The sound that was calling me, the day that I came out of my daze of heartbreak, was the far off thump, thump, thump, the low vibration of The Abbey, a famous gay bar in West Hollywood. Don’t ask me why or how my body wanted this, but it was the only thing that could shake off the past. Yes, that’s right. Really, hot gay men dancing in their underwear to really loud house music. That’s all I wanted.

So I gathered a group and we planned an Abbey night. We drank, and drank, and drank some more. We drank until all our problems went away. But it wasn’t the alcohol that kept my problems away that night. It was the dance floor. I could have cared less whether I drank or not that night. My body wanted the dance floor, and as soon as everyone in my group was drunk enough to become puppets, I dragged them all onto the floor, and let my body go.

With every twist and turn of my body, the anger and hurt and sadness melted away. Nothing else mattered in this moment except for my body and the music. I was engulfed in the sound of the music, and my body translated it into movement. Movement that turned all my emotion into a story for everyone around me to experience.

When I went to the club that night, the last time I had sex was with…him, the great heartbreak. My body had shut down in the last couple of months because it knew that experience may never be able to be recreated. The idea of trying to have lame sex, or even ‘good’ sex again was debilitating. I didn’t know what to do. But in that moment on the dance floor, my body recreated it, and released all of its sexual frustration. I made raw, uncensored love to the dance floor that night.

Everyone around me knew it. I got by far the most attention of anyone on that packed dance floor. No less than 5 guys tried to intervene the energy from my body to the dance floor. I humored them for a minute, and then got back to my first love. I was drenched in sweat at the end of the night when I looked up and saw him. He was to be the next one in my love saga. I caught his eye through the crowd of people. I didn’t stop dancing, but every time I took a step, I came a little closer to him until I was grinding right next to him. We didn’t miss a beat, and I finally let someone intercept my sexual energy. I was now making love to him instead of the dance floor.

It was, of course, the end of the night shortly after I found him and we spoke for the first time. He was tall, dark, and Italian…as in from Italy..with an accent. I was drunk, but he was polite and sweet and took my number and then let me go home with my friends. He was the Italian, and he was the one that restored my faith in men and love.

It was at the point of reaching the bottom of the cliff that I finally came out of my daze. I’m not sure how long I had been falling after I jumped from the cliff, but it must have been a pretty hard fall because I felt pretty beat up. In the last several months I had put up a good fight at the top of the cliff, getting beaten around by way too many guys in a row. Of course they were not actually physically harming me, but I still felt like I was getting punched in the gut regardless. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take so I chose to jump off. At the bottom of that cliff, I opened my eyes out of the trance and slowly began to scan my new surroundings. The most beautiful colors I had ever experienced flooded my vision and somewhere in the distance I heard the low beats of music. My body started to move and I let my body lead me to the sound.

As a resident of the exciting city of Los Angeles, I get to see a lot of trends come and go. Especially when it comes to food and dieting. For a culture so skinny and fit, we are more obsessed with food than other parts of the state that don’t strive to be fit, and eat whatever they want. It takes a lot of energy to think about food that much, which is why we never have any energy to put into anything else. And precisely why, here in LA, we are a diverse collection of women with really hot bodies… that are all single. Well, I’m exaggerating of course. But a lot of us are single, or struggling in our relationships. Now I know all you LA women were hoping I was actually going to discuss the newest development in the dieting world, but unfortunately I am not. I am merely using food as a comparison to our dating lives. And quite frankly, we are coming up short on one of them, and it’s not our appearance.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we’re not out there, every weekend night. At the clubs, the bars, the sporting events, the concerts. We are. We just aren’t putting our full energy into the process. We expect that whatever we’re doing is just fine, as long as we are putting energy enough into our appearance. If we even spent half the energy we put into our appearance that we did our dating life, well then we might be getting somewhere. But day after day, we keep dieting and exercising, night after night, we keep primping and fluffing, and then we throw our beautiful selves into the lion’s den and the competition of the most beautiful begins. This approach works for awhile. Until we find ourselves running into the same wall over and over again. And then one day, we crack and realize, this just isn’t working anymore.

