you can't make homes out of human beings.

(someone should have already told you that.)

reading back on my previous posts, I can't help but feel like I've been trying to censor myself, even if it's just to my future self. I'll write out what I feel here, today, in all my wildness and weirdness.

1) my number is ten right now. I can have sex, and not have it mean very much - with the tenth boy, it was just because it wasn't a big deal and I was curious and hungry. it was really very bad, and I did not enjoy it. he held me afterwards without being asked, and I found myself tucked against him, not sure what I should be feeling. 

2) the A situation. I had a grown-up conversation where I tried to ask the things I want to know, and he put a lid on monogamy. I can feel myself tumbling into something that scares me. I see a future where I fall in love and I can't resolve the feelings of inadequacy and failure associated with a partner that has sex with other people. maybe it would be OK if he only had sex with casual randoms, I reason with myself. maybe it would be a fluid thing where we had rules and boundaries and sometimes it closed up. maybe it would be OK if he gave me the emotional support I needed. maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. 

I wonder if I can give all of myself if I am sleeping with other people?

he brought me back a book from his travels. I am making ice-cream from it; silky and tender and sweet. I need to watch it; I need to be careful.  

3) D comes up more and more. we've been emailing, very briefly.

time to deal, I guess. have a coffee, have the chat. 

I know what I want and I'm desperately afraid I'll never find it. 

A Song of A

Six times in three weeks. We fuck ravenously, delightfully. The heft of him in my hands, in my mouth, in my pussy, in my ass - delicious. To look at him is to want him. We have been outside the house precisely twice; both to the bar across the street from me. I don't even know if it really matters. I want to see his house, want to fuck him there and wear a shirt of his home. His smell is arousing; when I lie in the sheets of our distant fuck it sends something through me, something raw and filthy and fresh. His skin is strangely sweet, with a hint of bitter musk and salt.

He's this close to fucking me and coming in me, the bastard. It's pretty much the last barrier. I would let him, if we were dating exclusively. I don't know what the deal is there, but I don't think he wants that, really. I should just ask; people are not all like me. Sarah thinks I have a particularly vivid inner life; maybe A does not.

His dick is the greatest thing I have ever had, lets just leave it at that.

He holds me indelicately and it feels like I might break in his arms. Such arms, too. Mmmm. He's just big all over. I want to fuck him sweetly sometime, but I don't even know if that's something I'm good at.

I do not think he wants to date me and that makes me sad. If I found that out for sure - I would have to stop, wouldn't I? Because I would catch feelings, eventually. I might already have done so.

a letter to my (old) lover

Dear D,

You're back in the country, and you're seeping into my life. Slowly, slowly, your name comes up in conversation, and your face appears in digital colour. You sent me a request to be friends over six months ago. I wonder if you did it while you were drunk. H said she left you alone in a bar; maybe that was what it took. Maybe you thought, well, it's time we unfroze the Cold War. Maybe you didn't think at all. I fear the latter more.

Sometimes I fantasise about rejecting you, of seeing you at T's wedding and just leaving you cold. I don't think that will happen. This is what will happen, I think.

- Hello
- Hello, how have you been 
- Great, and you? I hear you've done ____
- Oh, yes, I'm fantastic - really loving the _____
- And your family are well?
- Oh yes, very well

Ad nauseum.

I miss - something. The feeling he gave me. The feeling that I was with exactly the right person. But he wasn't, was he? Not then, not there.

Maybe love,
SL

the ghost ship that didn't carry us

Earlier today, I read a few lines that struck something within me, from the Dear Sugar advice column at The Rumpus.

I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

As I approach 26, I am more and more aware of my own capabilities and weaknesses. I fundamentally tend towards laziness, am a little too critical and often become bogged in minutiae - seeing the forest only for individual trees. But I'm also generous, and loving, and good at being good to a person - really, genuinely, all-my-heart good. 

I spent six, almost seven months across 2015-2016 with a boy who loved me but wasn't enough. Who roused tender feelings, and sparked to life yearnings that I had not experienced before. But - it was not enough. I did not respect him as I need to respect my partner in life. I did not feel that bone-deep knowledge that I did not need anybody else, that he was IT. I cheated on him, once, and did not feel significant remorse. 

I read the things that Dimitri and I used to write to each other, to say to each other that I recorded faithfully - and I wonder about my ghost ship; the spectre of what could of been, and mourned it once more. I am twenty five and eight months. I am trying to be better, every day. I want to know that someday, I will feel like I did at twenty-one again.