curling up by oneself when all one wants is assistance with self-heating duties is no fun at all). And then I lie awake wondering what that says about me.

But, no. I don't miss the sex. What I miss? Really, honestly miss? Is touching. Not touching, but-- well, cuddling. Which is, by the way, an exceedingly lame word, but let's face it: when it comes down to it, I'd be willing to submit--and DO, in fact, submit--that sex is only sub-par to actually sharing space and silence with someone who would be content staring at you indefinitely. And, yes, this is all very sterile but that's how I've come to regard it. How attached can I BE to concepts that are months and months removed from my immediate memory?

Still. Despite all this, I'm okay. Quit crying myself to sleep months ago. The worst of the dreams that used to torture me all through my waking hours have basically slipped into wherever it is dreams go when they die. Aching dreams of raw melancholy conceived in my painfully photographic imagination. I used to dread them. But they've gone now. So I'm too dumb to remember what the longing was like, and mostly grateful for the amnesia. Though maybe a little sad.

Maybe more than a little.

In any case, I've stopped waiting for love, which is the biggest relief of all. Dirt shoveled into the void with my own bare hands, and my fingernails picked carefully clean. Only soap and water now. Sterility, sterility, sterility. It will be a lovely surprise now, when that seed blooms at last, full and clear and in a color I've never seen before.

And then I'll be wishing for Winter again.

I wish I understood myself.