on vulnerability

i saw “the last showgirl” (staring a very beautiful and very sparkly pamela anderson) last night. i won’t spoil it, but i’ll tell you that i cried through most of the movie. i’ve been thinking a lot lately about longevity. mostly i’ve been thinking about how, if i plan to continue this practice as my career, to make it feel sustainable and rewarding and wonderful and nurturing for as long as i do it. if i’m being fully transparent, it’s not feeling like that right now. that’s ok, there’s always ebs and flows. but i would love for there to be more flow than eb.

“rope as an extension of yourself” sounds romantic as hell. i’m constantly in pursuit of more emotion, less technicality. getting out of my head about making my rope “correct” and putting some goddamn heart and soul into it. lately it hasn’t felt so simple.

“rope as an extension of yourself” only feels good when it’s being received with open arms— when that extension of you is being cradled and nurtured and put back together again. rope is an exchange— i give you a little of me and you give me a little of yourself in return, and afterwards we build each other back up. this should be so simple… right?

i want so badly to tie with this level of sincerity *every*single*time* but in truth, i would be a shell of a human being if i did. let’s be real: not every rope scene can be the ooey gooey sexy vulnerable emotional cauldron of my dreams. sometimes (most of the time) there’s just not time, or we know ahead of time we don’t have capacity or maybe we just don’t align in this way and that’s ok— not everyone has the time or space or want to be on the receiving end of my vulnerability and i don’t blame them for that one bit.

so sometimes rope as an extension of myself actually feels really really bad. sometimes it feels like a lil chunk of my heart being ripped out with every tie, and not given back. so moving forward, my goal is to to protect that extension of myself a little more carefully, negotiate it a little more carefully, give it a little more aftercare, maybe save it for special times and special someones.

i think there’s something to say about not everything having to feel great all the time. i’m a huge advocate of feeling your feelings deeply all the time, even the ones that feel bad. more on that another time.

thanks for reading, y’all. as always, thanks for supporting my ebs and flows.