Greetings from Vienna!

I'm currently sitting in the net lounge at a youth hostel in Austria. I won't do a long post now as typing is awkward on a German keyboard (the y and z are interchanged, for a start!) but just wanted to drop in and say hello.

I'm stoked that I've finally managed to make it to continental Europe, to a non-English-speaking country. Luckily for hapless travellers like myself, most people do speak English to a degree, but I've been making an effort to use the German words and phrases I know as often as possible. I now have a burning desire to learn German properly! It's fun pushing my knowledge and understanding of the language (which is minimal) through exposure rather than through books and CDs. I'm definitely going to invest in some better language learning things though and see if I can learn it properly over the next few years.

Vienna is very pretty and has lots of interesting buildings and a great collection of cultural heritage objects. I've been to see the Schönbrunn Palace, which had a lot of imperial artefacts and historic paintings in it, and an unintentionally funny English audio guide hehe. Today we're going on a photography ramble through the city centre, visiting a traditional market, and sticking our heads into multiple souvenir shops. Should be a pleasant, quiet day after yesterday's high-energy festivities!

I hope everyone is having a lovely start to 2011. I have such good feelings about this year. E and I have many plans and dreams, and I intend to see them come through. A year ago I was nervous about the upcoming move to London, unsure of what I wanted in life and full of unsated longing. Today I feel secure, satisfied and strong, with a clear path ahead of me. It's all rather wonderful, really!

Bisexuality, Again...

Usual disclaimer: this is about sex, sexuality and the philosophies thereof. It may contain details. Do not read if you're squeamish about any of the above.

About 11 days ago, when the events began to kick off that led to me becoming involved with my darling girl E, I had a moment of sheer panic. What if all those bitchy naysayers about bisexuality had been right? What if I was just looking for attention or trying to be special? What if I found myself in an intimate situation with a girl and realised that I was in fact not really attracted to women that way at all? I believed I was bisexual and had gone as far as kissing and that felt fine, but for a moment I wondered whether it really was all in my head.

Thankfully the panic was over quickly and turned out to be entirely unfounded. Not only was it great, but it was far, far better than anything I'd ever experienced with a man. That is not to insult the men I've had relationships with - well, not to insult the few of them who actually had decent skills - but being with a girl felt right in a way that heterosexual relations have never done for me.

While potentially triggering another round of 'what is my sexuality, exactly?', this also opened my eyes to the very real difference between heterosexuality / homosexuality and bisexuality. I simply cannot imagine only being attracted to a single sex. I may have spent 20 years of my life being unknowingly bisexual and another 10 largely pretending I wasn't, but it was there in my mind... there to the core. To me the 'either or' mindset is so familiar, natural and comfortable. I had a stark moment of realisation that most people are genuinely only interested in one gender, one way or another. It struck me just how weird that was to me, and equally just how weird bisexuality must seem to those who don't experience it.

The long-awaited confirmation that this really truly is who I am forced me to confront the fact that this is something that most people are not. A very strange moment. A defining moment of identity that was really very meaningful and special, and I don't want it to be eclipsed by the general squeeing over-excitement that currently fills my days.

I am bisexual. Naturally, fundamentally, from birth to death, to the core. This is part of who I am.


And I am proud that I am finally whole.


Welcome to Christine :)

So happy right now :)

I know, I'm still in the 'SQUEE' phase and probably shouldn't be blogging at all as I'm entirely incapable of being sensible.

But, I am so damn happy I can't help sharing it.

My life has done that thing it does sometimes, where suddenly everything is falling into place and is just exactly right.

I feel like I'm hugging and being hugged by the whole world, all the time. And particularly by her :)

Squee!

The big three-oh...

Yesterday was my 30th birthday!

I am still kind of reeling at how awesome a day it was. I started out with a long lie-in. As soon as I woke up, good things started to happen. I discovered that 6 incredibly awesome friends had chipped in together to pay for my flights to go and see my best friend H when she's in Vienna over New Years - an incredible surprise as I thought I wasn't going to be able to afford to go! Totally overwhelming :) Then I went up to the parcel office and found that the package waiting for me was not a book I ordered but actually a huge parcel from my family in Perth with gifts and a DVD and other things of win enclosed in it, including the awesome pendant that is my 30th birthday present from Mum - an opal given to me by my grandmother set in white gold. So stunning!

