Sexuality Happens

Here is another “Back in the Day” post, this from February 23, 2009, about the Five Love Languages.

Jiz Lee recently wrote a post that got me thinking.

The five love languages are familiar to me.

These are the five love languages:

1. Words of Affirmation

2. Quality Time

3. Receiving Gifts

4. Acts of Service

5. Physical Touch

I first learned about the 5 love languages at camp in 8th grade (welcome to smart kid camp). We all wrote our top two ways we best received love on our arms, so that people in our groups understood how to best demonstrate their love for us (again, gifted kid camp).

It’s important that people understand that there is no right or wrong language. If you feel loved when you receive gifts, this doesn’t mean it has to be diamond rings…it could be cookies, flowers, a book someone thinks you’d like, a hand-me-down that is perfect for you. Physical touch, while it CAN be sex, it doesn’t have to be. It can be hugs, cuddling, massages, having your hair stroked. Acts of service can be anything from fixing a washing machine (or bed frame!) to giving you a ride to the airport or picking up a package for you from the post office. Words of affirmation don’t have to be said at a specific time or in a specific way; I love you, you’re beautiful, I enjoy how you make me think, thank you for being in my life. These are all words of affirmation. And quality time? That can be whatever you make of it. Strolling through museums, curled up on the couch watching movies, or supporting one another by attending events that are important to you.

I loved the concept, and made of poster of them for the wall in my bedroom. I literally just took it down from my mother’s house the other day while cleaning it out. I held it, I read it, and I thought about how much I use it in various facets of my life, whether by name or not. Actually, I just had a conversation about the love languages with a woman who is in Vagina Monologues with me. They are everywhere.

It may seem silly, but those five simple ideas have helped me so much throughout my life. I know that Ifeel best loved through physical touch and quality time. I want people I care about to hold me, to kiss me, to feel me, to touch me. I want them to want to spend time with me. Walking through the Denver Zoo with Q, going lingerie shopping with my friend in SF, seeing people I love in the audience at my performances; this is quality time for me. Acts of service are hard, because when I’m sick, I want nothing more than soup and tea, and feel loved when people provide them for me…but when I’m not sick, I’m very counter dependent, and have trouble letting people do favors for me.

How do I best show my love? Physical touch, quality, and acts of service like woah fuck. I leave my phone on 24-7, so people I care about can get ahold of me whenever they need me. I love giving people I love rides, I love helping them with online things, I love supporting them however I can. I am a touchy-feely person; I give hugs, pets and cuddles like no one’s business. And quality time…? Well, just like I want people I love to spend time with me, equally, I want to spend time with them.

I can give words of affirmation. Usually they are written, although sometimes spoken. But I have much trouble receiving them. Especially from people I love. I can’t imagine that they actually think I’m beautiful, or brilliant, or witty. I mean, yes, it’s a self-conscious thing, I know that. And I’ve gotten better at taking compliments. But I still have issues with it. I also have trouble getting gifts, unless I really know someone. But I do love giving gifts, things I’ve made, things I’ve found while out and about that are perfect for people I care about. So while I can and do show my affection in these ways, they aren’t the go to ways for me, as i have trouble receiving love these ways.

Knowing these things has helped me explain myself to my partners. I realized when I was presenting my Poly/Relationship Mapping class at Femina Potens last month why having a partner who would bring me soup when I was sick was so important; it’s hard for me to ask for help, and so me asking for soup, and then having it brought to me was a demonstration of love…TO ME. It wasn’t until I was explaining it you all the people at this class that *I* realized why it was so important to me, so how could any of my former partners know how much this mean. When I hop into bed, and someone sleepily puts their arms around me, or strokes my back, I feel loved. When someone arranges to hang out with me, or just shows up wanting to spend time with me, I feel love. When Monkey and Jen drove hours with 3 kids to come and take me to Fisherman’s Wharf and spend time with me, I felt cared for. When my best friend showed up on my door step the week before Valentine’s Day, as I felt like I lay on my death bed, with a half-gallon of minestrone and a smile, I realized how loved I was.

