The Rush

[on that note, I will write it out]

I think I know what I like about meeting someone new. No. Spending time with someone in a new way. When someone who looks at me. Sees me. I feel something. I feel something other than nothing, something other than my own pain, other than my own lonely, something other than the void of me. They distract me from myself. They take me to another world outside of my own, with new and shiny and wonderful. They give me input to break my loops of cyclical thoughts.

The rush of someone paying attention to me feels too good - I'm ashamed to admit that. The rush I get from someone wanting to pay attention to me feels so good. Same but different. It feels so good I feel a little guilty about it. Like I'm doing something fun and wrong and I'm going to get caught.

There is a *boooosh* of wonder. There is a bright light awash with new colors, the warmth of their sounds flush my skin; peel my eyes open; brush my arm hairs with their waves. My cheeks flush when I watch their lips move. As they talk I imagine those lips on my skin. I watch light play across jaw and cheek and the whiskers in between and I want to lick them for the scratchy feeling on my tongue, to hear a sound so intimate as whiskers bristling. I want to feel someone else like I hear my own blood pulse in my ears. I want our gaze to tie our two brains together so we think as one.

I'm probably a little intense. Someone has probably mentioned this to me before.

Then I begin to second guess myself, and I second guess them and I wonder what they see when they look into me. And when they reject me for what they do see or hear or what they feel - or don't feel while in my company. I get so wounded. I crumple. I feel. It's okay. Even if it hurts. Heart hurt is an acceptable feeling over leg hurt or back hurt, I know it will fade eventually. However the lasting effects of the second guessing and the heart hurt are that I end up looping out on stuff like this. I can't function. I'm locked to a pad of paper all day. When a thought that blurps out with a tear - my hand is forced to write it out. I'm a mess. A mess who writes shit like this all day just to clear space so I can get onto something else, like laundry and looking for a job.

More and more I'm finding it hard to look into peoples eyes. I want to. As welcome as the potential heart hurt is I'm afraid that if they look into me I'll fall into them. To experience the rush. The rush sweeps me away. If I don't look I'm safe. Safe from obsession. Safe from rejection. Safe from heartbreak. Safe from feeling. Safe.

I second guess myself at least once a week. I wonder what. the. fuck? I'm awesome. What's the problem? I'm fat. I won't have babies. I'm old. I'm weird. I think too much. Inconsiderate. Selfish. I. Me. I. Tailspin. Until someone checks in on me, touches me, closes a circuit and I'm okay for another week.

This *this* is a tailspin. not the dog chasing tail variety, closer to the loss of emotional control variety but closer still to the stunt flying variety. The needs medication variety. Have you ever been in an aerobatic airplane stunt flying tailspins? It's a gut in your throat, screaming, eyes watering, dizzying, heart racing oh my god I'm going to puke if we don't pull out of this in the next half second kind of rush. Yeah. I'd chew xanax right about now if I had some.

What has me writing this right now... all day, is that when I started school I noticed something.  During the school year I'm distracted from myself by school work, projects, reading, writing, picture making, making making so distracted that I don't have time to pull yarns out of my head and unravel like this. I can pick at threads enough to make adequate work, but not enough to get into being lonely. During the school year I don't even care. Maybe because I come in contact with other people.  I have real live conversations with real live humans. There are hand shakes and sometimes hugs (!) there is laughter and discourse - the circuit gets closed.  When I have long breaks between sessions I start to go a little nutty. I get agitated about being alone all the time.  I start to be concerned with being single. Like the only way to fix being alone is to have a partner :-/  even I don't believe that. I suppose I start thinking about what it is exactly that I want and that boils down to wanting to be in an intimate proximity with someone. That doesn't even mean fucking necessarily - maybe whisker licking though.

I'm on summer break right now. It's a long break. I'm not distracted by school or projects or picture making and I'm too broke to do stuff, I live too far away to walk anywhere, I'm too broken to ride anywhere so I am home. I thought I'd try online dating to amuse myself with a few dates before I got too busy with Critical Massive and Burning Man stuff. I've been on some dates. They've been interesting, one was creepy and one was completely awesome. As soon as I dared look into his eyes I fell all the way in, deep.We are friends. It's a start.

The time we spend together feels amazing. Or more accurately the time I spend with him feels amazing to me. I don't know what he feels. I spend most of the time being embarrassed and awkward about being myself. I simultaneously want to stare him down and look away so I don't make eye contact, so I don't make contact. So I'm safe. I watch his mouth instead. I flush, I get goosebumps, I get calm, I chatter, I, I, I am honestly me. But two and a half months later I do not know if it is mutual. I'm in, he's not. Instead of being okay with that I'm in second guessing mode. I'm thinking crazy shit like, it almost seems smart to pretend he's not real. Reject him before he rejects me. Delete him!  I won't because that is actually crazy. I won't because I blurp tears just thinking that thought. (Am I really putting this on the internet?)  The tear blurping makes me wonder what the hell is going on with me.

Part of the second guessing is wondering if the rush feeling is the attractive part, or the person making the feelings? Can they be separated?  To test this I have continued to go on dates to meet other people, maybe it's not just him but the experience. First, apparently I'm repugnant. Of the few who have contacted me, fewer still have actually been able to communicate well enough to coordinate a date shaped experience. The ones who make it through the gauntlet are pretty bright. Coffees, lunches, creeps, people who's pictures are 10 years out of date, they have god, they're crazier than me, not cat people. Women, men. There have been hot, HAWT, god damn it so help me bone jumping hot people in the mix. It is not the experience. It is him. Every person I have met makes his star shine a little brighter. I leave those experiencing enjoying him that much more for being exactly the person he is. I'm totally energized by him. He's like a drug. Well, I suppose he really is a man shaped distribution center for dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin, so at least that is a true statement.  I get so little of these otherwise that when I see him it actually is a rush. The rush is limbic resonance. It is real.  It doesn't take much in the way of internet "research" to learn that if I quit seeking "reward" the dopamine levels of the experience will drop and the rush will fade.  hum.  I think I just rationalized myself to a conclusion.  Do I want the rush to fade?

Yes the rush is the interesting and attractive part, and no the person generating the rush cannot be separated from the experience. Package deal. Rush generator monkey. Do I want to alter this experience? No. Do I like the crazy? Do I like the rush cocktail? Yes.