London turned on the warmest December day so far for me, and my wonderful friends A and G showered me with affection and took me out for dinner and cocktails with two of their closest friends, S and E. I'm still not quite sure how it happened but E and I (meeting for the second time) hit it off amazingly and by the middle of today we were thoroughly established as a couple. I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND, folks!

I am a very happy, bewildered and over-excited 30 year old, proud to be 30, proud to have a girlfriend, so very lucky in my friends and loved ones and lifestyle. It feels glorious.

I think I only had a bare hour or two of sleep last night, so I'm thinking crashing out soon so I can work in the morning would be a very good idea.

What a birthday!

Weekend Away

This past weekend I went to Newmarket, near Cambridge, for the local SCA shire's Yule Ball. I had a great time and was able to wear my brand-new cotehardie, which I've been working on, on and off, since July. It turned out very well and was widely admired. I also managed to spill wine on it, but it wouldn't be me if I didn't. ;) It'll come clean!

The weekend also marked a milestone for me, in that I drove using my newly-minted British licence for the first time, all the way from London to Newmarket and back, in a big hire car, with 4-5 passengers and loads of baggage, over icy streets in parts no less! I was very nervous beforehand, and when we set off from my friends' house for the long evening journey to Newmarket my legs were shaking! But all went well, and I feel moderately confident about driving in London now. Not something I want to do every day, but if it has to be done, I can do it.

I'm the only driver of that group of people, and I have no doubt that I will be doing it again, as we as a group have formed an SCA household. It's been coming for a while, but we had an impromptu meeting in the car on the way home and got our name, charge, badge and motto established and talked a bit about what we want to do as a household. It's a true household of kindred spirits - some are actual kin, others just spiritual kindred. The level of closeness is amazing, and it spins me around that I'm part of it. I have several other friends that close in Australia, people I am completely comfortable and open with, but for sheer amount of time spent together I don't think I have ever been as close to anyone as I am to the couple who are the core of the household. The experience of complete loving-friendship-trust-openness is heady and wondrous. I've craved that kind of connection for a long time, and now that I have it I can't quite believe it. It takes my breath away.

And yet, as always it seems with me, the awareness of that connection leaves me wistful about an even deeper connection that I lack. I have a safer, more complete connection with these friends than I've had in any actual relationship I've been in. In fact these friendships characterise everything my 'love' relationships have not been. My whole dating history is characterised by sad, sour, unsafe, angry, dramatic, unloving, denigrating and ultimately short relationships. (The only former partner with whom I had a good, healthy connection is 14,500km away and may never live in the same city as me again, so although I think the potential for this kind of connection is there, I can't count on it ever being a regular part of my life.) With that one exception, I have never been able to relax and love and trust anyone like I love and trust these friends, and being in their presence, as much as I love it, reminds me of what I've never had.

And it hurts.

I want so badly to find my way to that deeper level of connection. There must be more wonderful, self-loving, accepting, dear, true people in the world! In London, even! But I don't know how to find them, and the odds of them being both free and interested in me seem so minuscule.

I'm still so full of doubt about myself, my identity and where I fit in the world. Finding one place that I fit, one set of hearts with whom I click, throws into stark contrast the emotional chaos surrounding the rest of my life.

Argh, I don't know... I want to just be happy about what I've got but the ache won't go away.

*sigh*

Impatient & Lonely

I have been in a bit of a mood the last couple of days. There's a good (biological) reason for that, although of course I only figured that out after the teary meltdown!

