Wednesday: Today I’m grateful for feeling…
Tired and blah most of the day. I woke up feeling as one does after a big cry the day before: incredibly heavy, fuzzy, and lethargic. I think it’s all from the debate. I’m trying to put it behind me and focus on what I can control but I can feel it like a weight pressing down.
Grief over Ludvig and worry for the fellow SIA member who went off camera on Monday. I still don’t know if she’s alive or not. I hope she’s there next week. This sits on me like a weight as well: the sorrow from the past, the uncertainty of the present, and my helplessness in all of it. What I can do is not panic so that’s the game plan.
Revelatory, scared shitless, excited, and pukish at the next phase of the journey. I’ve been piecing it together tentatively in my head for about a week and a half now, how to get over my fear of arousal and pleasure. How to move forward without my dad’s chokehold every time I want to connect with my partner. Through a combination of a very intimate SIA meeting today followed by therapy, it has clicked together and I feel sick just thinking about it. If the vast majority of my codependence journey came down to loving myself and having self esteem before I could have healthy relationships, I think I have to approach sexuality in the same way. I think I need to masturbate. I need to form a loving sexual relationship with myself to embody a non-predatory, healthy form of arousal and pleasure. I’ve been trying to form this while having sex with Cubu but it’s too difficult, he’s too male. My skin is crawling right now. I need to practice healthy self-love in this way so I can extend it and enjoy it with others. I think this is it, I think this is the route that I’ve been gearing towards all year but looking at it makes me want to scream, I’m so wildly uncomfortable. How did I not know I had been sexually abused when I react this strongly every time? I’m also really excited to have figured this out though, to feel like I have a path. And this one may even feel good by the end of it in a conventional way lol.
Scared and maybe proud that I bought a vibrator? I think things were inserted into me as a child so I couldn’t even look at the internal ones. I bought a little external bullet. I feel like the dirtiest thing on the planet, I feel so fucking gross. My hope is to use it in my self practice and once it begins to feel safe and pleasurable rather than feeling like I’m assaulting myself, I’ll integrate it into sex with Cubu to try and bridge that gap.
Astonished and guilty that I told Cubu about all this. About my plan, about the vibrator. It felt unfair because I’ve essentially said I’m going to start masturbating and I’m only going to have sex with you when my body is on board with it, but you still can’t masturbate. He took it very well, saying that if this is what I need to do to move forward, that he supports it. I think he’s telling the truth but I feel wretched. I’m also unwilling to budge on being less controlling until it works so there’s guilt for that too.
Called by the universe to read Reclaiming Pleasure, a book about building a somatic relationship with yourself after sexual trauma. I have checked it out, read half of chapter one, and returned this book at least 4 times in the past two years. I haven’t seen it in probably a year. Today it landed on my cart and I took up the challenge. I’m now on chapter three and I’m devoted to reading through it while I have lunch.
