Dear Readers: Here is another hidden blog for you....from my private Shameless archives. I hope that you enjoy it....it is a scene from my marriage in the days of sorting it all out.
Love,
Pamela
Looking Into The Sea
I don't know what to do with myself. I tell myself to focus to pay attention to my family. I don't mean the obvious things. This week I went to the supermarket two times. I cooked dinners and I packed lunches as well as driving to the mall to get my youngest new clothes...made appointments for him to get his braces tightened, talked to his teacher about how very smart he was. Yes sir - he had the highest test grades - but he is still not handing in his homework.
I drove to NYC in the pouring rain because the oldest wanted me to buy him groceries as a part of his birthday present at "Trader Joes"....kind of a free for all of bagged pasta and endless bags of chips for his dorm. He used to want Ninja Turtles for his birthday and to go wild in Toys -R-Us. Now he wants groceries. My boy has grown up. Nineteen. He is nineteen. At that age I had met his Father - a year later I would be married. I am stunned briefly by the age of my kid and my youth at the time that I choose my husband. I did the shopping with him, yet I didn't want to have lunch with him. I knew that I couldn't concentrate. How could THAT be? Time with my oldest son away at school and I was letting that go? Yes. I was. I had no patience. And then there was Gavin who has been texting me about our sex life...yes....I said texting. I was driving home and up on my Treo comes this message.
"I am craving your body." He writes. Okay. Good to know. He hasn't touched my body in a sexual way in weeks. I text him back.
"So....take my body"
"Hmmmm" He writes, "guess that leaves all my fantasies waiting to be fulfilled."
I feel impatience with the conversation. I know that I should be thrilled that he is reaching out....trying. It occurs to me that I am a mean bitch. What the hell is wrong with me? This poor guy is trying!!!
"Just a thought. Perhaps I am too focused on your fantasies and I am impatient in my ability to fulfill them. No one can compete with fantasies and perhaps I should be more focused on fulfilling my own."
Now we are talking! I want him to be greedy about his pleasure. I want to be used for that. I want him to just take me.....but perhaps his fantasies have nothing to do with me? I can't believe we are having this conversation through instant messaging. Truly the modern couple.
"Yes - I would love you to focus on your fantasies and to share them with me. I would love it if you would just make love to and stopped worrying my fantasies and how I fulfill them. Just be you and make love to me. That is all I need."
"That is the central act of all my fantasies." He writes....
"So?"
"Do you find it more difficult to get aroused from interactions that do not fulfill your fantasies?" "No..sweetie...I do not. I love it when you make love with me. No one can do that as wonderfully as you. You always give me pleasure."
This is not a lie. My husband knows how to give me pleasure.
"Do we need milk?" He writes. This conversation is over....
I was available on all the levels that a good Mother needs to be available. I was available as a Wife....on all levels....Yet I was at a new level of distraction from my family. I trying to get a grip of my own desire - and it is hard. There is too much shame wrapped around all of it for me.
I am reading this book written in 1899...."The Awakening" by Kate Chopin - it is about the sexual and personal awakening of a wife and mother in New Orleans during the turn of the 18th Century.
So many of her thoughts are mine. I recognize her distraction....her disinterest in her social norm responsibilities. I get it and this story takes place over a 100 years later - yet women are still on this journey. Why is that? Why do we have to go on this journey? Why aren't we just as we are? Why aren't we born awakened? Or are we...and then just put to sleep by a world of social norms and the "have to's" of our world.
I am going through my days right now and my mind is wandering. It is like I am always looking far off into the distance. Perhaps even into the sea of another time in my life whether it be the past or the future. And I know that I need to be in the present. I fight to pull myself here. I find myself lost in erotic fantasy....wondering if I should if I should start going to go to the "One Taste" meetings in NYC. I find myself thinking about going to a Tantra Workshop or retreat.
I need to concentrate. I need to focus - there is a husband here who is struggling to find me. There are kids here – although mostly grown....but there are kids here. There is my more than full time job.
And there is me.
There is tragedy at the end of "The Awakening". Edna walks into the sea for she cannot live in her present. Her choice is not my choice. But I can see her walking into the ocean as she feels that there is no breath in her lungs that is hers and on the last page as she is sinking into the ocean she is thinking of her husband - of her children. "They are a part of her life. But they need not have thought that could possess her, body and soul."
