Montana
I have made a bit of a breakthrough in my quest to understand this state.
See, yesterday afternoon I got sick of moping around feeling lonely and bad about myself. So, I did what always worked for me in Portland. I created a dating ad on Craigslist that is, if I do say so myself, pretty badass. I wrote out how I'm feeling at the moment about who I am, and what I'm looking for. Body of the ad below.
Bozeman is a pretty small city, so I figured I'd get much less responses than I would expect in Portland, especially since I figured my ad was long and convoluted enough to weed out the good ol' boys who didn't like words.
I was DELUGED with responses. So many. To the point where I'm having a hard time responding to the good ones, of which there are actually many, because of the sheer number. And the quality of responses is high. I definitely attracted the kinds of people I was looking for. Smart, open minded, aggressive, interested and interesting... Good quality to choose from and interact with.
Yet I can't seem to force myself to make a date. The responses have been so aggressive, some from dudes who make my heart pitter patter a bit with their words and pictures. But I just can't do it. I can't open myself up to that kind of interaction.
A part of it is how I feel about myself right now. Despite the fact that, empirically, I know I am more physically attractive at this point than I have been in a good long while, I feel like absolute shit about myself. I feel gross, and pathetic, and completely unattractive. My sexuality is hiding under the rock of my shame, and the rock is growing bigger, getting heavier.
I can't imagine opening myself up to the condemnation in the eyes of a man, to the judgment and disgust.
I also can't imagine accepting the attention of someone who wasn't disgusted, I can't imagine believing their attraction could be real. And if it was, what would it say about them?
All of that is hind brain shit. It's stuff I KNOW, stuff I feel, but have little control over. I see it on the periphery of my knowledge of self, but when I reach out to grab it and confront it, it slips away. I want, very badly, to acknowledge it and then burn it with fire. But that is not happening out here. Something about Montana is stopping me from accessing the kind of power I need to do that.
Which brings me back to my breakthrough.
Driving around this morning, after getting coffee, I started thinking about the kind of energy I would need in order to feel connected out here. When have I been happiest? When I'm being physical and cerebral. When I am hiking, when I am losing myself in hard physical work.
This land is so very masculine in so many ways. There are, literally, twice as many men out here as women. The mountains and valleys and wind, they all FEEL masculine. The energy seething under the ground is the energy of destruction, and there is little energy of creation to mitigate it. There is very little feminine to balance the roiling masculine.
So, in order to connect out here, it feels like one has to become more masculine. I try, normally, not to assign gender to energy. Destruction and creation are not masculine and feminine, they just are. But hard ridges and planes, fire and harsh wind, long winters and short hot summers... It feels like a place that was made to challenge, to pit oneself against and win or lose. There is a black and whiteness to this place that is in no way feminine.
It is, basically, the exact opposite of where I've lived for the past 13 years. And the masculine energy it calls for is the energy I have been forcefully tamping down inside myself for the past 4 years. It's the kind of energy that my relationship with T could not survive, that ruined friendships with women, that netted me the kinds of guys who really wanted me to beat them up. It IS a part of who I am. But it's a part I've neglected and ignored for too long to be comfortable simply letting it loose so quickly.
THe women here seem harsh, because they have that masculine energy. We have all remarked on it, how hard and ruthless and competitive the women seem. The men, in comparison, are almost soft. They'd be easy to connect to, I know. There are so many of them, and they are lonely and longing for softness and sweetness. Which sounds so trite, and SO sexist.
But I can't connect to anyone without my power as a base, without a firm foundation to stand on. For a long time, I had the power of my sexuality, soft and feminine and fiery, so potent. It's hard for me to access that here. I lay in bed this morning, trying to bring myself to pleasure. I stroked the velvety soft blankets with one hand, imaging they were soft skin overlaying hard muscle and bone, as I stroked my own softness and imagined pleasure. But something kept stopping me from coming. Something kept cutting me off from my own joy, my own pleasure. I couldn't access my love of sex, with myself or others.
I wonder what would happen if I opened the floodgates to my masculine side. I think I would love Montana, but that I would be alone. It's too unbalanced, too little of what I need to be.
See, yesterday afternoon I got sick of moping around feeling lonely and bad about myself. So, I did what always worked for me in Portland. I created a dating ad on Craigslist that is, if I do say so myself, pretty badass. I wrote out how I'm feeling at the moment about who I am, and what I'm looking for. Body of the ad below.
Bozeman is a pretty small city, so I figured I'd get much less responses than I would expect in Portland, especially since I figured my ad was long and convoluted enough to weed out the good ol' boys who didn't like words.
I was DELUGED with responses. So many. To the point where I'm having a hard time responding to the good ones, of which there are actually many, because of the sheer number. And the quality of responses is high. I definitely attracted the kinds of people I was looking for. Smart, open minded, aggressive, interested and interesting... Good quality to choose from and interact with.
Yet I can't seem to force myself to make a date. The responses have been so aggressive, some from dudes who make my heart pitter patter a bit with their words and pictures. But I just can't do it. I can't open myself up to that kind of interaction.
A part of it is how I feel about myself right now. Despite the fact that, empirically, I know I am more physically attractive at this point than I have been in a good long while, I feel like absolute shit about myself. I feel gross, and pathetic, and completely unattractive. My sexuality is hiding under the rock of my shame, and the rock is growing bigger, getting heavier.