But also realize that I need to know my friends and partners love languages in order to best demonstrate my love to them, in a way that they understand and accept. I have some friends that are not touchy – I’ve learned this. So instead of telling them they just did an amazing job by giving them a big hug, I have to say it out loud. For some of my friends, they love it when I give them extra sex toys and porn, but are so busy that they don’t have time for quality time. We have to adapt, and we have to know ourselves, so we can tell the people who love us HOW to best love us.

As usual, it all boils down to communication. Communication is key, you know the drill :)

In hindsight, I wonder what the good doctor and all the gifted kid counselors would say if they knew how well discussing love languages helped relationships…sexual, kinky, poly and more.

Since I came back from Florida, it’s been non-stop. Q’s sister was in town visiting from Long Island. Jamye Waxman was in town to speak. Q started her first day as a grad school professor. I still haven’t had time to process all the emotion and family drama from my Florida trip, and Q is on a meditation kick (which I’m trying to do daily, and seems to give me headaches).

The result? Right now, we have an incredibly mercurial relationship, almost bi-polar. One minue, we’re holding hands, looking into each others’ eyes, sharing frozen yogurt, being all lovey dovey. The next, we’re arguing with each other about little things, being nit picky, almost ignoring each other.

People keep telling me it’s Mercury in retrogade. I don’t normally believe in that, but we all like to cling to something to explain why our lover and ourselves have suddenly started acting bi-polar towards the relationships…and I mean hell, Mercurial (the temperament/actions) and Mercury sure sound alike, right?

But it’s made me realize, along with some posts on Alphafemme’s blog, that relationships constantly require work, even if they’re working out just fine. Being complacent about the relationship leads to things getting stale, or issues not being worked out. However, I’m also realizing that working on and improving relationships takes a lot of hard work.

This is the longer sexual/lover relationship I’ve ever been in. I mean, I’ve made friendships work for years. My best friend Annabelle and I have been friends since 2002, and my best friend E and I since 1999. Clearly, I can handle long term relationships/friendships, including their natural ups and downs.

However, I’m new to making long term lovers/partner relationships work. I didn’t realize how hard it can be, how much effort need to be involved in truly communicating (instead of just saying yes and no, or I like this/don’t like this), how much it can hurt as we work through our issues, as well as personal issues that get brought up.

I’ve never been a highly emotional person before, but I am often with Q, because I just have so much love and trust for her, which seems to bring out this side. I need to work hard not on pushing them down, but not letting them run wild. I let little things hurt more than they should, and I feel a lot of my OCD-ness and anxiety returning, something which I would like not to happen.

Then there is the disability thing. As things get worse, and I have more bad days, and hospital visits, I always get worried that something will be the last straw, and she won’t want to deal with me anymore. I’m trying to figure out how to even phrase this feeling. I’m not sure yet.

I have a huge fear of being left/abandoned by those I love; friends and partners alike. It happened with Julius, and with Nikki, and with the Kinky Whore, and I’m terrified it’s going to happen with Q. It’s not logical, I know, but I have a history of people I love leaving me. Can I trace it back to daddy issues, and my father dying when I was 13? Possibly. Who knows? Regardless, no matter how much I trust Q, I still have this voice in the back of my head, especially whenever we’re aruging or trying to improve things, telling me that “if you don’t do it right, if you mess up at all, Q is going to leave you, just like everyone else.” I need to figure out how to quiet that voice, and trust in Q and in what we have together.

Q pointed out to me that relationships cannot thrive and grow unless we ourselves thrive and grow. Whether that is through writing, therapy, meditation (I’ve decided I’ll try it daily for 3 weeks, and then decide if it is in fact helping me), etc, we have to, as individuals, work on ourselves in order to work on our relationship.

