Gratitude for Men...

I wish, often, that I didn’t like them.  I wish, frequently, I batted for the other team.  Men have been such a blessing and curse in my life.  So many missteps and false starts.  Men have been a huge source of trauma in my life.  But without the trauma they provided, I would have never had to heal.  And without all the healing, I would not have evolved into this version of myself.  And, I do really, pretty much like me today.

I love the cut of a shoulder, the smoothness of hard abs, the way they laugh with their whole bodies, their smiles, the way they smell after a shower.  I like the solid nature of men, how they are so anchoring, which is just another paradox in my life because, for me, these anchoring forces have also been so destabilizing.  Most often more like an anchor around my neck as I attempt to swim to shore after the wrecking devastation of our doomed love affair.

I have faired far better with men as friends than lovers.  When I try to combine the two it is usually a precursor for some new relational disaster.  Is it me?  Or just the men I select to date?  Regardless, isn’t that still just me since I am the one doing the selecting?

I vacillate between thinking that if men had been less of a factor in my life, I would not have required the need to heal so much.  And then I think, life without men, would have been so much less colorful and dynamic.  I guess it doesn’t really matter what the operating theory is, I have a literal lifetime of experience with men and I guess, it just is what is.  And like with most things, it has been a very mixed blessing.

For the most part, men have been the most unsafe thing in my life.  My dating choices have not been stellar but I have made and kept some amazing men as friends.  If I could only date the ones I am friends with...but alas, I am not interested in them.  And so the vicious cycle begins again.

I think where men are concerned, I have loved most the promise of safety they provide.  It has often been illusory and fleeting, but those moments, tucked in safely to their embrace, is a heady intoxicant and I have drank my fill.

I am not sure where my journey leads now with men.  I have been taking a break because I felt so bereft and defeated by my constant vain attempts to love like other people.  I know it is me, but it also, it has to be, at least a little bit, them.

Men have been my greatest teachers in this life.  Mostly about things I would have rather not learned.  But they have taught me the repeated lesson of forgiveness and my unremitting need to evolve past my trauma and scars.

Men have left an indelible imprint on me, a long, twisted love story that is replete with amazing highs and life altering blows.  I have, quite literally, changed course in my life because of men.  They always the carrot and the stick.  How appropriate, no?

I have also used men to make me feel something.  And then used another to make me feel something else.  I have not used them for money, strangely my fierce independent streak that is all encompassing has spared me from the perils of ever being financially dependent upon these often toxic and unreliable men.  So I may have gotten a lot wrong, but at least I got that part right.  I guess I understood, perhaps far earlier than it became a conscious idea, that men were always going to be problematic for me, so I made good decisions to alight my own path, and that I would be forever in charge of paying my own way in this world.

And perhaps this fact alone is why I have struggled so much in my relationships.  Perhaps the fact that I have not needed them in this way has made it harder for each of us to traverse the rocky path of marriage and dating.  Perhaps if I was a little more in my femininity, perhaps it might have worked out better.  Being someone who was often more educated and financially rewarded, has been a liability for me.  Either attracting men who just wanted to reap the benefits of my labor, or warning them off by being so independent that they were unsure what, if anything, I needed them for.

After 40 some years of dating, loving, fucking and marrying, with such very little success to show for all my efforts, you would think I would have given up by now and thrown in the towel.  But it is this very thing about men that makes me unwilling, at least so far to eliminate them from my life:  each one holds the promise of a new experience.  And that my friends is a very hard thing to walk away from as it turns out.

I do not know what is in store for me regarding men going forward.  I know the more I work on me, the better my choices are with them.  But I am not sure healthy is something I will ever select.  I seem to love men in all their fuckedupness and that seems to be hard wired in.  And as much as it pains me to admit it, these men, while providing absolutely no safety at all, have always been the most fun, the most exciting and the most satisfying, at least for a little while.

Men have been my greatest teachers for lessons I didn’t want to learn.  But they have been the greatest exponential growth factor in my life.  And I will say, it has been worth the ride.  I regret none of it or them.  Each one bringing me a great deal of joy and excitement and their share of pain.  No relationship that possess the power to heal and wound in equal measure, could ever be anything else.  The precarious balance between love and hate, power and powerlessness, safety and danger has been worth the effort, regardless of the resulting fallout.

I am a better version of myself because of men.  All of them.  And today, I sit in gratitude for them, with them and because of them.  I am grateful for it all, and that I may still have some fuckery left in me yet.  Hopefully a little less down as I am willing to sacrifice some of the up, with the idea that perhaps I might achieve a little more peace and serenity and safety next time.

And if I don’t, well then you will be the first to read about my latest and greatest debacle.  I mean, drama brings a certain level of interest and the resulting apathy is kinda hot. So I work for something different in my experience of men, but I remain tethered to reality, in that I am the most common denominator in this equation and while I have changed, I am still me.

Again, still...

I am grateful for

A fun day with Grace

Getting everything done I needed to 

Dinner and a meeting with Steve

Big Sur TODAY!

All the fun stuff coming this week

Travel

Chelsea

Leslie

My kids

The stars over Ojai

3 purring kittens on my lap

Freedom from chaos and lies