Home Bound.

I was so bored that I lay in the bath until the water ran cold.

Must have been an hour since I got in.

And I’ve done nothing but stare at the reflection in the water, a still surface except for the occasional ripple due to my breathing.

One breath in.

One breath out.

The candle wick shortens as it burns the time away. Kind of like how I feel.

My cat comes in to check on me to make sure I’m still there.

I am.

I think about nothing and I think about everything.

It’s like, although I don’t have this novel virus, it’s like I caught something else, as I’m sure thousands of other people in the world have too.

Displaced from jobs, lives uprooted and dismantled at the core, I feel this deep rooted unsettling feeling that’s made my days ache by uncomfortably slow.

Boredom, confusion, uncertainty, stress: those are but measly words to describe how I actually feel.

My whole life has been become affected by this cacophony of madness that’s permeated all of society, which is rare considering I live so far removed from the world, all the way up in Alaska.

Without a steady job, without a social life, lacking the inspiration to be creative like I see so many of my friends being, feeling like a dump truck whenever I try and exercise, I’m struggling to recognize what it is I’m living for day after day.

I know I’m not alone, but damn does it feel lonely nonetheless.

Sleep, once a sacred sanctuary for me to recharge and reboot, is fleeting, at best. It’s a futile attempt at getting a reprieve from all the daily headlines repeatedly reporting deaths and new cases. I end up waking up multiple times in the night sweating, heart pounding due to stress I can’t quite place its origins at, and where dreams once roamed, I now wake to nightmares so terrifying that I lie there petrified and paralyzed.

I don’t know if this feels worse because I was vulnerable before all of this madness happened? I had just made a breakthrough step in trying to find help, contacting a therapist, only to be denied due to the new social distancing mandate.

It’s fine, I’ll just live with my feelings then. I’m fine! It’s fine.

But I can’t even describe what it is I’m feeling. Like I said before, it’s worthlessness, but also laziness and depression, but it feels mutated and more powerful.

Anyhow, it was during one of my continued binges on Netflix that something Jane said (from Jane the Virgin) resonated with me.

Her husband Michael had just died due to complications of being shot whilst investigating an international drug lord (straight out of a telenovela!), and part of how she began the process of healing, was to write her romance novel about it.

My husband hasn’t died (husband, where art thou?), but I do understand writing and it’s relationship with healing and sifting through emotions and feelings, and so that’s why I’m here today, as this is the one thing that consistently brings me solace and understanding during rough times (and these are certainly rough times, am I right?).

While these are uncertain times which have brought me (and countless others) stress and anxiety, I have to look on the bright side and embrace all the things I normally wouldn’t do in my day to day routine.

I shouldn’t be looking at what I don’t have right now, I should be looking at all I’m blessed to still have.

I’m blessed to be able to spend all this time with my family. I’ve had dinner with them every night, complete with cocktails at the start and coffees to cinch the night right.

I’m blessed to be able to work still, which I’m enormously grateful for, and while I know it’s minimal, and teetering on a day to day basis, I’m still able to get out of the house and make other people’s days better, one cup of coffee at a time.

*safely, always

I’m blessed at this opportunity to reach out to friends I don’t talk to often, making contact with those I’m always “too busy” to catch up with, as well as start conversation with new friends (hey you!).

It takes some adjustment, certainly, to acclimatize to this temporary way of life, but it’s for the greater good , and I mind as well find joy in the little things.

So yeah, I’m home bound for the moment, but I’m home. And I’m alive, safe, healthy, and surrounded by those whom I love and cherish the most. And that love is stronger than all of this uncertainty and disruption. And it was strong enough that it got me out of that cold bath tub and these hands back onto a keyboard where they belong..

The Wrong Path.

You know when you’re traveling through life, taking certain paths, lefts and rights, and you notice that things look a little familiar?

Like, maybe you’ve been on this road before?

But instead of the road being one fraught with happy memory and a welcome embrace, it’s littered with heartbreak and tragic reminders of the wrong turn you made and the suffering you made whilst pushing through?

It seems that I have returned to that very same path. It’s dodgy, cobwebbed, and dark, and while I’m disappointed I’ve once again become reunited with a road I thought I would never return to, I’m also grateful for the opportunity to change my ways, once and for all.

Now that I know that this is a path I’ve not only been down before, but survived, I feel better equipped at getting through it. And hopefully my time spent here won’t be as emotionally exhausting as the first time walking these same sad steps.

The story begins with my somewhat bad tendency to get Tinder whenever I travel through different cities. There’s no way I would ever download it where I live (for fear of swiping to find the local bag boy I see at Safeway, or stumbling across one of my regulars at the coffee shop), but other cities? Yes please.

See, back when I first started using the app, it was out of pure and harmless curiosity. What’s the local flavor like of Southern California, San Francisco, London, the East Bay?

I very quickly discovered that it was essentially a hookup app, very sexual. At the time, I wasn’t interested in one-night stands and sexting, but as the years wear on for a woman like me, those feelings start to develop more intensely, naturally.

So, during one of my last expeditions out of town, I decided to create a profile, at last interested in the possibility of dipping my toes into that kind of “relationship,” so to speak.