And so, I’m working on harnessing my emotions, learning to let things go. I’m trying to not attach so much importance to little things. I’m trying to re-create more of my own life here. It’s hard. I don’t really have friends. I strongly dislike the kink community, there is no queer community, and most of the lesbians we’ve met drink a lot and do drugs, neither of which is for me. I’m having a hard time creating my own life outside of Q and my relationship because I’m in an area where I don’t fit, where I don’t belong. I think that’s part of the issue.

And I’m going to work on, I’m not sure how, but I’m going to work on this fear of abandonment. I’m open to suggestions, ideas, etc. How do you convince yourself to leave your past alone and trust in the future and in your parnter, completely?

-Essin’ Em

Last weekend, Q’s birthday weekend, we were both sick as dogs. I mean, I have had a lot of illness in my life, but the majority of it has been respiratory; whooping cough, pneumonia, etc. Or it’s been physically injury, like my knees, and hips, and getting hit with a boomerang, or having my foot caught in the fly wheel of a bike. I’ve been lucky enough not to have had much in the way of stomach bugs since I was a kid.

WARNING: Story is about a stomach bug. Don’t read if you have a weak tummy.

Now, this is good, because I hate throwing up. I’d rather have 30 MRIs or 50 injections that throw up once. I hate hate hate the feeling of throwing up. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve never been a big drinker; the fear of possibly drinking to much and then throwing up is a very potent weapon to sticking with a glass or two of wine, and frou frou and delicious drinks.

But all this aside, I came home the night of the 5th from teaching a class at Fascinations on the G-spot and Female Ejaculation. I was fine. I made myself some homemade guacamole, ate it with pita chips, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so good. We went to bed.

An hour later, Q found me on the floor of the bathroom, holding an alcohol pad to my nose (it can reduce nausea) with an empty bottle of Pepto Bismo.  I was hugging the toilet, trying to do everything in my power that I could to not throw up. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

For the next 6 hours, I had one of the worst nights of my entire life. Every hour, on the hour, like clock work, I would run to the bathroom to projectile vomit. I’ve never experienced this before; vomit being forced out of your body, through your mouth, and both nostriles, while you’re essentially peeing out your ass. I’d vomit and shit at the same time. My throat and nose were burning, my ass was chapped. I used every available place to throw up; the toilet, the sink, a trash can, the bathtub.

And through out all of this, Q had a damp washcloth on the back of my neck, and helped me clean up and bleach the crap out of everything…each and every time I pulled an Exorcist. I couldn’t even keep down water, and my black eye make up from the night before was smeared down my face, adding the the look. She brought me SmartWater, and helped me into bed, each and every time. Finally, at 5am, when it showed no signs of stopping, she drove desperately trying to find an open drug store (this is AZ, remember?), and brought me home more Pepto, and Gingerale, and Gatorade.

Through all of this, I don’t remember much, although I do distinctly remember trying to verbalize how much everything hurt and how much I just wanted to die. However, as I lay in bed the next day, my muscles exhausted, too weak to even move to get online, I remembered how cared for I felt. How much having her help me through this meant to me.  

Oh course, the poor thing got sick Saturday night (although she only threw up once), and was dead to the world all day Sunday. Birthday plans were obviously postponed.

Love has many facets. There is the attraction, the reliability, the thrill of something new, the chemical connection, the familiarity. But when I am sick, there is nothing more in the world that I want (other than possibly to die, in this case) than to have someone taking care of me. And when Q, who had a luncheon and two presentations the next day, spent her night taking care of me, I just realized, yet again, how much I love her, and how much love she has for me. Cleaning up after the Exorcist? Now THAT is love.

-Essin’ Em

Part of this post is part of my 30 Days of Letters blog endeavor. This would be Day 2, a letter to my partner/crush. However, it also just so happens to be Q’s 25th birthday, and so I’m combining it.

