feelings

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Sometimes, I can’t help but feel selfish. 

Yeah, there’s a feelings rant going up on here. Bear with me or just ignore it.

It just have a much easier time articulating my feelings in writing than I have ever have out loud. Especially in writing not directed to anyone in particular. And this is the only diary I’ve ever been able to keep, so, here goes.

When feelings start to come out, I always feel selfish. That’s how I get. Partially because I worry I’ll be hurting a friendship by inserting myself into the middle of it and partially because he says he doesn’t want or need to see anybody else regularly beyond some threesomes and sharing. 

So, because I feel selfish, I don’t articulate myself. Because I am scared of seeming too demanding or needy. And I’ve never been good with conflict. I have this terrible all-or-nothing instinct where I think a single disagreement will completely destroy everything. And so I back out and try to please everyone.

My therapist says in the mess of that, my own feelings get lost. Which is something that goes on in terms of my family, my friends and my activities. I am incredibly cautious with the people I care about and neglect to articulate my needs because I worry somehow I’ll come across as selfish. So, I’m kind of a failure at communication.

The issue is resolved for the most part, but ugh. I don’t know.

Powerless

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A little over a month ago, Craftsmate and I got into this really uncomfortable argument in a semi-public setting about what we were doing. Basically, he sort of just dropped the bomb out of nowhere about not wanting to do kinky stuff anymore and I was upset because he wouldn’t provide me with an explanation. 

There were a few explanations. It was a little awkward that I had just returned from Penthouse Land. He wanted to see if we could actually just be normal friends. He wasn’t sure what to make of our dynamic. And, he topped it all off with a “you make me feel powerless”.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, taken aback, then added with more than a little bitterness. “I am so sorry that I make you feel powerless.”

Although I had never considered it in those terms, I felt the same way. He had seamlessly worked his way into my life. My friends like him a lot. My roommate adores him. And the whole shame episode still felt fresh to me and the fact that he was suddenly living in a world that I had tried to keep completely separated from my blog had made me feel entirely powerless.

So, I think, in an effort to try to retain some power in the midst of being too vulnerable, I put up a bunch of walls. I thought he had seen too much of me already and as a result I wasn’t really being open with him at all. Sometimes I even got a little mean. I realized, in feeling like I was the victim, I assumed I was blameless and that I would be justified in taking whatever moves necessary to protecting my vulnerability. Especially after the really awkward kissing debacle, I did not want to show any of my hand or let there be any way I was more invested in this than he was (or even at all invested).

After I had expressed this to him, he came over that night. I was stressed out about other things and we were going to attempt to talk further, but Sunshine was home and awake. At one point, I walked out to go move some laundry to the dryer and he came with me. 

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he said. “But it makes a lot of sense.” We hugged.

We wound up falling asleep on the couch together, my head on his chest, his hand on my hair. The next day, he tied me up while Sunshine was still asleep in the other room. With my arms pulled back stringently, I realized that kink was very much a controlled outlet for my vulnerability. I could shut it down at any point I wanted with a safeword. There was power in this sort of powerlessness. 

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tease-and-deny:

thinkivykink:

You tease.

montecervesa:

Why, hello there.

Yeah, I didn’t really like knives before. I may be changing my mind on that one. 

Suh. Mirk.

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Last night, SG asked me to friend his girlfriend on Facebook. Why? Because, in his words: “It will make her so happy”. 

I’m sorry, what? Excuse me. That’s just about one of the most inappropriate requests to make of me.

I have tried, in the time I have had something going on with SG, to basically avoid talking to his girlfriend. Occasionally, she’ll like something I’ll put on his Facebook or, according to him, ask about how I’m doing. And I’ll do the same for her. But, the two are in a nonmonogamous relationship with no sharing and a sort of out of sight out of mind mentality. 

And part of me has had integrity issues in the past with this sort of thing because I feel like she does this solely to appease him. She’s a very traditional girl, not really too bright, but almost painfully kind. Sexually, SG claims she’s not really on-point with what he wants. He complains that he can’t have an intellectual conversation with her. But, she’s sweet and tall and gorgeous and one of those Southern pageant queen types.

