As always, this is an incredibly self-centered post. The site is called “Tinu Stuff” people. Get used to it, LOL!

Seriously though, the reason I have a special site that acts as the public side of my personal journal is for three reasons.

First, I like to keep written records, both on and offline, of how I feel, what I think and how I came to certain conclusions, etc., to help with my own evolution. I’m always attempting to make myself into the best me. This helps.

Second, pure entertainment value. It amazes me how many people just enjoy seeing what is in someone else’s mind and heart.

Third, I’m hoping that some small part of this blog will be a help, inspiration or warning to someone. Even if it’s one person. I know that there have been several times where reading someone else’s thoughts on a situation they were in helped me immensely.

Today I’m thinking about what would make my relationships in the future more successful. And I’ve come up with several things.

First, in the beginning, I have to start keeping all thoughts about the situation to myself unless someone should expressly ask. I’ve become conscious of the fact that I vacillate between complete radio silence and bursts of emotion, and that it’s potentially quite unnerving. It’s usually because when I meet people, I watch and circle them for weeks or months before actually engaging. Then, in the few circumstances where I feel I’ve met someone I can connect with, I’m so happy about it that my filter turns completely off.

The problem is that while some people welcome this wholeheartedly and with relief that they can now do the same, other people don’t find it as cool. On top of that, I often do it in writing. And if you’ve been here or to any other site of mine before, you can see that I can sit down and write a 1000 word stream-of-consciousness brain dump in less than an hour, and read one in less than 3 minutes.

I easily forget that not everyone is a speed reader or particularly fond of reading long prose. Ah, well. In business, I learned to write for people who scan. Not so much in my personal life — if anything I’m more verbose.

Secondly, I really have to think about what I truly want in a relationship versus what I think I’m supposed to have.

Yes, I want to fall in love. But I don’t want, need or expect love to be all-consuming. I want to have a life outside my primary partnership and I want my partner to do the same. That’s how we can keep things fresh – space and lots of it. I believe true love is about freedom.

Yes, I want to get married. But I don’t want to have a traditional marriage. Not to say I wouldn’t adore being a house wife. I’m down for all of it expect cleaning, so I’d probably keep my business open part-time to guarantee we’d have household help. I’m not damaging my health for anyone, ever again.

What I mean by non-traditional is that I’m not a traditionalist in most respects, as far as relationships are concerned. I’m from a culture where a man and a woman go to a party together and everyone dances with everyone else’s spouse. I thought this was normal until I went to college and faced issues of possessiveness and jealousy whenever I was what I felt was a little flirty.

That’s really the shallow end of the pool though. I believe men can be tender and still masculine, gentlemen and still respect equality. I also don’t believe that you can or should possess another person, outside the romantic sense of the word. I believe we are brought together to love each other as we are, not “fix” each other. I believe in freedom, on both sides of the fence… while I want to be part of a couple that does things together, I don’t believe we have to, or should want to, spend all our free time together.

I’m a creative person, and when I get into my creative space, I need to be alone. That can last for hours sometimes and I need to be with someone who is okay with that, or better yet, just not around certain times of days or days of the week so I can habituate myself into summoning as much of my inspiration as I can in that alone time.

That’s not to say I want to end up with someone I don’t see. Not at all. Just that I’m the type of person who could be with a basketball player who was on the road for weeks at a time, as long as the quality of the time we have together is superior and prioritized.

Actually, judging by past relationships, I think I would thrive on it. And I also see how not having those options sometimes made me feel smothered. I was once deeply in love with someone who wanted to be with me every day, all day, no matter what. I appreciated his devotion, but was frustrated with the fact that we didn’t ever DO anything once we were together. So we had all of the time but none of the spark. No intellectual stimulation, no conversation, no exploration or travel.

Yeah, there was the sex, but since I was better at it than he was, that kinda sucked after a while – not horribly.

But have you ever had your favorite dish, prepared the exact same way for three weeks in a row, at every meal. Trust me by the time you get to week three you want to punch newborn kittens in the face.

