Monthly Archives: July 2015
Comments…
Wow…I am a real bone head sometimes, but it’s okay because I make up for it in cuteness! 😀 haha. I’ve been a bit out of it lately, preoccupied with other parts of my life and not really doing much blogging or reading, so I have obviously fallen behind!
I opened up my WordPress account this morning and found well over a dozen comments that needed my approval before they could show up on my posts. I am super sorry for this, and if you were one who left a comment I do hope that you will accept my apology for my tardiness and for not responding personally to your comments, but there were so many and I got a bit overwhelmed and decided to do this one post in response. I believe that I have now approved all of the comments that were awaiting my moderation and they should all show now.
From now on I will pay closer attention daily and make sure that the comments are approved. Once I approve one comment for you WordPress assumes that I “trust” you and will automatically make all of your future comments on my blogs post publicly. I am generally okay with this, but if I see you start posting derogatory or inflamatory stuff about me or anyone that I mention I will delete it. Respect is all that I ask. I welcome your comments and opinions and do love a good discussion, so post on!!!
It’s going to be a really super hot day here today, so I am going to get my work done, do my errands and then spend some time in the cool water of my sister’s swimming pool, or at the beach, I haven’t quite made up my mind yet on which it will be. I am up early in an effort to get a jump on the day and avoid working in the direct sun of mid-day.
Everybody have a great day! ~MB
Lazy Hazy July
“Each of the myriad decisions we make every day has the potential to have a deep impact on our lives. Some choices touch us to our very cores, awakening poignant feelings within us. Others seem at first to be simple but prove to be confusingly complex. We make the best decisions when we approach the decision-making process from a balanced emotional and intellectual foundation. When we have achieved equilibrium in our hearts and in our minds, we can clearly see both sides of an issue or alternative. Likewise, we can accept compromise as a natural fact of life. Instead of relying solely on our feelings or our rationality, we utilize both in equal measure, empowering ourselves to come to a life-affirming and balanced conclusion.”….Daily OM
I refer back to this particular OM quite often to remind myself that our choices do have impact on our lives, and I try to weigh mine carefully. Maybe I don’t always make the right ones in others’ opinions, but I make the right ones for myself.
I’ve been pretty reserved, quiet and contemplative lately. Just spending alot of time staying busy and keeping to myself. I had a date for the 21st but it didn’t happen because I have decided that I need some time to recover. Recover from what? From a long and drawn out emotional affair that I had. I ended it because I could see it wasn’t going to go anywhere ever. It was destined to be only an online emotional mess. I need more than that; I want more than that.
Recently I’ve been talking to a very pretty and sweet woman recently that I am interested in, and I hope to meet up with her later this month in person. She is occupying my thoughts quite a bit lately, and I enjoy chatting with her evenings on Facebook. Although I am nervous to meet her, but at the same time I think I need to stop being so damned stubborn about things, and just let things take their course – meet her and see what kind of chemistry is there! She wants to meet me and spend some time with me — I am really honored that this pretty woman has chosen me to give her time and attention to, and it’s nice that I am attracted to her as well. She’s very femme, which I just love as you all know. She lives a just a few hours drive away from me, which is excellent in my book. Hell, I’m actually pretty excited to meet her and just have a nice time together. I am a good host and tour guide and there’s so much cool stuff here to check out and that I love showing people.
Other stuff….Lulu, my Pomeranian puppy, is coming up on being 6 months old and she’s really looking pretty with her long flowing hair and her bright eyes. I have started training her to go outside and obey commands such as sit, stay, wait, leave it, come here, and far enough. She is lightening fast on the ground, so her obeying my commands is essential to us having a successful venture outside with her off lead. Nola has been helping alot by showing the puppy what to do basically. She’s a good lead dog.
My gardens are looking spectacular finally. I have paid them more attention lately, planted a bunch of new perrenials and moved some stuff around, mulched all of them with a nice dark black mulch that really makes the flower colors pop. My mom even came up and helped me weed out the rock garden one day, and we got that pretty much done now, just needs a couple of bags of new mulch to finish it off this weekend.
I am trying to get the place looking as nice as possible because it may be going on the market soon. I’m thinking of making a move to a newer place, or a nicer area. Maybe check out condos, or find a nicer modular in a better location. I am thinking about possibly moving back to Kittery or to York Maine, that’s where I am looking anyways. Just time to make a change and this place has been great for the time I have been here the last 4 years. I’d like to make this move within the next year if possible. I think it will happen, just got to pull things together and get ‘er done.
