The Power of Ritual

 A few weeks ago, I went to my brother’s wedding with inadequate emotional preparation.  I thought, “it’ll be cool.”  Like most families with real pasts and real scars, we all get a little nervous before reunions.  But every single one of us came with faith, love, and our best selves.  It was far more poignant than I’d anticipated.  

Everyone got up to the mic sharing stories of what the bride or groom were like when they were kids.  Their awkwardness, competitiveness, fierce curiosity, sense of adventure, and love of science.  There was so much love to share that other people were talking us down from the mic.

This couple had thrown a party.  You’ve never seen so many white people of all generations dance their hearts out.  Even people who didn’t know how to dance were moving their bodies to the rhythm.  At one point my mom and I simply high-fived each other with both hands to the beat, with nothing but joy.

And it wasn’t just a good time.  It was a catalyst for healing.  At one point, I was joking around with the person next to me that I was going to dance inappropriately.  My parents were in front of me.  I said, “I’m just joking.  I’m not going to murder my parents tonight.”  My Mom turned around and said, “Lis, you just be you.”

I proceeded to cry for the next ten minutes.  No one knows how special that moment was, or how many years of reaching we’d both done to get there.  

Everyone deserves this type of celebration, whether or not they find someone resembling a “soulmate.”  Everyone deserves their loved ones to make a trip, dress up, read them speeches about how much they love them, and eat cake.  God knows lots of people who shouldn’t get married do, just because the wedding is such a beautiful and validating experience.

There’s something transcendent about a good ritual.  It connects us to our ancestors.  We are choosing to perform the same symbolic actions to communicate powerful intentions, even if those intentions have had different cultural contexts or stakes.  Like the way monogamous marriage used to be about land, children, and dowries.  The changes that birth control and working women threw into the milieu.  

Through all that, we still fall in love and desire each other.  We still need a trusted friend to fall crying into on a hard day, and make us laugh when we need it.  I looked at the faces of my brother and new sister-in-law at the front of the room, and saw millions of faces behind them, millions of eyes looking at each other with anticipation and trust.  A pulse of eternity was in the room.

But rituals should also evolve with us, like everything else.  Right now, you can have as many weddings and divorces as you want.  You can live in a commune with seven lovers.  You can live by yourself in complete wholeness.  And you can have a party whenever, and for whatever reason suits you.  Symbolic acts and tradition aren’t the only way to feel connected to history and humanity, but if you find it as meaningful and meditative as I do, it’s important to make it your own.

An act as simple as lighting a fire and singing a song can connect you to millions of ancestors.  It’s their gift to you.  So do it whenever you need to feel their presence.

Relearning Magic

Having grown up in a home that was equal parts Christianity, philosophy, and science, I feel the need to define what magic means to me.  Also, having attended enough open mics where incels take shots at women with dyed hair, I’ll try to keep my eyeballs from rolling out of my head while writing this. 

I’ll start with what it’s not.  Magic is not unscientific.  In fact, most scientists will tell you that they discover magic everyday, and need to create new branches (or break old ones) in their previous schemas of the observable world.  

Thus, magic is also not a formula that trumps scientific rules, such as shooting lightning from our hands or making potions that alter a person’s autonomy.  Just because fantasy stories describe these powers, doesn’t make them true.  You can enjoy Love Actually without believing that the power of love is enough to transcend a language barrier, just as you can enjoy a cleansing ritual without believing it’s going to do the work for you.

Magic, to me, is a word that describes elusive dopamine.  It can be found in many fields, and we’re always chasing it.  Generally, bursts of magic are surrounded by grueling discipline in a choice activity.  Musicians and athletes bring uninspired bodies to their craft everyday.  They warm up, get the blood flowing, and begin practice.  Sometimes groaning through it.  But every now and then, they hit a flow state and fly in a dimension that only thousands of hours could bring them to.

But because discipline is hard, many search for magic that is more accessible–such as hard drugs or toxic sexual situations–but harmful.  Quick rushes are generally followed by solid crashes, and we feel more depleted than before.

The world really doesn’t know where to find magic.  Most women are told, however subtly, that it can be found in men or motherhood.  Most men get the idea that it is found in being needed, and passing along as many of their genes as possible.  Everyone else gets told they have to fit into one of these categories.