First of all, today is Q’s 25th birthday (she likes the TMNT a lot, hence the graphic). If you feel so inclined, leave a comment here, or head over to Q’s Twitter with your birthday wishes. Happy birthday baby! No more young driver costs on rental cars — w00t!

And now, my letter.

Dear Q/baby/stud muffin/etc,

I love you, period. I love you more and more every day. I never knew I could love a person so much, and in so many different ways, and more and more and more. I am so happy every single day of my life to have you in it.

Thank you for putting up with me. With my crankiness in the mornings, with my epic fear of bugs (although I did kill that one — I really do hope you’re proud of me, as it was one of the scariest moments of my life), with my messy house style, with my animal print obsession, with our cats and how they get along, with my late nights and travel, with my sex toys scattered around the house, with my pain issues and migraine issues and knee issues, with me being emotionally needy at times. Thank you for working on your communication skills, and for never leaving or going to bed angry (frustrated, perhaps, but never angry).

You do so many amazing things, and I am so incredibly proud of you. The work you’ve done on the campus making it a safer and more inclusive place for LGBTQ students, staff and faculty is just unbelievable, especially given not having a budget, having four campuses, 70,000 students, and the pay check of someone barely out of undergrad. You put your mind to something, and it will be accomplished; that is how dedicated (and at times, stubborn) you are. I just wish your job appreciated you more — you completely deserve it.

I know we have rough patches…whether it’s having to learn to live my my trips to doctors, hospital and ERs, or me learning to live with your sometimes wacky school schedule, we make it work. As gross as it seems, I just can’t even imagine my life without you at this point, so please don’t ever make me have to.

I’m always a little scared. Despite what might seem to be a tough and self-confident exterior, I’m always questioning. Am I pretty enough, am I smart enough, am I dedicated enough, am I good enough. When my knees came to the forefront of our lives, I questioned whether you’d think it was too much, whether you’d give up and leave me because it’s a lot of work, and emotion and scary as fuck to deal with all this. I know it’s hard, and so I will always question how someone can love me enough to deal with it. This has nothing to do with how much I love or trust you; it has to deal with me, and how I view myself. Please don’t let this push you away.

You’re smart, funny, witty, vibrant, silly, deep, introspective, hot, studly, and just over all the best partner (and cat co-parent) that I could ever imagine. Even better, in fact.

<3,

-Essin’ Em

Relationships are constantly and consistantly changing. Period. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.

When I say relationships, I mean everything from friendships to lovers, play partners to family, etc. Relationship means two (or more) people in relation to one another.

Think for a moment about your best friend from 1st grade. Do you still talk? Do you still have the same dynamic? What about your parent/guardian? Is your relationship the same now as it was last year, three years ago, five years ago? Or your last lover/hook-up/ex? How has that relationship changed since you are no longer together?

Relationship change, everyday. I don’t understand when people say things like “this is perfect– let’s never let our relationship change.” How is that possible? Even if both (or all) people didn’t want any change, change is inevitable. As other parts of our lives change, morph, grow, crash and burn, etc, this all has an effect on each and everyone of our relationships. Resisting change is futile; only when we can accept it and work with it can our relationships truly blossom and change.

Take my moose Evey. When we first met, her primary partner was essentially trying to convince me that she would be an ideal fisting partner. However, despite that move on his part, we wound up becoming more of play partners in the kink scene. At first, it was a bit more serious styled, and then we both discovered our love of silly, amusing scenes, and we went from there. At one point, we had sex (well, not according to formerly mentioned primary, but we did according to us), and decided that we didn’t think that’s where the relationship needed to go. We didn’t repeat that experiement.

Sometimes, she’s more a service moose, helping me get around, bringing me ice, planning things, bringing people to see me. Sometimes, she’s just a moose, and we talk in ridiculous accents and plan our scenes. Sometimes, she bottoms to me, letting me play tic tac toe on her arms, or beat her up while wearing a cape. Our relationship constantly changes, depending on where each of us are (physically, emotionally, mentally, and locale-wise).

