Just Desserts

Today I was going through a notebook from two months ago. I found the following:

I deserve to be more than a rebound. I deserve to be with someone who takes care of hirself. I deserve someone who wants to be sober for a good portion of hir life. I deserve someone who loves hirself. I deserve someone intelligent and optimistic. I deserve someone who generally thinks well of people. I deserve someone who wants me for me, not for my being hir not-ex. I deserve to be with someone who takes joy in the world. I deserve to be with someone who is a great dancer.

This sentiment seems particularly poignant lately. I have always settled on lovers who do not fit this description, and not just because of the dancing bit (which, by the way, refers to taking great joy in dancing and not actual skill). I have long felt as though I were starving for acceptance, such that I have attempted to sustain myself with partners who were neither compatible nor appropriate.

Trying to squeeze blood from a beet and all that.

The thing is, though, I haven't been starving for acceptance for a long time. I've had an amazing community for several years now- women and men who are there for me both when I need them and even when I don't. Almost a year ago I realized for the first time that not only do I like myself, but I think I'm pretty fantastic. Life is great, and I am terribly excited about the future.

So when I look back over this summer and fall, at choices I made and situations I encouraged, I find it difficult to understand my overtly self-destructive actions. If I like myself, if I'm not anemic from lack of love, then why would I allow such an unhealthy liaison to flourish? Why did I put myself in the midst of what I knew, even then, to be an ill-suited situation?

The reason is that I have never stopped to acknowledge that I'm not starving anymore. To continue with the food analogy: I remember once reading a dieting tip in a magazine suggesting that one eat more slowly, as it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to send the message to your brain indicating that you're full. There's a time delay and if you don't realize that you're full you'll continue to nom down on whatever's on your plate. . . maybe you'll even add more.

Which is not to say that I promote diets, but rather that there has been a serious time differential between walking about in the world with new-found self-esteem and self-respect and realizing this new state of being. I've been wandering about thinking I'm still empty when, in fact, I have all I need.

Which means I don't have to settle for shit.

. . .

I don't have to settle. I have the ability to think about what I deserve, not just what I need. I don't need a partner to make me feel special or loved or accepted. I deserve a partner who fits, and if a potential partner doesn't really fit, then I'm better off on my lonesome.

This is not marvelously easy to write, less easy to publish into the ether of the net, and far less easy to put into practice. However, I feel that it is true in the pit of my stomach, in that bit of viscera behind my belly button. I don't need a someone. I would like someone, but not just anyone will do. I deserve someone wonderful.

And I am willing to wait.