I have given myself spirit, mind, and often body to over thirty men since I graduated high school (five years ago).   Every kind of man under the sun, every astrological sign, every personality type, those from happy secure families, those with haunted pasts, drop dead gorgeous men and not so gorgeous men, loving sensitive attentive men, and apathetic wounded men. Some that wanted to save me and many that I wanted to save.  In these five years I have rescued souls from paths of destruction and dragged others to them. 

An astonishing majority of them have said to me something along the lines of  “I feel like you put a spell on me.”  I did.  We humans are brilliant at recognizing and memorizing patterns.  I feel like my ability to recognize patterns (unconsciously) has totally fucked me.  I know the way relationships are “supposed” to look.  I know the things I am “supposed” to say.  The places to touch and the linger upon.  I have watched millions of women seduce men’s hearts into their love traps…I mean….nests.  They seal the deal with a passionate kiss before and then the credits roll.   

I can help you think that you love me and that no one has understood you so well and loved you as much as I do.  I know that formula.  My head got sucked up into my own game every time, and by the end I would lose myself in the simulation of love that I tried so hard to create.  I always thought there was something wrong with me when after a break up I was never heartbroken for my loss.  I cried, yes, every time, but it was always for them, guilt.  And I have noticed that later when I “miss” them, I’m not really missing them at all; I miss loving them.  Instead of recalling him kissing my forehead or bringing me flowers I dwell on that devastatingly poetic thing I used to say to him that made him feel like a man, or the thing I used to do in bed that he said no one ever did before, that made him cum “like that”. 

But before you start thinking that I am a cold unfeeling bitch, you have to know that I was not always this way.  I have opened myself up completely to a man before, a few, when I was young and naive (or more so).  And there were moments with the others that I left the door open for intimacy.  But there is nothing more painful in this world than being alone, and thoroughly misunderstood.  I would drop bread crumbs for them, and when that didn’t work I would often resort to practically screaming my identity at them.  None of them understood even a small fraction of who I am…not one.  I kept thinking maybe the next one will.  But as I get older I am beginning to think that perhaps it isn’t their personality that has rendered them incapable of knowing me, but the male culture.

Oddly enough people have been telling me just that for years, but I have never really listened to them.  They say things like “well men just aren’t like that.”  I laugh at the fact that what kept me holding on to the dream of an authentic relationship with a man was really what I saw in movies.  These blissfully intimate relationships between a men and a women where he knows her and she knows him and 3/4 of their communication is shared glances.  It is a pretty dream. 

But I feel like I have been robbed.  I haven’t ever felt it….really felt anything with a man.  My heart was always separate from our time together…it was never welcome there anyway.  Call me bitter, but a man doesn’t want a woman’s heart…not really.  He just wants to call her his.  And while I suppose that is somewhat endearing, I don’t want that.

I wish my experience with love was like my experience with sex.  Because I was intentionally sheltered from anything sexual when my peers were diving into sexual socialization.  I just wanted to be good for Jesus, and sex was dirty and wrong.  I literally knew nothing when I moved out on my own.  And while that has caused A LOT of trauma and misfortune in my life it has done one positive thing for me.  I learned it as I went.  I learned first how to hold hands with a man, the things he responded to when I touched him, how to kiss and gaze and eventually how to have sex, and fuck and make love and give head and make him moan.  I didn’t learn that from movies and the media and advertizing and the input of my friends and family members.  But love is something different.  I knew what it was supposed to look like, feel like, I had the mold right in front of me, I just had to figure out a way to squeeze myself into it.  And the residual me that wouldn’t fit would be thrown away…piece by agonizing piece.  

But now I find myself here, falling in love with this perfect stranger, Leah, and knowing nothing about what that is supposed to look like or feel like, and I have never been free before.  I don’t really know how to hold a woman or touch a woman…I have no idea how to make her cum or even how to hold her hand, and I love this.  I feel this.  It is absurd and reckless and absolutely fucking incredible, and…I don’t mind breathing so much anymore.  I have daydreams again….I didn’t realize how empty life is without daydreams until I started having them.  I see us making love, smudging the lines of our bodies together.  I see us shrinking down into dragonflies and moving in that  clumsy love drunk areal mating dance.  And when we fly in front of your face, diving, oblivious to your presence, you will take a mesmerized second look at the genetic fuck up of a bug we are together with eight wings and two electric-blue torsos.

The first conversation I had with her was about my fish.  I was still in mourning when we met, because Tom (the goldfish) had just died–sad sad day in the Horn house.  We were at walmart in search for a new man of the house, we found a lovely red beta fish (who is still alive and uh…flipping(?) by the way).   Leah was the casheir.  We spoke briefly about Tom and then about Ben (that’s what we named the new fish).  The conversation was not unpleasant, but it wasn’t really significant either.  I am sure that it faded from her memory two or three shopping carts later, and I let it slip from my mind before I even reached the exit.  It was actually just yesterday that I remembered it even happened, after thinking about this girl non-stop for two weeks.  And now that I have uncovered it I am trying to figure out a way to erase it from existence entirely.  I know this seems absurd.  Why do I want to erase this arbitrary conversation?  Why, for the very fact that it was arbitrary, of course!  I didn’t even notice her!  …So five years from now when she is laying in my arms and I am moving a perfect strand of hair off of her perfect face I will not be able to say “I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”   No….no….just as I ready my ass to fall squarely onto that plush and blissful armchair we all yearn for, it will be yanked out from beneath me and replaced with a slightly less cushy chair (like the couches in motel rooms)….because “I loved you from the third time I saw you”  just doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?

