Who’s down on “hot and heavy?”

Note: I posted ths after a week of about 3 and a half hours of sleep per night and even Ambien wasn't putting my anxiety. I thought about editing it now that I'm sleeping more soundly, but I just don't want to!

Lately, I haven't been feeling very desirable…..

I've been over 450 pounds since I was 21 years old, so I used to live vicariously through my friends relationships. I've always been the "mother goose," or the listener of the group, because I though I couldn't afford to lose any more friends, after my fraternity phase of couch pissings, so I've always been pretty good at keeping secrets. The one theme that I've heard time and time again is people start talking about how the relationship is in such a great place. They might even be thinking about moving in together or they have already. So I push for details like, "wow, you guys must be all over each other. Do ya just walk around naked and just go at it all day?" To my shock, time after time, no is always the answer. Then they go on to explain to me that when a relationship gets to a certain point, you just get too tired at the end of the day to have sex so instead of once or twice in a night, it might be once or twice a week. I would get so angry inside when friends would tell me that. I hadn't been touched in god knows how long and these perfectly fit and healthy young men with girlfriends just don't feel like it! I just didn't understand. I used to think that I was a better man because I knew I'd never be like that with any girlfriend of mine.

A relationship is hard work; especially when there is a child involved. I see that now. After a day's worth of class, working out, getting dinner on, evening family obligations, and an errand or two, I'm absolutely exhausted. Be that as it may, this feeling of desire just starts burning inside of me and it's a flame I don't know how, or would I want, to put out. It's like this volcanic optimism and satisfaction inside me that just exclaims, "even though this day was so rough, there isn't anybody I'd rather spend this day with and work so hard for." In my body, that satisfaction overwhelms me and it becomes too much to handle and passion becomes the outlet for release. I optimistically thought that this is what it meant to be in love, but I get the feeling that my perspective is a little different from the rest of the lovers out there.

I've been at least a little different my whole life so why would this topic be any different? This feels like some sort of spiral or cycle. When I feel undesirable, I become less desirable. Actually becoming less desirable will make me feel even less desirable, and so on down that winding road to where BIG mistakes are made. With my lifelong burden of sometimes crippling depression, I get very nervous when I even get the hint of a spiral coming on. The problem is that I'm so inexperienced in serious relationships, because I used to weigh as much as one couple, that I don't know the nuances of even having the opportunity to be intimate every night. I also think one aspect of intimacy is not only sharing the moment, but making memories that keep your partner attracted to you after the night rolls off into the sunrise. I, on the other hand, am loyal and dependable to an extent that some would say to a fault. So is there no need to keep me interested? Is there less need for intimacy when you know your partner will be back?

All I want is this spiral to be broken. This life changing work is so damn hard and I'm very, very fatigued. I don't know why, but I'm afraid I don't have the strength to push through this one and I have to do it alone. My girlfriend is so "gun shy" from her marriage and doesn't want a situation where her whole entire life depends of someone else's permission. I keep telling her that the only person that she should rely on is herself. Since she has a child, the only person she should trust is herself. Even if we were to get married, she needs a life in place so that if something changes, or the relationship goes South, that she and her daughter can safely walk out at any moment. So, with these parameters on our relationship, I can't use intimacy or our relationship as a crutch, but I just feel like it's the only thing I've got. I'm just so tired….

It seems that there is this level of comfort when you're in a serious relationship that supersedes sex, which makes sense. The expectation of every night is just unreasonable and really, who is in that kind of shape? It's just hard for somebody with such low self-esteem to go from "hot and heavy" to a more "normal" rotation without thinking that this is somehow my fault. So even with this in mind, how do I go about feeling more desirable and how do I sell this to the little, loud, annoying guy in the back of my head that's keeping me up at 12:45 at night? In the end, there is only one person responsible for this problem and how I'm currently feeling and that's me. I'm trying to correct the one million mistakes that I, and I alone made. I'm just so tired and I need more than sleep. At this point sleep would be a good start. I think a shower and an Ambien should do the trick!

In even the darkest of days....

I don't know how to say this, but today was just AWFUL! We had a foot of snow and every ounce is still on the ground. My girlfriend has been without a vehicle because her car is in the garage and her driveway is absolutely impossible for her van. It slopes in five or six different directions, but I've been rolling up and down it just fine because I have a big truck with four-wheel drive. I was heading out to meet "my princess" at the bus stop and I just didn't seem to give the driveway the "oomph" and respect that it deserved and i got hung up in the field of snow. "This is impossible," I thought. "I have four-wheel drive." I tried to manipulate the truck in every way I knew how, but to no avail.

An hour and a half later, I'm shoveling like a madman because we need to drop off the little one at her dads, torquing like mad, pissed angry, and I'm thinking, "boy, this is gonna kill my back in a few hours." I tried moving the truck again and when I slid sideways, I just lost it. "Goddamn-it" I shouted and punched and kicked the truck. "My queen" heard me and bundled up and came outside. She asked what she could do to help, but I had no idea. I figured she made her obligatory offer and was heading back inside, but then she picked up a shovel and started moving snow. We worked for another hour and finally, the vehicle was free!