I’m young, I have desires… so why not?

It didn’t take long for me to match with some guys, and it was even sooner that I started developing a sort of textual relationship with one in particular, purely sexual.

Having been somewhat dusty in that department, it felt like my abandoned attic of a sex life was lit with a match and flooded with light and vibrant color.

As time wore on in my vacation, the more excited I became at actually getting to hook up with this guy, with the bad boy earring, 6ft4” frame, big lips, and foreign accent. I was ready, all loaded and in my “freakum” dress, as my friends so subtly put it.

My match and I had been talking about getting together pretty intensely for awhile, so on the last day, when the time came for him to bust a move, he ended up avoiding me, making up excuses as to why he wasn’t free. I was shocked, naturally, but also hurt, confused, and feeling some pretty intense rejection.

I’ve been denied before, mostly for not putting out, and ironically, it seems that when I want to put out (so against that phrase), I still end up getting rejected.

I couldn’t understand why a guy I had been texting pretty hot and heavy with wouldn’t want to actually experience all the things we had talked about, with me, in person. What’s better: a tangible person to have fun with, or pictures, texts, and videos?

Who knows, but I guess this particular guy preferred the latter (and of course didn’t have the decency to be honest and tell me that from the get go). And who knows, maybe he had a girlfriend, or was too nervous to follow through and walk the walk. It’s definitely likely he was talking to other girls, but the real reason? I’ll never know.

What I do know was that I was hurt, and what happened next was an embarrassing move on my part, done out of weakness and desire.

Instead of staying rightfully mad at him and deleting him from my life with a good ole fashioned Lily Allen “F*** You”, I reached back out, and we talked half a dozen more times, about SEX.

It’s like I was addicted. I couldn’t stop my fingers from typing up how hot I was feeling, I couldn’t stop my body from sliding under the covers in intense desire, and I couldn’t refrain from staying up well past my beauty sleep awaiting his racy response.

Even though I was essentially spurned, I still wanted to be in contact with him. It was like he was my drug, and I wanted that damn high. Despite all the warning signs I got from him, despite him CHOOSING NOT TO MEET ME IN PERSON AND EXPERIENCE ALL THAT WE HAD TALKED ABOUT, and in light of all the tears he caused to flood their way out of me, I still chose to sext him back because he was making me feel things I hadn’t felt in such a long time.

Which brings me back to this pathetic path. This path that I have historically taken when I ignore telltale signs that someone isn’t right for me. The path of torture where I suffer through the brambles and the pain hoping and believing that there’s something beautiful at the end, which of course, there never is.

Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.

I guess I deserved this. As a result of focusing so hard on what I wanted, I lost sight of what I deserved, and this guy was, and is, not what I deserve.

As I begin the difficult task of sifting through my emotions, I’m starting to unearth and survey what it is about this situation that warranted such a reaction from me, and how it’s having an impact on my life and my health.

It’s not that I feel guilt from the patriarch that it’s shameful for a woman to be human and have the same sexual desires like men have (though that’s very real in our society).

I don’t feel embarrassment that I engaged in racy sexting with a stranger because at the time, I felt confident and beautiful and it’s something I wanted to do, for me.

And it’s not that I’m regretful that I let him into my life, because he brought me back to a place where I could better understand myself and what I deserve.

If anything, I feel I let myself down because I’ve been down this road before and I obviously didn’t learn the first time around.

See, I often find myself stuck with who I am, who I want to be, and who I should be.

This particular relationship was out of the sheer desire to do something I wanted to do, to dabble in the horrifically titled “slut phase” (can we call it just exploring your sexuality?) and I think I’ve learned that sometimes what I believe I want doesn’t always align with who I am.

Despite me feeling like I could be ready for hooking up, I won’t ever be ready, because that’s just not who I am nor who I want to be, and deep down, I think I’ve always known that, and that’s why it felt so wrong to continue talking with him. I also found that just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

I also need to accept rejection simply for what it is. To him, I was just photos and text, and other than that, he knew nothing about me so I shouldn’t take it so personally. And instead of hanging on to his attention like a dehydrated flower, I need to learn how to water my own damn roots.

I’m slowly learning to trust the signs, to listen to that voice in my head and to assess the feelings I get instinctually when something or someone doesn’t feel right and aligned with who I am.

I’ll sext again, don’t get me wrong (I find myself to be very good at it… I am a writer, after all), I just won’t do it if there’s no future with the recipient, because while sexting finishes well, (pun intended), it’s temporary, and I want something that will last far longer and be a part of a relationship that’s bigger than a one night stand.

So for now, my light in my abandoned attic of a sex life will stay on, but I will be its sole caretaker.

Ayyyyy a little self-love goes a long way.

And that path I found myself back on? I’ve finally decided to step off of it and venture into the new and unknown, knowing that if I ever do find myself back there again, it’s because I let it happen.

My life is in my own hands and as my friend Whitney said it best, “Don’t make a season out of a situation.”

I have to remember that sometimes, while things break my heart, they fix my vision; and ultimately, put me on the right path again.