I am aware that over the last few months my post count on this blog has dipped dramatically.  So much of what I wrote about included the ins and outs of my dating life.  The constant search for love, for a man, for “the one.”  The good, the bad, and the ugly results of that search (mostly bad and ugly). Now that I’m not writing about that as much, I have to figure out a way to reinvent this blog.

Right now, I am not in a relationship, at least not the kind I can understand.  I can’t really write much about this, out of respect for the privacy of another, but what I can say is that for the first time about six months, I have come to accept that I continue to be unattached, and I am willing to try to embrace the single life. The operative words here are “willing to try,” because I’m still quite conflicted about my status.

Last night I went out bar-hopping with my two gay friends and house guests and got rip roaring drunk.  I don’t do this all that often, but sometimes on those Friday nights, the party girl in me comes out.  At some point in the night we were walking down 14th street belting out Janis Joplin songs.  By about 2 am we ended up in a gay club where I got my groove on with a girl (who apparently beelined it across the room to dance with me) and a guy (maybe one of the few straight/bi ones in the joint).  

It’s been a long time since I danced that hot and sexy with anyone.  It was extremely exciting to feel strangers’ hands all over my body, grinding, gyrating, working up a sweat, being more than a bit nasty.  Apparently I got the girl in trouble, as her girlfriend came up and basically summoned her away from me.  She kissed me on the cheek and was gone. My friend said he saw them arguing outside later.  I danced with the guy for a while, but then I was done, ready to move on, and left to find my friends.

I am a very sexual person, and it’s sad to say but right now what I’m missing most is physical intimacy.  Yet I’m not able to bring myself to do anything to change that.  I’m exhausted from dating, from the work that goes into it, and I’m surrendering to that exhaustion.  Even the work that goes into orchestrating a booty call is too much for me.  I am temporarily celibate, and I suppose it is of my choosing.  If I were that desperate for sex, I could do something to go out and get it.  I have before. I’m just not willing to put the energy into getting laid.

There is more to it than sex, of course.  There are those dark times, like tonight when I was stuffing my comforter into the duvet cover.  I remember doing this with my ex-husband.  A simple act, so mundane, but it was something we always did together - lining up the comforter corner with the cover and shaking it into place.  Like folding sheets, it is something that is so much easier to do with another.  Tonight it was literally about comfort.  The comfort of being with someone.  The little comforts and the big ones.

At some point in the shaking out of the duvet cover, my mind kicked into gear, spewing something about how he is not alone, he has a partner, and how I cannot seem to find anyone.  How he must be so glad that I am all alone, and that I deserve it.  I had these fantasies of finding someone and telling him that I was about to get married.  Blah blah blah.  

Luckily I was able to recognize the mind stuff, see it for what it was, and get back to the task of making my bed.

I am coping as best as I can - throwing myself into art, into activism, projecting my passion in these directions.  It is satisfying to do so and is a perfectly good outlet for my pent-up energy.  But it is in my nature, and I guess human nature, never to be satisfied.  Always longing for something more.  Right now I am in that not-quite-comfortable place where life is good, but I am jonesing for something to make it better.  Appreciating life in the here and now - an admirable practice. Wish I could say that I am there, but it’s all about the journey, isn’t it?