Traveling often for work these days, and in so doing I find myself particularly inclined towards introspection. I have long struggled with depression and mental health, and I find writing on my struggles to be cathartic. I have also been constantly working to further understand and express my sexuality in a healthy way. What follows is a deeply personal and open discussion of my current mind and struggles therein.
I was hesitant to make this piece public, but I honestly believe that open radical honesty about our struggles is the only way for humans to meaningfully connect with one another. We all have trials. Talking openly and listening to one another unites us. If you know mine, maybe you can empathize. If I am open, perhaps you will be able to be open about your struggles too. I seek to both give and receive empathy and support.
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The emotion that bubbles up inside of me so often on these trips is likely defined by many as loneliness. I am not sure the word fits for me, but I don’t know the full intention of the one who coined the term. In truth, loneliness, desperation, sexual frustration, and an existential sense of dread all congeal into a mass of internal strife that suffuses the moments where focus is allowed to wander.
It is worst at night. Laying in an empty bed. Companion options include television with reruns of shows I like, or episodes of shows I’ve never cared about. Or the constant droning hum of entertainment put out by my cell phone. A device of never ending content. Bored of what a certain app has to offer? Close it and open another. That boring now too? Great, close that one and open a third. Bored? Close the third and re-open the first. Rinse and repeat until the battery dies.
Past those lie the theoretical companions of a good book, or writing, or a project, or some work task. It takes a will greater than my own to rise up to take on such a wholesome task while under the influence of the lonely hotel lethargy.
So try to get out. Minimize the time spent trapped fiddling with the covers in the cookie-cutter room. Coworkers help, people in the same situation clinging to one another like shipwrecked sailors clinging to the flotsam. All strangers in a strange land seeking to fill the time between mandatory roles to play. But it is almost always the same; unless I personally interject an alternative. The blandest of trajectories. Dinner, because humans require sustenance. Then alcohol with dinner, because how else do people interact with one another? Then more alcohol, until the last reasonable hour, or first reasonable party member, brings the “party” to a close. Unless an alternative is driven by a strongly motivated, passionate option-maker, this cycle will complete itself nightly as driven by those with the drive to drink. Singing, dancing, any sort of activity, some will partake, and the cycle becomes brighter and more memorable. But those with joie de vivre are the minority. And the default is slow, un-pointed conversation while idly taking in whatever sports-ball happens to be playing. Chill; I suppose. Empty social carbs that leave the starving extrovert feeling sated for half as long as it takes one team to sports harder than the other.
Alcohol. Homer Simpson called it the source of and solution to all of life’s problems. I have never found a problem that could be solved by alcohol. Not for longer than it stays in your system. Aside from withdrawal. The biggest problem that alcohol brings to the surface for me, hearkens back to the impetus of this diatribe. Lust. Passion? Hunger. I feel it in waves, differently at different times. It tosses me like a dinghy in the surf. Sometimes the sea is calm. Sometimes Poseidon is angry.
When the sea is calm I am who I strive to be, and who I try to portray myself as. I am a poly amorous man, a husband, and someone who is interested in sexually expressing myself with people I care about. When the sea is angry… I envision pornographic scenarios with nearly every attractive woman who crosses my line of sight. I feel such a deep, painful need, that I can feel burning in my chest. It is almost a physical thing. I feel like I need to take the tip of a sharp knife, and drive it between my ribs, opening a gash in my heart that will allow some of the excess to get out. Anything to relieve the pressure.
I don’t know the answer to these times. Quarantine may be correct. However, isolation only brings the pot boiling higher, threatening to spill over the edge. Complicating matters in this day and age, we are never alone. We hold our world and nearly everyone in it within our pockets. Dangerous.
Less dangerous is external socialization. A flirtatious and unrequited text is less difficult than the terror of a cold approach of a stranger. Oh, and all of this discussion is under the context of sobriety. Add in alcohol and take that knob to eleven. Both the devastating need, and the absolute horror that comes with jumping the fence into talking to a stranger. But that fence is tempting. And the pounding of the need, the crashing of the constant waves, drives the mind further and further into elaborate examinations of improbable possibilities. A seat on an airplane next to a beautiful woman steals the breath from the chest, and any rationality from the mind.
Trapped, in perpetuity through analysis of the how. A polite conversation? An introduction? How forward? Funny? Serious? Braggadocio? Flirtatious? The minefield of the dance is deadly. I suppose that’s why people try to do it drunk. Some are experienced, practiced, fearless. I am not. I am fearful. I fear every aspect of failure. Rejection, offense, and inadequacy all loom on the horizon. And so the circle drives forward. I am not sure the exact journey. Though its sights are as common as childhood paths, I have yet to fully cognate the order of operations that brings one emotion into another.
