Healing and Exploring

January 9, 1998

2:08am

Yes, it's early, no matter how you look at it. I've spent the last 15 or 20 minutes trying to get comfortable and drift off to slep, only to find my mind in the mood to ramble. Past memoryies -- good and not so good -- ideas about putting my journal into paper form for Jevim, and on to Jevim himself... how I miss him, and how he has had such an effect on my life in the past year and a half. More than "just" having someone to love (which is a very important thing in and of itself).

In the past eighteen months, I've grown... grown up, grown in maturity... Thanks to Jevim, I've explored facets of myself that I had never known much about before, and I think I am on the road to becoming a more complete person.

Yes, I've been hurt in the past, and frightented, in many ways. But Jevim gives me the encouragement and the motivation to explore those dark, sometimes scary places, and when I do, I usually discover that they are no longer so frightening, or so painful to the touch. Granted, I still have a long way to go, but it's a beginning.

Without being too blunt about certain things, I will say that I was still very much a 'prude' when Jevim and I first got together, and very scared of the thought of actually seeing a male, unclothed. We had a couple online fantasies, and I even went so far as to write a short story of what I imagined our first intimate encounter might be like -- including my greater fear of seeing him nude than of going all the way with him. I let him read it (after a little convincing), and I think it helped him to understand some of my fears.

Armed with this knowledge -- and the fact that I had shared with him the event I think caused a great deal of the fear in the first place -- he was very patient with me, never pushing me too far or too fast, always ready to stop everything when my fears overcame my common sense.

It took us three visits, over a course of eight or nine months, for me to overcome that fear enough to be completely comfortable with him, and to begin to be more at ease with my own sexuality. Actually, he was the one who decided we should wait a while longer, when I thought I was ready at the end of our second visit, which had lasted a week. And I think he was right to wait.

I believe I still have a long way to go, becoming my own person -- discovering myself, and finding out who I am and who I want to be. Yes, there are still fears to overcome, but I am no longer afraid of Jevim or my own sexuality. I'm an adult, and it's my choice... it's not something that someone is going to catch me at and punish me for.

When Aaron exposed himself to me (see Growing up different for more details), it wasn't rape I was afraid of. I was too naive at the time to know or maybe just to think about that. I was afraid of him telling on me, as he'd threated to do. I had, after all, partially exposed myself to him to keep him from following through on his threat and telling. It wasn't until many, many years later that my mind brought that event back up and translated the fear of being caught into the fear of being raped... something very traumatic to me, as unhappy and lonely and mired in depression as I was at the time.

Jevim told me his opinion of it when I related the story to him, that it was more likely a case of "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" than a case of intended rape. After all, we were only about ten or eleven when it happened. That put it back into perspective, and helped me come to terms with the event and the resulting fears. Where would I be without my thinking, rational Jevim to help me see things with a clearer head?

Am I over my fear of men? I sincerely doubt it. But it no longer keeps me from having the relationship I've always longed for, and I no longer need a guy to prove himself safe time and time again before I will give him any of my trust. There were always a few exceptions to this rule -- guys who seem to be more gay or bi-oriented, more often than not. That was always my "gay-dar" test...if I was inclined to trust a guy right off, he usually wasn't straight.

You may ask (I do), have I helped Jevim to heal and to grow... to discover more about himself? I really don't know... I hope I have, and I'd like to think I have...

I think I have managed to convince him that I won't leave on him, or turn on him, or have my head turned by another. When we were first together, I think he really expected that. After all, that's what his only other previous experience had been like. But beyond that, you'd have to ask him. Maybe when he reads this, he'll have something to contribute.

It's now after 3 in the morning... the hour long sleep timer just shut the radio off. I'd turned it on maybe ten minutes before I gave up trying to sleep this last time.

Mom's cat came in and just spent the last ten minutes or so loving up on me, keeping me from writing. Hejust kneaded himself a spot further down on my body pillow (my surrogate Jevim) and laid down. He's purring loudly, and I think if I lay down the pen and turn out the light, it could probably put me to sleep. Goodnight... again.

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