We all know doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of crazy, right? It’s true, because Einstein said it. So if that’s true, why are we expecting to find a real love connection in the midst of this superficial routine we have? Why do we think if we concentrate all of our energy in one area, we will create results in another. What if we…wait for it…put our energy into dating instead? Okay, hold on, I already hear the protest forming in your head. “I AM putting all of my energy into dating!” But hold that thought, stop there, and really think about what that means.

What exactly are you doing to put all your energy into dating? Are you spending countless hours on your hair, makeup, dieting, exercising, tanning, shopping, etc.? Are you spending hours trying to figure out the hot spots for available men? Believe me, I’m not judging because I know the drill. The only problem is that I realized that drill… doesn’t actually work. Except for to get you exactly the type of man you do not want. And not because he’s a bad guy, but because he’s treating you exactly as you are presenting to him: the side of you that’s fake and is looking for a quick fling. Sometimes, a wonderful thing. But not when you’re looking for something more.

One of the diet fads that came into LA in the last 5 or so years was the raw food revolution. There is even a restaurant called rawvolution. I don’t even know if these restaurants still exist because I went through and out of that fad quickly, as most people I know did as well. The raw food may not have left me with much in the realm of dieting except for a damaged stomach, although it did leave me with an interesting thought about dating. What if we put the raw back into dating and relationships, instead of our food.

After this epiphany, I pondered this question long and hard about my own dating life. What if I took even half the energy I spent building a mask and put it into finding out what was behind that mask. And then what if I put energy into cultivating the person behind that mask and figuring out what she wants for herself as well as in a signficant other?

Then she could come out and say, “you know, I’ve always wanted to learn to play tennis, since I was a little girl!” I would start taking her to tennis lessons, and I would fall hopelessly in love with my tennis instructor and we would end up getting married and living happily ever after. If only I could be raw, even for a brief moment.

Anyways, for now, I will leave you with my ball of confusion because this is what I feel like when I have to deal with him.

the world is upside down. nothing seems right. black is red and blue is white. there are pink polka dots and black and white stripes. the colors are patterns and none of the patterns belong. i am lost in a world that i can’t get out of. and no one else knows because no one else is here.

the spiders are crawling all around me. they want to spin me in their web. the web is beautiful, the patterns make sense. but i am stuck. i try to break free but nothing matters any longer. the bright blue mother comes and i am trapped in her cocoon. the web no longer makes sense. the pattern turns into confusion. the confusion grows brighter until i cannot see any more. finally the white light comes and takes me away. i am finally free. but never, ever do i understand.

god i love to turn my little blue world upside down

inside my head the noise
chatter chatter chatter chatter chatter
you see i’m afraid i’ll always be
still coming out of my mother
upside down

don’t you love to turn this little blue girl upside down?
i know you love to turn this little blue girl baby upside down
but my heart it says you’ve been
shatter shatter shatter shatter shattered
and i know you’re still a boy
still coming out of your mother

but when you gonna stand on your own?
i say the world is sick
you say, ‘tell me what that makes us darlin’
you see you always find my faults
faster than you find your own
you say the world is getting rid of her demons
i say ‘baby what have you been smokin’
well i dreamed i dreamed i dreamed
i loved a black boy
my daddy would scream

don’t you love to turn this little blue girl upside down?
any kind of touch i think is better than none
even upside down
but you see i’m tangled up
got a kitten kitten kitten in my hair
Cincinnati – i like the word
it’s the only thing we can’t seem
to turn upside down

well i found the secret to life
i found the secret to life
i’m okay when everything is not okay

don’t we love to turn our little blue world upside down?
don’t we love to turn our little blue world baby upside down?
inside my head a voice
chatter chatter chatter chatter chatter
and it says ‘girl you’re all the same
still comin’ out of your mother
upside down’

~tori amos

I’m really not that snobby, but from my few visits to the Getty Museum (mostly for dates in which I pretended to know a lot more than I actually did) the style of paintings that have always captivated me the most are the impressionisms. I love the idea that when you are far away, it looks like an amazingly perfect painting, and the closer you get, the more you realize it just a bunch of paint strokes. But the real marvel for me comes when you realize that each one of those strokes had to be perfectly orchestrated along with the others ones in order to create the impression that there is a picture there at all.

