Day 369: Sex & the fear of failure

19122013

The moon is used as a symbol of femininity in witchcraft - "The Moon" by Alphonse Mucha

I haven't been writing for a few days because I have been preoccupied by practical application. I am going through something very intense in my relationship towards another person and it's required most of my spare time and attention. I am / we are now starting to find some kind of a balance after the first few days of constant new underlying points popping up and being discussed, so I am now also getting back to writing. I am not sure what to write about, but I will probably try to make an overview of what I've been going through.

Okay, as I was making a list of all the points that have surfaced within the past few days, one point stood out as I noticed I was reluctant to look at it. I've been thinking a lot about how I perceive sex through a negative filter: I compare myself to people who think of sex as something fun and exciting (an ideal here maybe) whereas I am nervous, tense and outright scared. Whenever sex comes to play, it feels as if I shrink. All of my insecurities are magnified and I feel incredibly small and vulnerable. I know people (women) who have a completely different take on sex where they feel empowered through sex, strong and magnificent. Although, hang on. Have I ever heard them put it into words like that? I see that my vision of “who I should be” within sex might actually be yet another self-created illusion. Let's look into that.

A few years ago I got really into witchcraft, which is a very female-driven phenomenon. I read a lot of literature (fact and fictional) on the subject and got the idea that a woman can in fact enjoy sex on her own terms by embracing her femininity. I basically created this image of the sexually empowered witch woman – a magical creature – something “more” than who I was – someone with the extra “magic” or understanding about what sex is and how it works.

I'm guessing I have filtered my friends – the people who approach sex with a positive attitude – according to this ideal and imagined them to “already be there”, to have achieved that magical something which I haven't. I've made myself feel like a failure as I have believed I'd need to be something “more” when in fact what I'm looking for is something less.

What sex basically is is touch. What separates it from other kinds of touch is usually the involvement of genitalia and/or a sense of intimacy, being “unusually” close. Touching other people is fun to start with: it's a form of communication and play, a tool for creation. Through touch movement is created; in it's ultimate form, new life can be created. The thing is, sex isn't usually seen to be that simple. First off, it is though of as a “special” kind of a touch. This is one layer of shit placed over the simplicity of sex. Also, sex is highly visualized, separating the act from the other senses (touch, taste, hearing, smell) – another layer of shit. Sex is also valued as a trophy, it is demonized, it is used as currency, it's used to control – shit, shit, shit – the conceptual (imagined) reality of sex has become an entity of its own. Even under all these layers of shit, all the beliefs that we have painted over our reality, underneath all that sex is still primarily a touch. In any sex scenario I can conjure in my mind underneath the roles all I see is trembling flesh. It's all just vibrations and frequencies, the flesh in differing tempo and beat.

So: what is the conceptual reality I have painted over the simple physical reality of sex? What are the layers of shit I need to peel off to get to the null point?

I am basically afraid of failure. I think of sex as something I need to succeed in. I use it as a measuring point for my worth. I'm getting kind of sick and tired about this “I'm not good enough” -sentence that keeps on surfacing behind EVERY SINGLE POINT I ever walk through because I'm still not sure where the fuck it comes from. Perhaps I'm just a culmination of the kind of femininity that has submitted under (male) abuse and dominance for aeons. What has created me is all the men and women in my lineage – and that's such a shitload of people that I can't even begin to imagine what they were like. But I'm guessing the issues have always remained the same, so it's enough that I look at the little I know of my history. My history is the human kind's history.

The way my fear of failure manifests within sex is through a basic concept: the belief that sex has to be “good” (a definition containing an ideal) for my partner to be satisfied and not leave me (which implies that the reason I look for relationships is to not be alone, hence the fear of being abandoned). Therefore I'm never really having sex for myself, as an act of self-expression, but for others. There may be other aspects to this as well but this is what's surfacing right now. I'll continue tomorrow with SF on this point specifically.

Day 294: Dressing up

20082013

 Me in 1993 (?) and 2012 dressing up the best I can!

I was asked to be one of the judges in a children's singing contest and I agreed to go. The night before the event I was thinking of what to wear to the contest because I realized that these children will look at me as a role model: I would be appear to be in a position of authority, plus for all the small girls a young woman like me does show an example of a kind – and as it turned out, I was the only 20-something in the jury, which makes me the person there that the children most likely relate to, as everyone else was the age of their mothers.

So I thought to myself: I am giving these kids the model of a woman, the model of a grown-up, the model of a human being. What do I want to show them? Or in other words: If I wear this and this, who am I while wearing those clothes and do I want kids to see that?

I realized that in terms of clothing there were many bad choices I could have made. I thought about a really neat black dress with a business woman type of feel, and I realized that I would wear a dress like this to gain authority, to appear powerful, and I would thus set an example that women have to be intimidating and serious, or even man-like to be appreciated.

I concluded that I would wear colour, I would be feminine and that I would show kids that one doesn't have to be serious about clothing – that it's OK to play around with what you wear, because what you wear doesn't define you. With the clothes I wore I felt comfortable, light, mobile, girly and silly. I noticed that I was nervous/anxious about “setting an example” so I kept myself in breath throughout the contest, trying to keep myself as “me” as possible. It was a little challenging with so many eyes following my movements and drinking up everything.

