introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K

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k.i.s.s.i.n.g.

early morning dreams - 3 february 2o15

"i want somebody who can hold my interest / hold it and never let it fall / someone who can flatten me with a kiss
that hits like a fist / or a sentence that stops me like a brick wall."
~ani difranco

it was after midnight. i pulled on my boots for the tenth time, layered on a sweatshirt, my fingerless gloves, a scarf, hat, and my warm vest. i grabbed the shovel from it's place inside the door and carefully pushed the door out into the snow that had drifted in front of it since the last time i went out to dig out the door. i've learned to keep up with it...the alternative is to go out the front door and wade through feet of snow and snow drifts to try to dig at it from the outside if it gets too high....it's just easier to keep it clear every few hours. i dug out the door and shoveled clear the sidewalk again. thankfully, there isn't too much there. the snowbanks have piled higher than my waist on either side, the snow swirling over the tops in the arctic wind. i wondered how many other people in maine find this much happiness in shoveling all this snow? each time, i remember why i came here. i know this is where i'm supposed to be for now...a feeling that doesn't often come over me, especially at this time of year. usually, my heart is darting all over the country, trying to figure out where i could land next, where i could go next. until last year, i just chased my own tail and never made a leap anywhere at all. now that i've done it once, i feel like i could do it again every spring if i decided i wanted to. i'm getting rid of more and more things slowly, simplifying for when i'm next overcome by a desire to be any place but here.

i took this snow day to catch up. the dishes were done. the laundry washed, dried, and hung up in the closet. the baby's diapers in the dryer waiting for morning when they'd be packed up in his go-bag for his nanny. it was late, as it so often is these days, when i finally crawled into my bed...still one of my favorite places. the softest clean cotton sheets, a perfect nest of pillows, my heavier winter down comforter...it is a cloud where i can finally rest easily most nights. i rarely dream now or if i do, i'm too exhausted to remember a lot of it. just trying to keep ahead because if i let the routine slip this early on, i'm concerned things will get difficult. so i trade my constant list of chores and hard work in the day for blackout satisfying dreamless sleep each night. i was hardly in that bed before the room was lighting up with the after-storm sunrise, blazing bright. it wasn't even seven o'clock in the morning. as is my habit, i carried my sleeping baby over to his changing table, changed his diaper without him waking and put him back to bed. i curled up next to him, enjoying these last few weeks of this before he has to start sleeping in his own bed. for now, i am thankful that he sleeps through the night. i'd been back in bed twenty minutes before there was a loud knock at the door followed by the consequential bellow of my old hound, his response to being yanked from his winter night's sleep.

my little old landlord, indistinguishable in all his layers and flannel and blaze orange and boots stood outside. he asked me if i needed anything as he shoveled out the last bit of snow from between the drifts by my door. i smile when he does this because my lease clearly states that i'm responsible for my sidewalk. he was here to plow our parking out and needed me to move my car. he'd already cleared the snow from it and shoveled around it. in the end, we got another foot and a half on top of all the snow piling up already. i pressed the button on my remote start, the car shuddered on. i went about putting on my boots and all my other layers again, barely opening my eyes. even after a snow day, i am tired and cutting my sleep short will be bad news for the day. i went out in the subzero morning and moved my car down to the other duplex parking which was already clear. i trudged back through the snow, in the door, peeling layers away until i was naked again and slipped back in between the sheets. the baby never knew i was gone.

my bedroom was overly warm. i'm not sure if the sun blazing in was doing it but when i woke, i checked my thermostat later when i eventually got up, set at 70 degrees (the warmest i can remember setting a thermostat since i was 18 and on my own for the first time) but the temperature registered at 77 degrees. i turned that down right away when i got up. even the little guy was warm. as i fed him his breakfast, i've tried to make sense of my strange morning dreams.

over the last few days, i've thought a lot about turning on my okstupid profile again, editing it for life changes, and seeing what happens...but the question i keep asking is whether to change it from looking for friends or for something more specifically dating-related. when i came here, i was only looking for new friends. i went on a few friend-dates but the handful of guys were usually pretty depressed about something or we just didn't have a lot in common and it was what it was. no heartbreak, no real disappointment...i knew i'd find my stripe of people here eventually and, lately, i know i'm getting there. i've got my writer friend who comes out for walks with me. i've got a handful of acquaintances i've met at work, others who came here looking for something like adventure. i'm starting to fit into the community a little bit and i'm thankful for that. it's just the kind of thing that takes time.