There is a good reason I get so hypnotized by these pieces of art in particular. They are a metaphor for what I feel like. In all of my relationships, the further I got away from the person I loved, the more real it became. I could only ever see the full picture as soon as it was so far away that I could never be a part of the strokes any longer. That is the only time I was able to see that it was the strokes, not the picture the strokes created was what I was in love with.

The truth is that I really don’t know the truth, as we’ve already established. I am at a point in my life right now where nothing makes sense, and I realize I don’t even know what the truth is anymore.

I’m not sure who I love or don’t love. Or that if I feel anything at all, ever. Or if any of my past relationships or loves ever mattered. I’m not sure I believe in love or if I even believe in the idea of sex.

All I know is that every once in a while I do feel something. Something so strong that I can’t deny it. And every time I get so badly damaged from it that it makes me not want to feel it again, and then I start to not believe again.

But in that moment, when I wake up for just a moment, I know that is the truth. And when I speak my truth, no matter how vulnerable it makes me. No matter how stupid or clingy or whiny I sound, I am at peace with the fact that I’ve spoken my truth.

In the case of my yoga teacher, I told him my truth. Shortly after my last conversation with him in which he destroyed me, I told him how I felt and that’s it. Without needing or wanting anything back. And then I let go.

In the studio after this, I felt relieved. I may have just cut myself open, wounded and lying on the floor, but I spoke my truth. He, on the other hand, never spoke his truth, and this became painfully obvious in the next couple of weeks.

I started going to yoga during his teaching off hours so that I wouldn’t have to suffer the torture of him touching me. Unfortunately, I was still there while he was in his own practice. But I could stay at my end and he could stay at his. From across the other side of the studio, it was easy to pretend he wasn’t even there. And then one day shortly after my truth, he became to come closer.

The distance between us became shorter and shorter until he was practicing next to me one day. I tried my hardest to not even make eye contact with him, and on that day I almost cried.

So then I took my Savasana, and then a thought hit me. I was at peace with my truth. He was still being tortured by his truth, trapped deep inside him. He was holding onto it so tightly, trying not to let it go. I had set mine free and he was being haunted by his.

In my corpse pose, resting next to him while he continued his rigorous practice, I smiled.

As you may already know, I slept with the yoga teacher in my studio. Last week, he killed any hopes of us sleeping together ever again and I have been devastated ever since. I am very hurt, of course, but the other part of it is that I am confused and angry on top of it. He did not tell me this statement lightly so as to spare my feelings. Instead, he was condescending and mean. He said he didn’t want to continue to confuse me. All I wanted were answers and he gave me elusive bullshit that confused me even more. He could no longer see me because he was I was a student.

Acceptable answer, fine. But then he continued that he was not interested in me either. This did not need to be said. Why insult me on top of it when I know that you are clearly interested in me since we already slept together? If you really wanted to break free from me, why throw in something like that?

Before I could even answer, he throws another one on the fire. “Besides, my heart is still in Africa”. Okay, now I’m just extra confused. Why did that need to be said? I wasn’t even protesting the last couple of comments yet.

So of course I had to call him out on that. ‘What exactly does that mean? You’re in love with someone in Africa then, right?”

“Well yes, something like that. She is my Simone de Beauvior”. I am speechless, I don’t even know how to begin to comprehend this statement. I’m sorry but…

#1. What the fuck does that even mean?
#2. How do I keep end up getting myself caught up with guys like this. There must be a certain je nais se quoi I have that attracts the most fucked up weirdos. Or maybe I choose them… I’ll ponder that another time.
#3. What could I possibly say to that? And why is he telling me this?

I tell him something about how holding an ideal of someone that doesn’t exist while denying something real never gets you anywhere. His response? Take a wild guess.