Yes, she even has a sash and a crown.

So, naturally, sometimes I feel awkward about the whole thing. Especially when he complains to me about her and how she only does stuff to make him happy and puts me in this really awkward position. And then to ask me to friend her on Facebook to make her happy is almost sort of insulting. As was two minutes later when he awkwardly transitioned into asking me why another girl wasn’t answering his booty-call to her. Which, fine, we discuss the other people we mess around with, but still felt so sleazy and horrible.

Maybe I’m still a little sore after the whole incident with Elle, even though he apologized. But part of me knows that this entire arrangement is becoming demeaning. Some of my friends are pretty insistent that I cut my losses and just get out. And part of me thinks that they are absolutely right.

But I have trouble letting go of people, especially when he offers these weird glimmers of hope amidst the ridiculousness. It’ll be a conversation or a moment or something he’ll say like “I prefer talking politics with you to dirty-talking you. And I really like dirty-talking you” that feels vaguely romantic and then I go God, what a low standard I’ve set for romantic.

There was a time when I was struggling through something for my portfolio and SG goes, “I know you can do it.” And I sort of shrugged him off and he said, “no, actually, I know you can. Because I found some of your work and I looked it over and I know it’s good. Because I still think about it sometimes.” I realized he happened upon something very old of mine in Elle’s house back when he and I were just getting to know each other. I told him I didn’t believe him and he made a reference to some little acute part of it and told me he would look at anything for me. And, lo and behold, he stayed up and did. And I was thinking the whole time, well, shit, he cares.

But I feel like he literally represents everything bad about me that can be found vaguely endearing. And I feel like this is all quickly becoming more trouble than it’s worth. But, I’m having trouble letting go. Because there are feelings there (oy) and that gets all kinds of messy. 

So, yeah, I probably need to grow a pair and have a little more self-respect. Eventually.

tomlet:

Strangers With Candy 3×4 Invisible Love

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“leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them." – Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, a poem by Marty McConnell.

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Can I get the check on this week, please?

Yes, I am about to use my sex blog to whine.

This week has been a mess.

Sunday kicked it off with a really brilliant moral dilemma that I was totally not mentally or emotionally prepared to take on at all.

Work was absolutely horrible. Indescribably bad.

My car is totally, completely, irreparably dead. While we managed to get a deal on a rental, as my mother and I were sharing that car and literally have no other vehicle aside from our two feet, and can’t afford to get another car, literally half of my savings is going to it.

A really important deadline is fast approaching and I am having so much trouble getting everything together. 

I got into an argument with SG over Chik-fil-A, of all things. Chik-motherfucking-fil-A. And he was so immature and so condescending.

My laptop had a problem and, since I sort of need it for this deadline and quite a bit more, I had to go get that taken care of. Goodbye, even more money.

I haven’t gotten any in two months. Can I just put that out there? Because I am putting that out there because for God’s sake. I’ve been so stressed I haven’t even been in the mood for anything anyway, but ugh. 

Yes, I know, I’m whining. But I feel like life’s putting a gun to my head and telling me to shut up and walk.

So, check please. Get me the fuck out of here.

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Drunk Ivy is silly. She’s an interesting dancer, she often starts rapping and she has a pretty unusual sense of humor. She gives a lot of hugs. She sometimes gets a little too introspective if left to stew for too long. She can be very convincingly sober if a situation arises.

And she always, always speaks her mind.

I went out with a bunch of friends last night for a friend’s 21st birthday. By the time the night was winding down, we wound up sitting around in a pub, resting our feet, giggling and catching up. Right around last call, SG started texting me.

While Drunk Ivy is a very talented texter, she was a little more open to his conversation and what eventually turned into flirtation. At one point, the Southern Gentleman said, “I can’t wait to have you again.”

Normally, I would have been silly and brushed it off. He’s been pretending what happened didn’t happen, avoiding conversation around it, and I have followed his lead. I’ve quietly resented him for it the whole way. And, at first, the response was a little coy quip of “if I allow you.”