At some point to actually unboil the egg, to straighten the spaghetti, I will have to endeavor towards unraveling what leads to this end state. It is exhausting. My mind is a steed whose master has run it too far and too fast. Lathered and sweaty, panting for breath, but denied any rest or respite. It won’t turn off. I don’t know how to escape it. Meditation helps, and allows me to get at least this far, sensing the borders of it. A blind man feeling the face and trying to imagine. Masturbation gives a moment's rest as well. If only the act of self flagellation wasn’t so far from the tips of my fingers these days.
I have not masturbated since starting the Prozac. I have not felt an urge to do so. I fear trying, because I fear what will happen to my view of self if I can not. I want connection, contact, intimacy, all so badly. My mind imagines more and more creative scenarios, with nearly every partner, known and unknown. But my body, my member, my… self? Does not follow up on my interest.
I saw a joke, from Archer, Pam is taking a picture of Lana in a french maid costume and Lana asks if Pam is going to masturbate to it later. She is of course. Funny joke. The funniest part is the crushing inadequacy of a picture to bring about such a reaction. Despite not participating in the action for months. Despite taking efforts to minimize stimulus. The thought of a single still image inspiring or enabling the act of masturbation is the funniest piece of that scene.
Is depression better than the side effects of treatment? Is this dearth of bodily sexual drive, in the presence of increasingly powerful mental and imaginary libido, even sourced from the little white pill? Is it the testosterone? I remember the first night after my first injection. I remember waking up and confidently reassuring myself that it was working. This was the solution. This helped, it fixed it. I woke up so hard that it hurt. I had semi-sexual dreams and actually felt like my body wanted to ejaculate again. Night one. Psychosomatic? Probably not, but I haven’t had that feeling as strongly since.
I think I found the words to express it in the sentence above. My body doesn’t feel like it wants to ejaculate. When a man is young, dumb, and full of cum, as the marines are apt to say, it is a constant pursuit. I am a foxhound who has lost the trail. Or perhaps an old dog that has forgotten how to hunt. Despite wishing for it, wanting it, needing to have it, my dick doesn’t care as much as I do. I am too young for this. I can perform, I haven’t lost the ability, praise be, but I have the constant nattering tension in the back of my mind.
It is like the quiet tension one feels in a slow horror movie. Am I going to? What if I don’t? Why am I not hard yet, it used to take far less than this, it used to happen on its own. Now I just pray that it happens. Perhaps this is a piece of the drive for escalation. Who can say… Jump the hurdle, get past the insecurity, and the fields of Elysium await. This is why people drink to fuck. It turns off all of the inner voices, if just until you metabolize it out. Once the hurdle is cleared and the act is initiated, speaking exclusively of my dearest wife of course, because despite my self identification as polyamorous above, I have yet to find any meaningful expression of that identity.
When making love to my wife, I am filled with love, lust, and joy. Sex after eleven years, even if the hurdle for entry is higher now than it was, is still a rich and fulfilling experience that leaves me feeling loved, in love, and connected. If only I could convince myself to do it more. I think about all of my robust and eclectic sexual fantasies. The impractical and macabre to the ornate, expensive, or overcomplicated, all swirling like a sky full of fantastic birds of paradise. Each one a transcendental beauty. But she proclaims, you can have that with me! I don’t know if I understand how.
I have tried, on occasion. Now I feel like a dog who fears walking out the sliding glass door not knowing if it is open, after hitting my face one to many times. I don’t feel frustration or animosity towards it, but I feel like the hand that would reach out to express my devious sexual fantasies with my wife has been wilted. I enjoy our sexual relationship. I love when the kinkier elements emerge within it, sliding through the cracks. But I don’t know how to imagine the depths of depravity that I yearn for expressed in our marital bed together anymore.
When she says she likes being tied, and asks for the ropes, I cringe, unable to stop myself from internally evaluating how much alcohol has been imbibed. It doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like a pity offering. Something put forward in patronizing placation. I wish it didn’t feel that way. I don’t know how to make it not feel that way anymore. Every rejection, every lack of communication that led to a poor outcome, every internal kinky drive that was met with disgust or revulsion when mentioned or seen external to us, all handfuls of salt thrown on the field.