“I know that, which is why I am dating casually.”

Now I’m confused as fuck and without even a good response to this.

All I can think of is that he’s dating casually, but not me. But yet he slept with me. Is sex dating casually and then in that case does that mean he casually dated me also…and then if that’s so then dating casually also means only once. See my point? It’s okay, neither do I. And that’s exactly the point.

Instead of taking out my frustration on him, I spent the rest of the night crying to my best friend and then crying myself to sleep. Out of frustration and hurt, mostly.

The lingering questions I was left with were: if he didn’t want to confuse me anymore, why did he even go into detail about anything. And most importantly, why did he not tell me this immediately after our one night, the first time I tried to reach out to him. Why did he continue to lead me on and then continue to flirt with me at and during yoga. I’m sorry, but that just does not add up to someone who is not interested.

*****************************************************************************************************

Part 2. 

This story has been left unpublished for too long, and I think it’s unfair to go into any other story before putting this one out there. However, since I originally wrote this post, things have shifted in my life and I come back to this post with a somewhat clearer perspective. Looking back, I realize I am slightly ranting and definitely rambling.

But understandably, I am frustrated and hurt…and confused. Now I understand that he is as confused as I am and when that happens, nothing ever makes sense or is explainable. I still don’t know what the “truth” is…but now I am asking myself: do I even know what the truth is? Maybe not. I thought he was the one. Clearly he is not. I thought I was in love with him. Well, I was, but now I feel like I was not. Am I now? I don’t know. And now I have become just as confused as he is.

This does not mean I have forgiven him or forgotten the past. I am still refusing to go to yoga when he is teaching, but that comes from a perspective of self-protection – there is only so much I am physically capable of handling. Him touching my sweaty body during intense, vulnerable physical poses after I was emotionally vulnerable to him is just too much. But in due time, I am sure this too will pass. And if it doesn’t I will be looking for a new yoga studio very soon…

Fidel Garcia “Phoenix Bird”

Coming off the tail end of way too many heartbreaks in the last two years, last night I pushed through the last one I had left to crush me. It was inevitable, I was just prolonging the pain and so I dove in. Now I am numb, but at least it’s… actually I don’t know what it is, I am just numb now. But I know it’s something.

I spoke many times before about my yoga teacher. We hooked up once, one magical night, and then both avoided the entire thing for months. I think we just pretended like it never happened, pushing the memory away every time it popped up. I’m not as good about pushing things away as men are, although I am pretty damn good at it for a girl. And so it went on for months, me denying my feelings and memories…and longings.

Last week I ran across photos of my ex, the one that matters the most in all of this love mess, and his new girlfriend. I had a complete train wreck meltdown for days…and then one day it just was. And if I was already this low, I may as well get through the mess of the yoga teacher, the one that exists right now in my life. No matter how painful it may be.

So I did and I confronted him. And he shut down and turned me down. And it hurt like hell and I went numb. I surrendered into the nothingness. I have nothing else to cling on to. My exes broke my heart, cracked it into a million, tiny pieces, and he shattered it last night. Now my heart is nothing but a million tiny pieces on the ground, but somehow I am okay with it. Maybe it’s because I feel numb and nothing right now, or maybe it’s because I know at least I reached the bottom. There is nothing else in the realm of love and relationships that could shatter me any further. The deed is done and now there is nothing.

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

~ Hafiz ~

For my birthday in January, my friend bought me a visit with a psychic for fun. It was great fun, she had nothing to warn me about, told me I was completely centered in my life and good things were in store for me this year.

I then asked her the dreaded question: When will I be in a relationship? 

Her answer? There should be no issues with me finding a good relationship this year. I am in the right mind frame, which I wasn’t in the past few years (true), and there will be many new people entering my life who will accept me for all that I am. Which of course is the foundation of any good relationship.

She said I could potentially be in a relationship starting in the month of January, but that she sees the month of April as the time when it will really happen.

