The Phantom

This weekend I found myself submerged in a rather tense swamp of worry and mind play about what I thought was happening with a man I really like. I hadn’t heard much from him and don’t do well with that. I’ve never been comfortable in the grey waters of uncertainty. Confusion bounced around loudly in my head: but we had such a wonderful time on our two dates, he’s not interested anymore? I know these dueling thoughts are a product of old patterns, but they linger still. He’s likely just busy, but maybe not. In my time trying to meet and connect on dating apps, people often disappear from one another in unexplained, unexpected, and unwanted ways.

The phantom referred to in the title is about the power we give to ideas, some old with no merit and others rooted in fresh worry that may or may not be founded. They sometimes take control in dark ways that feel sort of protective, but then also self-defeating. They danced around in my life a lot over the week-end and into this morning, when I sent more than one ‘poor me, he’s disappeared’ message! SHAME. It’s nice to be wrong sometimes, he didn’t disappear. I debated not posting these words I wrote yesterday, at my desk of despair that is my dining room table. But, stickysexysad is about sad, too and there hasn’t been much shared about that last emotion, that hard but universal place we all spend time in from time to time.

I share my phantom words, ecstatic that they are illusionary. I needn’t return to the self-doubt that rears its head so easily. He’s not a phantom, either. HOORAY!

Where does the wisdom go when you let yourself let someone else in? Sometimes it hides behind the bright, bossy, wetness of desire. It also floats inside the apps, my mind, and their bodies, balancing precariously between the molecules of lust and fear that bind us together. Knowing your worth doesn’t mean you’ll ever achieve it. So, I keep drifting from one swipe of my thumb to another.  Onward I travel; surveying the men I’ve scaled and sought like an amateur mountaineer, wondering.

The words from your mouth stick to my head like pollen on the stamen: ‘You are incredible, perfect’. But when you are not here and spare few words, I hear different things. ‘How could I be so stupid?’ ‘Will my search for what I deserve ever end?’ Those old ideas bounce back from amygdala’s cave with such ease. How I wish to bend those filaments of knowledge and desire between my knowing lobes to release new seeds. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here with these letters. But, why am I always alone?