Little Miss Lonely Heart

I never did eat those chocolate covered bananas. Too messy, too sticky, too much really. That was all the way back in October and I was beginning to think that maybe my man fast had gone on too long. It's good to take some time and reevaluate (or in my case, write down every sexual experience I've ever had, acknowledge where I've been selfish, dishonest, or caused harm, and read it all aloud to someone else while they make comments and laugh at my expense, all through the good of AA) but there comes a point, babies, where you have to get back in the game.
[Back in the game? I deplore sports metaphors, I'm more than likely to mix them up. Let's give it the old college try! Time to knock that ball through the field posts and try not to get fouled and end up in the box! You can't get a touchdown if you try to steal third! Let's bogey this sumbitch and take 'er home! Match, set, love, where's the motherfucking ball boy? Why am I the one who always gets drenched with Gatorade?]
ahem.... Back in the saddle. [Better. Now I feel like a cowgirl.]
I realized last night at my meeting that I may be the only female in my homegroup (which is large) that has gotten through two years of sobriety without sleeping with anyone else in AA. Even very old women with white hair who spend their hour knitting and nodding and speak in shaky voices full of wisdom and experience are out there getting more action than I am. I see the way they look at the gentlemen! It's like a goddamn sober sex party and I was invited but decided instead to wash my hair. Now I am seen as this font of self control and piety, when really I'm just clueless and awkward, like I've been my entire life. Not that I want to sleep with recovering alcoholics, those people are cra-zy. Besides, whenever I find myself attracted to anyone from AA I find that he lives at the shelter or he just got out of jail. I don't judge! I'm just sayin'.
Very recently I decided to take a man up on his offer of love and found myself alone and wearing foolish nightclothes. It is a very chilly thing to wake up in an empty bed in silky bits expecting company. He said all the right things, but there was no follow through. It feels like lies when there is no action to back the words up, and makes me feel like a back-up plan for if the night gets lonely. It made me angry. I love words, I have words, I have all the words I need.

[my love is like a tempest tossed
the sparrows up against the wall...]

[if tender feet I do not have to place inside my lover's palms
then I will have the poetry, I will have the words and songs]

I am hesitant to write in all seriousness about love because it is an embarrassing and private thing, unless you are in love and then the world loves with you and smiles on your shining face. And there are those who will say I had my chance, that love was there for the taking and I walked away. But love for me, like anything because I am too sensitive, is hard and tricky. I want it to be right. I can't be easy, I am not easy, and it is not a comfortable thing to be this skittish, this sober, this self conscious all the time. I envy those girls who have three-ways in cars and end up sleeping in fireplaces (that actually happened to a girl I know. slut.). Not the experience itself, a three-way in a car strikes me as decidedly uncomfortable, but the ease and laughter that goes with it, the shrug of shoulders and wicked smile- that I envy.
There's a Jamaican man I knew who used to say "Don't fatten a fish for another man to eat", meaning don't wind your girl up and leave her wanting, she'll satisfy herself somewhere else. Or maybe it doesn't mean that, he also used to say "You know what time it 'tis" and I would smile, desperately hoping that I at least looked like I did indeed know what time it 'twas. Anyway, I feel like a fattened fish that grows cold on a plate.
I yearn for sweetness, for ease, for warmth. I was self contained before but now, woken up I am needful. A need without fulfillment is no fun and not funny. I feel useless and at a loss as how to find what I want, which is strange for me. Alone is not lonely until you don't want it anymore.
A few weeks ago I picked flowers and cleaned my house in anticipation of company. Perhaps he thought that my house is always so shining, that I always keep a jar of camellias and eucalyptus by my bed. Or perhaps he did not care. This week I cleaned my house again and washed the clothes and made the house smell like lemons. Before the freeze I went out and picked camellias, arm loads of creamy perfection so lovely they seemed edible like they were made of fondant, and rosemary, and lavender. Now though it is so cold outside and all the flowers have fallen from the bushes and the sky is so blue and thin it looks like it might crack with the effort, I have a garden inside. For me and me alone and for my eyes to rest on something beautiful and gentle when I wake up. Though I love them, the flower's faces are so pretty, the gesture now seems as empty as the sky.
I was more content when I was all so self contained, but I don't want that contentment back. It's alright to yearn in winter. And be fragile. And crave warmth. Things happen in their own time. I may as well crave spring, and I do, but I think this longing in me has made me more whole. I feel more tender toward myself and toward others. I fell asleep last night thinking of Mwa and Danielle and Jo, thinking of the snow of Europe. I heard on the BBC that people in the Netherlands and in Germany were being advised to stay indoors because it is so dangerously cold. I worried about them, about you my friends. Do you have enough to eat? Do you have warm blankets and wool socks? And so perhaps this softening, this need is not useless after all. When one is hard and self contained there is no room for others to get inside. I want to let this softening happen, and not try to be so tough.
Which I think, perhaps, is finally the point of this post. I am afraid to open myself up and say I am tender, I am soft, I have a happysadness, because that is not cool or smart, and there is no protection there. But what do I have to protect? I am not so cool and smart, I am just a girl. I like flowers, I like poetry, I like the words "kiss" and "touch" and "pink". Perhaps I am coming into who I am again, and this time soft and on cat feet. If one is lonely, one must let others in. So simple and so frightening.
I started out this post meaning to be funny, and I end up so timid and serious. Perhaps this is why I don't write so often. I am in awe of those of you who write so well about your feelings, whose words are their honest hearts. I am going to end this here, where there is no ending, so I can go to the library and go to the grocery store and cook the food and go to work, but I am going to post it anyway, neatly done or not. To post and hope that I will write more, I will be a part of your brave circle. I hope you all are warm today. When I come home tonight I'll read your words and worry about you and smile with you and we will all crave spring, and that will take the edge off my foolish little loneliness.