As I look at the date today, this memory came back to me and I am left with yet another disappointment this year. So I am left to wonder if I can defeat all omens of obtaining a relationship, when will it actually happen? It doesn’t happen when I’m not expecting it, and it doesn’t happen when I am expecting it. It doesn’t happen when I’m closed to it and it doesn’t happen when I’m open to it. It doesn’t happen when I’m trying and it doesn’t happen when I’m not trying. It doesn’t happen when I care and it doesn’t happen when I don’t care.

So this has left me with the burning question of… will it ever? Am I doomed to singledom for the rest of my days?

I am considering taking a trip back to the psychic and demand her give me an update…

Oh and by the way, Universe, What the EFF?!

This is a lesson in writing when I’m so hurt I don’t know how to write. I’m not really sure where to begin. Other times when I cover my hurt up with anger or sarcastic wit, I am able to pull some kind of funny shit out of my ass. That is only after the hurt settles in and only when it’s not…huge.

Last year I went through a time period of what I like to call, Meet the Girl That Replaced Me. Otherwise known as, Meet the Upgrade and Meet the Girl Who Won. I continuously got punched in the stomach over and over when I was forced to meet girls who are now dating my exes. How fate could be cruel enough to allow me to meet 4 of them in a period of 3 months is beyond fair. The dust finally started to settle from that sequence of Chinese torture and then I am subjected to the biggest one of all.

Through the glorious wonders of Facebook, I was able to discover through a mutual friend a treasure chest of pictures plastered all over some tramp’s page. These pictures were couple shots of my one and only soul mate and her. The “one” that I have written about a million times on my blog. Any time I write about anything deeply emotional and heartfelt, he is the  one I am talking about. And he is the one in the pictures with some girl that is a comparable version of myself. My look is definitely his type, and he just found someone like me…that’s not me.

When I came across these pictures the other night, I went into shock. I was paralyzed, staring at them like an accident on the side of the freeway. When I finally came out of paralysis, I began to frantically click through all their couple vacation photos, as if the more I looked through them, the more answers I would obtain of why her and not me.

Before I realized it, I had spent 4 hours of my night staring at their pictures, and had to come to terms with the fact that I had found myself in the middle of a crazy girl obsession. I have never, ever, in all of my years been “that” crazy girl. I have laughed about her, and how she couldn’t control herself. I never understood how she could become that possessed  by love for some dumb boy that would earn her the title of crazy girl. And now I was her.

I contacted all of my girlfriends for support, I made them tell me how much prettier I was than her, to point out all of her flaws and tell me how unhappy he looked in the pictures. As if I could rewrite the entire story of their relationship and therefore know that I would still have a chance with him. That they were not the happiest couple on the face of the earth and destined to get married and have beautiful children.

That night, when I finally was able to calm down enough to pass out, I had dreams about their picture perfect wedding, and meeting their perfect, beautiful children. I couldn’t even escape by going to sleep. She was haunting me consciously and unconsciously. The next day at work I would suddenly be snapped out of my life when a flash of one of their pictures would come back to me. And her name, such a horrible sounding name, would play on repeat in my head. That afternoon I dreamed of stalking them. I wonder what they do in the evenings. Where do they eat, what grocery store do they go to? I knew where he lived, if I just came up with excuses to hang around that neighborhood maybe I would end up running into them.

And then I could ask him the burning question: Why her and not me?

I’m not sure what kept me from actually doing this, but I didn’t. 3 days ago this happened and I still have not given up the struggle with my inner crazy girl. She wants to come out really bad, and all I’d have to do at this point is just open the door and let her in.

So I’m left wondering, going into this next week, is if she will make an appearance. And how do I keep her from making an appearance? Do I really want to be that crazy girl that gives up everything to make a fool of herself? The better part of me says no. But the part of me that exists when I look at those pictures says absolutely. And that’s how the birth of the “crazy girl” is born within a girl historically so “sane” and chill no one would have ever suspected a crazy girl even existed inside.

Let’s hope this story is not to be continued but I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of my crazy girl, knocking just on the other side of the door.