I open the blog from time to time and review some of the entries. At times it is because I want to see where I was around this time say six years ago. At times I run across an interesting title and I wonder what I was writing about then.

Today the curiosity landed on My Pussy Doesn’t Stink:

I mean…it doesn’t but I wondered what made me choose that title. It was a recap of the premiere of the now defunct Hollywood Exes reality show. I was kinda funny.

I then scrolled down and something else caught my eye: https://www.vizionzfromthebottom.com/2017/12/20/i-gotta-have-it/

Cool enough title, now what was I thinking?

I was thinking that dating is exhausting and I don’t like it.

That is still a truth, and well fuck.

In the aftermath of May 7, I need to figure out how to get laid in a city where I know almost no one and the place I like to hang out at has more gay men than a Pride parade. I feel like perhaps at another time in life this was easier. That I could go outside and find a reasonably attractive person, bring them home, fuck them and kick them out.

I feel like that happened a lot on Godfrey Ave, but then again I also had moments like the kid who threatened to crash my car and that did not end well…for him.

I think back to that time in my life and realize it was not a great time for me. It was before Clyde moved into my uterus and in the aftermath of Kahlil leaving me for the first time. I was truly a savage running through those Philly streets looking for…..love.

Yes I wanted to be loved, and in the absence of that and the fear of that I settled for a lot of sex. Most of it was very good sex, but it was not the connection I desired.

The funny thing about that particular post was my wistful thinking about a man I called August 3. So the first thing that jumped out was when the fuck did I call him August 3? Then I remembered just how long I’d longed for this man. Well, my idea of this man. He was the opposite of Kahlil I thought, with all the good qualities and none of the abandonment and lies. He was a dream of mine.

I said I just wanted someone like him.

I got someone LIKE him, for a while.

Now I am back out here on these dating streets, frustrated, angry and afraid.

It is hard to admit that. It seems to be contrary to all that I want to focus on at the moment, but I also feel like not admitting it, is a failure and a mistake I cannot make.

I have very good days, where I don’t think of him or miss him. Where I embrace this new opportunity and turn into my most magical self. I walk with my shoulders back and head high and understand that a year or five from now, this chapter will be like all the others I recorded here. One where I faced adversity and kicked it’s ass.

I also have days like yesterday.

I was clearing out emails, because in my funk I’ve allowed them to accumulate. In that clearing there as a notice that he’d tweeted. It is based on an account I don’t use, but apparently I follow him on that account. On the main Twitter he’s blocked me, but like almost all of my social media there are other accounts.

I actually got up from my work desk to check his timeline.

In my head him tweeting meant that he was not suffering and I wanted to see what his mood was. He hasn’t tweeted much since May. His Twitter presence meant that tings were settling for him, and I wanted a heat check so to speak, what level of peace was he getting? Turns out, he was getting a lot of it and it made me angry.

He told the abbreviated tale of his trip back to our hometown. He went for his birthday. He reunited his parents. He likely saw his daughters and granddaughters. He seemed happy about the trip, and in his expression of his happiness, balanced with my current balancing act I got angry.

In our arguments since May I’ve repeated something over and over and he never acknowledged it: when our ‘business’ is settled, he gets to go on and live his life without ‘complication’, but that is not my reality.

Hearing of his trip East and reading those tweets in that voice I’ve heard for so long, created anger with me.

I didn’t want him to be able to just continue his life. Fuck that. It took me back to the absence of Kahlil and how it was so simple for him, Kahlil. When he was done with me, he got to walk away, and never account for my pain. I’ve since learned that the rumors of his divorce aren’t accurate and he and the woman he left me for are still living ‘happily ever after’, when that was not my reality.

I had to mourn, I had to rebuild, I had to weep and struggle and go back out there, and he just got to move on.

That impacted how I approached things with Lord Voldemort. When it was clear that he wanted me here, I made sure he also had skin in the game. He once accused me of planning it and I said something like I wish I were that deliberate. I can look back at things now and see in a sense I was.

It was important to me that before I uprooted my life, that I be “sure” it was real this time. It felt real. He made it feel real. I went through every box, checked every option, spent a disgusting amount of time checking every angle to try to be sure. I was sure. I would never have arrived here if I was not.

