Affection

Tonight, my ego is telling me how terrible I am at affection.

So, I agree. I am pretty awful at making signals to people that demonstrate how much I like them. I am afraid of touching people, looking them up and down, flirting, and saying nice things about them.

I'm not surprised that I'm single. I trail people off away from potential and into confusion. I talk and I talk and I don't really enjoy talking because I think my nature is more physical, maybe more intuitive, and learning to be in touch with my nature is like writing with the other hand.

I believe sexuality is so much interconnected to our humanity and everything we do.

I don't know what people are thinking, but I definitely create stories that convince me otherwise. Here at Twin Oaks, everyone I meet thinks I'm crazy and weird (the bad kind of weird), and I'm not interesting, I don't make any sense, I'm just not cool enough.

So, to my ego I say, you're right. You've always been right. You dwell within a pretty pitiful being.

I agree because it's my coping method. Years ago I used to fight my self-inflicted criticisms and that seemed to stoke the flames and make things worse. Now I just agree. There was one time over the summer where I was waking up every morning to my ego telling me how lazy I was, that I was a sloth for sleeping in so late. So, I agreed and refused to leave my tent until my ego could empower me. I told my ego: Fine. I'm lazy. I will just lay here like you said and be as lazy as you say I am.

I usually wake up pretty rejuvenated now. Telling myself I'm lazy is just silly.

So, telling myself I'm unaffectionate is silly, too, yeah?

When you notice another guy looking you up and down and making eye contact and find him sitting next to you at a party and getting right to the point with: "My name's Jesse. You have really pretty blue eyes," how do you respond? How do you regift that affection?

I don't know how to do this. I don't know what to say.

So, I'm disappointed in myself.

Stories and otherwise

Handwriting 1,667 words every day for 30 days is definitely a lesson in handwriting technique. Once I get to the last two pages I'm writing in the day, I start to feel my elbow and forearm muscles responding to the work I'm putting them through. I haven't yet reached that point where my wrist starts to feedback, so I'm hoping I'm doing just enough not to hit a tipping point. And also, these appendages do everything else for me besides think. They prepare and put food in my mouth, they help me make motions that accentuate oral communication, they assist in maintaining hygiene, they wipe my ass, they put on my clothes, and so on and so forth. They really do a lot for me. So, thank you hands. I've really been meaning to use my left hand in writing. It holds the book in place, but it's really been begging for a turn. And even now my right arm is exhausted, or at least close to it.