It’s late…I can’t sleep tonight…not sure why. Think I just have a lot on my mind lately. And tomorrow is a very busy day for me, so I need to close this up and get into bed. Hope you all are doing well. Peace! ~MB
Back to Basics: Trust
Trust is something that is huge with me. Honesty is the most redeeming quality a person can have in my opinion. I seriously dislike dealing with sly or dishonest people. Sly is even more aggravating than outwardly dishonest actually. It’s one of the things that I notice when I get interested in women. If they come off as sly or devious in anyway, you bet your ass I am going to be looking for that. They’re the types that won’t give you a straight answer, who gloss over questions and avoid what they don’t wish for you to know.
I realize that I am having a huge issue with trust in my life right now. It’s conditioning. Many months of conditioning. For some reason I think that if someone wants me to know something about them, if they want to share their life’s goings ons with me then they will offer up the information freely to me – perhaps because they trust me and want me to know. Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about things. Perhaps I need to be questioning more things and waiting for answers instead of just being good without the answer at that moment.
I tend to be very automatically trusting…I’m a trustworthy person myself. I guess I expect that some trust with my friends and lovers.
*Note: I am in a bit of a writing rut at the moment. I have ended the online relationship that I was involved in for the last 10 months, and it hurts. I’m working my way through it emotion by emotion. I cared too much and I should have known better that there was really not future in the situation, or not one for me anyway. I could not be contented with it the way it was. It’s not a bad thing, everyone needed to do what was best for them, and this is the best thing for me. I want to meet a woman here in the states that wants to have a solid relationship that has a future. And it will happen I am sure. 🙂
Come and go…that’s life
Going against the grain of what people want you to be. Don’t we all do that to some extent? Of course people come into our lives and leave, it’s just part of being human and interacting with other humans. Over my life I have had the privilege of meeting and knowing some pretty incredible people, and I have lost touch with lots of them too. Our lives merge for a while, then a split in the road comes, one goes a different way, and you lose touch over time. Or maybe you have a disagreement about something and things come to a more abrupt end. Either way, no one ever really stays in your life to the end. If you meet some incredible person who DOES stick it out with you to the end then you have really had something special in life.
I think back to high school. I am still in touch with some of my best friends from that period of time. We chat on Facebook and I see what they post about their lives today, and they see what I post, but we aren’t really involved in one another’s lives anymore like we used to be.
I have an Army buddy in Arizona that I have known since I was 18 and in basic training at Ft. Dix NJ. She and I touch base at least a couple of times a year, and we had a sort of reunion back in 2004 where we got together and reminisced about all the crazy stuff we did in the Army together, and about how we were so close but we didn’t really “know” each other. I had hidden my sexuality from her for fear of losing her friendship. I find out during our reconnection that that may or may not have happened. She told me that another friend of ours came on to her during our time at Dix and she ended the friendship because it made her (at 20) feel uncomfortable. So my fear may have been well founded. Today we are fine friends, I still consider her one of my closest friends, and she is well aware that I am lesbian.
In recent years I changed the roads that I was traveling and left some people behind. People that I cared very much for and about but who I decided I needed to move away from in my life.
In the last year I met someone who I became very fond romantically of, and who I gave a lot of my time to. But we can’t be together, so I decided we need to stop and severe our connection. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I didn’t handle it well. Because I didn’t know how to handle it. Her temper is a bit quick and harsh. And then I get angry and I get quick and harsh with what I say too. No, the best thing for us is to stop talking and everything and move on to our own lives, whatever they may be for each of us. I tried to be just friends but there are too many emotions and feelings involved to do so properly. Long distance relationships just plain suck. I’ve tried it now a couple of times, and the end result is always the same, they don’t last.
I want to start dating here soon, locally, and start to connect more with women who are seeking the same things that I am seeking – love, a relationship and a partnership. I want someone who wants to wake up next to me every morning and wants to work toward making that happen, as partners. I don’t want to be “just friends” And I want to be talking to women until I find the one that I have been looking for, because she’s out there and it’s just a matter of time. I’m sure along the way I will make friends as well, because I have very particular tastes and likes. I need to get back to dating the femme women that appeal to me the most as I look for that partner that I want. I’ve met a couple that I am pretty interested in, but if I am locked up in another situation that I know is really going nowhere I am not giving these other women a chance to show me who they are, and get to know them and for them to get to know me. I’m really in no hurry. I was going to go out with someone tomorrow night, but a a believe it’s just too soon for me. I need some time and space to process what just happened in my life with this other woman. That’s reasonable I believe. It’s just me, I just can’t just hop out of the pan and into a new fire quite so quickly. I need to take some time and process this, figure out what I don’t want to happen again and how to prevent it.
