nothing sweeter than the smell of sweat

tears rolling down your face. the vapours all up in the place. guess i’m alive today at least, while i ventilate.

ten reasons why i’m still here…

i haven’t really been talking much about dating on here the last few days. for a few reasons. well, first, i’m not. dating that is. shocker. broken record on repeat over and over- SF dating is hard and different and weird and blah. there are tons of other reasons. mostly, since i’m doing nablopomo i thought maybe you’d get reallllly bored with dating and relationships and want to hear me talk about self awareness, astrology, personal growth and love. hah. well tough. you got that anyway.

but tonight i’m going to talk about a totally weird and totally normal thing that is part of dating, and mating. it’s funny, because i wrote a paper in college on this exact subject, and here i am about to use what i learned. i didn’t pay for that.

BO. as in body odor. we all have it. well, could. we wash prematurely to send it the message that it is not welcome. and we wear chemically created goo in our underarms to avoid emitting the odor when we are not washing. and perfume/cologne, we all wear that for different reasons. either way, in our culture, BO is just plain gross and stinky.

except when it is not. i will bet that, unless you were raised in a completely OCD household, and have a obvious lack of perspective in life, you’ve smelled someones BO and thought, oh, that’s not really that gross. it just…is. because we all emit pheromones, smells specific to our body chemistry, that mix well with others’. or don’t. and not so oddly, something that would smell super stinky to someone else, may not smell that stinkified to us.

and, applying a scientific perspective to love (mating, same thing right?) for moment, i can clearly see how this human ‘function’ would prove to be really very handy. some people have smells that you just can’t stand. and some have smells that you oddly enjoy, and may bring emotional/mental comfort of some sort. my ex had a smell so strong (not BO, just body chemistry) that after we broke up i had to wash my sheets three and four times until i could sleep. my mom has a comforter at her house that we used once at christmas during a visit and it held his smell for probably a year and a half after we broke up. we all have a personal scent. and that can sometimes, usually actually, include perfume, shampoo, lotion, laundry detergent… but even if it includes those outside scents, they are mixed with our body oils and chemistry to become “our smell.” and it’s these scents that help us unconsciously, at an genetic level, decipher who should and should not be our mate.

i have a friend that doesn’t wear deodorant. a thirty year old male friend that just doesn’t do it.  he has decided that if someone can handle his man stench, then that’s a positive sign. and, mostly, i agree with him. there is something to be said about someones scent, even if it is BO.

this summer i had a rendezvous or two with a boy that one of my guy friends thought had terrible, no good BO. gag inducing BO. and though said boy rode his bike all day, walked barefoot in the park all too often, and wore the same clothes for days at a time, his smell never really bothered me (mind you i had witnessed the shower time, so i knew he wasn’t, in fact, completely dirty).

and last week, i was nearly, for lack of better word, intoxicated by the smell of a particular someones post bike ride sweat… more than once. i believe it is part of the bigger plan to help us attract a mate that is right for us.

smells. we have them. we are dirty, messy, living creatures that ooze and leak all sorts of questionably fragrant substances. so when they don’t bother you, and in fact may even entice you, you can know that you’ve at least got that right.

however, last night, the group of 5 grown, large, and hairy men next to me rocking out at the pixies shows were. not. that. case. i gagged more than once.

thanks for that, universe. the reminder that most of the boys in SF just plain stink.

you know i had my share of doubt, until i saw the vapours in your eyes.

vapours- islands.

oh nola, how you break my heart while simultaneously band aiding it back together

louisiana, come go away with me. we’ll take the highway, i’ll see you in between. if i listened to my head, never would have come. spend two days without it, just the sleeping in the sun.

day 2.

and i, again, have no idea where to begin. my mind is, per usual post nola visits, spiraling. last year at this exact moment i was in bad shape (like a good moment of bad shape?).

i was on a plane, at 30,000 ft above solid ground, heartbroken. writing. trying not to lose it in front of innocent planesitters.

here i am a year later, heartbroken in many of the same ways. but in a completely different place in so many of the other ways. the heartbreak this year is different.

i was explaining my love for nola to a friend that was there with me, on his first visit to the fine city. well, trying to. and the most concrete thing i could think of to explain my love was the people. my friends in nola are real friends. genuine, connection and care filled relationships. with one hundred percent acceptance of me. and us. and whenever i am around them, there is no awkward catch up/get on the same page period. we just are. the relationship continues. we live in the moment. and enjoy one another in the moment.

and i suppose that is why leaving is so heartbreaking. no matter what, the moment is over. and there will be more. but, i just don’t want it to be over, ever.

you see, it’s hard to know that you are doing the exact thing you need to be doing in life. and not want to change anything (well, you know) but still have these amazing connections and ‘moments’ that you have to…leave.