I also feel that freedom is important here. Over the years, I’ve found that I’m not so much a jealous or possessive woman at all, it’s just the way I react when I feel the relationship is insecure. Once the declarations of love come into play and are reinforced with some regularity, and my position as his lady is secure, I get very laid back as far as feeling secure in the relationship.

In fact, I’ve come to realize that I’m actually not the jealous type at all when I’m feeling balanced. I was just unbalanced so often, in so many of the wrong relationships that I thought it was the norm.

This is important because I want to be married to someone who is ambitious or has some kind of purpose to their life with respect to adding to the world, not just living in it and taking from it. Nine times out of ten, that means you’ll be looking at a creative type, or a social type, both of which have to deal with either fans or making social connections.

And if you’re constantly asking “Who the hell is Christine!?” and waving business cards in the man’s face? Probably not a good match. When I realize that this is what I wanted, and how the way I related was incongruent, I fixed it fast.

Now, granted, in my last major relationship, I fixed it TOO much, because who seriously goes for marrying a guy with 6 kids by four mothers, who lives in proximity to two of them, and can barely support themselves? And on top of that wanted to keep me a secret until we were at least 2 kids deep?

Yeah, I’m talking about Droplet. Let’s not even get into THAT.

I’d prefer it be an artist – it’s been a lifelong dream to find a way to marry a poet or a painter – or better yet be one – and still live a comfortable life.

I want – need – to be with someone who wants to travel. Who enjoys it. Because one of my favorite things in the wide world is to hotel hop for a couple of weeks and live off room service. In about five years, I’ll probably try to figure out how to turn that into a career.

There was a time when I used to make up reasons to travel, just because I had the money. Other days I would say I was traveling, and go to a hotel in my home city instead. I adored having a good reason to hotel hop in Vegas.

And I don’t need someone else to be there. I can have a perfectly fantastic time on my own, not to mention that since I can work from anywhere with a high speed connection, I never need miss work because I thought it’d be a nice day to island-hop. If I get bored, I just go out and meet people. Folks just like to chat with me for some reason. I’m told I have one of those faces.

There are physical and personality characteristics too.

Yep. I have a list and I’m ain’t settling. There are certain things I’ll give up to get other things, but some stuff is mandatory.

I’ll post that whole list later.

The point of all this is, I’m starting to see how deep my issue of choosing the wrong men goes.

Whenever I chose someone physically unavailable, who couldn’t be near me, it’s because I wanted to be in love without the responsibility of doing anything about it.

When I would chose someone who was emotional unavailable, it had a lot to do with how much I valued myself and my belief that I was worthy of love. And it was often because I wasn’t ready for the level of commitment – and I never will be because I want to be in love and married BUT I don’t want to be in the standard relationship….

I need a man who is away sometimes, whether that means marrying an entrepreneur who doesn’t work out of the home as I do, or being with some salesman who travels the world for his job and takes me with him.

Now, choosing someone technically unavailable must be sub-conscious. I’m so ready to find a person to be with and stop dating and starting over. I want to build a future with one person, in a relationship we define together, rather than one we find ourselves prisoners to because “that’s what people do.”

For a while, I even talked myself out of finding a man who was a friend to me first, simply because none of us hurts our true friends the way we do lovers. That friendship is the bedrock that I believe takes you through the hard times. When you know that other person is your captain or first mate, that it’s the two of you teamed up against the world, it adds so much to life.

And no, those aren’t all the things I’ve decided I want. Matter of fact, tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll put up the list – so if you find him you can tell him I’m looking.

Hm. Actually I might not be at the moment. I have one guy I’m looking really seriously at, and another waiting in the wings behind him (if he acts right), just in case.

Which I deserve a wrist slap for, I know but it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.

Besides, it’s too early for me to tell with this person. The instant he says he’s mine, all other bets are off. So I’ll put it up for entertainment value, ‘kay?

I’m experiencing elation. As I’ve been sitting here contemplating recent interactions, I’m pretty effing sure that I am starting to get go signals.

