Word Vomit: My Life Since Graduation

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been feeling again like I don't know what to say. A lot has been going on in my internal life, and it's a little hard to pin it all down and have it figured out enough to share it with other people.

Graduating college and moving across the country (again) but this time moving away from upstate New York for good has been kind of hard on me. I'm missing my friends in New York, and I'm missing the two pretty awesome lovers I'd started seeing not long before I left (curse my timing), and I'm missing the admittedly stressful busy life I had there. I'm kind of reeling at the end of my college life, my mode of being for the last four years, and also to a certain extent the end of my childhood. (Or adolescence or whatever.)

I'm feeling the fact that my friends from San Francisco mostly don't actually live here anymore. I'm lonely.

The worst thing right now is that a major reason I came back west at all this summer was to be available to explore the relationship I started with S when I was here over winter break. We've been talking over the internet for months, talking about what we'd do when I got here and making all sorts of loosely imagined plans. I was very excited to see him.

For a variety of reasons, though, he seems not to be making himself available to me, and I don't think he wants to pursue the relationship anymore. Maybe he never did and my expectations were just too high; I don't know. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it, as I think he may be avoiding me. We've only hung out with other people there. From small hints, though, it seems like he's no longer that interested.

I'm disappointed, to say the least. Even in the last few weeks he'd talked about how excited he was that he'd get to see me soon. I was very much looking forward to actually getting to spend time with him. Yet it just hasn't been happening.

I've gone on a few dates with other people, had a little sex. It's been pretty unfulfilling, and I know it's in the absence of doing anything to take care of my emotions. I don't even really have friends here. I don't have the possibility of a primary relationship, which is what I was so eager to explore with S. It's difficult for this transition to be so different from what I was expecting.

It's really hard for me to admit that I want to be in a relationship, that I want to really get to know someone, that I want to work toward intimacy. It feels so unhip, and I almost feel weak that I can't just put it aside until it's more convenient and enjoy the sex and the eventual friendships for now. As soon as I get anything going, I'll just be leaving again. Seems sort of silly to try and find closeness now, anyway.

My body's not letting me put it off, though; I'm feeling more and more shut down as I try. It's clearly time for me to do something differently.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and my conclusion is this: I'm not in a primary relationship (of any kind) and I want to be. So I need to start acting like that's the truth instead of ignoring it. Time to communicate what I actually need, to be clear with new partners. I want cuddles and talking in low voices and doing things together that aren't sex and comfort and familiarity with body and mind and someone to do things with and a partner in crime and someone to call me on my shit and the ability to fight sometimes and have it be okay. I want to actually get closer. I want love.

Easier said to myself than done. Now I have to say it to other people, prospects, and to encourage it to happen without forcing it. It's all such a delicate balance. I have to find that tightrope, though, and start walking it, because it's the right thing for me right now and ignoring it is getting me nowhere.