We don’t really talk about magic’s connection to discipline, or the labor of self-discovery.  But it absolutely does not happen without confronting our demons, or lingering in the bright fluorescent oblivion of loneliness.  No matter how much love we have in our lives, we will have to face being alone more often than we receive the comfort and validation of others.

I’m finding little nuggets of magic in rediscovering the parts of me that I’ve repressed throughout the years.  But it’s not a rush so much as a slow plow up a mountain.  A few extra minutes of sleep, a single extra push-up, a little conflict that I force myself to engage in rather than hide from.  A little metaphor I’ll use to put something into perspective.

All of a sudden I’m not the person I was anymore.  No more rushes.  Where did the magic go?  What’s at the center of the maze, the old man asked, increasingly anxious and violent.

I highly recommend getting in touch with your inner child, although it is grueling work.  You have to walk through all the unhealed damage you have in order to find them.  You need to hold their hand as they tell you where they want to go, and as you teach them all the things your wise sage has learned.  They need you to fight for them, because you are the only one who can.  They need to hear that it’s okay to lose, and it’s okay to fall.

I’m still tempted to reach for hot, fast-depleting dopamine when I haven’t put the work in to walk with my child and my sage hand-in-hand.  And we live in a world that profits from our own harmful decisions and our disconnection from ourselves.  But I’m learning, by doing the same thing most days, that there is no predictable rush.  There are many magical dimensions in life, but we have to be the ones who put them together, and there’s a lot of tedium.  Like a scientist who has woken up at 5 am and pulled herself into the lab for the 867th day.  I will put on the same glasses, walk up to the same microscope, and find new chaos, wriggling with entropy.  And I will dive headfirst into the thrashing wavelengths of my inner cosmos, before it’s time to get back into the car and complain about traffic.

Because like, what’s the deal with cars?

Healing from the Patriarchy, Pt 2: The Cultural Differences of Straight Polyamory and Queer Polyamory

Even though it’s been lonely taking a break from male friends in the midwest,* it has been absolutely cleansing.  And honestly, the midwest has always been lonely.  That’s nothing new.  We’ll all tell you that.

But my outlook on so many things has changed.  I’m freer to create my own world and really take responsibility for it.  I needed the space away from men and their projections.  I needed fresh air.

Shout out to the queer community.  Shout out to my non binary and trans comrades.  Shout out to lesbians and bisexual women.  

Deciding to immerse myself more in these communities–their art, comedy, covens, polycules, and politics–has felt like baptism.  This is home.

Shout out to my girlfriend and my therapist, who listen to me babble endlessly about obvious poly tenets.

Love is not just one thing.

What does it mean to love myself?

Relationships are customizable.

Pleasure is a good thing, and there is no shame in seeking it.  

Love is not just one thing.

Queer polyamory and straight polyamory are elementally different in Indiana.  One has a space (imperfect though it may be) for womanism, the other fears it.  One allows men to be flawed and gentle, the other projects male self-loathing onto women.  One contains more leftists willing to discuss intersectionality, the other wonders why-everything-has-to-be-about-race.  One is safe for trans people. The other is not.

Of course, all polyamorous events will purport to be inclusive.  But inclusivity is an action that requires the accountability of everybody.  It is not a static legal term.  And it’s hard.  I’m not throwing shade at spaces that have failed to uphold this status.  Just pointing out the differences in the experiences of them.

Every woman–regardless of sexual preference–who has attended a straight polyamorous event has been approached by every male in this event (usually pleasantly, but sometimes not) to shoot their shot.  When faced with a boundary, this man will then complain about how difficult it is to “find women,” and how “easy it is for [their current female partner] to find men.”

Every woman who has attended a straight polyamorous event has had this experience.  Ask them.

On the other hand, women who find themselves in queer polyamorous spaces find friendship.  Welcoming.  Value.  Listening.  They get in conversations freely.  They leave feeling connected instead of depleted.  They share music, laughter, irony, pain, and books.  

I needed the space to learn what it really means, love is not just one thing.  We know what the patriarchy thinks love and sex are.  Womanism allows space for everybody to be bold, to have an opinion, to have triggers and boundaries, to have desires and needs, to have vulnerable and gentle parts.  Womanism allows everyone to be held, and to be let go, when needed. Womanism is what polyamory tries to be, but generally falls short because of the work it takes to create these spaces.

