Basic Goodness...

I am thinking a lot lately.  What do I want?  What do I do with myself now?  Where do I go?  Do I remain?  What is next?

I have no idea.  Really.

It is hard when everything is possible, it feels like nothing is possible.

So since I can’t seem to find my direction, I have been doing a lot of thinking about who I am.  How I show up.  And how much I like the person I am currently.

Most of the time, I am ok with me.  But lately, I have been thinking about service, and selflessness and true presence with others.  Showing up for and with other people.  Doing things for others just to make their lives better because I sincerely, really, absolutely want to make their lives better, not because I want to make mine better.

I feel like I am a pretty good person, most of the time.  I am selfish, and self centered.  But I work on this every day.  I inventory myself, I look for the ways I am showing up for my life in a way and manner that is self directed...and I work on it.

I still struggle with intimacy.  That ability to be right here, right now and to tell you what I really think and feel contemporaneous to when I think and feel them.  I really do believe that kind of honesty is essential for true intimacy.  And I still like to keep a great deal to myself.  And that is incongruent with intimate relationships.  You cannot have this totally private inner life, into which no one enters AND have close intimate relationships.

I think I do ok with my friends and family.  I am pretty good with saying how I feel and what I think...

But in dating relationships, I falter.  It feels like so much more is at stake.  I accommodate, I do not reveal.  I hold back.  I do not let you in.  And I am not sure I can change this.  It feels like I have had this intimacy with myself for so long now, to let someone else in would be some sort of betrayal of myself.  I realized the other day that all dating or sexual relationship feel, to me, like a me or them dynamic.  Always.  I can have you or I can have me, but I cannot have both.  Couple this with all the shit that passes as dating today, and I have to say I don’t want to do it anymore...

I am not sure I can be different.  I didn’t choose this dynamic.  It has become a default from all the stuff that has transpired from the past.  And while I know where it comes from, it doesn’t really help me change it...Every intimate relationship I have ever had felt like a war between me and them.  If I was picking you, then I was betraying me. And try as I might, I cannot see this another way...

So I got back to basic goodness.  Mine and theirs.  Perhaps, I can relate to people (men included) in a more egalitarian way.  Where I just honor my own basic goodness while also honoring theirs.  Stop trying to force solutions or decisions where men and dating are concerned and just answer the question when and if it appears.  I feel like I have been at this for so fucking long, with not a lot to show for all my effort.

I would like to become more of a person that only thinks about things when asked, or the situation presents itself.  I feel like our society is so preoccupied with figuring out the answer to a question that isn’t even being asked...and may never be asked...

Anyway, this is what I have on this Thursday.  Basic goodness.  I am going to strive for that.  For myself and to see and experience it in others...

Again, still...