I have been spending a lot of time to myself, just chilling and thinking. Wondering where things will lead me next. I have this slight itch to move….I’m not sure what that’s all about, but I could easily see myself moving in the near future. Not too far really, somewhere in southern Maine again I believe. My big move will come in a few years when I try moving to warmer climates. Right now I’m just sick of my neighborhood and it’s deteriorating conditions…I’d like a little better neighborhood and maybe a condo instead of the mobilie home. Eh, that’ all just thoughts…I am pretty entrenched here and not really in any position where I have to move for any reason. It’s clean,comfortable and serves the purpose of keeping a good roof over my head. But if sometime good comes up I will definitley be taking a look.
Back up a bit….
I am talking to my friend from Spain again. Yes, the same one that I am very much attracted to and want to be dating. We’ve had a few rough spots over the last almost 10 months of us talking, especially after we sort of fell for each other and things got more intense. I know I have written a couple of blogs about some of these rough spots, and one in particular that was a little defaming of her more recently. If I could retract that particular blog I would do so, because I was angry when I wrote it and I should have not been in that state of mind to write something that would be so public in my blog. We had had a major sort of falling out and I should have dealt with it quite differently. I should have taken my thoughts and feelings directly to her and not to my blog. Alas, here I am now. I appreciated the comments left on the blog and the advice you all gave me to move on and such. But at this point my heart doesn’t let me do that, I’m very much invested in my relationship with her, whatever it may be or look like. Right now we are telling each other it’s just as friends that we are talking again.
Because I write a blog people only know one side of the equation. She doesn’t write or comment on my blogs. She is welcome to do so, and she did email me about it privately. She never meant to insult me intentionally, yet in my writing I think I made it sound like she did. I apologize to her for that. Again, I just shouldn’t have posted that entry at all, it was between her and I and I should have kept it that way out of respect but my anger got the best of me and my temper tantrum blog hurt her, for which I am truly sorry.
I protect the people I write about in my blog by giving them nicknames and not disclosing their identities. I think I do a darned good job of it. I’m going to call my girl “K” from now on to make it more simple. So it’s not like anyone knows her name or specifics as I have protected her privacy along the way. But she has one friend who reads my blog and gives her quite a dose of negative feedback on me. Someone who does not know me. Someone who does not know the dynamics between her and I; who doesn’t see us or hear us interact daily on Skype or by texts and emails. This friend of her’s doesn’t get to see how well we get along and how much fun we have talking. She doesn’t know the specifics of our conversations or the extent of our private relationship. No one does except the two of us. We’ve been pretty private about it and kept things between us. This friend of K’s doesn’t get the whole story. Just snippets. So she’s formed a pretty negative opinion of me, as I have also caused to be formed about K with some of my angry writing. This is what happens when you only get parts of the story; one side or just the little snippets of another’s take on it. I’m sorry she has a negative opinion of me, but I don’t really care to be honest. She makes no difference to me. The only person I truly care about here is K.
Writing a publicly read blog has it’s ups and downs. I see people struggle with it all the time. I see some that give up for various reasons, like negative comments or differences of opinion. When you put yourself out there you take that chance, and many others. Sometimes I wish I were more anonymous.
Anyone who has consistently read my blog knows that I am usually brutally honest with my views and opinions about things. I admit that I do fly off the handle sometimes when I am passionate about something. And I should not write when I am of ill temper and am addressing an issue regarding a friend or individual person. I got to have a little more self-discipline and I know it. I do keep a bunch of private blog entries, and I should just keep some things to myself in those. Writing is sort of like therapy for me, when something is on my mind it helps me to write about it, but I should write and then wait until I cool off if I am writing when I am angry….kind of like writing it down in the heat of battle but waiting for the cease fire to send off the note, just to make sure it’s really what I want to say out loud.
In figuring out what happened that day we had that big fight and about which I quoted her in the blog, we had a serious break down of communication and understanding. Now I understand that she was trying to say that I think in a more masculine way and she in a more feminine way. She was trying to tell me something and I was hearing it a different way than she was intending it to mean. I get it now. And she was right, I was thinking like a guy for sure…part of what I call the Butch emotional deficit disorder…I do tend to do this I know. It’s hard to explain without going into the whole argument and specifics, which I don’t want to do here, but it was basically a serious misunderstanding between us.