Recently, our relationship changed again. We had some play time planned at Thunder, and in the middle of it, she realized that her submission to her primary, her Master, now made it very difficult, neigh on impossible for her to get into the right head space to bottom to or submit to other people. My moose decided that while she was still open to play with others, she planned to focus more on topping.

For a moment, I was sad. I now have a bunch of beautiful new custom canes, and no one to use them on (Q doesn’t like pain). I have no one to be a silly bottom to my ridiculous top. However, then as I sat for a moment, and really thought about, I saw that this is just one more change in our relationship, one more facet for us to figure out, one more branch of growth.

Without change, relationships can grow old, and stale, and wither. It is only with change, and embracing it, can we grown, both on our own, and in our relationships.

-Essin’ Em

A poem for Q.

How do I find you sexy? Let me count that ways…

*When you open the car door for me, and close it after I’ve eased myself into the seat, I find you to be chivalrously sexy.

*When we lie in bed at nice, and you are the big spoon, holding and protecting me, the little spoon, your whole body up against me, skin on skin, I find you to be comfortingly sexy.

*When you make silly faces with me, or quote Glee and How I Met Your Mother, and our eyes connect, and there is that spark, I find you amusingly sexy.

*When you’re fucking me silly, and I look at you, deep in concentration, a bead or two of sweat rolling down your face, I find you earth shatteringly sexy.

*When I’m fucking you, sliding in and you, making you moan and groan and make those noises I love, I find you just fucking sexy.

*When we cuddle afterwards, and we are just a pile of skin and sweat and shakey-ness, I find you handsomely sexy.

*When you talk to our cats although they were our children, I find you fatherly sexy.

*When you are in my life, you make it so much better from making me food to stroking my hair, from keeping the worst issues at bay and celebrating the best. Everytime I see you, my heart jumps just a little bit. I still get those butterflies in my tummy when I see you in a tie, or you kiss my neck. You are, without a doubt, the sexiest person I know, and when I see you, or hear your voice, or get a text from you, I find you sexy. Always.

The other day, as we lay together in bed, I asked Q if she’d be willing to be a bit more romanctic. I told her that while I knew how much she loved me, and that I loved her an incredible amount, that we’d settled into a routine, and that I needed to be romanced more.

She wanted to know what that meant, and pointed out we didn’t have a lot of extra money running around (and this was even before I was robbed, which cost us $400+ in glass relacement fees, replacing cards, IDs, the cash stolen, my camera, etc).  It was hard to say what it looked like. It was Dylan Ryan tweeting about her partner bringing her a “almost done with your thesis cake.” It was other people talking about massages before bed, or wildflowers their lovers had picked to cheer them up. I had no easy answer, just that it didn’t have to involve money, just SOMEthing romantic.  Big help I was, I know.

Wednesday, she texted me that she’d been driving all around town looking for a sunshade for me. It’s 90+ degrees in Phoenix, and apparently, it’s still too cool for place to sell sunshades for cars. So she went around, desperately trying to find one.  She couldn’t, so she texted me again, telling me that THIS was why she wasn’t romantic, that THIS was romance FAIL.

But it wasn’t. To me, it was more romantic that she cared enough to try multiple places to find me a damn sunshade, more so even than if she’d found and bought one at the first place she stopped. Romance was the fact that she faced adversity and frustration trying to find something for me that would help make my life better.

Romance was when I woke up to find my car window smashed and much of my life (all in my purse) stolen, and she stayed home from work, calling the insurance and glass companies while I cancelled my credit cards.  It was her lending me money to replace my IDs, and still taking me out for Dining Out For Life that night, because she new how important it was to me.  She told me that this is what anyone would do. I beg to differ. I had an ex (F) who wouldn’t even postpone a weekly kink mentorship for an hour to come comfort me when Athena died. Yet here was Q, my knight in shining armor, helping me fill out the police report, and arranging for my window to be replaced within 3 hours of finding it smashed.

