Thursday, July 2, 2009

April to July

I left here to deal with a bunch of crap: mainly physical issues (meaning I was not enjoying sex much) and to deal with the breakup of me & one of my best friends....Francis. In a nutshell here is what has been going on: I changed birth controls and have been fighting my biochemistry like hell. I've also been VERY immersed in a fight to keep my assistantship at school - meaning I need to show them the research ASAP. I'm almost there - that has been HUGELY important.

Things are slowly getting better and I'll talk more about it soon.... for the few and far between who will actually find their way here - just in case what I have gone through could help someone else. Until then - much love to this little corner of the blogosphere.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Biochemistry is a BITCH

My body is such a bitch sometimes. I pretty much have to be on birth control - and have been since shortly after I even started having a cycle.

I've been on over 10 different brands in 12 years. They all have side effects.

Yes, being on them is better than not for a lot of icky reasons. Mainly that I am physically functional when on them - and don't lose so much blood that I could end up being hospitalized... (my genetics were designed to kill me, I swear).

I am grateful there is a 'treatment' for me... but I just can't help being so SICK of the side effects. If I take any with androgens I have bad acne and my hair thins out. If I take estrogen I have mini periods all the time, still have acne- just less, and often lose my sex drive and sometimes my ability to be stimulated in the same ways. Oh, and they all make it more difficult to keep my weight where I like it.

I'm currently on an estrogen one. My ability to be stimulated has been majorly affected - which sucks because I still have a drive but my body doesn't react much. It's very difficult to orgasm. That is intensely frustrating.

I had a cancer scare recently with my cervix.... there was a part of me that hoped I had it....

Sure, it was a very small part of me - but it was there. I would LOVE to just have my frickin' parts removed and get to BE MYSELF FOR ONCE without all these synthetic hormonal ridiculous issues.

Sorry for the rant but it's a part of why I haven't been around here much. It's hard to read sex blogs and enjoy them right now. It's impossible to write anything sexual.

The worst part is I don't know what I want to do. I don't want to lose my hair anymore or be in my late twenties with a teenager's face and back and chest. I can't go off BC. They won't take my parts out - I'm "too young" and I "might want kids one day" (AS IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT). For now that means staying on the estrogen, staying on a pill that takes a part of my identity... a part of my life... and tamps it down no matter what I want.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

What's in a name??


3 posts in one day! :D

Ok - I have one other random issue I'd like some opinions about....

I hate my name. I always have. I can't tell you what it is of course, sadface, but it's a combination of two generic names you hear everywhere that start with the same letter. My mother and father had the same initials, so they decided it would be so CUTE if my brother and I had their initials too. After my brother's passing and the break up of my family my mom left me with my father's last name and I kept it even after she remarried (I did NOT want to be adopted by my step dad). She chose to return to it when her second marriage dissolved, because it was the name I have.

Still... to me it's always felt like this leftover piece of junk from a family who never loved me. I need to pick a name and stick with it before I start getting published. For a long time I didn't worry about this (7 years) because I assumed I would marry my HS sweetheart eventually and just take his name and the stain would be removed.

That clearly didn't happen, haha, and I couldn't be happier. However, I'm left with this NAME I hate and the date I get published keeps drawing closer and closer... if I'm going to change my name I need to do it now and forever hold my peace. I just want to change my last name - and everyone I know is opposed to the idea. My name is 'cute' or 'they can't imagine me as anyone else' or 'it just suits you' are the reasons I get. My first and last name together have a sort of cutesy newscaster feel I've been told numerous times. Yeah, that suits me.

What do you think off hand?
Should I go through with paying to have it changed (it's not too much $, less than $100) but will take some time and effort... or just live with it? I have started proceedings to change it before but I get so much opposition from family/friends I have dropped the issue in the past. Why does it really matter? Am I just being a drama queen not wanting his family name on all of my accomplisments for the rest of my life? (I want to change it to a family name from pre-my father.) I can't see the forest for the trees on this one - so feel free to offer an opinion!

My number one reason I haven't done it yet is I don't want to deal with everyone asking me about it. It's a personal issue and I just know I'll have to explain it to everyone under the sun, ew.

Self Sabotage


Ok. I remembered something recently about myself.... I'll try to make some sense out of it.... ugh, here goes. This is going to be long.

I have a terrible memory. I don't remember my childhood, except for photos I've seen over and over since then and some painted in memories of random things. The few memories I do have are more like extremely old polaroids or very vague imprints of emotions and events that have no visuals attached. I usually only retain less than 5 of these snapshots and some separate imprints for each YEAR of my life before high school. Since I realized this was happening to me in middle school I started sort of telling myself a story of my life - creating my narrative if you will. (I actually sort of want to write a book of my life because it would be fictional even with a basis in truth.) It's helped to improve my memory of my life, but it's extremely difficult to remember lots of little things with this method and there is so much bias in remembering this way. I feel like it's contributed to making it so much harder to get to know myself as well as with learning life lessons... I feel like I have to relearn certain things 5 or 6 times before it sticks per se. What a pain in the ass.

