I'm back

It's been a long time since I posted, but so much has happened.

While all of it isn't appropriate to post here, I will say that it's been a rough few months.  From a personal standpoint, I've been struggling...and really trying to find ways to open myself up emotionally and sexually.

I'm also discovering there are things I want and need sexually that Sir isn't in to providing.  It isn't a judgement on him, it is just that being apart...there are things I need to feel sexual and sexually connected that I don't get.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get those needs met.  Anyway, I wanted to update this blog, and hopefully will be more diligent in updating.  I don't think folks actually read it, but it'd be good for me to do regardless.

Memories of touch

Sometimes I think humans forget how important it is to actually touch another person, to hold and be held by them.  I think we take it for granted until it is not there and then it aches when we realize how much we miss it.  Touch is important.  Without it, babies die.  Children fail to thrive, and adults develop a loneliness that is indescribable.

As I was walking this morning, I felt enveloped in the dense fog that hung under the grey sky up here in the hills.  I thought about my job and my private life...and then I felt sadness.  I realized I had not been hugged or held since I was on the East Coast with Sir back in early Fall.  Three months with no physical contact, save a brief hug at the airport and shaking hands with coworkers.

This mornings fog reminded me fondly of mornings where my roommate would come into my room, pull back the covers and slide in.  He'd spoon up against me and wrap his muscled arms around me and just hold me against him...and like an excited child I'd lay there...my breath quick for a while, afraid to move or disturb him. Eventually I'd fall asleep, occasionally pushing back against him in bed.

I craved these moments.  Not because there was romance there (we both knew it was nothing of the sort), and not even because it was sexual (as we have never had sex).  But sometimes he would grind against me, or he'd wrestle me down on the bed and pin me on my back or my stomach and bite me, not hard...but just enough of a nip to make my loins ache.  Despite that ache, I knew it would not go further, so I ignored the ache and just simply enjoyed it.  On days when my ex was gone, I'd sometimes sneak into my roommate's room and perch on the edge of the bed...waiting for permission to come in.  I was so anxious he'd say no (and he sometimes did)...but sometimes he'd pull the covers back, I'd slide in not touching him...and wait for him to pull me to him.  It was intoxicating.

I still remember the scent of his skin in those mornings, that natural scent that smells like your skin was kissed by the sun and he'd squeeze me and for brief periods I felt energized and safe.  Sometimes after a bad day, or a horrible family encounter I'd hug him and he'd hug me back.  Not that hug random guys give each other with a slap on the back or even a church "side hug".  These were embraces that made me feel like everything would be okay.

Those days are gone now, but I miss them.  I feel a distance between us now, something I cannot put my finger on.  But some mornings I wake up and wish he would knock and come in for early morning snuggles.  He closes his door now, so I know his bed is off limits to me, a fragment of a fleeting moment in time when he felt comfortable sharing that need between two men.  Sometime it feels like a dream, like it was never real...but then I remember that feeling of connection and warmth without expectations or assumptions.  Just two men holding each other, holding the outside world back.

Pathetic puppies are not desired puppies

This was going to be a post on Daddy/boy dynamics, but my heart isn't in it right now.  I have the draft saved on my HD, so maybe I'll edit it tomorrow and post it in a few days.

I went to bed last night depressed and lonely.  Honestly, it was a depression I hadn't felt in a long time and I still feel it today.  I watch people I know post about crazy sex parties and leather events they go to and I feel a sort of worthlessness around all of it.  Because I know if I was at that con, I'd be sitting alone in my hotel room, feeling too self-conscious about my body to actually go get the thing I really want.

My roommate doesn't understand it, but that is because people throw themselves at him sexually.  I don't know what thats like to be honest.  People who tell me its about quality, not quantity...are also people who get a lot more quantity than I do.  I sat alone last night thinking about how the sexual prime of my 20's has been spent doing graduate school work and hating myself...which hasn't really changed and my 20s are almost over.

Sometimes I feel too pathetic for my own good.  I'm going to crawl back in bed for the day.

I'm back for 2013

I haven't updated this in a long time.  It is not for a lack of want, or even time for that matter.  More that I have been lazy and forgot. 

I'm currently cruising at 37k feet while I'm writing this, tho it will be posted when I reach my hotel in the midwest.  What a year 2012 was.  It was not a good year to be sure.  I lost my dog, my grandmother, failed to match on my initial residency and suffered at times crippling anxiety that hurt me to my core.  But 2012, for all of it's negatives, also offered some positive experiences.  

I was able to go to my grandmothers funeral and obtain some closure over the abuse I suffered at her hands.  I was able to be there for Sir's 40th birthday and present him with a beautiful cake that I worked really hard to pay for and a party that I mostly planned.  I also engaged in therapy in 2012 for assistance with dealing with some past traumas, an experience which while not complete by any means, was fruitful.  I am looking to continue that into 2013.  

I also hope to match this year, something that would propel me one step closer to being a doctor and would place me in a new city, living on my own.  This is an exciting premise, as I have not ever truly lived on my own.  I've always had roommates or partners to answer to, and this will afford me the ability to truly set up a space that is mine and allows me to explore myself, my sexuality, and my nature to a degree I have never known.  I look forward to the experience, as well as the possibility of being more free to do assignments and be available for Sir whenever he wishes.

