Cuddle Party

The weirdest thing about a Cuddle Party, is that it's not weird at all. Not when it's done right, meaning it's led by professionals that teach in a very "workshop/seminar" way, what the rules are during the set aside "cuddle time" of the night. Also the other factor most needed to make this event NOT weird you out: having the right kind of people attending it.
Yesterday I attended my first "Cuddle Party." This is a real thing, I'm not making it up. It's been in my city for 2 years now and apparently really big in Portland (not surprising at all), which is where I believe it started. Yesterday afternoon I was feeling adventurous and like I could be social tonight, it was Saturday night for crying out loud. Usually though I would choose to stay in with my cat and binge watch some show over being around people I don't know. But I decided to see what was on the schedule for Saturday on the meet up website. I scrolled down looking at all the meet-up groups having events in my area on Saturday, particularly in the evening, when I came across something called a "Cuddle Party." I had never heard of it in my life, didn't know it existed, didn't know it was a real thing. I was skeptical but also very much intrigued. What I've wanted for so long is just to be touched, to be held. To connect with another human being on that level. I get maybe one hug a week, if I'm lucky, most times it's no hugs a week. I just don't have anyone in my daily life to provide that for me, so I survive without it. I get massages literally so I can be touched by another human being. But this didn't cost 60 bucks, it cost 10. I signed up immediately, 5 hours before it was to begin. I had no idea really what I was going into. I was curious though, and I thought "well, if anything it was only 10 bucks and at least I can say I tried something new." I figured at the very least it would be a story I could add to my collection of social disasters and weird encounters on this journey of endless singleness I appear to be on. It ended up being an experience I don't even know if I can fully explain clearly. You'd have to have been there. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life. I'm not even sure I've even experienced it with the 2 guys I've dated, at least not for that long amount of time and doing all that particular touching. It was a mixture of men and women, probably half and half. The first 40 minutes was like a seminar on how to express yourself with what makes you comfortable and what doesn't. We practiced saying "no" when you don't want that person to touch you, and "thank you for taking care of yourself," when you are told no by someone else. Because we all know rejection is harder than anything else when it comes to asking for something that we need deep down at our core and that makes us highly vulnerable. It was a great practice and they made it feel like I was at a workshop on communication and boundaries and not as some weird 70s key party. It SO wasn't that. The main rules are "clothes must stay on at all times" and "you must ask the other person before you do anything," and I mean anything. You ask to touch their arm, if you're going to move it to their back, you ask for that as well. Luckily there were many that were leaders or leaders in training, to help it get going once the "free time" for cuddling began. I know this all sounds weird but if you were there and you were open and around people as open as you, you wouldn't be weirded out at all. You didn't have to participate. They didn't force you. You could take a nap, stay on the couch and not touch a single person. I went to the bathroom right before it was to began and came back to a cuddle train going on. Everyone made it easier by just talking. Talking about anything and everything. Their head may have been leaning against someone's stomach or someone might have been stroking someone's arm, but it was natural, it was chill. There was music playing. And it didn't feel like I was apart of some hippie commune. No one had been drinking, it was a no-alcohol event, and everyone's clothes stayed on. I found myself at the end of the cuddle train next to a guy. He was a nice guy, a gentle guy. I'm not going to describe him to obviously protect his anonymity. But what started as me just joining what everyone else was doing- my head on his stomach, turned into back massage and light arm touch. Nothing about it was sexual. It wasn't meant to be. I didn't have feelings for him. Oddly enough I didn't even gain feelings for him after being given this affection in this way for so long. But I also didn't feel used. I know that must sound weird and like I should feel that way, but I didn't. I still don't today. It was this experience that is unlike "cuddling" with someone you're in love with, but you also don't feel uncomfortable about it. If you did, you could stop and go to someone else. You could always stop. No feelings were to be hurt. We talked at length about this in the seminar. I think because there were leaders and rules and boundaries and parameters set, a time table set as when it was to end; it made it feel safe. I felt very safe. It wasn't in some creepy guys basement. No one there felt creepy. It was really just about people connecting and meeting this need we all have for human touch. Especially in a world that is all too much about digital communication, not physical communication. I don't know if I got lucky with getting this guy in particular or what. It was his first time too. I don't know if I just got matched by fate to someone who was open and easy going and just kind and gentle, like myself, or what, but it was the perfect person for me. I couldn't even ask for more. I held some other guys hand briefly since it was out there and the way I was positioned on the floor and I ran my hair through some lady's hair, because she was right there as well and it was soft and fluffy and I liked it, but other than that it was just the one day. I can't even begin to tell you how not weird it was, but it wasn't at all! And I'm just as shocked as you by that statement! Connecting with someone in a safe environment, with rules, and with someone with the same spirit as you, I mean what more could you ask for? (Well besides an actual significant other of course). Granted I wasn't full out spooning him or looking into his eyes, but I didn't need to. Don't think on it too hard, people. If you're missing out on human touch, a "Cuddle Party" is the safest place you're gonna get it. Like I said, it wasn't sexual, I'm still gay, but I think I enjoyed touching him in appropriate ways and places, just as much as I enjoyed being touched. The head massage and the lightly touching my stomach (over my shirt of course), was the best part. I know for a fact that no one in my entire life has caressed my stomach so gently for that long, or even at all I don't think. That was literally a first. Massage therapists don't go for the stomach. I liked it. It was relaxing, it was comforting. The whole experience was like a spiritual one for me. I feel connected and alive unlike I ever have before. I feel like I could handle anything right now. My body is at peace. My mind is at peace.
By the end I was completely out of it. It's like I had entered another dimension. I was totally disoriented, but in a good way. I felt exhausted, in a good way. I was chasing such high levels of oxytocin that my body wasn't quite sure how to react to it. I somehow made it home. Today I am still tired, but it's a good tired. I feel taken care of. For someone who has spent so many years feeling that almost pain that comes from NOT being touched. Feeling like you might just break down and lose it, you just need someone to hold you. Well, even though I wasn't fully held like I would be if I was dating the person doing the holding, it was a very close second. Plus I don't think most couples cuddle for over 2 1/2 hours, at least not in this way. They maybe watch TV while the other one holds them or something. I don't know, I'm sure many couples do cuddle a lot, I definitely would be in one of those couples. I am definitely going to go to another Cuddle party. I feel like I'm good for awhile. To feel like your physical human contact quotient is met, is like a foreign concept to me. It's unheard of. That hasn't happened in almost 9 years. So for me to say "I'm good;" that's literally a miracle. I was a part of a miracle. It happened to me. I feel lucky to have found that event just hours before it was to happen, and for their to be tickets left and for me to have been just randomly (but not so randomly I guess) paired with the perfect person that was exactly like me in a lot of ways, including touch. It was amazing but at the same time felt like a dream. Did I really go to a cuddle party? My relaxed body says yes... yes I did.