My girlfriend is a consistent example to me of a healthy relationship.  I don’t care what the future holds when I’m with her.  I’m holding her hand.  Nothing matters.  Can I, a cis woman, allow that same composure and collectedness with my cis boyfriend?  Who is silly and sweet?  And lets me be me while still asserting that he is him? Can I not be obsessed with thoughts of how my straight relationship will end?

I thought my damage was simply, men.  That they can’t follow through.  That they can’t put effort into their relationships after the NRE has faded.  That when they’re stressed, they push everyone away and then return with no desire to heal the rifts.  That they never go to therapy and fix their emotional problems, which then sabotage their relationships.

Even though that is what has happened in most of my heterosexual relationships, that’s not what my actual damage is (nor does it do justice to my own mistakes in these scenarios).  These are normal human problems, and they’ve all given me a new piece of wisdom as I continue on my divine journey, and divine right, to fall in love and have sex with people.

The reason that poly, heterosexual relationships have been hard for me lately (besides being in Indiana, sorry-not-sorry) is the straight-culture expectation that they’re supposed to be everything.  That your friends and family have to meet them and approve.  And then they have to get notified when you break up, and then they have to ask what happened, and then they have to make a bunch of character judgements about what happened.

Every member of my family asked if I would get back together with my ex "when he was done" mourning his father.

My damage isn’t (just) men.  It’s straight culture.

You know what we are?  When you turn out all the lights, do you know what we are?  We’re little balls of fire careening through oblivion.  Some of us are big, some of us are little.  We’re constantly burning through what we have.  We’re starving for each other.  Some of us are just waiting for the next fire to share with another person, regardless of its viability.

When we get the ultimate blessing of a person who shares fire with us for a long time, it gives us life.  We need it so bad that we make religions and philosophies around it.  When the fire stops, we feel cheated.  We forget that we were always the source of that fire–that there are 8 billion other little fires scuttling around, and we’ll find it again.  That behind who we shared it with was an entire person who couldn’t see the future and had their own set of triggers and trauma.

My therapist (shoutout) assures me that love and breakups don’t have to hurt the way they’ve been hurting.  I don’t fully know how yet, but I feel like it has something to do with viewing relationships as a growth mindset (because in a growth mindset, you see failures as ways to learn).

Straight culture is what makes us have a scarcity mindset about the fires we’re able to share.  It’s what makes us think love magic only has one source, one color, one mechanism.  When you realize there is fire all around us, and a straight relationship is not the only way to get it, you start laughing more.  The way I grin ear-to-ear when my coworkers and I can share a joke.

Every Mr-Rogers-smile was forged in the same dark, flooded corners of oblivion that we all feel after big fires leave our orbit.

Remember that masturbation is a completely valid and beautiful way to love yourself, and that you’re worthy of (but not entitled to) all the types of connections that you crave.  We’re all horny and lonely, boo.  You’ll find magic again.

_______________________

*Honestly, the only thing I did was put up the boundary that I’m not talking about dating with them.  I haven’t said we couldn’t hang out, but you’d be amazed how many men lose interest in friendship when you aren’t getting them a step closer to a hard dick.

The Ashley Madison Affair Documentary

My throuple and I watched The Ashley Madison Affair on Hulu.  As a poly woman, I wasn’t super interested, but I’m always down for a documentary with my partners.

From the first moments Noel Biderman spoke (from collected interviews), I recognized him immediately.  Not personally, but personality-wise.  The poly community is rampant with these opportunistic fucks.  They aren’t drawn to the ethics, egalitarianism, science, or anthropological history of polyamory.  They just look around the room and see opportunities for sexual exploitation.  No reading or listening to the plethora of polyamorous materials, no communication, just in-and-out.

So yes, I saw Noel like I’ve seen dozens of poly men, and thought, “Well, this should at least be entertaining.  What’s he gonna get himself into.”  It was a predictable fall.  Like any American who starts seeing success, he buys expensive cars, starts seeing himself as superior to everyone else, and gets in a bunch of legal trouble that he may have been able to avoid with a little more finesse and humility.

But what struck me about this documentary is the clear undeniability of the following:

1. Cheating happens almost half the time in relationships that are assumed to be exclusive.  It might be as high as the divorce rate.

2. People are gutted when they find that they’ve been cheated on.  It’s a pain so great that they double over with symptoms of physical illness.

So I’m going to join the echo chamber along with Esther Perel, Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha, and many more authors. 