All pooped out…..pun intended…

You see, there was this guy whose left hand rebelled against his “mind”—his captain–the logical side of his brain.  In my life, my “left hand” makes all of these impulsive and destructive decisions, much to the distress of my left brain which scrambles to make sense of it and correct it’s behavior….but they can’t work together, separately.  I cannot ignore the feelings propelling the right brain and expect to change its behavior in any way.

So…..reflecting on this show I thought, “I am going to call Travis and tell him, ‘Even if you don’t understand the way that I think, even if you don’t like the way that I think, it is still the way that I think and I can’t change it,’” —–and some moments later I thought, “I am going to have Travis watch this episode over and over until he gets it, THEN he will see how important it is to have his right and left brain integrated.  Then my mental tone of voice changed, became maternal, (switched to my right brain), and said, “no, I am just pushing this outside, trying to solve MY problems outside of myself.”  And then I thought, “I must journal this”—–but then I realized that that too is trying to solve my problems outwardly.  Like in order for the thoughts to be real they had to be made physical–put into concrete language and made permanent in space.  But IT IS real in my mind even if it just stays there, perhaps especially if it only happens there. 

So I probably need to let go of my journal (and this blog) in order to give my right brain the freedom to express itself within my mind instead of putting it in a box of letters.  It deserves just as much respect, power and freedom as the left.

I need to let go of my journaling…but I may not be able to do it all at once.  I am addicted to other people’s approval which really only means I am addicted to projecting and attempting to face problems outwardly.  Journaling is still doing that, but it is at least only needing my own approval  (and perhaps anonymous  strangers…lol).  I guess I am weaning myself, step-down detox–decreasing the dose.

And something else…..I held Laykn in my arms as I watched this episode.  She slept, and she was so beautiful.  I stroked her tiny soft cheek with my finger and said, “Your momma loves you.” And she smiled in her sleep.  And at that moment I thought “What the hell am I searching for?  I am ALREADY in love.”

I do not want to write about this.  That must mean that I need to.  I met this guy, Chris on the internet.  He was 24.  He played the tuba or trumpet or something in the OSU band.  He was an “orthodox” christian-greek, but I didn’t know what that meant.  We talked a lot about God. I vaguely remember that we had a conversation about his family and food, that made me laugh.  I was in the “blue-bedroom” then.  I covered the walls with cutouts from teen magazines…how’s that for enculturation!?!

I have hated this guy for a long time.  He came to visit.  I was a virgin.  We did not have sex.  He never talked to me again.

It could have been many things.  Maybe he just realized how young I really was…I hope that was it.  But even if it was because I didn’t spread out for him, why should I let some creep make me feel less valuable for one night I experienced with him at 16!?

I don’t want to hate him anymore.  That is just another form of attachment.

I let it go.

Hmmm…I can easily recall past thoughts and ideas–where I was when I had them, maybe even what I was wearing if I tried hard enough, but my “outside life” (!?) well those memories are much much more elusive.  I tire quickly of hide and go seek.  The same realization came to me earlier today I need to start living outside more….no that can’t be right…….I need to focus inside more too…I need to learn to balance the inside and the outside.  I get overwhelmed when the kids are screaming and the TV is on and I am thinking.  It makes me crazy!  Outside-life doesn’t politely quiet down for my thoughts.  I need to learn to balance my attention, hold it in both places at once, because I am not fully anywhere, but I am desperately needed everywhere.

I shouldn’t be picky with these memories.  I want to cast them aside when they aren’t poetic enough to write about, but they must be presenting (present-ing) themselves for a reason, right? 

I was 19 and 20

We used to section of this little part of the hallway with the coffee table on its side, before we got the playpen and before Jaydn learned how to climb over it.  We folded blankets on the floor for a bed.  She was crawling and into everything.  She used to chase the cat, Jack, around the house “Ki!  Ki!,” and sometimes the cat chased her, though maybe more in defense of its food than play. 

Adam and I used to get high–that was the only time he really talked to me.  We would plan out exactly what we were going to do before we smoked because we’d always get distracted, or we’d spend and hour just trying to pick a movie to watch.  “Ok, we’re going to watch 300, then play “Kingdom Hearts” on the Xbox”  Adam would get the movie ready, the game ready, then we’d smoke.  We’d sit down, get all snuggly on the couch, negotiating territory for four legs under his heavy blue quilt, press play….then we’d play with Jaydn (he called her “Baby Jay”).  It happened every single time.  He’d scoop her up squealing and giggly and airplane her, running after me through the apartment.  “Get Momma! ”  In the end, we’d all collapse laughing our exhaustion on the bed.

He used to move her in her sleep, shift her around and change her position, then he’d watch her, his chin on the tops of his hands leaning on the edge of the playpen.  I saw him do this a few times from the other room before I asked him about it.  “I like to have an affect on her dreams,” he said.  I wondered if he did that to me while I was sleeping.