So what IS romance? I don’t know. I feel like I sound like good ol’ Justice Stewart when I say “I know it when I see it,” but it’s true. Romance is what happens when relationship go outside of the head, and trickle back down into the heart, when routine is broken, when someone goes out of their way to show their love for you. It doesn’t have to involve a single cent (although I’m still holding out for a bouquet of black calla lilies one day…for now, I buy myself my own flowers), but it does have to involve heart.

And Q is no Tinman. Her heart is there, is beating, and is plenty big enough for me. And her romance? It’s just my style, even if I don’t quite know what my style is.

What is romance to you?

-Essin’ Em

Q and I have been together almost a year and a half, tripling any previous relationship I’ve been in (she has me bested by a lot with three years). She was not changed me, but helped me find different and other parts of myself.  I never thought I’d want to spend any long amount of time with one person, want to live with one person, want to significantly share my life with one person. But I do.

Granted, I still have other play partners, and shoot partners, and of course, my loving moose Evey back in Denver. I’m not losing the kink side of my life, or the multi-partnered side of my life.

I never imagined I’d find someone who didn’t leave me when the pain was too high and I could leave the bed. I never imagined I’d find someone who would be  as silly with the cats, and sometimes even sillier. I never imagined I’d find someone who was as into social justice and rights for everyone as I was, but also wasn’t hoity-toity about the revolutionary politics, keeping people out. I never thought I’d find someone to whom my attraction never waned, but only grew as I got to learn more and more about them as a person. I never dreamed I’d find someone who would let me breathe pretend fire on them, and communicate in meow-talk. I never thought I’d find someone with whom I could share a bed and fall asleep in their arms and not feel awkward and uncomfortable throughout the night.

We’re officially registered as Domestic Partners in the city of Phoenix, so that I can share her medical benefits (until they get taken away in October, because Arizona is a conservative, queer-unfriendly state).

And today, at Pride, we’re participating in the mass commitment ceremony.  And this will be our engagement. We want to show the world that queer people are real people. We love, just like anyone else. We worry about what happens to our partners, and if we’ll be allowed to see them in the ER or the ICU (you don’t want to know how many forms I had to fill out to make sure she’d know if something happened to me during my surgery last October). We want to be recognized, just like anyone else.  Perhaps the relationships will end, perhaps we’ll drift apart, and perhaps we’ll stay together, just like anyone else.

We hope, that when we move back to Colorado, they will soon approve equal marriage rights, and we can get married there.  But for now, her titanium ring, and my onyx/boulder opal bracelet (I’m not a huge ring fan…may save that for the wedding) will show our choice to commit to one another, to be there for one another, to support one another.

I love her, more than I ever thought I could love. And she loves me back. When I’m with Q, I feel safe, and loved, and cared for and happy and silly and all of these things I’ve not ever really felt. I don’t have to make excuses for her drinking or drug use, or her flaking out on me, or her treatment of others (as I have in the past with other partners), because she is so on par with my values and ethics and morals and ideals, and that makes me one very happy panda.

I’m ready to commit to her. Not forever; I don’t really believe in forever. But for as long as the two of us can be happy and support each other, I’m there.

-Essin’ Em

I know everyone thinks of me as this sex craved, kinky as fuck, can’t get enough pervert.

I am  very much about to disillusion you. If you want to continue to think of me as such, stop reading now.

Still reading? Fair enough.

Over the last few months, a lot has happened. A LOT. I got sleep apnea from swollen tonsils and was a walking zombie. Then I had tonsil removal surgery. Then we moved to Phoenix. Which involved Q and I moving in together (the first partner I’ve ever wanted to lived with). Then I was unemployed and depressed. Then I got employed and was exhausted from getting back into a fairly regular work schedule. Then I had a cancer scare (still need to write about that). Then I had a 5 day long migraine where I ended up in the ER. Add to that the nerve/wrist pain I had, the back pain I have, and the knee and hip pain that never goes away, and is better one day and is HORRIBLE and excruciating the next.

