For every light that fades,

He has a passion that sparks my own

My eyes used to be covered,

my ears rudely blocked,

my tongue carrying a barrier of sound

to block what I can never allow

into my brain.

Images, sounds, words -

these things I cannot erase.

Kisses in secret,

touches unseen by public eyes,

caresses in places no one knows -

these things I cannot forget.

Breathy whispers carried

upon tiny waves of ecstasy unknown

collide with undesired grasping

and forbidden tasting of unripened fruit

in a frightening mesh of rage and desire,

of heated passion and sheer disgust.

Wrong or right,

true or false,

lust or love...

Let me be unbound now,

so that I may learn the difference.

Stop my hurried feet from its flight

so that desire, at last, can embrace me.

Open, curious, vulnerable...

yes, I believe I am ready now to face my fear. 

So I'm feeling much better after last night's rant - which was a bit scattered at best, I'll admit - and ready to report, now being of sound mind and of sound body.

I had an experience online recently with a guy I vaguely remember from a vocational class in high school. He's currently married... and in the midst of a divorce. He finds me online, and and we chat for two minutes while I try to remember who he is and arrange to see him in town and catch up on life after high school. He admits to being interested in me after all this time.

Then he asks me to strip down in front of my webcam for him to watch and enjoy, to put it mildly.

While I can honestly say I've never messed with the video capability of my webcam like that, I'm certainly not going to do it with someone I hardly know or trust. Then, he sends pics of what he has to offer (let's just say, I wasn't impressed) and says that I can touch it (which I had no desire to do). Now, mind you, this guy is in the middle of a divorce, and has absolutely no idea of what's happened with me. Nor does he particularly seem to care. I can understand about a guy's sex drive and how it can mess with rational thinking... but honestly, how is it possible to be so...rude to the point that no one else's feelings matter as long as your needs are met? After telling him about my (lack of) carnal knowledge, he backed off for the moment and went away for the night. The following night, he finds me again...at about 2am, and wants to hook up. Again he offers to let me touch his underwhelming package. This time I told him that I wasn't that girl and that I'm not going that route unless it's someone I'm actually involved with and trust. This actually silenced him. After that, I deleted him from my friends list.

The moral of the story: never demand something you don't truly deserve from someone you don't know. Even if you've wanted them since junior year.

This is an all-too-familiar scenario that drives me completely crazy, especially as someone who's been on this insane rollercoaster where the promise of a meaningful connection is but an arm's reach away, only to see it slip away due to some unforseen circumstance.

Guys, if you're going to pursue a girl, do it right. Get to know her, and let her into your world (little by little, if need be). Be genuinely interested, patient, honest, and open-minded. And most importantly - when in pursuit, be completely untethered! I can not stress this enough. Guys, if you're with someone or getting over someone, don't even consider going after someone else until you know that you have severed whatever ties bind you to them. [And yes, this goes for us girls, too.] Start with these basics, and go from there. Choose to ignore this at your peril - and see if your heart doesn't get broken.

Personally, I'm done playing around.

So guys, approach with caution... and consider this your first and only warning.

Here's an observation. Well, more of a rant from a very pissed-off virgin...

Every man wants to be a woman's first - the one unforgettable standard by which others after him are measured...provided that he does his job correctly, of course.

Some days it seems that every man wants to be your first in the sack, but unwilling to sacrifice himself to protect you from the heartbreaking aftermath of the morning after -which can be likened to the horror found after a hit-and-run on a dangerous mountain curve - when you awaken to find his side of the bed empty.

So tell me something, guys:

Why is it that there's so much stress on a man to be sexually active and on a woman to be sexually pure? And for the girls who do remain true to this double standard, why does there seem to be either a line of guys (different personalities, a mixture of intentions) ready to change that or a flurry of them running away for outright fear of an attachment they have no intention of fulfilling? Some say these are the girls you save for when you're finally ready to settle down after sowing your wild oats. Others attribute it to being inexperienced and prefer girls with experience. These things are understandable, even valid in some cases.