Growth is hard.  Trauma is painful.  But both create new buds and flowers that shape who we are.  I hope 2013 is a fruitful year.

(Also, I can say that so far in 2013 I have clocked over 5k miles, and will have clocked almost 20k air miles when I'm finished before the end of this mouth.  Not bad for a guy who used to be so terrified of flying he had to be unconscious for most of it.

Unpretty

Starting yesterday through next week, Sir has a guest in town and also is at an event.  I promised not to bother him since he is hosting someone and will be busy...but its hard.  I miss talking to him and have to hold back the urge to message him a lot.

My other issue is I had a really negative experience on Recon today.  A guy chatted me up (a rarity for me to be honest...) and he actually seemed to want to chat.  See, I don't hook up much at all because I am self-conscious about my skin and cannot host.  On top of that, my schedule is nuts.  So people have to make an effort if they wanna meet (even for coffee).  The last minute "I'm horny and in town" doesn't work with me and I don't even like the idea of hooking up with strangers last minute because in the past i've had some issues regarding my presentation.

A bearish man chatted me up.  Said he was a dom and wanted to just meet maybe for coffee.  He lived locally and I figured I had some time.  Also I've been trying to put myself out there more to make friends and maybe even a pal with benefits at some point.  But not some one night fling.  I made this all clear, and he was genuinely interesting.  I asked him about meeting for coffee at a coffee shop just to see how each other were, and if it went well we could meet some other time for maybe something else. No promises kinda stuff.

Long story short, he flaked.  When I messaged him, he at least had the decency to be honest.  Brutally honest.  Honest so much it REALLY hurt my feelings.  I'm not going to post what was said here because it didn't matter.  It was his opinion.  It hurt though because he implied he did want to meet and hang.  I feel like giving up.

More on food

My relationship with food is a complicated one that goes back to being raised in poverty.  When you are poor, you have a different relationship with food.  You look at food as something that you might not have in a day or two, and each opportunity to eat produces a psychological response similar to that of a starving person.  Growing up, I remember when we would be treated to eating out at a restaurant  my mother would tell us to "Eat our monies worth" in an attempt to get the best value for the dollar.  Sometimes my parents would take us to the Golden Corral or Ryans (both buffet style dining in the south) where we would spend over an hour, with my mother often commenting if we didn't "eat enough" and reminding us that food does not grow on trees (in her defense, nothing they serve there grew on a tree).

I don't fault my folks for this at all.  To be honest, I understood it then.  While my mother and father never left us to go hungry ever, I do remember nights when supper was very basic (grits, maybe with an egg in it) or mustard and cheese sandwiches.  I remember often my folks did not eat with us those nights and framed it in allowing us to eat in front of the TV (something that rarely happened as we always ate around the supper table in a room without TV).  I relied on school lunches in the morning when I was hungry and remember the rare times my mother would cook us breakfast on the weekends as being true treats (Bisquick pancakes, grits with butter and scrambled eggs, ect).

Yet as I entered middle school I began to have body image issues.  I was not fat per say, but I was a bit thick.  Thankfully in the south, being slightly overweight is common and the obese kids were the ones who suffered for weight, allowing the kids to pick on me for being a "faggot", a "sissy" and poor, not my body.  But internally I wanted the muscle I saw on a few of the kids as they entered puberty.  I felt flabby.  In high school, I wished I had a healthy lunch even though I honestly despised salad at that point in my life.  I was working at a fast food joint for extra cash and found myself eating sometimes two of my meals there.  And boy, were they meals.

At this establishment prior to dropping out of highschool, I would start my shift around 530pm.  I would get a food break around 730-8 where I would eat a double or triple cheese burger with onion rings and an extra cup of nacho cheese.  I would snack (as did a lot of the cooks) on mistakes.  I worked the drive through (rare for a boy, but I was "that" kind of boy) and so I also made ice cream which gave me that if I wanted it too.  (Thankfully I was never really into sweets).  Sometimes on the way home from work at 11pm I would stop by Jack in the Box for "supper" where I'd order a burger and egg rolls to take home with me.

After I dropped out of highschool due to bullying, I was in a homeschool program that allowed me to work the opening breakfast shift.  I was at work at 430am making biscuits from scratch and worked till 11am.  I would eat 2 or 3 sausage egg and cheese biscuits in the mornings, and usually took home my double or triple cheese burger at lunch time.  On days that I didn't work, I had ramen noodles for breakfast (latchkey kids who live in poor families each cheap).  Except I'd have two packages of them for a meal.  Sometimes I'd have a box of Mac-&-Cheese instead of ramen.  Interestingly, I never rose above 215lbs.

