I woke up thinking about sex and men

Day off here at camp and I woke up thinking about sex and men.

The most read post on this blog is about relationships, being single, being passionately alive.  It's gotten almost a hundred more hits than my next most popular.  Interesting.  Though I am deeply private about that area of my affairs it does not mean it doesn't compel me.  I think about it all the time! Which explains all the reads, I suppose human hearts and quiet passions are the one sure thing we all have in common.

My cycle just passed, meaning it's ovulation time.  At Eric's house yesterday I couldn't help but notice all the colts, all the twenty-year-olds unshaven, shirtless, shoeless.  Twinkling eyes.  The new guy/girl flirtations, the girl/girl couple meeting under a tree, the two tight fresh bodies of young people walking off for the first time holding hands.  There was so much frolicking in the air.  Last night during the mycellium slideshow it occurred to me that not once since being here have I wanted to join, to throw my flirty breath into the swell...

Further proving there is a transition I believe I am making.  A passing.  The worst consistent pain I've known flogged me for months and months--this was the time of muscle-ripping when I left my long-term boyfriend in 2008.   Grief is like that when it hits.  Dizzying, foundation shaking.  Nameless.  It was an ache that can still visit me, and the variety of griefs that got transposed on to that time in my life were griefs that had haunted me, unfelt, for years.  The deaths of friends, the loss of best friends, the agony of family traumas in my childhood home.  The shame I had yet to let go of of the years of my life in active addiction.  I made my passing though, lived in solitude for a year out on a river, dug out my injuries then worked to re-root myself deeply in to the strong soil of my family and friends.  When it was over I quit my career, and moved to my family home at the beach.  It was a maturity process that I took on consciously and worked at whole and slow.

After leaving my ex, I had two relationships.  Both within that first year.  After the second ended, because I wasn't ready, I threw myself in to the Game.  My obsession became having fun, and for the next two and a half years I met more young twenty-something hottie guys than I ever tried.  Twenty-something guys don't date, they "hang-out" or "talk" so I got good at that lingo, at having no expectations, at keeping it light, fresh, fun and funny.  Always remembering I was in the Game.  The host of female strength around me, of literal single gals out and also ready to have fun, grew and grew.  The most beautiful moments of all were in the center of my grls, realizing my belief in my self was doing the same.

There is still a great stigma around women my age who are unmarried with no beckoning promise of settling down. Married women are suspicious of us, married friends question us, relatives look on with concern in their eyes.  What I want the world to know:  we have our reasons, they are unique, personal, and real.  My new friend Irena, from Belgium, said yesterday that she doesn't know if she can have a relationship and live the adventurous life that makes her most happy.  She's tried both; like me the committed life left her unfulfilled. It is her fear, that she'll never find the balance.

Here is my passing:  I dont want 20 year-olds anymore. I'm done with that nonsense of "hanging out."  I am strong, full of life with tons to give.  The Game never once afforded me anything meaningful, the one most recent actual my-age man who I thought offered potential ended badly because that's how we met: in the Game.  Today I am certain there is a man out there who wants openness and connection and happiness and also adventure just like me.  Certain.  Until  he shows up though, I wont waste my time and energy on less than that.  I'll choose the carload of gypsy single grls, I'll choose following my own light and life and dreams, continuing all this education and fun.  I'll be brave, and open.  The thing about passings are we dont know what's coming next.  We just keep the faith that we aren't the same as what once was.