Since I've started reading so much on training and memory retention and learning... I've actually begun to suspect that all of this is attached to what is likely a REM disorder (my sleep issue). Research is showing that without REM sleep things you learn and experiences very rarely make it into long term memory, and that without that REM sleep we retain very little and what we do retain doesn't always get properly connected so that we can retrieve the information later. Awesome huh? So maybe it's less a pain in the ass and more of a freeing way to live? I wish it felt that way.

Alright so now that you know this important issue I have.... it hit me recently that I had forgotten an important pattern in my first relationship. I was constantly creating escape hatches in the first 4 years of that relationship, out of words, constructed issues that I decided should break us up, by talking up all the negatives, convincing myself not to love him, etc.

Hmmm, sound familiar?

I remember one day in particular (vaguely) where A got exasperated with me (something he rarely did) and asked me angrily/tearfully: "Why are you always trying to run away from us?" or something similiar. What I remember clearly is that the sentiment slammed into me. I was always - ALWAYS - less in it than he was and maintained that vigilantly. Always looking for the out, making sure it was there. I didn't use it until he forced me to, but I had it.

This was.... poisonous in a lot of ways. In order to construct an out when the relationship is primarily good meant I had to do it with words - because he rarely gave me much ammunition. So I would go to my mother (my best friend at the time) and my sister and talk all about what I was concerned about and I would constantly sound on the brink of a break up with him. By the time we broke up they both hated him, with lots of good reasons. We were together 7 years. I think I did this almost the entire time. Poor A. He managed to fight me off on a regular basis and by the end of our relationship it was a running joke between us. He could say something about it, I would realize that's what I was doing, and I would stop. That's part of why breaking up with him sucked so hard - I had finally gotten IN after years of fighting it and then I was forced to leave.

So. I vowed not to do that with K. And I didn't, though I had built in the escape hatch of graduate school. I did give him the option of going with me to it though - which in light of our problems we decided not to go with (haha, I make it all sound like it was done rationally and painlessly.... it wasn't rational or painless at all - he wasn't mature enough for that and I was dying in agony from feeling forced to abandon his daughter). Lesson here: Didn't build in appropriate escapes and I devastated myself.

Add these two experiences to a lifetime of inability to trust and my history of being abandoned....
and I sincerely doubt my ability to be the least bit honest with myself in a relationship situation. I don't think I know how. And I have to admit that terrifies me.

I think this is part of why I like E so much and always keep him in the wings. He tells me what I feel - and that works for me on a lot of levels. I'm fine with believing him and it's much easier than trying to figure it out for myself. Still - I stay away from getting involved with him because he's not stable and that seems to be the #1 thing I crave in my secret heart.

Alright - so what does this have to do with now? SP. Smart, an active listener (now anyway), a good foil for my neurotic and dramatic moments, sexy, and someone I was very excited about dating before we put a title on things. As soon as that happened... not as much excitement, because I needed an escape hatch. So I built a GOOD one: well he thinks he wants his own children, I don't - so for sure we won't last. Then when he seemed a little malleable on that issue I grabbed another one: Well, when he's done with grad school he'll leave and that'll be that.
During this time I've also built lots of little ones: We're both too selfish so we must not be right because if we were then we'd immediately just be perfect and put the other first every minute of every day (even though we're both rabidly opposed to codependence) and it would be a fairy tale (but I hate clear shoes, they're ugly, and he'd know that so he'd have been sure to buy me the perfect knee high black leather boot instead) and we'd never ever get the least bit annoyed with the other person (even though we're both critical and smart and speak our minds) or be too tired to have sex (even though we both have medical level sleep issues and I'm constantly on medications that fuck with my libido and so is he). Right.

I took it steps further this time. I just kept parts of myself, large ones, put away into little boxes and over on one side of my mind, the side marked with: not pertinent to SP. Doing this ensured I would never feel like he really knew me or that he was close enough to me to devastate me. I told myself it was to make sure we weren't one of THOSE couples I hate who can't breathe without talking about it together. I told myself I did it to retain my sense of self. I shared enough that he would think I was open, and in it, etc. I'm VERY good at that, but in reality I kept the deep stuff, the important stuff, to myself. On purpose.

Laid out like that... well. I am the partner I would never want. How sad is that?? My mother is beginning to dislike him. My best friend is too good to do that, but she's so cautious about us now too because she holds my ammunition for a break up. I constantly make her new arrows to hold for me, just in case I need them.

