icy princess
There was no other way to walk away from DD, though, but to become cold. Like a rock I deflected his apologetic overtures as well as the comfort offered me by my friends.
When my sleeping heart revived, the pain of so much sensation in such a small place was second only to the pains of losing - no, of being robbed of - Janet.
I agreed to suffer the mourning of her death in hopes that it meant I could feel love again. On the way to her wake, in fact, is when it ocurred to me that in order to feel love I had to also be able to feel pain.
But even though feeling returned for my heart, I denied feeling for my body. Drunken moments of "weakness" were all I enjoyed. And then the participants seemed to hide from me afterwards... as though they had woken up beside a corpse. Did they know my body felt nothing?
The men I "technically" dated I never even kissed - like ML and SS... PF. And with TP I believe I was ultimately comforted in my confidence that he would never make a single physical advance upon me - drunk or otherwise.
Then came MS, a friend indeed as well as a shared bed. What an anceint sensation that seemed to me. One I barely remembered from AA (it's initials, not an acronym). AA happened before my heart's reawakening.
One night MS touched me - skin to skin with nothing interposed - and I began to shiver. He withdrew, and simply held me close. By his questions he obviously knew something was not right. We just fell asleep. He couldn't love me, though, or I him, and he even seemed to inhibited to admit our connectedness.
So that's what KG was for. He announced our even-then-un-explored connection from atop the Empire State Building. He kissed me in sobriety and told me he would always find me. Though my body still was untouched he acknowledged me in daylight, with his eyes opened, and with no liquid courage.
The first man to do so in years.
the light has not continued to shine on his reasons for putting me aside, but I know it is all withing him and has nothing to do with me. I've always known that.
With a greater understanding of my heart's place (i.e. in my chest, alive, and not in a stranger's hand, dead) I met JA. We didn't click. He and I didn't understand one another. But there was admiration and an attraction. Most importantly there was a sober comfort. We never could figure out each other's needs beyond just being held, but his unobtrusive tenderness warmed my body.
It was different tahn a revival, though, because my body didn't wake up int eh same state as it had frozen four years earlier. It was older and had a different perspective and a newfound appreciation for itself.
The inevitable end to mine and JA's relationship came after a surpisingly long interval of 6 weeks. At the close of which I felt rejuvinated... without desperation.
I knew I would not simply fall prey to my body's new need for touch - a need I had come to resent - but that I would be in control of all such choices.
Touch would come on my terms and without fear.
Mike is the hand whose touch I cannot imagine life without, and I am so thankful I am able to offer him the warm, living, and confident woman I am now. One who connects soul and body. Instead of the cold, lifeless, mechanical girl I found myself to be at 21.
