space

.
so a new word has been applied to me and i even like it.

spiky.

it was one of those words that you hear applied to yourself and you can feel it settling into your skin like really good moisturizer. it's just somehow immediately yours.

'mute was discussing the kind of woman he likes [picture me] and has historically liked [picture strong, opinionated, articulate women...] and he basically said that most of the important women in his life have been spiky.

apparently this is a defining trait of women like us and it makes a lot of sense. i've called myself prickly and mercurial in the past and both of those things are true but spiky sort of feels more like a description of shape than personality.

shape in the sense of the jigsaw puzzle piece fitting that we all do when we're dating... we try someone out in all their permutations and see if they fit our particular connecting pieces.

and i'm *feeling* spiky.

i know that i basically spent the better part of the last two years whining to my blog that nobody liked me and that the worms in the garden tasted good and that i should thus shut the fuck up and just enjoy the dating.

but it's WEIRD. [and besides, y'all don't want me to shut up *grin*]

i have been a fully defined human for years now. making my own choices, doing my own thing, sleeping when i want, not sleeping when i want, eating if i feel like it and basically totally basing my life around the choices that i alone make.

of course my friends were involved, how could they not be? you can't go camping with a group of folks and not worry about what they're doing and how you're all getting there. i mean i was still living cooperatively and all.

but this is different.

this is a person who is in my space in a way that friends aren't. i mean there's hand holding and stuff. i don't hold hands with my friends, kiss their lips, feed them chocolate, whatever... i just hang out.

but suddenly there's this like large presence around on a semi regular basis [who i like, don't get me wrong okay?] and my space feels funny. there's a hand on my back (okay shoulder, he's fucking tall) or a voice in my ear and somehow it's making my personal space feel weird.

i think it's simply that i haven't shared space with another human in three years. and a half if you count back to when tr and i still liked each other more than we didn't.

i haven't put my arm around someone or kissed them or felt their breath on my neck. i haven't called someone to ask what we were doing for dinner or for our date or whatever. i haven't even had to consider someone else when deciding what movie to rent.

i've been alone.

i haven't been dating or running through football teams every friday night.

alone.

and whether 'mute and i end up hanging out long term or not is totally not relevant to the discussion at hand. what's interesting is how strange i feel to be dating at all.

i was convinced in the last couple of years that i would take to dating again like the proverbial duck to water but i feel a lot more like a baby learning to crawl for the first time. plus i'm a klutzy baby and keep running into corners.

not only do i have to explore this man that i'm seeing but i have to explore myself. i have all of these assumptions about what i'm like when i date and very few of them turn out to be true. in some ways i'm almost a teenager again because i'm getting to know myself as a dating person.

i'm actually that different from the person i was the last time i was in this seat. hell i was in my *twenties* the last time i started something with someone. i was in.my.twenties.

i'm turning thirty five in three months.
i've experienced my own personal crucible.
i've filed off a lot of bullshit.
i've grown new branches...
i've been there and done that a lot.
no a lot.

no seriously a lot, like someone sent me a check off what you've done list and i said no to like five of them. out of a long list. people often refuse to believe that i've done all the crap that i've done. i don't see why i would lie about it really.

anyway yeah, i'm new.

and i am very different when i'm dating these days than i expected to be or have been.

okay, so far. i'm sure all my fucked up baggage crap is going to show up any second, really i am, but for now i really do feel a little like a high school girl. i'm sort of exploring myself all over again through the eyes of someone else.

it's a strange and vulnerable and ultimately wonderful place to be but also it's making me spiky as hell. it's my space dammit and someone is invading it!

and i'm really surprised at just how hard that part of things is for me. it was the one thing that never actually occured to me as a thing to even wonder about. but i feel weird when a hand touches my shoulder unexpectedly.

kind of like one of those wild horses after they put a bridle on it and she's willing to take the bridle but she still isn't sure. and you can see her standing there and seeming to be willing to heed you but then you touch her shoulder and her entire skin just shivers.

so she's standing but she's fucking freaked. and then, after she gets used to the idea that your hand is on her shoulder her skin will sort of settle. and yeah, she's accepted the touching and all but she's feeling pretty cautious. there's always the chance that she'll kick you instead right?

so you take your hand off and she stands there and like flicks an ear at you and you touch her again and you know what? exactly, her skin does that thing again. and that's me. it's like every time we go on a date it takes me a couple of hours just to relearn this idea of shared space.

and i *like* it that's what's so fucking strange about it. it's alien and weird and hrm not wrong but unnatural and i like it. but still my skin shivers everytime. (hush bubbles you dirty girl you, that kind of shiver is a whole 'nother post)

so i find myself sort of randomly snappish or irritable and it's never about what's happening right then [okay part of it is the longest bout of pms ever but that's another story] and it always seems to relate to that space thing.

my sister, a very wise lady, was once heard to pronounce:

space is a hard thing to negotiate

smart girl that one.