What I'm having a really rough time with right now is deciding if those arrows are justified, or if all of them are shit because I haven't allowed myself to really participate in this relationship as one. I've made it a fauxtionship - almost entirely by myself too. I'm leaning towards the shit option. (And Sasha - when you read this - isn't it funny how you asked me questions about all of this right before I got slammed with a revelation about it from within that basically answered what you were asking?! We're mental twins.) If nothing else I feel that this relationship has more to teach me - if I will but let it.

I came home from my conference and had a 3 hour conversation with SP. I laid it all out there how I've felt - and asked what his plans were when he graduated. He said his plans have been for a long time to take me into account in whatever his decisions are at that time, but that he never talks about because he has no idea what the options will be and it seems silly to think ahead when you can't plan anything. He's so practical sometimes, he doesn't want to waste energy thinking about an uncertain future. But he wasn't the least bit uncertain about me. He loves our relationship, and he loves me, a lot. It really hurt him and made him very sad to hear how I had been handling things. He has never pressured for more because your future is inherently uncertain at the completion of graduate school, and because he was afraid I would bolt. To me it says a lot that he chose not to even get angry, but instead asked me what else he could do to make me feel more secure in the relationship.... He asked a lot of questions, made sure he really understood what I meant and where my little unhappinesses are occurring - then he told me what he thinks is great about us and suggested some ways we could make it even better for both of us based on this and other previous conversations. He also told me how vulnerable this made him feel because he had no idea and asked for some reassurances from me that I believed in things over the course of the next few weeks... if I did.

Then he went and has been doing these things we talked about since then (not to mention his past track record of changing his listening style, methods of dealing with annoyance, etc.). He isn't the guy who says he will change something to shut me up. He only says it if he means it, and then he does. I'm pretty impressed and I only hope I can do the same - because the changes we want are only the type that make you a better person - not the kind I hate where someone wants you to change to suit THEM better.

It makes me cautious now that my best friend is cautious. When he's with me though - and I'm not overanalyzing everything - maybe that's the place I can find the truth of my feelings? (I have to say there on the couch with my head in his lap looking into his eyes while we talked about all of this stuff I felt so calm and secure but even here I hesitate to say I love him - though I know I do and I tell him so regularly without qualms). I don't know what to do. I don't want to only notice the positive, that's dangerous. I don't want to keep building my hatches, I'm already sad and angry with myself for realizing how I do this and am dying to figure out how to stop.... but I don't know if I have the capacity to look at my relationship clearly. Fuck.

I guess a little part of me always hoped it would be like a fairy tale. Someone would show up and manage to get past all my barriers and I would just FALL and that would be it forever. I think my walls are much too strong for that. I told him all of this in order to force myself to make a decision, and I decided to stay in. So now what do I do? I wish I knew.

Up-to-the-minute....



Oh blog, dear blog, how I have missed you!!! It's Thursday again, supposed to be an HNT day... but it's not going to happen - at least no physical revelations... though there's about to be some other ones. I'll make it a goal for next week.

Quick update:
- It's that time of the semester again, and during this one I'm also about to propose my thesis and begin piloting a research study. I am so busy I find myself here, avoiding the to do list that is crushing me, because I need some mental peace to get back to tackling it.

- My conference went... amazing! I wish I could go into tons of detail and gush for a while, but it would just bore you anyway. I'll summarize....
It helped revitalize me in many ways - from my passion for my degree and what I do to my own confidence in my abilities, intelligence, and in the people I have at my fingertips to work with (Officechick E is the exception, not the rule - and just because I'm constantly exposed to a selfish brat who has a negative image of me doesn't mean everyone else has that image of me... no matter if she tells me they do or not). It also spurred some involvement in some new projects, which is super exciting, but means my already extremely limited time is going to be further stretched.

- Medical issues are back rearing their ugly heads.
None of the testing I had to have done was covered - though I was told it would be. Of course I elected to purchase glasses before that with the 'credit' I get to put toward medical expenses every year (since every doctor always tells me how healthy I am I figured that was a safe bet, damned hindsight)... and I did need them for when I exhaust my eyes... but considering I am going to have to pay for school and my living situation for 3 months out of pocket this summer.... this could be a very bad situation soon.
My sleep issues have never gone away - I just stopped whining about them. They affect me less sometimes, more others. I wish anything seemed to work, but it doesn't.... so yeah. Whatever. I guess I just keep to try dealing with it as it comes. Roll with the punches. What I wonder though is just how AWESOME I would be (how much smarter, how much better my memory would be, how much less I would have to fight to stay thin, how much more energy I would have, etc.) if I actually could sleep the right way even once a week.... I'm having very short odd dreams and some sleep paralysis pretty regularly. I dreamed of Sasha the other night, of twitter, of my closet, and then of much more oddball unimaginable things.