The best problem ever is going to be in figuring out

–> whether or not I am fully cleared for take-off,

–> if today’s journey to the site alerted him to the space shuttle plan (even if he didn’t view the rest of the posts, as he swears, a quick look at the sidebar of that page could have betrayed my intentions)

–> whether he was hip to the clues I unwittingly gave him today, which fell away, upon positive responses to flirtations and hints, or

–> if he thinks I’m just being flirty in general.

I highly doubt the last one. Specific things were said that lead me to believe that if left to unfold naturally, the seed I planted is going to grow into a whole garden…. stay tuned….

in a dreamless night…
where only stardust clothed my after thoughts of you before i saw you smile at me from the dark side of the moon…
you remind me what water tastes like
..or snowflakes on June days in Georgia…
or young love in the twilight of an after life…you remind me of my future past…

i am shy inside, my thoughts darkened with the precious words that lay on your breath, sending me a gentle breeze of adoration.
you make me feel as light as the step of those freshly in love… i turn on satin sheets to the painful emptiness of my bed, clutching thoughts of you to my sweat soaked body.

I will become you. . .and you will become me. . living out all ancient allegories. . becoming the trees of knowledge and the potters wheal of an infinite galaxy. . inhaling life. . . exhaling rosaries that bend in the windpipe of my hindsight. . .

I’ve seen you somewhere before. . perhaps in a future life?

i will meet you soon, maybe yesterday, maybe i have already been with you tomorrow. i can feel your rebirth inside me from before we were born. the ribbon that is time ties us together, ever bound with an echo of our shadows within each other….

i miss you even though you are always here, in the molecules of the yearning between my thighs, on the song of my skin recalling your hair, when the sun sets, painting miracles of ocular intoxication within a mood that reminds me of the you i have yet to meet.
this excites me.

…almost to the point of intoxication or orgasmic hallucination. . I’m imagining the love I would make for you . . a gift to be hung around the sun in every galaxy from here to kingdommmm. . . gone . .in a billionth of a second. . in the moment it took to bat an eye. . . . . luv becomes moon dust. . ancient as the galaxy. .

i sit inside this infinite second of love that i want to selfishly share with you, if only to see your smile rival the stars and shatter time, placing us in the stillest waters of eternity where we could bathe in each others gaze.

when i find a gift of myself to give you it will have no beginning and no end, only the continum of the pleasure awakening my being from the knowledge that i make you happy, if only for a brief forever…

cause we make me happy . . .and your kiss is the life blossom in valley of the reality of death. . .

and us makes me blush… your touch is the birth of every dewdrop of joy that ever brushed against the springtime of our next lives

I stand in that place in space and time where possibilities echo. . where words and dreams that have never been seen are the only reality. . and you are within me. .
WE
ARE
DIVINITY……..

WE
ARE
DIVINITY……..

……..divinely……..

This was a poem written by myself and the friend of mine who painted the soul and memory likeness of me before we would ever have the chance to meet. He painted it without pictures, just a description and an idea of me in his head. We were close friends, once a bit romantically so, but never in a serious relationship.

In fact, at the time of this writing, we were both writing about other people. My contribution is the italicized portion.

I’ll post a snapshot of the painting next. Then off to bed with me, finally.

]]> http://tinustuff.com/blog/kepera-a-collaboration-213.php/feed 0 http://tinustuff.com/blog/in-love-with-him-and-shouldnt-be-146.php http://tinustuff.com/blog/in-love-with-him-and-shouldnt-be-146.php#comments Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:42:24 +0000 Tinu http://tinustuff.com/blog/?p=146

So yeah, I’m in love again if you haven’t noticed. I’m in a totally exhilarating, you-can’t-be-in-love Love, again.

If I was to go by people I know the best, people who fulfilled the promises they made to me, this would be the person closest to being the love of my life, the one who got away. If I’m being honest, the only reason I didn’t give him the crown before was that he was out of the realm of possibility, in that he was taken at the time I was doing my tally.

He’s not anymore, hasn’t been for longer than I would have thought.

