The Land of What Might Have Been

The last three days have felt like there's a string attached to my heart and brain that runs straight down through my body.  At intervals, and without any warning, something yanks on the end of the string and drags my entire nervous and circulatory system out through my crotch.  It's reminiscent of when you go over a bump in the road, or through airplane turbulence, or when you're lying in bed on the very edge of sleep and feel like you've just fallen twelve feet, except for the much lower center of concentrated energy than usual.  It's not a recommended way to go through life.

I'm not sure how to make it go away.  I don't really know that I want it to go away, except that it's distracting to have to reconstruct your insides a thousand times a day.  I know what started it:  three or four sentences, all as tame as the raciest parts of your average middle school YA novel.  But they set off depth charges.

In spite of assurances that this is normal, it doesn't feel normal.  It's also new.  The guy I had a hopeless crush on in high school had the ability to render me shy and stupid merely by being in the same room.  I had a lengthy correspondence relationship when I was in high school, too.  It was conducted almost entirely by letter and was more chaste than classic literature because we didn't even have scandalous subtext.  Checking the mail was punctuated by intense anticipation, but, really, that relationship was more about trying to out-write each other than it was anything else.  My ex-husband was a series of conversations in, "I should not do this.  Well.  OK.  Why shouldn't I do this?  Because it seems like a bad idea.  Like you would know without trying it."  *tries it*  "OK.  Well.  That wasn't bad.  It was, in fact, pretty good.  We could do that again."  It was logical and considered and somehow I still managed to get it all wrong.

Is it because I know so much better where this kind of interaction can go?  I've spent not an insignificant amount of time typing way, way more intimate acts to strangers online, and the closest this resembles was the guy who, without writing anything below my shoulders-

Oh.  Of course.  When I was married, my experience wasn't even part of his thought process, let alone his actions.  Of course anybody who pays any attention to me is going to effect me.

A conversation today included this sentiment, "You mean you wanted to have sex, asked for it, but didn't get it more than once a month?  And you can have multiple orgasms, and not only would he not go down on you, he was out looking for other people to have sex with instead of you?  I hate this fucking guy."  Which is, reassuringly, not the first time I've been told that.  Fingers crossed.