Is it any wonder that my sex drive seems to have taken a vacation? No, but it pisses me off.

Why? Because I LIKE sex. In my head, I still want to have it 6-10 times a week like we used to. I see Q, and she’s so hot, so sexy, so much deliciousness and I want her all the time. But physically, my sex drive has gone out the window.

Do we have sex? Yes, although definitely not as frequently, and not for as long of sessions. Do I wish we had more? Again…my head says yesyesyesyesyses, my body say whatever. 

When we do have sex, things have changed. I don’t ejaculate as much, so I guess that’s a good thing, since the bed doesn’t end up as wet. And my orgasms are a whole different animal; they feel different, they happen differently, etc.  Plus, where as I used to need about 2 seconds of kissing and maybe some nipple play for warm up and was then ready to fuck for hours, I now need foreplay. A lot of it. And the problem is, I don’t even know what type of foreplay I need, because this is a whole new and different journey for me as well, as I’ve never really been in this boat.

I feel horrible for poor Q.  While her sex drive has decreased slightly too, it is nowhere near as minimal as mine. I don’t want her to think that I don’t find her sexy (because I do! And I tell her that all the time), or that I don’t want to be with her any more (I can’t imagine being with anyone else — I love her so god damn much)…but how do we make this work?

Sometimes, she’ll masturbate, and I’ll help out with kissing and touching and scratching and all of that. Sometimes I’ll fuck her, but then she wants to fuck me and I’m just not in the mood and I feel horrible and gross and like a bad partner and a failure as sex educator and at life.

So we talk. A lot. I tell her where I’m at, she checks in with how she’s feeling. We try new things. We reach outside the box.  And hopefully, slowly, my sex drive will come back, and at the very least, we’ll figure out a way to make this work for us. Because really, what do you do if you ARE the sexuality educator, you ARE the pervert, you ARE the person that people come to for answers…and you just don’t have them?

EDIT: So I wrote this post when I thought I was going to be going to New York. This is not longer the case due to ticket issues, Q’s father being laid off and more.  Ergo, I’m still in Phoenix. Le Sigh.  However, I liked what I wrote about my thoughts and issues with family. So I’m keeping it up. Just don’t get confused with me not *actually* being in NY. -EE

And I’m off, once again, to New York to visit with Q’s family.

Family is such a hard concept for me.  I have such a small family; a grandfather and aunt (and her partner) in FL, my mother and sister in CO, and an aunt/uncle/3 cousins in Israel. That’s it. The whole thing.  I’ve met all of the Israelis I think 3 times (when I was little, my bat mitzvah and my sister’s bat mitzvah), and I see the FL troupe maybe once a year, my mother and sister MAYBE twice. They certainly have no plans to visit me in AZ.

But Q is so much closer with her family. She talks to them a lot, supports them through their problems, celebrates their triumphs. They are all so excited about her coming for a few days, and I just feel so out of place, like there is something wrong with me that I don’t have a large and/or loving and connected family.

It’s been over a decade (11 years next month) since my father died.  I’ve gotten over, for the most part, people asking my about my “parents” and “so, what is it that your father does?”  It’s just so hard for me to interact with family in the way that Q does. I want her family to like me so much, and I almost try too hard, and then wind up failing at my mission anyways. Le sigh.

But, we’re meeting with PhinLi bookings on Friday night, and I’m hoping to stop by Re/Dress (the plus size vintage/thrift store) to get some cute clothes and maybe a bathing suit, so I’m getting to check some “important” stuff off my list as well.

I leave you with this picture from Q and my last trip together, on the plane (in a shirt her mother gave me for the holidays), and I’ll see you on the flip side!

-Essin’ Em