Echo

What if I don’t get home at all?

Why do I have to get home before it’s too late?

WHERE IS THIS FEELING COMING FROM

Ironically I think all I want is a best friend. Or wanting a best friend, is the umbrella-ing big picture of what I seek. If I could have what I had at 6 years old, that comraderie, that partner in learning and crime, that co-instigator, both of us innocent and sincere in how we lit up for each other and pushed each other, I would be happy. I want that in a practical adult realm + great sex.
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At the party I went to this weekend, I had a guy challenge me to a drinking contest, and I beat him. Jokes aside, I can get things down the hatch fast. Later, a friend of his was telling me about how he has no shortage of woman who want to get with him, but he never closes the deal. His friend said his standards are unreasonable. “He wants a virgin,” he said. “And you’re not gonna find very many of them out there who aren’t way too young or just not worth it.” Another friend piped up. “He doesn’t want a literal virgin, he just wants someone who’s virginal.” I laughed. This guy would love that part of me if I’d had any interest in him.

I have Mars in Virgo, which basically symbolically translates to the sex planet ruled by the Virgin. I also have it suppressed by Saturn, the stern father who keeps a very close eye. The Princess in her Ivory Tower? Yep. Deal with it.

No surprise why I take sex so seriously. My sex drive is beastly. It takes conscious effort to contain, through strenuous exercise and staying occupied and just a general feeling of responsibility and accountability. Yet, while I’m not a virgin, I could have very well waited a very long time , was actually determined to wait, but then I realized in my 20’s that perhaps my eventual partner would prefer that I know what I’m doing (thus my first relationships kind of having a tone of “I don’t really enjoy what’s happening, but I need to know how it’s done.”) Virgos are no angels, though. I’ve known many a promiscuous one, both male and female, in my day. But the difference is approach. There tend to be higher ideals, higher values. A notion of purity, and wanting to find a worthy cause to serve. Sometimes, the promiscuity is the training to prepare them for the one. They do like being prepared. To each his own.

Mars in Virgo is the ultimate virgin/whore placement. Sexual energy filtered through the ideal of the virgin means that you either have sex for a higher purpose, romantic ideal or ultimate partnership, or you aren’t and you know you aren’t. Thus, the whore feeling. This is one of the reasons I’m so slow to enter relationships and dread break-ups, even if I go through years of celibacy and not dating (though making lots of platonic friends). There has to be something strong there, a chance, even though I don’t expect. Each relationship that doesn’t work out makes me feel like I didn’t wait for the one I’ve been looking for, and it does make me feel bad about myself, even though I know each relationship brings me closer to him by learning about myself and learning about what I want. It still feels a little like cheating, like “Crap, another indiscretion.” I know future husband probably isn’t expecting me to be a virgin, but I hate having been with people who aren’t him, even though I know that’s just the way life works. But I would rather be with him, give all this to him if I could find him. If my energy matches his, then I don’t need anything else.

Energy is energy and you often have to find a way to work with it, like a river flowing. It flows the way it flows and how it wants to flow, but you can make advantageous adjustments within its core nature to make it work for you. I can’t shake that what I care most for is purity and innocence in a world where these notions are sometimes mocked and deemed unrealistic. I know I can’t own my partner’s past and it’s about the now and the future, but there are certain things I can’t deal with, like I can’t deal with men who pay or have paid for sex, make a dominance or conquest game out of sex, or in any way have disrespectful or immature ideas or feelings about sexual union or women. The reason? I will never trust them. I need to trust that the one I’m with is the one who all this is for.

But someone who has also valued himself and what he has to give, who also believed there was someone they wanted to save the best parts of themselves for, was always my match. The Virgin and Whore are two sides of the same coin. The idea of Whore has been stigmatized. When you talk to the prostitutes in Amsterdam, while some of them work in that line because they have drug problems, psychological/self-esteem issues or see sex as a bargaining chip, others will say they love sex, the control, that men want them so badly they’re willing to pay. All that aside, the social stigma is that a woman who loves sex is a whore or a slut, when really, a woman who can embrace her sexuality in a healthy and encompassing manner along with her other facets is probably the most complete and powerful woman of all. Virgo has the power to be both. Virgo has the ideals of romantic love which belong only to those worthy and honorable, as well as an acceptance and embracing of their raw, unbridled sexuality. Mars filtered through Virgo for me has meant, if I can be disciplined enough to save myself and energy for someone worthy whom I really have chemistry with and really love, all that energy and desire that I’ve been saving will be directed in the most powerful way towards a union that will be ultimately fulfilling. Can I have sex without love? Definitely. Love and sexual attraction are sometimes mutually exclusive. But I know I want, need and could get so much more out of the experience by not flitting away what I have. And so I prefer to wait, not go for bait, until I find someone I want to unleash my oceans for.

I’ve always said that there’s something I’m saving for someone, that no man has touched. This is true. I’ve been holding it since I was a kid, ever since I was dreaming about my Other.  It’s something deep inside that I haven’t seen either, but I know it’s still there, can feel it, and I know I haven’t given it away. Anyone who has felt love from me can feel the purity, a love that is for love’s sake that makes them feel safe and alive. When I am devoted, it comes out of me like a natural spring. I have a feeling when I commit, we will discover an extra gear. An extra source. But it’s always been important to me not to give it away, to value myself enough not to give it away, to value the one I love by not giving it away.