After the show I received feedback not only about my clothing but also about how I carried myself: I had appeared “graceful like a movie star”. That comment showed me that it's the combination of wearing clothes as self-expression and the way you carry yourself within the clothing that creates your appearance – not just one or the other. Sometimes clothing becomes an armor behind which I like to hide, as if the clothes would make me “bigger” than I am (this is the case with the black dress), and I have to start paying more attention to what I wear and why, so that with every piece of clothing there would be no fear but only self-expression – and practicality, duh, lol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that with what I wear and why I set an example for the future generations on what the purpose and use of clothing is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I wear clothes out of fear, I teach the future generations that clothing is used so that we may hide behind them and thus present an image of who we would like to be, believing our own fabric facade and hoping that everyone else buys into it too.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I wear clothes out of practicality I teach the future generations that clothing is used to help our bodies adjust to the conditions of our living environments and to assist and support us in our activities. (This is why I never wear jeans, lol)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I wear clothes out of self-expression I teach the future generations that clothing is used to express ourselves to the world as who we are, not as our self-image, and that this can be fun, enjoyable, lively, not serious and non-personal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what I wear does not define me – that I could wear goth, hippie, business, farm, hobo, hollywood or prisoner clothes and remain the same within all of them – that I am not the costume I wear but the being within those clothes carrying those clothes and moving within their limits.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to what I wear, morphing my posture and personality to “fit” the clothes I am wearing, not realizing that real life is not about theatre stereotypes and that I can in fact re-define the clothes and disassemble my image of what a person carrying them must be like by stopping, breathing and through the touch sensation feeling what the clothes are, testing their qualities, how they move, stretch, weigh and breathe and carrying them according to who I am / who I become through creation within and as breath as self-expression within these kinds of clothes.

I commit myself to pay attention to what I wear and why.

When and as I see myself thinking of wearing a piece of clothing out of fear – to present an image, to gain power, to be a character – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am not utilizing clothing for practicality and self-expression but for fear and hiding. I ask myself what I am trying to convey with the particular clothes and why. I realize it is not necessary for me to present a dishonest appearance in order to gain something. I forgive myself for the fear and I release it by facing it and breathing it out. I re-assess the situation I was dressing up for and I choose my clothes based on practicality and self-expression asking myself what I would actually want to convey in that situation without fear driving me.

I commit myself to explore clothing by slowing myself down when dressing up to actually feel the clothes on me and what their qualities and limits are, and to re-shape the clothes if it serves a purpose; I have scissors and a sewing machine, so better make use of them!

Days 243-244: Dependency on physical touch as a stabilizer

26-28052013

I was recently in a relationship to another person in a way that involved physical intimacy. When our ways parted I noticed that after the “high” I had got from the touch contact faded I experienced myself to be “missing something” - as if something had been lost. I later realized that I had made my sense of stability, which has been quite fragile now that I've been traveling, dependent on the comfort I had experienced within the touch contact.

Later on came more specific experiences. I was sitting in a train after having just landed to Japan and I had my big rucksack in front of me. I leaned on the rucksack and wrapped my hands around it, and I suddenly felt sadness because I associated the hug with the rucksack with the touch I had had with this other person. One other point I noticed was within a moment where I remembered to breathe with all of my lungs after a while of not breathing, and I felt again sadness because I associated this deep breathing with how I breathed while I was in touch contact with the other person.

So within a short interaction with another (a few days) I connected these physical acts of self-support (breathing and hugging) to the other in my mind, when in fact the support I received from them had nothing to do with the other person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget myself when I touch another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to focus on the experience of being touched instead of focusing on the act of touching another as self-expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that the act of touching another as self-expression is dependent on the other – that I cannot express myself in this way if the other is not here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that me receiving touch is dependent on others as I have not realized that I am able to induce a similar experience of touch by myself – and that this implies that touch for me is, then, not about the physical act of touching but about something else, something “bigger”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that for me touch with others is a way to induce an experience of stability, security and comfort – a replacement of actual stability, security and comfort within and as myself – and that I search for this experience with others over and over again because the previous experience always fades and leaves a “void” that I desire to fill.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the only way to make stability, security and comfort a constant part of my living is to build them into myself – I could also attach myself to something external, like another person, and make sure with all means possible that this external object does not disappear from this existence before I do, but this would make my life subject to constant gambling and this I will not do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see realize, and understand that to be reliant on others to give me the experience of stability, security and comfort is to live as inequality as I refuse to acknowledge myself to have the same responsibility over myself as others do over themselves and believe that it is another's “duty” to take care of me on top of them taking care of themselves even though I am perfectly able to carry myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to utilize touch for fulfilling my needs and desires, only taking and never giving, instead of using it as a tool of self-expression and communication.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from myself by believing and perceiving that the sense of comfort I receive from touch comes from outside of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the experience of comfort – enjoying my physical body and existence – is in fact created by me and not by others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire for others to touch me as I have not realized that the experience I seek for in touch is a replacement of what I am missing in myself on a fundamental level – and that I do not need to seek for this from others because I can build it into my foundation from where it will not fade as experience does.

I commit myself to explore touch with myself and with others from the starting point of focusing on myself within and as the realization that touch is self-expression – not a show, a scene or a story – just me being HERE within and as breath as movement and action.

As I now see, realize and understand that the only non-abusive way to be stable, secure and comfortable in this life – the way that is “best for all” - is to build this into myself and not seek it from others, I commit myself to not accept and allow myself to depend on others to be my stability points and “anchors”. When and as I see myself living as my patterns of dependency (losing focus from myself into the other, following the other instead of being self-directed, not being aware of my experience, allowing my desire to be with the other to move me, etc.) I stop, I breathe and I realize I am living out a behavioral pattern I have created earlier in my life when I have not had the tools to support myself. I realize that I do not have to live according to this pattern and that I can decide to move myself into a different direction. I breathe and I investigate the point at hand to see and forgive its origin, and I physically move myself out of the pattern by being aware of what was moving me before and by making sure that I now move self-directed. I realize that this act of becoming self-aware and self-directed is what eventually becomes stability and security within me as I will be able to actually rely on myself.