I can't imagine opening myself up to the condemnation in the eyes of a man, to the judgment and disgust.
I also can't imagine accepting the attention of someone who wasn't disgusted, I can't imagine believing their attraction could be real. And if it was, what would it say about them?
All of that is hind brain shit. It's stuff I KNOW, stuff I feel, but have little control over. I see it on the periphery of my knowledge of self, but when I reach out to grab it and confront it, it slips away. I want, very badly, to acknowledge it and then burn it with fire. But that is not happening out here. Something about Montana is stopping me from accessing the kind of power I need to do that.
Which brings me back to my breakthrough.
Driving around this morning, after getting coffee, I started thinking about the kind of energy I would need in order to feel connected out here. When have I been happiest? When I'm being physical and cerebral. When I am hiking, when I am losing myself in hard physical work.
This land is so very masculine in so many ways. There are, literally, twice as many men out here as women. The mountains and valleys and wind, they all FEEL masculine. The energy seething under the ground is the energy of destruction, and there is little energy of creation to mitigate it. There is very little feminine to balance the roiling masculine.
So, in order to connect out here, it feels like one has to become more masculine. I try, normally, not to assign gender to energy. Destruction and creation are not masculine and feminine, they just are. But hard ridges and planes, fire and harsh wind, long winters and short hot summers... It feels like a place that was made to challenge, to pit oneself against and win or lose. There is a black and whiteness to this place that is in no way feminine.
It is, basically, the exact opposite of where I've lived for the past 13 years. And the masculine energy it calls for is the energy I have been forcefully tamping down inside myself for the past 4 years. It's the kind of energy that my relationship with T could not survive, that ruined friendships with women, that netted me the kinds of guys who really wanted me to beat them up. It IS a part of who I am. But it's a part I've neglected and ignored for too long to be comfortable simply letting it loose so quickly.
THe women here seem harsh, because they have that masculine energy. We have all remarked on it, how hard and ruthless and competitive the women seem. The men, in comparison, are almost soft. They'd be easy to connect to, I know. There are so many of them, and they are lonely and longing for softness and sweetness. Which sounds so trite, and SO sexist.
But I can't connect to anyone without my power as a base, without a firm foundation to stand on. For a long time, I had the power of my sexuality, soft and feminine and fiery, so potent. It's hard for me to access that here. I lay in bed this morning, trying to bring myself to pleasure. I stroked the velvety soft blankets with one hand, imaging they were soft skin overlaying hard muscle and bone, as I stroked my own softness and imagined pleasure. But something kept stopping me from coming. Something kept cutting me off from my own joy, my own pleasure. I couldn't access my love of sex, with myself or others.
I wonder what would happen if I opened the floodgates to my masculine side. I think I would love Montana, but that I would be alone. It's too unbalanced, too little of what I need to be.
Hi there. I'm new to the area, and not a permanent resident. I travel for a living, though I'm spending a number of months in Bozeman with family.
I'm a social creature, and normally find it easy to make interesting connections wherever I go. But Bozeman has proven... challenging. I like a challenge, and have decided to up the ante by aggressively pursuing what I'm interested in.
Despite the section I'm posting in, I'm not interested in long term right now. I'm not looking for casual hookups, but I'm not only interested in platonic either. I'm in that middle ground where I'd like to date, like to have fun, but can't do serious. If you're looking for similar, awesome, get back to me.
Some details about me, and what I'd like to find:
I'm a writer by night, tech geek by day. I live a pretty nomadic life, going where the wind (and house sitting gigs) takes me. I make a good living, but don't care much for money, beyond the pleasures and beauty it can buy. I'm a hedonist, who can be happy anywhere as long as I can find beauty, acceptance, and fun. That's involved swanky hotel rooms and star lit night skies from the back of my Jeep.
I'm as content in a grungy dive bar as I am in a gorgeous martini bar, as long as the company is good.
I'm highly sexual, and thoroughly confident in that, but I can go through periods of almost monastic aloneness when focused on something interesting. I love to learn, from books or people or life, and love to chat about things I know nothing about.
I'm extremely drawn to enthusiasm in others. I love nerdy, geeky folk, people who love what they do, be it carpentry or physics.
I am open minded and prone to err on the side of compassion, but I believe in being level headed and reasonable. I avoid hypocrisy and angry judgmentalness at all cost. I'm not interested in folks who embrace hate or fear, whatever form those small minded prejudices take.
If you're the kind of person who feels compelled to point out the hypocrisy of avoiding judgmentalness while eschewing the company of small minded bigots... Well, we might get along for a bit, have an interesting argument or two... But eventually I'll skewer you with disconcerting accuracy one too many times and one of us will walk away in a huff.
Physically, I'm drawn to many different kinds of people. I don't know if I have a type, since I'm more drawn to personality and brains first, but I do tend to like bigger guys.
I am tallish, and like to wear heels sometimes. I'm very curvy, and very comfortable with that. I'm definitely not everyone's cup of tea (I'm more a glass of scotch anyways), but I'm cute and confident and fun to be around. I take a while to warm up to most people, but I'm good at keeping conversation comfortable until it gets real.
Ok, that's a long ass ad, so I'll leave it at that. I'll respond to replies without pics, but only if they're genuinely trying to connect. Single sentence emails are not connections. Overall, though, I'd prefer a pic and a paragraph or two.
I'm open to meeting tonight or tomorrow, if we click.
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