-Monogamy is a wonderful and challenging thing, but it needs to stop being the default.  Let’s raise a glass to chosen monogamy–when two people have talked (and continue to talk) about the options, and decide firmly upon exclusivity with each other.

-No one should have zero conversation around what you want sexually.  

-The choice to be exclusive doesn’t mean you’ll never want other people or that you’ll always want your partner.  This doesn’t mean that either of you are unattractive or unloveable.

-The structure you want from your relationships (mono or poly, open or closed) won’t always stay the same.  Sometimes you’ll want one of them, sometimes you’ll want another.

-Desire does not always accompany love, nor love desire.  These are two different forces.  It’s wonderful when they align, but they don’t always.

-Sex is not a measurement of love or value.  It’s great when it happens, but celibacy does not mean you are unattractive or unloveable. 

-You’re allowed to consent to sex that you know you won’t enjoy as much as your partner, if you want to give them something.

-You’re allowed to turn down sex that you would otherwise really enjoy for any reason.  (Stress, uncertainty about the relationship, fatigue, not being mentally present)

-The continued learning and talking about sex will indeed result in better sex for you and your partner.

I think different sexual communities can learn a lot from each other.  I think we need to keep the door of communication open between polyamorous and monogamous people without judgment.  

Fleabag (If John Mulaney gets to be late to Back-to-the-Future, I can be late to this)

The industry has long been obsessed with shows about single, messy, white women in low-paying jobs. See Single Drunk Female, Two Broke Girls, The Mick, Broad City, and Lesser Things, to name a few.  Their emotional unavailability is always a big deal.  However, unlike traditional television where the seemingly nice man "breaks through" to the woman's trust**, the men are more realistically disappointing.

This dynamic is delightfully self-aware in Fleabag.  The protagonist tells us in the second episode, "I'm not obsessed with sex.  I just can't stop thinking about it.  The performance of it.  The awkwardness of it.  The drama of it.  The moment you realize somebody wants your body.  Not so much the feeling of it."  These are the words of a woman who has done time in Heterosexia.

My favorite thing about Fleabag's sex life is that in a cathartic twist, it's the men who are disappointed at the end of each date.  Because Fleabag always remains in control.  Harry wants her to only orgasm from him--not even to masturbate.  Martin straight-up molests her and hates her for not giving in.  The male retreat next to the female retreat literally screams "SLUT" every hour on the hour.  The man-child in episode 3 gets everything he wants from the date and still hates Fleabag at the end, for...?  Not falling in love after a single date?  Not throwing her arms around him and begging him to be her boyfriend?

In a pitiful confession, the man-child says, "You don't grow up with teeth like these and not-notice when someone is faking it."  Which is hilarious, because he didn't seem to notice (or mind) that they weren't connecting the whole night leading up to that moment.

I'm enjoying the reality of disappointing sex in Fleabag, and how it throws shots at the patriarchal fantasies of Heterosexia.  But I'm also looking forward to more shows where women are happily single/playing.  Queer women.  Straight women.  Trans.  Cis.  Non-binaries living in sexual freedom.  I'm so fatigued with how much people ask single women in television, "Are you really happy?" or "Are you alone?" as if the only happiness is through romance, and the only way to not-be-alone is to have a monogamous partner who both lives with you and has sex with you.  No one (on TV) asks powerful men whether they're happy or feel alone, and from what I've read in the threads, they'd really like to be asked that more often.  

(I'm looking at you, men.  Ask each other this.  Women are done taking care of you.)

Shrill is a great step in this direction, and I've heard wonderful things from Everything's Trash, which may have to be next on my list.  

Let's get some happy, slutty, liberated women who actually enjoy their time alone.  I want some scenes of happy women drinking wine in bed and masturbating, because the bed is actually a fantastic place for those refreshing activities.

_______________________________________

**What?  You mean that 2 weeks of him "putting it all on the line" (consistently treating her like a person) isn't enough for her to trust him??  What more do you want??

The Metaphors Matter

"Love ends, just like everything else does," I tell my therapist, who nods.  But I still don't understand the words yet, even as I say them.  Everyone else seems to understand.  I'm still word-mapping at the white board.

I've learned that I'm not going to live forever.  That this body is going to die.  And I'm ready to age and laugh through the creaking bones and the disappearing memories.  And I'm ready to be my parents' parent, and graciously help them move toward the finality of their bodies in whatever way they need.  I understand that we are all going to change as we creep, or dash, closer to that good night.