Anyway, we are talking now and things have been going pretty good. I really super enjoy this woman and talking, laughing and getting along very well. We’ve had a lot of intense conversation and are trying to mend some fences. We’ve sort of agreed just to be friends, which is SUPER hard for my heart to accept if that’s seriously what it comes to – us just being friends. But, we live 3,500 miles apart…and neither of us is relocating our lives to another country, culture and way of being. With that said, the best we can do is be good friends and hope for the best for the other. It will be really hard to see her date someone else, or even start talking to someone else, and I don’t know if we will just fade out communication at that time (if either of us starts dating someone else), or what. Hard to say what I will feel, but I know it won’t feel good. It makes me crazy just to think about it.
Had I realized at the beginning of us talking, before I became emotionally invested, that all of this would be so hard I may not have taken things as far as we have here. It never crossed my mind at first, then I began to think about the distance involved in this situation. Any LDR is difficult, but make it intercontinental and it can just be heartbreaking, I know, and hind-sight is 20/20, right? I can’t help that I fell for her now. I can only go forward and try to adjust my thinking and attitude to fit what is happening at the moment and keep my wits about me as best I can do.
A Little Rant on Butch-phobia
I got a note from a young Butch who is struggling with being Butch. Sad when one struggles so hard with just being who they authentically ARE. Pisses me off that we have nurtured a lesbian community who thinks that Butch equals male. Butch doesn’t “equal” male at all, Butch is far more than plain old male, it’s the culmination of masculine female energy and living.
There is so much going on in the LGBT community currently, that things get a bit jumbled in my head. I have several half written pieces in my cache about various things concerning various LGBT issues. I mention this because one piece is on “allies” and what constitutes an ally versus what constitutes prejudice and phobia. I look at it from underneath the proverbial “umbrella” myself. So my perspective on anything LGBT will be skewed in this fashion; bias to some degree.
Maybe I am even getting a little off topic here now, it’s because when I think of phobia both Transphobia and Butchphobia come to my mind. Because those are the two inside the community that affect me personally the most, thus the two that very first come to my thoughts. Know what I mean? Sure you do. Since I identify as Butch then Butchphobia comes to my mind when we start talking about the various phobias that we deal with as LGBT people…homophobia being our #1. And then even that doesn’t bother me as much as phobia coming from inside the LGBT community itself – some of that being internalized Butchphobia.
I find that quite a few lesbians are seriously Butchphobic. They shun the more masculine of us in the crowd. I’ve had it happen personally, watched it happen to friends and felt the pain that is a result of being dissed by my own supposed “community” members. I’ve heard it said more than once to me “oh, I don’t identify any way, I am just a regular, normal lesbian.” to which I always want to say,”Hell yeah that big fat rainbow sticker on your car says ‘LOOK I am normal and regular’ alright!”
And I want to have a big ole argument about this “Normal, Regular Lesbian” title.
I want to know what is not ‘normal’ or ‘regular’ about ME? Why can’t I be part of the normal/regular crowd? Are they afraid of me? (Maybe they fear that my masculinity will be contagious! hahaha Let me assure you that Butch doesn’t wash off or rub off on anyone else. It’s pretty permanent. Same with femmes, it doesn’t wash off like their cherry flavored lip stick!
Is it that I am Butch? Are you saying that that’s not the norm? That I can’t just be a regular Butch lesbian? Cuz that’s what I am; just your regular stock Butch lesbian. (Except when I am that “special” kind of Butch…you know, like the one you like so damned much, but are afraid of what your friends or family will think, if you ask her out. Maybe they’ll ask you the old “Why not just date a man?” fall-back question and then you would be some uncomfortable huh? The femmes that I date have dealt with this question I am sure (because they’ve told me about it). Dating a Butch lesbian is a bit like dating someone with a lesbian tattoo in the middle of their forehead, it’s usually blatantly visible that they are lesbian. (Now before you railroad me I know that there are straight Butch girls…and other sexualities of Butch out there, but for all intents and purposes of this blog we are talking about lesbians) So it’s important to me that I date strong minded femmes, because they can handle these rude questions much more effectively, and with some finesse. I love that about femmes, they will stick up for what they believe in and are loyal to. Bless their steel-plated hearts.
I don’t try to be anyone other than who I am. I don’t tell you how to identify and you don’t tell me. I try to be authentic; honest about who I am and how I see things. And I dare to be different.
(….to be continued…) I’d love to hear your thoughts below!
Peace! ~MB~
MainelyButch: Private Label 