He was cocky. I suppose he thought I had moved on. And so he assured me that I definitely would because he knew my body and detailed this in a pretty naughty text that perhaps, under other circumstances, would have made me blush.

But, Drunk Ivy took matters into her own hands and replied: “You will never, ever have me again after what you did.” With that, now back at her friend’s apartment, she fell asleep, totally unashamed.

And, this morning, Hungover Ivy got the apology that she deserved.

Shame

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I didn’t like Shame when I saw it. To be honest, I didn’t really give it a fighting chance. I got together with friends and watched it with a ton of booze and we drank every time someone did something creepy and sexual. We couldn’t get the volume up high enough, we got wasted pretty fast and we just started making fun of all of it.

But, damn, the title was perfect for a movie of that nature. I don’t think I’m a sex addict, but I certainly have a lot of sexual secrets I carry around. And the dominant emotion surrounding them since I started becoming sexual is shame.

I felt shame when I was discovered by another student from Ivy University the other day. While he was totally friendly and promised to keep my secret safe, I still feel a little sick when I think about it. Part of me wishes he hadn’t contacted me, but part of me is sort of glad he did because it brought the issue of discovery to my attention. Because it could have been a lot worse.

I told my therapist about my blog tonight. Her face kind of dropped and when I pointed it out, she smiled and replied, “no, I’m not judging you. I’m just concerned. You know this is very dangerous.” The issues, she says, that I need to deal with here are whether or not I’m comfortable with being identified with the blog and why I actually have it in the first place.

Why is a matter of catharsis and exhibitionism. That’s easy. The first question is the harder one. And a lot of it is rooted in shame. The fact is that I’m ashamed of myself and the things I’m into. I’m ashamed of some of the things I’ve mentioned on here. While writing here has made me feel less ashamed behind the veil of anonymity, being associated with this writing would only make me even more ashamed.

There’s a part in Shame where Sassy Fassy is at his computer and his obviously named sister Sissy comes over and opens it. Maybe the sequence of events here is wrong, she may have opened it herself, but either way she sees just this stream of unavoidable porn and Michael Fassbender literally freaks out. He’s not angry about her finding the porn, I don’t think, so much as he is humiliated that he’s there, that is secret life has been accessed. It’s the reason why the movie is called Shame, in my now-sober opinion. While he’s completely unashamed at telling some guy that he’s ready to fuck the guy’s girlfriend, he’s ashamed of his sexual secrets only when those close to him find them.

When I told my therapist how many people followed this blog, her eyes widened. I realize I’m totally unashamed to tell hundreds of random strangers about my sex life and proclivities. I don’t even think twice about it because I guess I’m just anonymous, like Michael Fassbender’s character in the bar when he told someone he was going to fuck their girlfriend. He was, to that guy, a nobody. Here, on tumblr, I like to pretend I’m pretty much no one. I get messages from people, even couples, saying that they read my blog, that they relate to me, that this and that. And it’s strange to me because I feel like a stranger, so I feel unashamed.

To have someone pull part of my real self into this tumblr brought out a ton of my shame. Because I’m not just no one anymore. And I don’t want to have to be associated with this tumblr because, yeah, unfortunately, I am still ashamed of my sexuality. I don’t know how it would honestly get in the way of my life goals, but I don’t want my family finding out or acquaintances or anybody else. On the ride home from therapy, I considered what it would mean to be the person who was unashamed of all of my kinks. I’ve never been into munches or fetish clubs or public displays of kinkiness, but I tried to consider myself as one of those public sexperts or whatever.

And, honestly, I couldn’t. I’m not ready to be that person. So, as this blog nears a thousand followers, I’m debating what that really means. I used statcounter and was alarmed by the amount of hits this place gets a day. While it’s a great stroke to the ego, it’s also pretty terrifying. I don’t want to be outed, I don’t want to be discovered, I don’t want to be Think Ivy Kink aside from on this blog.

I’ve just got a lot of thinking to do. I know I don’t want to take this blog down, but, gosh, tumblr’s too small of a world. Discovery is terrifying. Shame is crippling.