But learning how to love within the mortality of relationships is something I'm still wrapping my mind, body, and heart around.  The grief of loving has hit way harder than this vengeful feminist would like to admit.  And I'm sure it hasn't been fun for my partners as I've talked about such uplifting themes.

Purity culture is not just the church.  I left when I was 19 (cue Tegan & Sara) and became polyamorous.  But sex without love still felt cheap, and love without commitment felt like a lie.  Love ending felt like being ripped in half.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's also emo music.  It's American Football and Death Cab for Cutie and Brand New (aka my favorite f*cking music).  It's women twisting themselves around the psychoses of men--the best of which are only self aware enough to ask you to sympathize, but not active enough to work on themselves.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's the fact that weddings are a party and divorces are not.  It's thinking that love is the best thing, and singleness is the worst thing.  It's hearing that one person cheated, and then asking what the other person did to "drive them away."  It's assuming that a partner is the only way to save you from "dying alone."

* * * * * *

I was 13.  A few years away from liking boys (they were still gross), and decades away from figuring out that I also liked girls.  Abstinence was...the only thing adults in the church wanted to talk about with me.

Not my creativity.  Not my struggles focusing in school.  Fuck, not even my relationship with God.

They wanted to talk about virginity and "saving" myself like I was a bottle of champagne for someone to enjoy one day far in the future.  (And honestly, I was one of the lucky ones...check out "Keep Sweet" on Netflix.)

I will never forget how every Christian woman lost. her. shit. when Amy Grant got divorced.  It's all anyone would talk about for weeks.  I couldn't listen to my favorite Amy Grant songs without hearing the following:

Oh oh faithless hearts, be far away from me...

"Yeah, she's one to talk.  She had the faithless heart."

True love is frozen in time

"Yeah, and you froze it."

The same sun / that melts the wax will harden clay

and the same rain / that drowns the rat will grow the hay

"I don't like this song."

"You see Lis, God hates divorce.  He wants us to work it out."

"But what if the husband was really bad?"

"There's always a way to work it out."

"What if the husband hurts her?"

"Sometimes he goes to counseling and gets better.  If he doesn't, and only if he doesn't, then they can get divorced.  But God still hates it."

Amy Grant wasn't abused (though to her critics, it truly wouldn't have mattered).  She merely fell in love with another man who brought her more joy and was easier to be with.  The scandal of the decade.

What did I learn at 13?  I learned that women aren't supposed to pursue their own happiness.  They're supposed to pursue monogamy, which is greater than individual happiness.  It's Divine Purpose.  Truth.  Belonging.  Not-Dying-Alone.  Family.  A structure everyone can understand.

* * * * * * 

I've been talking to my inner child a lot lately.  Because in therapy, I keep hitting these platitudes about love ending, and how I'm supposed to move on from it.

Love isn't simple enough to make any definitive statement about it, and relationships have nearly infinite variables.  But sexual energy and attachment energy are so strong and driving that we need ways to interpret what we're going through.

To quote John Green:  We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.  (Paper Towns)

Right now, love for me is like changing my clothes when I'm tired.  I have to figure out where to put my arms and legs, and I have to think extra hard about it.  Sometimes I just sit there with my shirt half on, my shoulders and back exposed.  I realize there's no way to avoid it.  I can't say, "I'm never changing my clothes again, because apparently the last pair of clothes wasn't good enough."  

We will always have to change clothes.  We're not getting out of that, no matter how thrilling or mundane the task is.  We just...need them.

Can I, maybe, just enjoy these outfits a little more?  Whether they're electrifying and short-lived, or whether they stay in my closet for ages because they're so classic and reliable?  No two outfits are the same; nor am I when I'm in them.  Some of them I'll always remember in ethereal bliss, like the pink fleece dress with pastel hearts and ruffles in which my 6-year old self could nap, play, or rule a castle.  Some of them evolve, like the black and white striped shirt I consistently replace with different cuts and fits.  Some of them I'll keep collecting--no matter how many I have, like the chunky, boyish jewelry.

Some of them were ratchet mistakes, but taught me that I need a little more danger in my life--the olive corduroy mini skirt, the teal bubble shirt, the satin capris.

Some of them are in an astral plane.  The bohemian skirt I got in a Jamaican store in 2012 was a purchase that I felt defined my energy--creative, relaxed, focused, meditative, exuberant, grateful.  When I wear it now, it doesn't seem to fit, even though I'm still all of those things.