and it’s not that i don’t have these moments of connectedness in my ‘real’ life. i do. gosh, i do. i have an amazing life, for which i am endlessly grateful to the universe. but i cannot seem to process the idea that there is another world of greatness 2,500 miles away. that i can’t experience more than once or twice a year. in person, at least.

and there is one part all of this that i just cannot self therapize through. you see, i’m pretty good at the ‘thinking through’ part of life, self-awareness, growth, and relational schemas. where i’m not so good is the feeling part.

i don’t know how to ‘process’ feelings. and maybe that’s it. feelings aren’t supposed to be processed? either way, i find myself stuck when i come to the point of ‘this is what happened and why i feel what i do.’ but then i’m not sure i know really what to do with the feeling with which i’m left. and i get stuck. very, very stuck.

i know for certain that sf is for me. that everything i am doing in life is exactly what i should be. but why do i feel like this when i leave nola? why are there people in my life that i want to be around much much much more than an annual vacation or two provides? i mean, i have friends all over the states. and i love visiting them, and i miss them, a lot. but i don’t feel like this when i leave.

like a piece of my heart is gone.

i’m sure there are pieces of the story i’m not telling you, in regards to the laundry list of reasons new orleans, and its people, affect me so. but know this- i end up, in a worse way, in the same stuck position. feeling helpless and lost a little by trying to just sit with my feelings. and say ‘they are what they are’ and i even know why they are. but they are hard, intricate and complex feelings that touch on so many other things in me.

i know that any therapist or intuitive would tell me to just embrace my feelings. that they are for a reason, and to trust the universe, and let things unfold.

and i can, and will do that. but right here, on an airplane, in suspended time letting it unfold is challenging. that doesn’t mean i won’t do it it. hell, i have no choice. but i feel like if i keep thinking, writing, processing, i’ll have an answer.

and if there is one thing i’ve definitely learned for certain, it’s that life doesn’t work that way.

drinking our coffee, under a canopy. never saw the morning, slept through half the day. there’s thunder and there’s lightening a hundred miles away. i got my hands full most of the time.

i got my hands full, all summer long. i’ve got my hands full.

‘Louisiana’ – The Walkmen

breakable girls and boys

we are so fragile and our cracking bones make noise and we are just breakable girls and boys.

so i am sitting on a plane listening to music that i am sure is about to kill me. i am about to lose it, and have no idea why. well, i have about seventy ideas. all of them lead me to a place where i have no control. and the more and more people start to read these ramblings i call writing the more i feel like i should some how alter the content of this blog to be less personal, more analytical, less crazy about to lose it on a plane steph. but right now, at thirty thousand feet above real life, i just don’t want to do that.

i’m sad. and confused. and connected. supported. and alone. and leaving an amazing vacation and an amazing city to return to amazing friends in an amazing city. and i am wholeheartedly bawl my eyes out sad. i’m sad to leave vacation, a fantasy world, to return to real life unemployment and dating drought. i am sad that someone is going to read this and not get me. and sad at the honest and unbelievably positive response i have received for writing. there is just something missing in it right now. and i am scared that i am leaning on past good things to fill this void. and when those past good things don’t work, or end for the same reason they did then, i am left feeling a little less sure that this all will work out.  and how do you process something that you know you want but just cannot have. where do you turn when you have no control over something. something you want so badly it breaks your heart. and since you can’t have it, how are you supposed know that it truly is that something that you want so badly.

how is it that six months after leaving my job, friends, home and life and moving across the country to start anew, i am already feeling restless. why am i reveling in this weekend’s discussion of grad school and a work routine that lead to a missed chance to connect one more time before i left. why do i long for all the things i was so excited to have already accomplished. ready for new. maybe it is unemployment, feeling one hundred percent undesired, or unsure of what my next steps are but i feel restless and stagnant and worthless and sad. and heartbroken. for reasons i just cannot figure out.

heartbreak. the feeling that you have no idea how to continuing moving through life due to a lack of the returned love, desire, spark and presence of the one thing you feel you cannot breathe without. here i am, on this plane, simply heartbroken. for seventy different reasons. all uncontrollable by me. because that’s what heartbreak is. something you would put all the power in your mind, body and soul to combat. and it still wins. leaving you feeling defeated, at loss of energy, hope, and worth all while simultaneously smothering you in the memories of what you had prior to the loss that made you realize that it was the only thing you ever needed.

this is a real life glimpse of the story of a twentysomething midwestern girl overwhelmed with love, honest connection, distance, friendship, accomplishment, and pure old fashioned heartbreak.

but i finally saw the piece of love in your face, that bathed me in regret then you drove me to places i’ll never forget