SO MANY THINKS. A starter blog about dating...

...see what I did there? Thinks vs. Things? Eh?

Just kidding.

I have a particular beloved friend who is dealing with reentry into the dating world while undergoing a divorce. This experience is one with which I am well-acquainted, and I share her trepidation and dissatisfaction. Many difficult questions, and specifically those that challenge our sense of place, self and self-esteem, tend to rise to the surface in dating.

This, as the previous post, is a disjointed thought about what's ingrained in us as we develop our romantic and sexual selves. Likely other posts will follow...

We grow up with, are exposed to through all types of media, and are taught so many tropes about our personal relationships that are, because they are dichotomous, gendered, misogynist and/or couched in religiosity, that ultimately are unattainable and unrealistic. 

1. We, and women in particular, are taught that our partners must be our "best friends". Again, women in particular are taught throughout childhood and adolescence that a "best friend" is a singular entity. As girls, we yearn for that, to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables, bosom friend, who knows our secrets, our hopes, dreams and whole selves far better and more intimately than any one other person may. As we mature, and as we shape our romantic, sexual and sensual Selves, never are we able to do so FOR our Selves-indeed, we are taught to do so in order to be more appealing to this "best friend" who will eventually become our (another trope) "soul mate". Herein are resulting issues:

a. When we meet potential love interests, we automatically and unthinkingly subject them, and ourselves, to a battery of unseen "requirements", a rubric for knowing each other that must be completed before the relationship is to evolve and progress: favorite color? favorite and least favorite foods? side of the bed? shoe size? hometown? 

i. I have discovered that both the trope of a singular "bosom soulmate" is not only socially false, but unreasonable for me, as it pertains to the person I share a romantic, sexual relationship with. I hope never to stop uncovering and teasing out, and discovering that person. I hope never to have the same question, nor the same answer, for them twice, and vice versa. 

ii. Recognizing and honoring that, outside the romantic sphere, there are multiple people for whom I feel a deep, intimate love without romance or sexual attraction, has changed what I expect and what I view as necessary to receive from my partner. There are many whose input I respect and rely on. It is completely possible to use the human resources outside our romantic relationships to discuss said romantic attachments. It is not reasonable nor acceptable that we place the full weight of our expectations and fears upon a single partner whose role it becomes to at all times know us inside and out, nor should we expect that that partner's intimacy and most intimate self belongs solely to us. 

To follow: In what ways are we taught to deny our sensual selves when relating to others? How does this influence the ways in which we hold expectations for our romantic relationships, and place undue pressure on ourselves therein?

The Self as a Fractal

While mathematics and especially theoretical mathematics are not my strong suit, I have always had a fascination with the ways in which chaos theory and fractal math apply to socio-cultural and social-emotional situations. I have no idea what spurred the following poorly-expressed theory, but after a week of intense conflict with my Self, it came out in this form and fashion. A succinct way of distilling down all that I've been agonizing over, to be sure.

I have battled hard against anxiety and depression since I was a teen, and PTSD or CPTSD since my mid-20s (following a series of what is most easily described as Highly Unfortunate Events). Perhaps the below theorizing is the result of, a few days ago, finally having felt that I had battled my own demons and won...

"Humans in general are alternately the chaotic arms and spirals, and the central, tightly-coiled, absolute value in a fractal. Systemically, if applied to the individual psyche and psychology, we can posit that:

a. where a conflict between the Self and CPTSD, anxiety, depression, etc. exists, the central, Mandelbrot-based "c" value (the relationship between the Real and the Imaginary parts of an equation) are reflected by the current mental-emotional stressors; thus the Self becomes the derivative sequences (arms, spirals, infinite iterations); the central absolute can be considered both the cause and the solution to such chaotic, harmful Self-conflict: filial-tribal networks, community, learned healthy coping, resilience; AND:

b. the inverse can also be true, wherein the Self becomes the central, absolute value, having the most constant stability, as healthy coping, communities, and resilience are built; we might posit that information can flow both outward and back inward along a Julia set (this being the result of each further derivation from the original). Given this inverse relationship and the theoretical exchange between Chaos (the world around us; personal relationships; existent unhealthy coping) and subsequent Order (we observe; we experience; we are given input; we grow), can we teach ourselves how to become anchors in the eye of, rather than being the, Storm?"

What are our obligations to one another in relation to this ever-inverting and reverting system of emotional intelligence and growth? It would seem clearer progressively that we must encourage and empower one another to be unafraid of the two key and opposing states of Being: one that appears on the surface unmanageable, but is anchored firmly within the Self, and another which is chaotic  to the individual (whose mental-emotional state appears as many derivative arms), but is anchored in multiple ways.

Footnote-I will likely come back and add more to this later...

Resurrecting a neglected project...

I have not posted here nor on Sunday Morning Poems (a collaboration between myself, Lauren Leslie, and Nicole Hardina) in what seems like eons. 

But, here's a small thing, written in between checking things from both work and personal lists that never seem to become shorter.

It needs a title, which is not my forte and  never has been, but, it is still a sort-of poem...


6/20/2019

And when there is still, as the river-valley winds die,
haze scattering light across what's left
of snow, which clings like Dall sheep do
between peaks,
we call what breaks the treeline greens
and tundra rusts
fire. Somewhere south of us, it burns.
There, when by careless match or half-cigarette
or (disbelieve it?) lightning
strike, stillness is the beak of a boreal
woodpecker. Listen:
never more than three beats
at once, lest what we eat
discovers us, glossy black eye bent
close to dry bark, to crusted sap hardened amber,
which needs no match, no flicked ember
to set alight, within which we dream
(if ever the heat lets us sleep)
there are mosquitoes, gossamer
old wings containing old codices
of new life. And newness we crave wholly,
while the mountains trap thunderstorms,
and we wait
burning too, for a rain that smells
of snow.