What I don't think I fully understand are the guys that show an interest, are genuinely intrigued, and draw closer, raising a girl's hopes before dashing them to the ground, not knowing they had been shattered many times before. Yet she continues to smile with a very genuine understanding and respect as the war rages on the inside. For someone who has waited on that someone special all of their lives, this is so hard to take, and they feel that they can only take so much before they give up altogether. It hurts, it frustrates, and it confuses because the thought comes to their minds - What's wrong with me? Did I not do or say the right thing? What more could I have done? With this thought they withdraw back into their shells, leaving the next person with the task of drawing them back out again.

I guess my question now is this: how many times can this keep happening before I say "No more...I'm done"?

It started with silence –

unceasing, loud, violent, unbreakable.

Not a shard has fallen,

regardless of the effort.

Scream to the heavens,

watch it reverberate in sonic waves

and crash against the barriers.

No control, no release,

no chance of redemption from imminent death.

A whisper here translates

to nothing more than white noise,

the specter of conversations past.

It meets the same mute fate

of other sounds before it in this audible darkness.

It all started with silence –

unceasing, loud, violent, unbreakable.

Nary a shard will fall, and aren’t we all

looking for some kind of way to shatter it?

And this is how it ends.

So, not long ago I wrote about the still-shocking passing of music icon Michael Jackson, who died of a cardiac arrest at the age of fifty. I listened to his music fervently for days (and still doing it, in fact). In doing this I found that his heart, his soul, his pleasure and pain - in short, his very essence - lives in the music. From the driving bass line of "Beat It" to the back-to-basics soul stylings of "Butterflies," from living life "Off The Wall" to starting with the "Man In The Mirror," his art was intertwined with his life. To listen to the songs, one could not feel that this man was now gone.

The dreams are still there.

Today I felt like screaming until there was no voice left. 

That's because today was one of those 'People Suck' kind of days. The two posts I discovered earlier (Ode to the Nice Girls and Ode to the Nice Guys) are a great example. The more I read them, the more I was incensed by how silly and sheeplike we can be sometimes... and the more I wished I could have written those rants (*laughing*). Well, now I get to write one of my own...

So growing up, I went through a period where I didn't trust guys as far as I could throw them, thanks to one too many bad experiences. My father (God rest his soul) and my brother were the only real exceptions to the rule. It was just as well since being a heavyset girl in junior high was a major guy repellent in itself. I had crushes on guys - none of which saw me as dateable - and I didn't see myself as being good enough for the ones I knew as friends, so I never asked. Eventually I started talking to guys after a considerable weight loss and small confidence boost, but it was still awkward. I didn't have my first kiss until the age of 22, and what followed was nearly 8 months of weird uncertainty and heavy petting from a guy that never really cared for me anyway. There was a nice guy even then, and I passed him up 'cause I didn't think I deserved him (though it was what I really wanted). Being the stupid girl I was, I gave myself over to what I think of now as cold seduction. He was the first and last guy I ever involved myself with.  

When anyone loses their cool over hearing 'I couldn't go out with you, you're like a sister/brother to me,' or the ever-reliable 'you're such a great friend, it would be too weird,' I immediately relate to them, and have the strong desire to applaud them. And I do 'cause it's truly a crime (not to mention completely asinine) for a real treasure to be passed up for a bunch of rhinestones. I know this 'cause I've made that mistake with a few great guys. But knowing they're happy now is fantastic. Being a little older, a little wiser, I know exactly what I want and I'm ready to go after that treasure that I was so blind to before.

It's understandable to be upset with those that don't see what you're worth. But it's crazy to believe that an entire gender is that blind and that insensitive that the only way to grab their attention is to be just like them in their vapid (and very little) 'all-about-me' world... especially when you've made it this far being the amazing person you are! What kind of sense does that make? The fact is that there's always someone to appreciate you for you. There aren't many around, and not always single, but there's always hope for redemption. There's always a chance for someone's blinders to fall from their eyes and see the inner beauty that you possess. 

Yeah, people do tend to suck for reasons none of us seem to fully understand. Good news is that we're not all alike in personality - we all need the basics of human survival. That includes love and belonging.