Through all these little mood swings I've been in the grip of an overwhelming sense of loneliness. I realised that, for the first time since coming to the UK, I'm actually getting significant uninterrupted swathes of me-time. When I was first here the share house was a novelty and I had nice girls to talk to, and then I was with my ex and had to be constantly alert and sensitive to his moods. I couldn't listen to my own music or just zone out or work on something pointless and ridiculous for hours. I've loved having that back this week - I'm starting to feel like myself again - but at the same time, there's a loss there. Fuelled by the fact that there is someone from Perth whom I'm missing like crazy (he knows who he is), I'm flailing around just wanting someone to cuddle up to. It's a very physical sort of loneliness, craving contact that no much internet chatting, no matter how affectionate, can quite replace.

And at the same time, I'm almost afraid of finding someone. The ease with which I slipped into yet another dysfunctional relationship scares the pants off me. I absolutely do not want another relationship like that. And in a more general way I'm scared that I'll just find myself back in another monogamous, vanilla, dull relationship like all the others I've had. I've spend my entire adult life hiding what actually interests me because I was afraid (... of everything...). Sometimes I feel like I'll go nuts if I can't start exploring all of that side of myself, right this moment. I want to find people with whom I feel safe sharing the real me and who will understand and I want them now damn it.

But I'm not ready right now... the ongoing mental arguments with the ex are proof of that, although they're easing. I want all this and I want to be ready for it now, and it's incredibly frustrating that I'm not.

And there's no solution but time. I'm doing everything else I can, I just have to wait. Meh.

Processing

I am going to write this and subsequent posts on the assumption that the ex has sensibly deleted the bookmark and is no longer reading this blog, as I have done for his. He deleted and blocked me on facebook, so I think it's safe to say that this blog is an ex-free zone and I can speak my mind freely. If I'm wrong, well... he's reading this and knowing that a) I don't want him here, and b) anything he reads from this point on is at his own risk. So.

I moved out on Saturday, finally. It was very nasty, in the end. On Thursday we were having a great time. He was saying he was still attracted to me, and was so glad we'd stayed friends. He was telling me what he was getting me for Christmas and gave my sore shoulders a massage. And I thought: yeah. A truly amicable breakup. How nice.

On Saturday he was in a foul mood, called me an ungrateful little shit, accused me of a number of things he'd invented in his own head, and forced me to move out a day early with wet clothes and hot soup in tow. It was ugly and horrid and I ended up calling friends in tears - wonderful true real friends who came running and soothed me and looked after me until I was laughing again. The next day, at some point, I found he'd deleted and blocked me. The same man who'd begged me to stay friends when we broke up.

*sigh*

But honestly, in a way I'm glad. This kind of come-here-go-away, I-love-you-I-hate-you crap was the theme throughout our relationship. When he was in a good mood it was wonderful. When he was in a bad mood there was nothing I could do right, and his complete lack of trust coupled with an inability to understand that he could be wrong made getting through to him a nightmare. Everything I said was twisted against me, even as I was accused of doing the same to him. Every attempt at reasoning was met with wild histrionics. It was impossible. Seeing that again one last time at least takes away any need to be friends, and any possibility of nostalgic backsliding. I am so totally uninterested in ever going there again.

I had truly hoped that we could be friends, as we do share some fun interests. But at the end of the day, I have a wonderful set of friends who are also safe, stable, excellent people. I don't want or need friends who act in such an ugly and unloving way. Anyone who swings between those extremes has problems... and is not my problem.

Naturally I've been processing all this madly over the past two days. My brain won't be still. I'm constantly trying to rationalise and reason and find a way to explain things that, at least in my head, might actually get through to him. I know this is a phase and it'll go away as I get through the natural grieving process, but it's making me a bit batty. I don't want to argue with him one second longer. I've had enough.

This evening I suddenly remembered that I'm not obliged to make sense of him any more. His mood swings, his inventions, his OCDs, his deliberate non-listening followed by accusations of having never been told... none of it matters, and none of it is my problem. His twisted logic can't hurt me any more, so when I remember bits of it I don't have to sort through it for some kind of pattern or sense. I can shrug my shoulders, roll my eyes, say "rubbish!" and move on. Hurrah.

Life is picking up and moving forward, and I am already so much happier than I could ever have been in that relationship. I can see my future life taking shape in a glorious way, full of love and security and hearts and people and community and place and kin and home. It looks good :)