I am Lost Trying to Get Found

I had a couple epiphanies in the car this morning. It happens that way sometimes. You can't really multitask and drive. Ergo: think. I've been listening to this podcast about music from the '90s. And that takes me allllll the way back to 1997. All of that angst and air sucking and grasping for whatever it is you want to find when you're an 11-year-old girl. Returning to my id, maybe.

I heard that the music you hear and love when you're 14 shapes your taste for the rest of your life. I think I hit it earlier. I think that's because I've been so steeped in music since birth. That is to say, I heard so much music to that point, but as a child early to the teenage angst party. I think I was 11.

I'd heard my mom's love for country and early roots and my dad's love for gospel and country story songs, I'd heard unaccompanied hymns in church and I'd heard guitar pickers and acapella humming all over my entire life. But I hadn't heard anything that really reached into me and made me feel. I changed with Live and Wallflowers and Alanis Morissette. Most of the things they sang about didn't really mean anything to me until a long time later, but true to my usual self, I leaned in to hearing and understanding the feeling.

I've been out here doing this wrong. And that was sort of pointed out to me last night. I always look for an explanation. I know there usually isn't any rhyme to attraction. You either are or you aren't. I'm attracted to people who are the other half of my buttoned in and buttoned up and buttoned down superego. I've spent my entire adult life responsible for another person and I have fought and rejected the wilderness in myself in favor of being a good mom. Good news is that he's pretty much baked at this point. He still needs me, but he can dress himself and feed himself and he doesn't require a baby sitter. Even if he needs one sometimes. I'm back out there looking for my id. Getting back to the earthiest of myself. I like her most of the time. I wish she'd stop trying to make her way back to my by kicking down the door and punching me in the pussy. 

I guess "Namaste, terrified ball of goo in a meat sack who wants to love and is tough as nails and deeply traumatized and softened in the heart from having that heart pulverized a few dozen times." I've realized I like this duality in a man. I want a man. A strong, manly, assertive, unafraid to stand up to me man. Works with his hands. Gets dirty. I also want a man who will hug me hard in front of his friends if I need it. Unafraid to tell me he loves me. Comfortable in his own tenderness and comfortable in my softness with the knowledge that my spine is rebar. Can ask for help and support. Knows that we both have our strengths and things to contribute. Knows that real partnership isn't one person carrying the other, but two people offering to hold what they know they can for each other so that everyone's burden is lighter. To help each other. I want to let go a little and I guess what I'm after is trying to hang on to control. Anchors and wings. 

I guess really, my requirements for a woman aren't much different. But I like pretty women. Steal my favorite lipstick, baby. Funny how it swings that far to the other side. Or maybe it's not. I guess everything is relative. Either way, sharp as a tack is a requirement. 

I did recognize a while back that it's time to let go a little. Breathe out. Melt, as someone said recently. I think the idea changed me a little already. I have been so uptight. So. So. Gripping this control so tightly to my chest that I kept myself from breathing. And you can only hold your breath for so long before you pass out and you might get some brain damage. I'm learning to let go. Or maybe not fully let go, but let out a little. Give everything in my life a little leash. Let it off the leash and watch it wander. The idea of being present without attempting to control.

These are some hard lessons. As if I were not warned. And maybe what I'm doing here is learning. I almost left it at "just learning" but that is not fair to me and not fair to the process. Learning is the most important thing we can do as living people with reason and passions that exist outside just the animal in you. Your lizard brain keeps your body safe, but sometimes your man brain keeps your heart from being safe. Because feeling safe makes you feel vulnerable, and your lizard brain has you believing that feeling is dangerous for your body too. The exclusively human struggle. That existential self-sabotage.

I think the best thing I can do at this point is to sit with the feeling of confusion and the feeling of no control and the feeling of free fall into whatever is next. If you can fall up or fall sideways, maybe it will help you find your feet again. And I have to safely learn to lean where I can. Trust the people I love trust. Trust myself. Trust the love in me. There is so much love in me.