Exaggeration? Overly sensitive? Probably. Nothing I am writing of is the fault, or responsibility of any other human mind but my own. It is my spaghetti to unravel, though I write it partially to share with the hope of elaborating where I am with my struggle. I also write it to more clearly delineate my own thoughts. Meditation helps my uncover them, I suppose writing can help me catalog and order them. Time to land…
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I was hesitant to make this piece public, but I honestly believe that open radical honesty about our struggles is the only way for humans to meaningfully connect with one another. We all have trials. Talking openly and listening to one another unites us. If you know mine, maybe you can empathize. If I am open, perhaps you will be able to be open about your struggles too. I seek to both give and receive empathy and support.
--------------------------------------
The emotion that bubbles up inside of me so often on these trips is likely defined by many as loneliness. I am not sure the word fits for me, but I don’t know the full intention of the one who coined the term. In truth, loneliness, desperation, sexual frustration, and an existential sense of dread all congeal into a mass of internal strife that suffuses the moments where focus is allowed to wander.
It is worst at night. Laying in an empty bed. Companion options include television with reruns of shows I like, or episodes of shows I’ve never cared about. Or the constant droning hum of entertainment put out by my cell phone. A device of never ending content. Bored of what a certain app has to offer? Close it and open another. That boring now too? Great, close that one and open a third. Bored? Close the third and re-open the first. Rinse and repeat until the battery dies.
Past those lie the theoretical companions of a good book, or writing, or a project, or some work task. It takes a will greater than my own to rise up to take on such a wholesome task while under the influence of the lonely hotel lethargy.
So try to get out. Minimize the time spent trapped fiddling with the covers in the cookie-cutter room. Coworkers help, people in the same situation clinging to one another like shipwrecked sailors clinging to the flotsam. All strangers in a strange land seeking to fill the time between mandatory roles to play. But it is almost always the same; unless I personally interject an alternative. The blandest of trajectories. Dinner, because humans require sustenance. Then alcohol with dinner, because how else do people interact with one another? Then more alcohol, until the last reasonable hour, or first reasonable party member, brings the “party” to a close. Unless an alternative is driven by a strongly motivated, passionate option-maker, this cycle will complete itself nightly as driven by those with the drive to drink. Singing, dancing, any sort of activity, some will partake, and the cycle becomes brighter and more memorable. But those with joie de vivre are the minority. And the default is slow, un-pointed conversation while idly taking in whatever sports-ball happens to be playing. Chill; I suppose. Empty social carbs that leave the starving extrovert feeling sated for half as long as it takes one team to sports harder than the other.
Alcohol. Homer Simpson called it the source of and solution to all of life’s problems. I have never found a problem that could be solved by alcohol. Not for longer than it stays in your system. Aside from withdrawal. The biggest problem that alcohol brings to the surface for me, hearkens back to the impetus of this diatribe. Lust. Passion? Hunger. I feel it in waves, differently at different times. It tosses me like a dinghy in the surf. Sometimes the sea is calm. Sometimes Poseidon is angry.
When the sea is calm I am who I strive to be, and who I try to portray myself as. I am a poly amorous man, a husband, and someone who is interested in sexually expressing myself with people I care about. When the sea is angry… I envision pornographic scenarios with nearly every attractive woman who crosses my line of sight. I feel such a deep, painful need, that I can feel burning in my chest. It is almost a physical thing. I feel like I need to take the tip of a sharp knife, and drive it between my ribs, opening a gash in my heart that will allow some of the excess to get out. Anything to relieve the pressure.
I don’t know the answer to these times. Quarantine may be correct. However, isolation only brings the pot boiling higher, threatening to spill over the edge. Complicating matters in this day and age, we are never alone. We hold our world and nearly everyone in it within our pockets. Dangerous.
Less dangerous is external socialization. A flirtatious and unrequited text is less difficult than the terror of a cold approach of a stranger. Oh, and all of this discussion is under the context of sobriety. Add in alcohol and take that knob to eleven. Both the devastating need, and the absolute horror that comes with jumping the fence into talking to a stranger. But that fence is tempting. And the pounding of the need, the crashing of the constant waves, drives the mind further and further into elaborate examinations of improbable possibilities. A seat on an airplane next to a beautiful woman steals the breath from the chest, and any rationality from the mind.
Trapped, in perpetuity through analysis of the how. A polite conversation? An introduction? How forward? Funny? Serious? Braggadocio? Flirtatious? The minefield of the dance is deadly. I suppose that’s why people try to do it drunk. Some are experienced, practiced, fearless. I am not. I am fearful. I fear every aspect of failure. Rejection, offense, and inadequacy all loom on the horizon. And so the circle drives forward. I am not sure the exact journey. Though its sights are as common as childhood paths, I have yet to fully cognate the order of operations that brings one emotion into another.