But I have to call him a crush because I just can’t go there. And if by some miracle it seems that I can, at the very least not yet.

It’s not that new guy (we’re calling him Flame) is bad for me. It’s not that I’d be bad for new guy. Truthfully, thinking back I believe the only reason Flame and I are apart is circumstance.

The circumstances were these (why did they cancel Pushing Daisies?).

Number One:

I’ve been through a lot of turmoil in my life, and my main coping mechanism is to block things out. I avoid thinking about things that are painful, finding a distraction until they’re just gone. This can be good in the sense that I’m functional for that period of time. It helped me survive the part of my childhood that is peppered with sexual abuse.

So blocking out bad thoughts clearly it has its place, in terms of temporary survival tactics.

Still, it’s bad in that I mentally throw the baby out with the bath water, meaning I cease to think about six months or a year of my life and anyone who reminds me of that time period is essentially dead to me. I met him during a time of unforseen tragedy, and in forgetting that to get past it, I forgot about him.

I distanced myself, and in that time, he met someone else, who, by the time I invited him back into my life, he was in a serious relationship with. At the time, so was I.

Sometime around the time I became unentangled from my lover, so did he with his, unbeknownst to me, he was no longer with. By this time, we had started to become friends again.

So that circumstance has been overcome, it’s not like I’m going backwards out of nostalgia, adopting an old relationship with its old problems.

Number Two:

On top of my rock-em sock-em block-em robot issue, I find it extraordinarily hard to trust people.

Okay, not true. Obviously I trust “people” as a group, or I wouldn’t have my little lovefest here online. I find it hard to trust a person, an individual, a new friend. Though, nce I feel my trust has been earned, I’m loyal to a fault.

But since trust deepens over time, catch-22 here we come.

Trust is one of the primary components of love. So there’s that. I can’t even trust Flame enough right now to tell him that I’m still in love with him.

Shit Shit Shit

I’m still in love with him.

Now, that’s one parallel with my relationship with Droplet (the ex-fiance) that I’m not comfortable with. Of course, comparing the love I shared with Flame and the love I had with Droplet is like comparing a hot extra vanilla latte to instant coffee.

Still.

How Can I Still Be In Love With Him?

Better question – how could I have still been in love with him all this time and not known it? Answer – I buried it, apparently. As we talked about, I’m good at that. Too good.

I was initially just reminiscing about what it feels like to me, to truly be loved, in the aftermath of my break-up with Droplet, because I wanted to make sure I never settle for anything less than that again.

This last time I settled because I heard the words “Marry me”. Droplet never followed through with any of this promises related to asking for my hand, not one. And they weren’t outrageous promises mind you. But I held on because I thought, I’m 36. Who else is going to marry me?

My biological clock had just started ticking, and I had marriage/baby on the brain. So I did a lot of compromising, because I believe that’s what relationships are about.

Problem is, both parties have to compromise and he did not.

Anyway, back to how I came to realize I love Flame still.

I found this love letter he’d written to me. And it all came rushing back. Not the memories, or even the memories of the feelings, which is what normally happens.

The actual love.

I’m wandering into such dangerous territory. I can tell he feels that something is different between us, too. It seems he’s suddenly being freer when we speak, talking off the top of his head, before he felt a bit guarded.

And he seems to be reacting to me the same way he did before either of us would talk about what we were feeling the last time.

Which really scares the crap out of me. Unless I’m imagining/projecting all of that, which is even scarier.

Already losing my nerve to be resolute. Maybe I should just play it cool for now, get myself fly again, then fly out there for a short visit for the first part of February.

Shit Shit ShitshitshitSHIT shit. I can’t do this. I have to finish recovering- don’t I? He’s probably not recovered from his break-up yet. Even if he’s totally fine, I can’t just pounce on him now, out of… respect or something like that.

And … and.

Hm.

What were the other reasons again?

Shit.