Some of them left before I was ready.  The red zip up hoodie left pissed-on in a ditch, in a series of unfortunate events.  I'm angry about its early departure instead of the threadbare age and the gradual oblivion it should have had.  We always want more time, even at the very end.

With each piece, I uncover a new expression of my identity that will always be with me, whether or not the physical cloth is still in my closet.  I guess the goal isn't actually having the perfect clothes.  It's what I do with my time when I'm in them.

Bisexual, Homoromantic

Yes, it's my fifth entry about my sapphic flowering, and by far not my last

When I was 19, I lost my faith in God.  I felt the final crumb of anger float off me, exposed under the crushing weight of nothing.  My last prayer was, "Wow.  You're not even up there, are you.  You're not even fucking up there."  And it became clear that for my whole life, I had been crying on my knees to no one.  

Those were xanga's sunset years, and I blogged every day about that journey.  My page name was called Glass_Web, and I had a total of 12 readers (an astounding number to me; far more than I have now).  For several months, losing my faith was the only thing I wrote about.  As the year wore on, the atomic trajectory of that grief thinned out, evolving into questions that became so familiar, they sort of lost all interest to me.  I eventually came to understand, through long meditations, some breadcrumb basics of atheism: that death is final (for our bodies, brains, and individual self), and that time is precious.

Livejournal, on the other hand, (LizzyLeprechaun, but it’s not public) was my place to process the entirety of my first truly sexual relationship, from start to finish.  My desperation, my addiction, the sensual cage I wrapped myself in, and the eventual crack of my feminist cocoon. 

And so, Yardsale Buddha has become my place to take stock of my 30s.  My hundred-entry farewell to the idea of love I’d been chasing since I hit puberty.  Even through polyamory, and discovering all the things about sex that women aren’t supposed to talk about.

Amanda Palmer wrote the most beautiful post this past Wednesday, and I highly encourage all three of you to read it, after you squander your time reading this garbage.  There was a line that pierced me, as fresh rain to lungs.  She wrote, “everything is divorce-colored…When songs are delivered to my head, they’re divorce-shaped….The TED talks about prosthetic limbs seem to be about surviving divorce. The TED talks about genetic mutations seem to be about divorce. The TED talks about the murmurations of birds seem to be about . . . divorce.”

Do we ever accurately explain how many times our human lives fall into rubble?  

Men are not the only ones subjected to pride.  I cannot express my own grief without rage–rage that I believed in the magic I felt.  Rage that he, that they all, drank until they were full, and left without remorse.  Rage at the concerted effort to keep women mentally and culturally subjugated because domination is easier than communication, and men are terrified of sharing power.

Nothing will soothe the rage, so I just enjoy the beauty of the fire.  “Take your trophy and go,” I tell his ghost, looking up at the stars.

Do I still enjoy having sex with men?

*takes drag*

You know what, I do.  They do it well, and I’ll not deprive myself of pleasure just because they are romantically unreliable.  There is a rush of hunger in the eyes of a man that is unmatched by a woman–whose wisdom, intelligence, and collective grief tamper our flame.  How can you get excited when you already know what’s going to happen?

(Yeah, I know I’m hard-negging men right now.  It’s a step up from all-out hatred.  Hurt people hurt people, my therapist says.  And if I have to live in a world where Jordan Peterson and Christopher Hitchens exist/ed, you can handle some negging)

Desire is different from romance, and that’s not a part of straight-man culture.  Which fucks up a lot of long-term, heterosexual relationships.  Desire blinds me to everything except what I crave.  Romance enhances my experience of everything.  Desire is shutting myself down and doe-eyeing the one thing I want.  Romance is a collaborative dance–seeing that my woman is cleaning, and helping her clean.  Noticing each of our waves, and dancing with each other.  

We need both.

It’s okay to break up.  It’s okay to long for someone who isn’t longing for you.  It’s okay to masturbate to things that will never happen.  It’s okay to not be over your ex.  It’s okay to be over your ex.  It’s okay to get divorced.  It’s okay to be bored.  It’s okay to be broken.  It’s okay to not be aroused by someone you deeply love.  It’s okay to have feelings for your friend with benefits.

We don’t get to determine what we feel based on how convenient it is for our lives.  It’s fine–evolution happens to also be making shit up as it goes.