Haircuts can't solve my emotional issues
After what felt like a sexual and personal renaissance for a couple of years in my early 40s, I got lost in a forest of confusion and grief which I've been trying to find my way out of for the better part of two years. There were a number of things that contributed but the main catalyst that sent me spiraling was when a relationship I was extremely invested in began to crumble then completely fell apart over the course of six months or so. Losing a person I used to talk to daily meant that when we ended things I felt not just broken hearted, but also friendless, isolated, and incredibly lonely. Those emotions fed into the depression I've been battling on and off for most of my life and things got dark. Really dark.
After a long wallow, I tried to figure out a way back to the optimistic and cheerful person I considered myself to be but wasn't getting anywhere just thinking my way out of it (my default method). Since my brain wasn't doing any magic I decided maybe external was the key and I found myself trying on a ton of different physical identities to see what might feel right but the radical changes to my appearance didn't fix the lost, vulnerable person inside. I kept feeling like if only I could hit on the right combination of hair colour and attitude then Poof! I'd magically feel like early-2015-model Kat, or a badass older sibling who was cool enough that I wouldn't miss that Kat so much. Strangely enough, it didn't work. (cue expressions of shock)
With the underlying knowledge that my physical transformation wasn't going to fix anything, I did some therapy but couldn't afford much and eventually got sick of talking about the same stuff over and over. It was embarrassing to admit that I just wasn't getting past it and I couldn't bring myself to continue to drain our finances when it felt like I was repeating the same story over and over.
Despite some really enjoyable time with a special person, overall dating wasn't helping and I found the prospect of meeting new people completely overwhelming. I knew it wasn't going to recreate what I was missing anyway and breakups with casual but long term partners reinforced the feeling that once a person gets to know the real me, they no longer want me in their life.
Since I feel like I'm not willing to risk my heart in any way (which I know I can't actually prevent but it's where I am), I've thrown off a bunch of ideas about finding anyone I'd really connect with and decided to go back to the basics of purely sexual connection. I've been focusing on finding the sexy by acting unicorn for sexy couples and having some fun and sizzling threesomes to try to get back to the fun early feels I'd had before capital R relationships became the bulk of my open experience. While enjoyable, these experiences leave me feeling a little flat, but they're scratching an itch for now.
Like many a rebellious teen, er, 40something, I came back from doing weird and wild things with my appearance and have tried to rediscover the early days of open with my free sexy side by growing out my hair again and dying it back to the colour it was when I felt my prettiest. I always struggle between my paradoxical desires to look cool/badass/butch and to look and feel pretty. It is a deep desire for technology (other than a sweltering wig) to allow me to be able to morph between the two without so much effort.
What I've finally realized as my hair has been returning to what it looked like four years ago when I felt pretty and powerful and desirable was that I've been changing external things thinking it will fix me and get me to how I want to feel inside. That it would let me return to the giddy feels I'd had when we were first open and there were so many possibilities, to how good it felt to have a ton of attention and potential connections, to life before all the pain and complicated polyamory feels. That it would get me to feeling wanted and seen the way my I felt wanted and seen by my former love in the early days when they were really interested in me.
The way I felt wanted and seen in those days is the piece I've been grieving. That is the place I've been trapped in trying to recreate the wrong way through hair and emotionally absent sex. Finding my way back to that feeling is tough because when people do express their desire both to get to know me and to get physically intimate, I don't feel the same way I did back then because I'm not that person anymore. The world is also not the same place it was in 2015 where it felt like we were in an overall upswing, rather than swirling around the toilet drain. I don't know if knowing what I'm chasing is going to change anything but at least it gives me a direction to work from and I can stop focusing on finding the perfect haircut/colour to solve my problems.
I know that I need to find the feeling from within, but that is never easy since I'm dealing with the pain and experiences not only from the past four years but from my entire lifetime of relationships and trauma. I'm not the same person I was when I was having those new feels; I've experienced so much pain, heartbreak, depression, anxiety, stress, and hormone shifts since I was that newly non-monogamous person that there's no way I can hit the reset button and find myself in that same place again.
I need to shift the matrix I use to measure success in this endeavour since it's impossible to 'go back'. It will be a long road but I can work toward feeling somewhat similar, however that ends up looking looking, feeling seen and desired and powerful while in the new place and as the new person I am today. It's certainly worth aiming for.
