The Thing We Most Fear Leads To Flow
My ex came back in to be friends again recently. He is in opposition to me, almost always. Like magnets that push away. His pole is realism, (I call it dire pessimism), and mine is…unicorns (he calls it a bullshit fantasy land). I was obsessed with him for six years of volatile acrimony.
When I found adultfrienedfinder years ago, I dove in whole-heartedly and he hated it. He belittled my choices daily, in a way that was reminiscent of my father’s communication style. With ferocity, I set out to disprove this man and to show him that what I believed in and what I was doing with my life was not only valuable but vital to the world. I would think of this whenever I was faced with a challenging impasse in my personal orgasmic evolution; A, with his sneer and his words of endless doubt, endless surgical break-down of every value and desire I held dear, would be the face I would see whenever I wanted to give up, and it fueled me through several years of intense growth.
Now, many months after our final break up (of which there were many), we’ve reconciled unexpectedly and become close friends. Someone once said to me, “you and A are like guardians at the mouth of a temple, like the two lions that stand on either side of the gateway, protecting what lies within.” Perhaps if we lean into one another too much, our positions will not be held any longer and the sacred thing that we are meant to guard would go unwatched.
Last night, he and I were working on something together. We talked and laughed, he flirted with me, talked about using thrusting vibrators and I lightheartedly rejected him. At some point, the conversation turned to people I have lost, and a spot of intense loneliness in my system that I am aware of but keep my distance from. I cried and he held me. I felt how he is like my brother; a twin soul in some strange way. I felt the place where we truly are the guardians of something precious together and how our poles are very different but both necessary. I remembered that when we were together before, he loved me fiercely, too. There were many moments when I would have been swallowed by fear and he was there with healing love instead of harsh words, revealing that he secretly believed in and supported me from behind the scenes. And here he still was, in the back of my soul, pushing buttons and pulling levers, but we have had so many edges sanded down in this last year that I could finally let go and let him be back there and let myself sink into the feeling of him, of this twin soul who is never going anywhere who I used to be so scared was going to leave all the time.
After he left, my thoughts were spinning with memories and doubts. The fears mounted higher and higher, the voices loud and abrasive. I continued my list of tasks in front of me as I listened and watched my mind. There was a moment everything hit a screech level of insanity and then a white-hot fire compressed my body and propelled me as though through the eye of a needle into an extremely unexpected state of flow. I flew through the rest of my list with precision, feeling heat waves rolling off my skin, more alive than I had felt in a long time.
I realized that him being him and me being me naturally creates ignition in my system. It creates friction, which I used to take personally and be constantly angry about, which leads to ignition, which leads to flow. It was like God pulled the curtain back for a moment and I could see A’s function in my life, without the added judgments that I once held. I saw how at a basic physiological level, those who are closest to me are there to activate a variety of responses in my system. Allowing them to come and go in the flow of life allows what is most needed in my system to be given, and not too much of it. A and I, in a small room together on a daily basis, was too much ignition – it became a raging fire much of the time that resulted in endless frustration and hopelessness. Instead, an ambient awareness of the consistent underlying connection between us and an occasional dropping in where we touch that spot of deepest intimacy is just the right dose for me at just the right time. Being able to allow this to come and go with ease is my new definition of sobriety.