meditating on you

I wish I could draw you to me. You could be my focal point in meditation. I would close my eyes, picture you and use every ounce of energy, every part of my life-force to pull you closer to where I am. I felt a tug in my stomach when I did that. It was weird. Unlike anything I had felt before. My eyes were closed and I pictured your face and pulled you in with my mind like I was Darth Vader using the force. Or Luke Skywalker... let me be the good guy in this scenario. I pulled you in like a magnet, to me, and felt a pull deep down in the pit of my stomach. Like I was bringing you closer to me via rope that I was tugging on through my belly button. Maybe it worked. Maybe I brought you closer to me. Maybe. Maybe it's the opposite of when a ravine is coming apart. Slowly with the years of wear and tear, the earth erodes and pulls apart at the seams, slowly making what was once one, into 2. Well this is the opposite. Like a magnet, I am drawing you to me, so now 2 can become one. Ya know I used to visualize you. In the passenger seat next to me while I drove around all day at my job. I didn't talk to you, because I'm not crazy. I didn't truly see you there, but I could picture you there. You were always smiling at me or laughing. You'd put your hand on my leg briefly or squeeze my shoulder in support. But then it became too depressing to picture you there, since it's all just pie in the sky. It's wishful thinking but the highest of the highly unlikely. It's fun to dream though. I don't think that any one thing "works." Not meditating, not visualizing, not praying, not trying, not pleading to the universe. Nothing works truly. If it did, at least one of these would've worked by now. But that's alright. People can believe what they want to believe, that's their right. They just can't force their beliefs on others. They can't tell someone how to believe and what to believe in. Everything is random. I am sure of it. Even if I do end up with her or some other her, it will be all random. It wasn't meant to be, it just happened. It happened and I took it and ran with it and loved it and cared for it and in the good times and bad, we made a commitment and stuck to it. That would be nice if that happened, but I'm not counting on it. I will still try to draw her to me. I can't not do that. I don't obsess for hours, I don't stalk, I don't try to engage, I'm just here. And she's there. If I believed in reasons, I'd say there was a reason why I am so drawn to her in particular, but I don't know why exactly. I don't want to be. It's a little insane and impossible sounding anyway, but it is what it is. I like the idea of meditating. Even if it doesn't produce results, it's relaxing and calming and focuses my brain. I'm not thinking of a million things, just one. Just you. Or maybe I'll pick something maybe a little more appropriate like the rainbow I saw over Niagara Falls in Canada. It was gorgeous. I love being inside a painting. That's what it felt like. And that's what it felt like every time I looked at the Pikes Peak mountain range in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was an ever changing painting dependent on the seasons or time of day, but it had to have been drawn... it couldn't have been real. I'm a lucky gal to have seen what I've seen. There's so much beauty and I have so much more to see. I'm thinking Grand Canyons next year. But for now I could probably use one of the beautiful scenic views I've witnessed, as a focal point for my meditation. Or I can keep using you. See if something comes of that. Why not? A girl can't live on food and water alone. She needs hopes and dreams to keep her alive.