I have a couple other pending things/relationship updates I'm about to do other posts about... so here goes wiping the slate clean....

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Busyness.


Oh, life.

So E has been in and out of late - he maintains a huge passion for me. It... both reassures me of my lovability and attractiveness in times of doubt (mental and physical), but also bothers me. I am in a monogamous relationship - no matter if I believe it to have a fairly proximate expiration date or not. I refuse to cheat in this situation. I also refuse to lead someone on or not be honest with them. Whenever I don't maintain honesty I get into trouble, often friendship sours, and everything gets messed up - sometimes beyond redemption. Friendship with him is difficult to maintain with his constant communication of his attraction, so we'll see how long our period of being in the in and out phase of talking to one another lasts.

I am going out of town next week for close to a week, and things are going kind of crazy in my professional/personal life. The boyfriend returned unscathed from his long trip to India.... but my underwater digital camera stayed behind on the bottom of the Ganges River. He ordered me a new one, haha. Our passion for one another was/is incredibly strong on his return, but our past sexual dissapointments soon returned as well.

Sex when I have any kind of ick going on down below (and my genetics ensure that even on birth control I regularly have what they call 'breakthrough bleeding' ) is not his cup of tea no matter what. BUT when that's why we aren't doing it he doesn't really want to touch me directly - just through fabric. Well... that's not enough to do a thing but leave me wanting more. I don't usually get off externally either without a vibrator - for me it's all about gspot sex not clitoral stuff. I used to... but the birth controls that work best also seem to lower both my sensitivity and my libido. Sadface. I can't get upset with him about this stuff though - I've never stepped up to the plate and solved the problem by requiring that I orgasm during these usually short times (I have a period only once every 3 months, and breakthroughs usually only last a day or two) or introduced buzzy things into our bedroom or anything else. Usually we're so busy it doesn't matter I just stick to my own schedule when he wouldn't want to have sex with me anyway - and the Hitachi keeps me happy enough until I can get what really satisfies again. This time it didn't quite work that way thanks to his jet lag. He awoke wanting sexual activity and I was also awake but groggy and knew sex wasn't on the menu that day.... We argued about it around 4 am when I didn't respond well to his fingers. However - we got past it. I was too annoyed to use that opportunity to explain my sexual take on things. I really should just requre what I want - but this leads to the next issue I have....

The word love has gotten very intense too of late, abscences can do that. I'm not really sure what I want to do about either - this relationship is clearly not my first priority and never has been. It's not for him either. We're ok with that - but that clearly is not entirely comfortable for me or I wouldn't talk about it so often and be so preoccupied with it on occasion....

Knowing that this relationship was somewhat transient from the start has really tainted it in many ways. Such as in my sexual satisfaction with him specifically (though not overall)- I never really bothered making it partly his responsibility or concern. Honestly, that was pretty short-sighted. If nothing else I'd have been doing a helluva favor for whomever comes next. He's very good at sex, but only ok at foreplay and for me definitely not so good at non-sex orgasms. He occasionally has lovely bursts of dominance, which I have been careful to nurture, but again they had nothing to do with knowing physically what I or most women would love (though he has learned more in that regard).

This is mostly just a bit of personal ramble for the moment... my school life has been absorbing all of my attention lately. There may not be HNT's for the next two weeks, but at least I'll be having some fun while getting some work done on my life, schoolwork, and career.

See you again soon, space cowboys.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Your Circle.


My lovely somewhat divine friend sent me the world's most timely little thing today, and I wanted to share it. I love this idea, though I am not their average. I do think those closest to us influence us in many ways though.

Quote for Contemplation

My thanks to Carrie Wilkerson for providing me with this quote:

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. "

- Jim Rohn

Think about the five people you spend the most time with. Look at their careers, their finances, their marriage, their level of contentment, their health, their outlook on life. Where do you fall in relationship to them? Spooky isn't it? Are surrounding yourself with the best possible influences on your life? Who do you know that you admire in any one of these areas? Figure out how to spend more time with THESE people. Who are the folks who are holding you back? You MUST reduce their influence. That's not always a comfortable thing to consider, since sometimes it's those dearest to us who have become the anchors around our necks.

Can't see a way to change your immediate circle of friends? Get new ones! Join a club, a church, a gym, or a volunteer organization. Seek employment elsewhere or get a part-time job. Ask for an introduction to someone you feel would be a good role-model. You owe it to yourself to provide your mind and your spirit with support and encouragement in order to grow to your full potential!

- From The Average Goddess