before i'd left bangor for a chunk of my maternity leave, i'd been talking with a fella. we ran into each other on election day--there should have been a baby coming then but there i was, casting my vote and rushing to work. i didn't have time to say much but there we were, in the real world. he was easy enough to spot and i suppose nine month's pregnant me was, too. the next few days after voting, we talked about spending time together when i returned...but, when i returned, for whatever reason, he never responded to my messages. i was a little disappointed at the disappearance but, as usual, i try to understand. i try not to let it be about me...who knows what it was. it's hard not to believe that it's about me, though...i mean, come on. for as much as i have it together, most folks are gonna see this baby as being a mess they don't want to get into and i'm realistic about that. i have to be. only one fella had the courage to call it what it was, i suppose. if i'm honest, i'm relieved a little...because my heart just hasn't been in it since then. so i've never turned on that dating profile...i consider it each day again but i never just do it because i suppose i'm just not there yet but it's on my mind. i suppose i find it hard to believe that much is going to come of it anyway.

i suspect that all this thinking about trying to meet someone probably fed my dreams. there i was with a faceless sexless person but clearly on a date...a date...i could feel the same old nervousness more than anything. there was no baby there, it was just a night out. fast forward to when we're supposed to kiss and i'm dodging it like i normally do...more than the possibility of having nothing to say, i spend most of a first date figuring out how i'll dodge a kiss. i'm ridiculous. the alarm rescued me from having to explain myself in my dream.

a thing that only my closest friends know about me is that i am not a kisser. kissing, for the most part, disgusts me. it comes from a germ thing i've struggled with for a million years...at least that's what i've always thought. but this morning, while my baby is sleeping, i've been thinking about this over coffee. why would a dream about kissing be a nightmare? what is wrong with me? rachel asked me once what it was and i answered in one word: fluids. and i suppose that is partly true. kissing is pretty gross when you think about it for more than ten seconds, right?

i spent the better part of 4 years with a man that i couldn't kiss. not wouldn't. couldn't. could not. i know it bothered him and he took it personally and, in hindsight, he was probably right. i knew for a long time--i think we both knew--that we weren't going to last. the first time we did kiss, i choked on his tongue in my mouth and after that, i just couldn't. i've never figured out why other than i've probably kissed some really bad kissers. and if they didn't know they were bad kissers, the whole thing flips back on me, right? maybe i'm the bad kisser? probably. likely. maybe i'm supposed to want someone's tongue invading the personal real estate of my mouth and they're all doing it right and i'm failing miserably at being receptive. but fuck it. for the most part, i just don't like it.

so i don't know why i even kissed him at all. i just wanted to. that was the difference, i suppose. i wanted to. for hours...and so i did. that baffled me for weeks...who the hell was i that night? and rather than wait and hope to be kissed like i did for all those years before i just stopped kissing anyone at all, i kissed him because that was what i wanted to do. a single brave moment that makes me happy to recall.

so that's the gauge, i suppose. if i have to rewrite this stupid profile to match what is the current state of affairs, i suppose i should be up front about that more than anything. if i can't kiss you, i don't want to be with you...because i'm not wasting another 4 years with someone with whom i won't share spit because if i can't share spit, i can't share the rest of my life, probably.

of all the stupid things to dream about. of all the stupid things to even think about. but i'm thinking about it a lot. at 36 years old, i've discovered that i do like kissing. rachel, it isn't about fluids at all, it seems. it's about liking someone enough to like their fluids, too.

i'm getting there. my brain is getting there, reasoning things out. my heart is bound to follow. i'm starting everything over because that's just how it is. i'm determined to not freak out about kissing because that's part of it, right?

maybe after valentine's day is over i'll get back into this but for now, i'm putting it in a parking lot. i'm thankful that this month, i'm not dwelling on the february disaster that was last year. this month, i'm not thinking about how many times i had to walk away from a relationship at this time of year. i'm thinking, instead, about wanting to kiss someone. i'll take it.

xo,
warmth,

jones

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.what came before. - .what happened next.

a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017
baseball season to football season, abbreviated - 25 september 2017
the doodles - 11 july 2017
at arm's length - 4 july 2017
like a sea-mammal needs a bicycle - 30 may 2017

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