Flip-flopping around

I realized something earlier today. I don't know shit. I don't like that word, but what else would I use? It describes it perfectly. For awhile now I've been living in this place. This place where I thought it was what was best for me. I thought to myself, "Christie, since having hope only leads to getting crushed and let down and ignored and being rejected by every potential relationship, isn't working for you, why not live in a place where your dreams are NOT coming true, because that's just what was meant to be?" I know that sounds weird, but I really thought it was what was best. I thought I needed to accept being alone for the rest of my life. Accept this in a way where I wasn't upset about it, it was just the way it is. Some people are meant to be alone. I mean look at the world. Is every single man and woman with someone or had someone and they died of old age? (because that counts as having someone. Having someone till your old counts. They just happen to die first. Sucks for the one left I guess, but your turn will come soon enough). No of course they are not all coupled up! This isn't the damn Ark! For both millions of reasons and no reason at all, people are alone... forever. They die alone. I thought that accepting forever single status would allow me to just enjoy my life without the distractions of "wondering" or "hoping," wishing on damn stars, throwing my life savings away in pennies down wells, trying and failing to connect and trying again... and again..and again. It seemed easier to me, in a way, because then I don't have to try to meet someone, like I have been for 8 and a half years. I don't have to try because this person doesn't exist. I thought it was what's best for me. I was ignorantly happy in a way. A denial happy. A pretend happy. But at the same time I wasn't happy at all. I was miserable. When that hope is gone, even that little sliver of hope that you had left, that hope you might one day run into that one person you're supposed to spend your life with, the one person that will love you for exactly who you are, but at the same time challenge you to change just by simply continuing to love you in all your failures. When that hope is gone, what is the point of living? While I see my life as something I can't control, I mean physically life or death control, because I could never do that to myself or the people who would be affected; I couldn't help but think... and wonder how much time I had left on this Earth? It's almost as if I thought if I was never meant to have someone in my life, then my life would end shortly. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me. Now that I'm typing this out I'm realizing that since I felt so strongly that one of the biggest and most important roles I thought I was created to play was both wife and mother, without those as a possibility anymore I thought to myself... well this must be it. The end. Maybe not this minute, maybe in X amount of years, but certainly not to my old age. Even writing about it freaks me out, and I kind of want to stop. I don't want to put that out there. I don't want to die anytime soon. Not at all. I don't know if we'll be able to "regret" in Heaven, it doesn't seem likely, but I still want to experience many things. Most of all love. Real love. Committed love. Physical, intimate love with the gender I was meant to have it with.  I have never experienced that. I know the 2 guys I dated loved me in a way. They told me so. They showed me often and they both said they wanted to marry me. But neither did. Of course in the long run this was what was best. I am SO happy those relationships didn't make it to the finish line. I would be trapped right now... probably daydreaming about another life I could've had... with the girl next door (metaphorically speaking, there is no girl living next door to me... but I guess there could've been, in that life). But I realized today, all of a sudden in fact, with nothing to ignite it or cause the realization; that I don't have to choose either one. I don't have to choose to live in a way where I'm accepting this life I have in this very moment forever, for the end of my time on this Earth. I don't have to choose to be completely and utterly content being single because there is no one out there for me and to just accept that. I also don't have to choose to live with hope that crushes me every other day. I can live somewhere in the middle. A quote from Ginny Owens, a blind Christian singer/songwriter just popped into my head. She said "you can  wonder, but you don't have to worry." Those are simple wise words. I can wonder if I'll run into this girl I feel is imaginary and only lives in the stories I make up and write out endlessly; but I don't have to worry that that won't ever happen. I don't have to worry about it, either way. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. But it's 50/50. Not 0/100. Always have hope things could change. Maybe you are doing all you can to put yourself out there. Maybe you aren't. But maybe you are doing the best you can in this moment in time, and be okay with that. Hope is an okay thing. I quoted Community  the other day on my Facebook page. This one character said this about hope, and I kind of had to agree: " Hope is pouting in advance. Hope is faith's richer, bitchier sister. Hope is the deformed, addict bound incest monster offspring of entitlement and fear. My life results tripled the year I gave up hope and every game on my phone that had anything to do with farming. What's true will be true. Our job is to deal with that truth." While that is a dark and comically harsh view of hope, I like the last line. 'What's true will be true. Our job is to deal with that truth.' Although if you think about it I won't ever really know the "truth" of my single status. So maybe this doesn't apply at all to this situation... bad example I guess. I'll try this one instead:
 "Patience is the key, because when the right time comes, it will be very beautiful and totally worth the wait." And just for kicks, some Wilson Phillips lyrics for ya: "Don't you know, things could change. Things could go your way. If you hold on for one more day." And since you don't know how many days that is... just keep holding on... indefinitely. You can do it. You're stronger than you think you are.