Once I moved away to go to college, I lived in a dirty, filthy rental in St Louis, Missouri where we had no AC or heat.  I was in a poly relationship with two men and we shared the home.  One of my partners loved to cook and cooked us yummy (but mostly unhealthy) meals where we might have Rice-a-Roni with fatty hamburger meat in it, bread, and potatoes on the side.  (Yes, bread AND potatoes).  The other partner did not eat veggies, and was a bearish guy from the midwest who was raised on a diet of meat and cheese.  I lost weight living there, despite our lunches being take out from Checkers or Arby's 5 for 5 menu.  I can't imagine how many calories I was eating, but it had to be a lot.  I was no where near as big as my two partners, so maybe I didn't notice it, but I went to the doctor a lot for other issues so I knew my weight.  I only drank when we went out to the bar because we didn't keep booze in the house.  After the bars (which we did most weekends at least one night), we'd stop at Whitecastle for burgers and I'd have 5 or so.  (I still adore WhiteCastle).

At school though, I noticed I didn't like how I looked.  I tried to cut calories where I could.  I skipped meals at home, would order diet pills from the internet, and began very unhealthy restricting behavior.  I never liked being hungry (a throwback to childhood) which I guess saved me from anorexia.  My hatred of vomiting saved me from bulimia, but it didn't stop my binge eating when I was sad.  I ate my feelings.  My weight fluctuated between 200-210 though.  I didn't understand it.  I felt like I was eating more than I did at home down south, yet I had lost a little weight.

Upon moving to the West Coast to continue my education, I moved in with a new partner who is a fantastic cook.  I still live with him.  He cooked most nights back then.  He cooked balanced meals.  We had veggies with every dinner, we never had bread AND another carb/starch, and we had a little wine with most meals.  It was yummy.  We did eat out, but he and my roommate had such stark differences in how they ate.  My former partner was a heavyset bear of a man, but ate relatively little.  My roommate ate more than both of us and snacked heavily on cookies and candy, yet was smaller than both of us.  I still felt bad about my body image.  My doctors noticed I had issues with my liver at this point, and performed a biopsy.  The biopsy revealed I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which he attributed possibly to gluten issues or issues with how my body processed carbohydrates.

He put me on a special diet for two months.  It was difficult given that I lived with two people who did not follow it at all.  The point of the diet was to see if I improved.  This diet had no grains at all, very little carbs, and almost no sugar.  I wasn't hungry, I dropped down to 200lbs, and my IBS went away.  I was astonished.  Yet my liver panels only moderately improved.  He asked if it was sustainable for me. I told him that it would not be given my current living situation.  My partner was not happy with me taking up extra room in the fridge, needing the kitchen to cook separate meals, and the fact that I basically couldn't eat with them anymore.  They still ate a lot of grains, and my meals were much more expensive.  After two months, I eased back into carbs (still trying to keep them low).  Things were okay for a while but I still had this issue with eating too much.  It wasn't that I was eating BAD, just my quantity was high.  The new drugs they put me on during that two months had weight gain as a side effect, and my diet wasn't helping.  Then they switched my meds, I gained 10 pounds, and I gave up.  I couldn't do it anymore.  I had tried dieting, I had tried diet pills...I honestly couldn't see how I would ever be more lean in my current situation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be thin.  I'm a thick guy.  I started going to the gym and I look good thick with muscle.  I'm working on getting more muscled, but I'd like to lose my paunch as well.  I had looked oddly forward to my one year externship as a way to practice and try out living my "new" eating plan.  I began drinking heavier because I was miserable and honestly, the booze helped.  No other substance had ever made me not care and make me happy the way booze did.  I smiled more, I laughed more...I didn't worry so much about how cruel my now ex-partner sometimes was.  I didn't have to think about him dumping me because he found my skin issues unattractive, I didn't have to think about the hateful things he said to me about how he had to "try so hard" to be attracted to me or to want to "be in the same room" as me.  I went on interviews but failed to match.  That killed me.

To be fair to myself, I wasn't drinking a lot more than other grad students I knew.  I drank most days, but usually not to "excess".  But the extra calories were not something I needed, and I knew I was medicating myself.  I didn't care.  Not matching dealt a huge blow financially to me as well as to my self esteem.  I had to take another year of schooling, I had failed.

(more to come later).

Cursed health

I got to spend a week with Sir on the east coast and it was a good trip.  I got some sling time in (which I love) and found out certain nipple toys don't work on my nipples.  Oh wells.

I did not get any puppy play time in, which is disappointing, but I did get to try out some Clover nipple clamps, wrist restraints and again the sling.  I adore the sling, I really do.  With some poppers and my wrists bound it was pretty amazing.

Unfortunately my skin was not very good during the trip.  It is still pretty rough.  I'm thinking there are some changes I need to make but they are so large I wonder how I can do that given I live with two people who will not make them with me nor assist me in doing them. There are some smaller ones I can do for myself, which I will list here so I can work on them and feel like I have something to be responsible to.

1.  Drink less.  (Not drink less often, but less overall.  I tend to pour heavy which can't be helping me any.
2.  Gym more regularly.  I do hit the gym at least 3 times per week, but I need to make it on similar days, do it more often and the like so it's something I can rely on.  I'm also much less likely to miss it if I schedule it in.
3.  Eat less.  (more on this in a new post)