My biggest problem, is that I don’t trust people. My perceptions run deeper than the average surface. Borderline psychic intuition. My imagination knows no bounds. Do I find things, or did I imagine them? Sometimes, it’s just a feeling of something under the surface, the princess disturbed by the pea. When I have distance from people, I crave to know their secrets. I’ll take care of their secrets, because their secrets don’t touch anything that is me. When I get close to people, I’m terrified of their secrets. Every closed door makes me anxious, even though I would never try to open them if they haven’t opened it for me themselves. But then, these dark corners start to seep into my dreams. And it’s hard to know what is real perception and what is imagination. Most disturbing, is how I don’t know exactly how to protect myself from them.

I am suffering from amorphous bad feeling. I’m stressed but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Gonna try to quietly ride out the day and hope tomorrow comes more clarity or the dissipation of this feeling.

Today’s a 7 day. A solitude day. Woke up to a heavy rainstorm and sadness around me. Just one of those days.

Got in touch with my friend Michelle, a fellow screenwriter who moved to Jersey and just had a baby girl in December. Wanted to find out how she’s doing and to get her to send some pictures of her kids.

In her email, she wrote:

You’re an incredibly talented, driven, creative, and courageous person. I miss having an adventuresome friend like you nearby. Despite all the things and people in your life that can tie you down, you continue to fly by the seat of your pants. I admire that because it’s the only way to truly live.

That’s a nice thing for her to write. But it makes me wonder…if someone flies by the seat of their pants, are they approaching life ass-first?

Perhaps those are the trade-offs I’ve decided to make. I sacrifice ties and stability for freedom and to feed my appetite in curiosity and inquisition. I would prefer a short and fulfilled life than a long one where I barely stirred the surface.

It has been exhilarating, rewarding, and rich with colors, tastes, feelings and textures. As Blair once said, he believes I experience emotions he didn’t even know existed. I have touched so many people’s lives, and they have touched mine. But underneath it all, the sacrifice. My closest companion has always been loneliness.

I’m a great analyzer of patterns and trends. But its so much easier to see outcome and big picture if what you’re analyzing isn’t too close to you. In relationships I have always vacillated between enthusiasm and caution. Aka, sometimes I get gripped with fear and freak out, because my aim in life is to have goals without being attached to wanting. When I want something, it scares me. In this way, I always needed someone bigger, someone better at navigating emotions who could earn my trust and coax me out of my tangled fears. Fears start as potentials in the mind, but are realities if details enforce them on this plane. One day, I would like to find my fears to be just fears.

Looking at patterns, I can say, this kind of feels like this, or I’ve gone through that before. And the relationship failed. But are these signs of failed relationships, or the initial steps of all relationships, including one day, the one that will work? I’m getting closer to the things I want, that make me feel comfortable. New situations, new heights. But why is the fear the same?
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I had a dream last night that I was in Fremont and at home with Michael and my mom. Some of the Clubsport boys–Curtis, Andrew, Jeremy, had come over and were in the backyard grilling. I guess I didn’t even know they were there, because I’d come home and had been roasting a turkey in the oven when my mom told me the guys had come over and were making food. I went outside and there were 3 grills going, one gas and two charcoal. There was a lot of meat. And Jeremy had brought it in a big black truck. They said they were almost done. My mom asked me if I would go to Blockbuster exchange some DVDs (we’re on a monthly program so we can keep 2 DVDs at any given time). I asked the guys if they wanted to watch anything in particular. Andrew didn’t care, Jeremy wanted something action, Curtis wanted something from the 80’s. I told him I was a 90’s girl, so what if I got a movie made in 89-90. So I went, but Blockbuster was inside a supermarket. And for whatever reason, I had only decided to put on a single shoe, and was carrying a bowl of turkey drippings that I wanted to use to make a gravy with.

I got in line to return the movies, but it was Sunday so it was crowded. There was a middle-eastern guy, about dad age, who insisted that I go before him. I guess wearing only one shoe and carrying a bowl of drippings made me look like I was in quite a hurry. I can’t remember what movies I got, but before checking out, I hit the bakery thinking I would get some bread. I found a 6 foot long loaf of Irish soda bread and tried to bring that to the checkout. While looking for bread, I had somehow lost my bowl of drippings. At the checkout, the guy said I couldn’t take the movies because we owed $15.71 in 3 months worth of late fees for a Lost  Season 3 DVD that had a missing pin code. I told him we must have returned that DVD a long time ago, and I didn’t know anything about a pin code that would come with a DVD. He said he could extend it for another day, and I said I would go home and ask my family.

I had to walk home with my one shoe and giant loaf of bread because I didn’t know how I actually got to the supermarket, but upon leaving, I had no car.

By the time I finally got home, they’d eaten without me.

Frustrating dream.

“But Julia, aren’t you the black queen?”

“Queen of Spades, indeed. I hope you weren’t busy following the red queen around.”