Listen to Big Feels on Spotify, cutie-pies. <3
Big Feels on Pleasure:
Today, as I write this, has been a very good day. I have laughed a lot…and even though I am not laughing now, I know I could at the drop of a silly little hat.
I have been thinking a lot about pleasure. For the record: I also think that’s an embarrassing word (you were thinking it too, right?). Pleasure, god. But it’s still kind of the best word to use? I don’t know, tell me if you have a less embarrassing word (obviously, “joy” is a contender…but it’s not the exact right connotation, now, is it?).
Anyways, I’ve been thinking about pleasure in simple ways like enjoying the small things (stretching; the sun on my face; chats with friends; a good smoothie) and in (seemingly) big ways like sex, tbh.
I don’t plan on getting too much into sex in this Big Feels, except to say that if sex feels complicated to you, too, you should read:
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski
Good Sex by Jessica Graham
From Good Sex, I am learning how to use meditation as a way to tap into my body’s experience of pleasure. And, look, I don’t have enough evidence yet to make an informed opinion, but I did one of the meditations for the first time this morning and then I had a very good day, so maybe there is something there. (I’m hoping to use this as an ongoing healing tool, without letting it become a metric that I judge myself against – wish me luck!!)
The other thing I’ve been thinking about, which (I think) goes hand-in-hand with redeveloping my relationship with pleasure, is learning how to follow the scent of what is simple. In my mind, what is simple is what is already here and happening. What is simple is not striving for what is out of reach or has not yet come to pass.
I was talking to my sister today and she was saying how she loves her life, and is trying to be in the moment of loving her life, while also being aware that life is transient and that, ultimately, people die (!!). No matter how good everything goes or is going, eventually someone will die; something will die; or someone who you hold in your heart will be hurting in a way that you can’t shake.
What is simple?
I know that I will feel the bad to the core of my being. I want to feel the good that deeply rooted inside of me as well.
I was in Toronto over the weekend with my dear-heart Megan. It was five years after our first tattoo together and we decided to get another one. Tattoos have been therapeutic for me, a small rebellion. I typically love the feeling of the hurt. It’s a way to channel my emotional pain that feels tangible and real. This time felt different. I was getting annoyed at the hurt by the end. I thought of the Kim Cattrall quote, “I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.”
Megan asked me, “Did it used to feel like you deserved the pain?”
Yes. Something like that. Or maybe, even more than that, I felt like I was destined for pain. I guess I don’t feel that anymore, not all the way, not all the time.
What is simple?
I want to ask for good and I want to recognize it when it arrives. I want to ask for good and I want to feel as if it belongs to me when I receive it. I want to ask for good and I want to get the good and I want to see the thin line that divides terror and pleasure and still choose to walk it.
Because, that’s kind of it, isn’t it? There must be something terrifying in pleasure, otherwise why would we carry our secret dread with us all the time through every happiness? Maybe we don’t all do that (I try to remember that we don’t all feel the same thing). But I would hazard a guess that anyone who has lost something has a hard time with holding anything — whether it’s holding it all too tightly or not at all.
I told someone recently, “I’m afraid all the time,” and it’s true; but maybe it’s more accurate to say: I am walking the line of terror in hopes that I fall off on the side of pleasure, again and again.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The recommends: The mini cans of Diet Canada Dry Ginger Ale—simply fabulous, darling.
“There must be something terrifying in pleasure, otherwise why would we carry our secret dread with us all the time through every happiness?” SPOT ON!