Two hours later, the muscle aches started; just as I predicted. I was in bed the rest of the night alternating spots to apply hot and cold. As we lay in bed exhausted and sore after a pretty miserable day and looking at a daunting-ly painful future, the uncontrollable urge to make love came over us and we shared a moment that will live in our hearts long after the snow melts and this awful winter changes to spring. As it ended, we laid there and held each other and we each knew that there was no place in the world that we'd rather be and that if we had to endure all of today's pain and aggravation for that moment then we'd gladly get our shovels and start all over again!

Looking back, I don't know which was more special. The making love or the working together to get the truck free. It was cold, we were tired, miserable, and wet, but it was so nice that when things were so dark that we each got to endure with the person that mattered most of each of us. I thought that type of love affair happened only in the movies. I am so grateful that I have a girlfriend that wants to put in her half to the relationship and I don't know what I'll do with myself and all this extra effort! For now, I'm thinking using the hot pad religiously and lots of BenGay, but then after that, "the world is my oyster!!!"

"Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are..."

My life has been plagued with bad relationships. Until recently, I lacked the confidence to demand that I be treated properly so it allowed women to walk all over me. I never thought I was good enough for the relationships that I was in and they used it to their advantage.

The other day, my girlfriend and I were eating dinner and she asked me how much of my thinking and behavior is affected by previous relationships. I struggled to come up with the first one, but since then I realize that I'm a fucking mess with all sorts of baggage clogging my way of thinking. It amazes me that I expect the worst from an absolutely incredible woman because every other woman I dated treated me like garbage. I'm a smart, level-headed man, but when it comes to relationships I'm neurotic bordering on insanity.

I've been conditioned to expect my partner to do and think the exact opposite of what I think and feel and when I find a woman that I match up with so well, I'm nervous that it's just some elaborate ruse. I know in my mind the truth about her, but these ne-jerk reactions are a tremendous inconvenience and could potentially ruin a really healthy relationship. It's been so long that I can hardly see their faces anymore, but the affects of those bad relationships still remain.

Meat Loaf once wrote, "I hear that ugly, coarse, and battered voice and he's right behind me now and he's gaining ground.... But it was long ago and it was far away, oh god, it seems so very far; and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car...."

I was scared to make improvements in my life because I knew that the daemons from my past would haunt me wherever I ventured and that they would cause me to fall further the higher I got in life. Because it isn't where you end up that is painful; it's how far you fall. That's the problem with life. "Objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are." If I'm not careful, I'll be so focused on the pain in the rear-view and I'll crash into something catastrophic. Every day is new. Every day is different. Addicts in recovery say that "today is the first day of the rest of my life." I need to pay better attention to those words.

My past sucks, but today was one of the best days of my life. Nothing really special happened except I worked on improving my life, I woke up and will go to sleep next to the woman of my dreams, and I got to cook for my family. I've spent my whole life looking backwards and missed the joy right in front of my face. Life will be so much different without starring at that rear-view mirror. I think I'll figure it out though. Besides, most cars in Indiana don't have rear-view windows anyway..... ;)

What to do when words don't seem to help....

As I continue to get older, it seems that the effectiveness of my words seems to becoming less and less. I'm a very genuine, honest person and in the past, people in need of an emotional boost would flock to me because I was always there with a compliment. If you have nice eyes, I'm going to tell you that you have nice eyes. If you've lost weight, generally, I'm going to notice and compliment you on your hard work. It seems that as I continue to age, and my peer group continues to age, the world has taken it's toll on people. Now, those same compliments seem to go unnoticed.

My lady friend, whom I refer to as "rockstar" on this blog, is the most incredible woman that I've ever met. She is fun to be around. She is full of life and energy. She is sooo seductive and absolutely sexy. I literally worship the ground that she walks on. I compliment her all the time, not because I'm trying to get somewhere, but because she has no many things that are so right that I just feel compelled to list all of her positive qualities. I will admit that sometimes I'll tell her how pretty her smile is when she isn't smiling just to get her to smile. Let me tell you, when she smiles it's really as if time stands still. She has such a great heart and soul that just radiates in bright, colorful rays outward when she smiles and it really makes you feel fortunate that you were there to witness it.

Sorry, I got off track. Anyway, it seems that a lot of the compliments that I pay this woman seem to "bounce off." I sometimes get the feeling she doesn't believe the nice things I say about her or maybe she thinks there is some sort of agenda behind them. This is a very common tale. As we get older, words just become lip service (sorry for the bad pun). People have been lied to so much as their lives progress that they get to where the really don't believe half the things we say to each other, even compliments about each other.