Even though there were those proverbial red flags, none of them amounted to the point that this move was incorrect. Yes, some of it was my romantic ideations, but they were always supported by his action.

Then May 7 came.

Every fear I had, that I thought I’d shed, arrived at once and they’ve been magnified since then.

As I try to ‘date’ again, I am looking at those fears and battling them. I don’t know who will win a I type this.

I’m not the girl who lived on Godfrey. She was 20 something and flush with cash and cute and while the behavior was reckless it felt fearless at the time.

This Nicole is almost 50, and the knees don’t bend like they used to, the body is not the same. The concept of being out there again is not attractive. STIs, Covid, Monkey Pox. Many many reasons to avoid people, avoid connection. The excruciating circle jerk of let’s get to know one another, let’s see if we click.

The ugly hello messages. The conversations that start but never finish. The dare to hope that perhaps this might be a connection and then the harsh reality of the fizzle.

Swipe – swipe – swipe.

I have to admit that I begin every hello with the idea that this might be THE ONE. Yes, the girl who doesn’t believe in THE ONE.

In Lord Voldemort’s absence, every fear returns, every concept returns.

I’m too fat, too old, too weird. I will not find anyone who wants me and I will settle for the physical because the emotional is not something that I deserve. I will walk this world without love.

I am loved though. Many people love me.

I go to sleep alone. I wake alone. When I come home, only the turtle and the cat greet me and they are only temporary visitors to these 4 walls. I was quit excited about these 4 walls and in many ways I still am, yet there is also the deafening silence at times.

In the aftermath of May 7, I made a lot of progress here. I can see the difference in this house. Yet, it doesn’t feel like home because I no longer have the people I love to share it with. It’s how Clyde took space in my uterus, I needed someone to come home to. Now he’s 3000 miles away.

Yet Lord Voldemort got to see, and hug, and love on his family. The family he expunged me from as he systemically erased me from his existence. Those tweets were a reminder of that. A reminder of my solitude.

I look at the screen on my phone and see there is a message waiting for me. I will look at it and answer it….eventually.

The 34 year old says he has a lot of energy. I will find out, because I need intercourse, but when I send him off like I sent off 5×5 and mediocre, what I desire the most will not be here. With any fortune, he will be an upgrade, but he still won’t be ….him.

He said that he loved being Black as Fuck. I wanted to punch the screen, knowing his own self loathing and wanting to expose it to the world.

That won’t fix, this moment though. This moment I have to suck it up, and power through…again.

Being transparent I am weary of doing that. Moving from moment to moment of brief brevity and connection. It’s why I don’t want to date, and why I am building a roster again of those who can keep the physical needs at bey while the emotional ones well I still need to figure those out.

I think that he will be too short, if he enters the rotation.

I don’t want a rotation. I want the idea that formed in those daily conversations. In those Zooms. In his arms as we lay together exhausted and spoke about our future.

His assault aside, that is one of the reasons for the restraining order. It will keep me from myself, and looking up at him like Daisy Johnson did to Hive. I know that desperation and I am in the middle of it. The only thing which will cure it so to speak is time, and that piece of paper gives that to me.

I need to figure out how to end those notifications. It’s going to be tough enough that I can run into him, or her, at the market or the restaurant. What I need less of is a reminder that once again I was cast off.

At least with Kahlil there was a younger woman, who might bear him children, who doesn’t have the baggage that I carried from our rotations. A fresh start.

With Lord Voldemort, he returns to the woman he accused me of being, when things get ugly between May and July. He sees me as the devil yet sleeps next to one every night and says he is in love with her. He also said he was in love with me, but that no longer matters.

She latched onto him right after her bankruptcy, and pretended until he was hooked. I’ve seen it before. I simply thought exposing him to real love and real transparency and real respect would free him from that bondage. What wasn’t in my vizion, was that he’d desire that bondage more than his freedom and I would end up collateral damage.

He cannot erase me, after all there are still more hearings etc. He can move on with his life though and like his trip to Philly find moments of happiness that distract him from her vampire grip.

My vampire grip is my battle with my insecurities, my demons so to speak. Even if his love had been real, it would not have saved me from that.

Even if the man he pretended to be was real.

Alone is how I have to do this for the moment. I dislike it.