My Next Brilliant Plan.

First of all, I'm not sleeping with anyone. I'm not dating anyone. And anyone who might have been on the horizon, past or future, is out of luck. I've made an executive decision and I'm trying it on for size right now: I'm going to be by myself for a while. Some may call this a regression to my old celibacy pact. Well, OK, I guess that has merit. But the difference is that I'm not going to seek or cultivate a relationship, not just sex. Sex is out too, by the way.

So call it a Loneliness/Celibacy Pact. Haha.

I have no real interest in being lonely. That will just happen, I bet.

I have no real interest in being sexually frustrated. That will happen too.

What I really want is to change. I want to stop looking toward other people for groundedness or balance. For 30+ years that's what I got from my mother. Then I looked to various men.

Let me give you an example: if I like a man, my mood depends on whether or not he emails or calls me. No no, let me re-state that. My entire state of mind, my inner peace is shattered if I don't hear from him when I think I ought to. That's just a small example. I'm easily and disasterously unhinged by factors and relationships outside myself.

I need to learn how to be centered inwardly. To know who I am, to determine this new life without regard to what anyone else thinks or feels. To trust myself beyond all others.

Another example: last summer my grandmother basically called me a drunk and a bad mother. I actually tried to sit down with her later and engage her in a conversation about it. What??!!!?? Who the fuck does she think she is and more importantly why did I actually consider her opinion, when in my heart, I know she's dead wrong?

I don't know if I'm saying this the way I want to. But you don't have to completely get it. I do. I need to be alone, with all the implications.

Yippee. What a fucking blast.