No Business

Someone whose friendship I valued recently pressed toward more romantic/erotic interaction, and I was flattered, and I tried to respond in an available way at first, since this person is attractive, brilliant, fascinating, and we obviously are simpatico in many ways. As things began to heat up, I could not ignore my burgeoning sense of unease and dread, however. I started having horrible nightmares about past situations, and began to realize feelings of deeper disturbance. I felt fundamentally dishonest, and as if I had to exert effort to ignore my gut-level qualms. 

Sadly, and truly regretting the necessity, I stepped back, communicated my boundary directly, and had to admit to myself, most of all, that I have no business at this time pursuing an intimate, romantic or sexual interaction with anyone. At first, this had me feeling very negative toward myself, struck by my incapacity, and the framework of inability to be available for an interesting adventure. I felt nearly bottomless despair, wondering when I will ever get myself back on my feet, and realize that love can be so sweet, pace Joni. I was surprised by many of the aspects of the pain that came up for me, even just barely venturing into this territory. 

But I also had to be honest about not only my incapacity, but what I truly want. I want to be alone. I want to be footloose, fancy free, and autonomous. The plain fact that I am not yet, and that I am still inconveniently attached to a corpse of a relationship from the past, is neither here nor there. Pursuing something in any effort to get free of the past is bad faith, and doesn't work anyway. So, re-framing my reality as a matter of what I want is much better. For now, I want NOTHING. I am single and unavailable. I am in particular, *unavailable*. This is by choice. At least, the ways that it is operative in my daily life is by choice. Conscious choice and a conscious commitment to myself. It has the force of a ton of fucking rage behind it, and that in itself tells me a lot. 

At some point, a fully manifested, sunlit, real partnership with someone in the actual world will be grand. But that is not what is happening now, nor is it what I want. It is neither here nor there what I am able to do, at this time. Of course, my capacity or lack of capacity informs my choice and my desire to be single and unavailable at this time, but it is not the whole story. 

I regret that my vagueness for a while made me seem available, or had me "trying to be" available. I am only now learning how to be single and unavailable. so it's not surprising that I would make mistakes. I have always allowed for the possibility of a new romantic/sexual relationship in my life, and my boundaries have been loose and weak in the past, so it's no wonder that I am simply unfamiliar with standing firmly in being unavailable. The person who was interested is a total knockout, also, and that didn't help matters. One of those weird things where one feels like, hell yes, I need to make myself available. The problem of course is that that doesn't work. The gut level resistance and reservations will be heard. I have a long enough history of ignoring all of it in my past, and ending up in long term, highly problematic, bad faith, dishonest, "halfway in" relationships as a result. Perhaps if I stand in my unavailability now, some day I will learn how to say an unequivocal YES to a woman, something I have not often done in my life, and the last time, to a woman who was 100% maybe-morphing-into-NO, and made no bones about it. 

I'm still sad. Fuck all of this goddamned fucking bullshit, is the angry energy around all of my grief, also. I'm sick of all of it. Exasperated by my own heart. If there were a way to extricate cleanly and be cold as fuck, without ripping my own heart out and watching it beat a few last times, and then die, I would do so. But there simply is not. I may well admire others who seem capable of killing their feelings, but I don't have the capability right now. I have had, in the past. It has not served me well, anyway. 

But here's the bottom line. Nothing can be precarious for me at this time, or hinge on the life and behavior of another person. My stand in being single and unavailable is fundamentally a stand in taking responsibility for my own life, my own reality, and goddamn it if I will have my reality hinge on the behavior or decisions of others. That is the reality at this time. It is the only safe place I have found to stand, through all of the past three years plus. The fickle, unreliable, hesitant, changeable, unavailable realities of A and others are all well and good for them, but I absolutely MUST find a steady course for myself, or die. It is that dire and urgent. It sounds fairly dramatic, but it is exactly how it feels. 

Anyway, I am single and unavailable. That's that. I lean fiercely into it because I haven't done it before. I am a garden of NO's. I am more wall than boundary, because I'm weak in it. I am done, done, motherfucking done. When I get more easy and comfortable with it, perhaps the walls can be opened up a bit. I expect to be in a remarkable and inspiring, beautiful, passionate, devoted and creative living partnership someday, because I have the capacity to be really good at that. 

For now, this is about as naked and raw as I feel. And I am learning that I absolutely must protect myself, as a result, even from ones who would not harm me. It's harm I cause myself, more than anything.