At some point to actually unboil the egg, to straighten the spaghetti, I will have to endeavor towards unraveling what leads to this end state. It is exhausting. My mind is a steed whose master has run it too far and too fast. Lathered and sweaty, panting for breath, but denied any rest or respite. It won’t turn off. I don’t know how to escape it. Meditation helps, and allows me to get at least this far, sensing the borders of it. A blind man feeling the face and trying to imagine. Masturbation gives a moment's rest as well. If only the act of self flagellation wasn’t so far from the tips of my fingers these days.
I have not masturbated since starting the Prozac. I have not felt an urge to do so. I fear trying, because I fear what will happen to my view of self if I can not. I want connection, contact, intimacy, all so badly. My mind imagines more and more creative scenarios, with nearly every partner, known and unknown. But my body, my member, my… self? Does not follow up on my interest.
I saw a joke, from Archer, Pam is taking a picture of Lana in a french maid costume and Lana asks if Pam is going to masturbate to it later. She is of course. Funny joke. The funniest part is the crushing inadequacy of a picture to bring about such a reaction. Despite not participating in the action for months. Despite taking efforts to minimize stimulus. The thought of a single still image inspiring or enabling the act of masturbation is the funniest piece of that scene.
Is depression better than the side effects of treatment? Is this dearth of bodily sexual drive, in the presence of increasingly powerful mental and imaginary libido, even sourced from the little white pill? Is it the testosterone? I remember the first night after my first injection. I remember waking up and confidently reassuring myself that it was working. This was the solution. This helped, it fixed it. I woke up so hard that it hurt. I had semi-sexual dreams and actually felt like my body wanted to ejaculate again. Night one. Psychosomatic? Probably not, but I haven’t had that feeling as strongly since.
I think I found the words to express it in the sentence above. My body doesn’t feel like it wants to ejaculate. When a man is young, dumb, and full of cum, as the marines are apt to say, it is a constant pursuit. I am a foxhound who has lost the trail. Or perhaps an old dog that has forgotten how to hunt. Despite wishing for it, wanting it, needing to have it, my dick doesn’t care as much as I do. I am too young for this. I can perform, I haven’t lost the ability, praise be, but I have the constant nattering tension in the back of my mind.
It is like the quiet tension one feels in a slow horror movie. Am I going to? What if I don’t? Why am I not hard yet, it used to take far less than this, it used to happen on its own. Now I just pray that it happens. Perhaps this is a piece of the drive for escalation. Who can say… Jump the hurdle, get past the insecurity, and the fields of Elysium await. This is why people drink to fuck. It turns off all of the inner voices, if just until you metabolize it out. Once the hurdle is cleared and the act is initiated, speaking exclusively of my dearest wife of course, because despite my self identification as polyamorous above, I have yet to find any meaningful expression of that identity.
When making love to my wife, I am filled with love, lust, and joy. Sex after eleven years, even if the hurdle for entry is higher now than it was, is still a rich and fulfilling experience that leaves me feeling loved, in love, and connected. If only I could convince myself to do it more. I think about all of my robust and eclectic sexual fantasies. The impractical and macabre to the ornate, expensive, or overcomplicated, all swirling like a sky full of fantastic birds of paradise. Each one a transcendental beauty. But she proclaims, you can have that with me! I don’t know if I understand how.
I have tried, on occasion. Now I feel like a dog who fears walking out the sliding glass door not knowing if it is open, after hitting my face one to many times. I don’t feel frustration or animosity towards it, but I feel like the hand that would reach out to express my devious sexual fantasies with my wife has been wilted. I enjoy our sexual relationship. I love when the kinkier elements emerge within it, sliding through the cracks. But I don’t know how to imagine the depths of depravity that I yearn for expressed in our marital bed together anymore.
When she says she likes being tied, and asks for the ropes, I cringe, unable to stop myself from internally evaluating how much alcohol has been imbibed. It doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like a pity offering. Something put forward in patronizing placation. I wish it didn’t feel that way. I don’t know how to make it not feel that way anymore. Every rejection, every lack of communication that led to a poor outcome, every internal kinky drive that was met with disgust or revulsion when mentioned or seen external to us, all handfuls of salt thrown on the field.
Exaggeration? Overly sensitive? Probably. Nothing I am writing of is the fault, or responsibility of any other human mind but my own. It is my spaghetti to unravel, though I write it partially to share with the hope of elaborating where I am with my struggle. I also write it to more clearly delineate my own thoughts. Meditation helps my uncover them, I suppose writing can help me catalog and order them. Time to land…
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