So, since words have lost their utility, let me tell you what I'm doing right now. I'm lying on the floor of my bathroom, with one hot pad under my lower back. I've got another hot pad under my upper back. My feet are over the side of the tub soaking in warm water while I've got bags of ice on each of my knees. My laptop, fellow bloggers, is on my stomach and I can see the screen because I have a rolled up towel under the back of my head. I ache in just about every muscle group I have. Why am I in so much pain? Today, I laid 1.6 tons (approximately) in a nice orginized fashion for the final step in the brick sidewalk that I've been putting together for "rockstar." I spent all day with my 360 pound stature hunched over and squatting placing each and every one of the few thousand bricks into their proper location. I would have gotten around to finishing this task earlier in my vacation, but I was busy doing other things for her such as hanging a new front door, fixing some steps, doing yard work, and trying to fix an ice machine. In the last few weeks, if I haven't been eating or sleeping, I've been doing some sort of job for her or researching on the internet how to do the job she needed done.

The funny thing is that she has said more than once that I don't have to do any of these jobs to get laid or for us to maintain our relationship. So why do I do these things for her? If words aren't going to do what they were intended then I'm going to have to try even harder to prove to her how I feel about her and how much I appreciate being with her. She can believe me when I call her amazing maybe 40 percent of the time, but EVERY time she walks out her new front door and along her new brick sidewalk (or even when they're her old front door and old brick sidewalk) she'll remember that I thought she was so amazing that I decided to use my vacation time to struggle and sweat as hard as I possibly could just to put a smile on her face.

Physical contact is great. Kissing makes me feel so special. Sex is absolutely incredible, but there is nothing better that giving a little bit of your time, strength, and maybe even a little of yourself in a selfless way for somebody that you care for very deeply. It's what makes relationships so special. In my opinion, communication in a relationship is very important, but nothing tops the lengths one goes to in an attempt to put a smile on the face of the person they care for so deeply. It's with that in mind that my alarm is set so that I can go over to her house and get some more work done before I have to go to class. I'm such a very fortunate man that I can't even put it into words. I guess you will all have to come by and see the sidewalk to know what a special person she really is.

3:30 am is a great time to start blogging.....

So, where do I begin? I have a final at 10:30 tomorrow morning and I can't sleep. I was a little tired when I started reviewing at 9:30 so I decided to make myself an iced mocha-chino (with sugar-free mocha and skim milk of course) with a triple shot of espresso. I'm not going to see the inside of my eyelids anytime soon. I'm in the process of this huge life change, which I'll elaborate on at a later date, and I've decided that it's time to start writing about my life. That isn't to say that I'm any sort of role model, far from it, but I've made a lot of mistakes and intentionally done some pretty stupid things that just so happen to be hilarious. I intend to use this blog as a way to share some of those stories and to discuss things that are going on in my life right now.

I wish I could tell you that tonight is one of those funny story nights, but I'm really just not in the mood. Maybe that's because my final is in 7 hours and sleep is nowhere in sight. Since I'm in this exhaustion generated philosophical mood, I guess I'll go ahead and ask the question that's been on my mind recently:

What makes sex so special?

It is the most incredible experience, but what about it makes it so special? I used to only have sex in very serious relationships, so I mis-guidedly thought sex was so special because it was an exercise in love. I was mistaken.

Is it the intimacy and vulnerability that a sexual situation involves?

I've been in therapy for a few months now and its been nothing but intimacy and vulnerability. I can honestly say that I'm not desperate to go see my therapist in the middle of the night when I have the most incredible dream.

I know that sex is so very special, but I have a very hard time describing why. That is one very big problem in talking about sex is that there isn't a common vocabulary. It is so hard for somebody to understand what you're saying when everyone uses different words to describe their feelings. Doctors or mechanics have no problem communicating and understanding each other because they were all educated using the same vocabulary. When we talk about sex, we could all be saying the exact same thing, but it makes us (at least me) feel like we're out of touch with the rest of the world.

For me, sex reminds me of the first time I ever kissed a girl. We had been dating for weeks and I think she was about to dump me because I would never make a move. One night I went to kiss her on the cheek to say goodbye and our lips met. It was one of those moments that felt like it lasted forever. It was one of those moments where I felt like nobody else existed in the world, but us. I have had thousands of kisses since then, but no kiss ever compares to that first one. Sex, on the other hand, is very much like that first kiss. When two people are locked in that moment it's almost as if time stands still. As the passionate kisses and incredible motion are followed by this unbelievable euphoria, it gives you the illusion that all of you cares, troubles, worries, and inadequacies have vanished for good.

A very, very good friend of mine, we'll call her "rock star," firmly believes that the world would be a much more peaceful place is we all just had sex with each other. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do think the world would be a more peaceful place if everybody had more sex. I can tell you that for the two days after sex I'm bouncing off the walls, giggling, and acting like a kid on Christmas morning. Imagine if the whole world felt that very same way.

As it is now 4am and my final is now 6 and a half hours away, I think I'm going to take a shot of tequila and hopefully pass the hell out!