]]> http://tinustuff.com/blog/in-love-with-him-and-shouldnt-be-146.php/feed 0 http://tinustuff.com/blog/but-still-re-love-33.php http://tinustuff.com/blog/but-still-re-love-33.php#comments Sun, 27 Jul 2008 05:03:52 +0000 Tinu http://tinustuff.com/blog/but-still-re-love-33.php
photo credit: petja2008

Sometimes, okay three time since we’ve been together, which has only been about 16 weeks since we’ve been back together but feels like the happiest year of my life, I get so frustrated with him that I want to pull out all my hair and make him eat it.

Granted. But I’ve never met anyone who I was with almost 24 hours a day who I didn’t eventually feel like that about.

However, if I’m being honest with myself, the real problem is that I’m scared that this relationship will somehow change or get broken in a way that I won’t like or can’t be fixed.

Because…. well, I know love isn’t supposed to be based on what someone does for you, but rather, who they are. I love who he is, as a whole picture, so let’s skip that part and look at this list in terms of “bonuses”:

• He does my laundry. This is important to someone who is routinely too physically ill to do laundry.
• He “waits on me hand and foot” – his words. And “enjoys it” – his words.
• He always wants to know what I think and what I want to eat.
• He listens politely even when I know I’m being an insufferable bore and can’t stop myself from talking.
• When he comes to bed at night he holds me in the dark and gently nudges me into sharing myself.
• When he comes to bed at night he holds me and tells me everything that is on his mind and in his heart.
• He tells me he loves me every day.
• He doesn’t believe he deserves me.
• He doesn’t believe that I don’t believe that I deserve him.
• The three times we’ve fought has been because he was frustrated about wanting to make me happy. Or happier.
• The first time I told him I couldn’t sleep, he stayed up with me, until I realized that he was staying awake to keep me company.
• He opens doors for me.
• No matter where he is or who he is with when we talk on the phone, before he hangs up he tells me that he loves me.
• Whenever I’m in a not-great mood, he tries to make it better, even if there’s really nothing he can do to make it better, even if I tell him that and he is met with my unholy bitchiness as a result.
• I told him about the abuse in my childhood and he listened and for once was completely on my side.
• He supports everything I do in every possible way.
• He gets mad if I have a nightmare and don’t wake him up.
• At any hour, on any day, no matter where I am on the planet, or how tired he is not telling me he is, he goes to the store to get anything I ever think I want.
• He remembers the brand, style and size of every single one of my toiletries, including my deodorant, for these types of trips.
• He remembers exactly what I like as far as food, and tries to make sure I get served precisely what I would like.
• He’s a supremely satisfying lover who lets me take charge when I like to, and has plenty of sex with me, as often as I like.
• He makes me laugh, all day long, every single day.

I could go on with that list forever.

And sometimes I have huge raging mountainous doubts about having pledged the rest of my life to him. Like dear-God, he’s a Limbaugh Republican.

Who doesn’t vote. But still, he thinks someone I believe is a hypocritical douche is worthy of listening to in his car on Fridays. He says things like “leftist agenda”. Out loud, where sane people can hear him.

And then lives his life as if he were a Democrat. Which is equally scary, since I’m kinda mad at them too.

And yeah, then there’s all the kids he has. Some day I’ll tell you how many and you still won’t believe me. But I love his kids. And I want a house full of them and I’m just too old to have the number I’d like, safely, especially with my medical issues.

Plus he completely loses control of his emotions and screams like a maniac when we disagree. Who doesn’t do that, though? The guys I date seem to think volume makes their points more right.

Anyway. The point is that Even If those were these huge parts of our every day life, rather than rare derailments upon which we go back on course….

Even if I didn’t have that feeling I have about him and with him in these I-can-feel-your-emotions-in-m-body type of soulmate love happenstances…

Even if this somehow, one day, tragically derailed…

All of the wonderful little things about him are so very worth enduring anything. And as I’ve told him so many times, which he fervently seems to think is not true, as long as when I go to bed at night, he’s there with me for 15 minutes of chatting and snuggling, I’m pretty much going to be a happy camper.

All this other stuff is gravy. Great gravy that is spoiling me rotten for any other man on earth.

But. Still.

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