“What excites you,” he asked. “Where is your passion.”

Not a question I could answer easily. So the usual responses flowed from my mouth– my children, winning business, driving fast, watching my orchids flower, diving…

But he is smarter than that and more insightful. Would not let me get away with the usual answers that appease most, Thank goodness. It has led me to this space, of real internal looking.

So really and truly, what keeps me waking up each day with optimism?

Learning new things. Having someone point out that my thinking is flawed and changing my mind. Love. Sex. Touch. Smell. Sight. Sound.

Openness, transparency – but having someone I am comfortable with doing that with. Letting them know my boundaries and having them respected.

Anticipation keeps me optimistic and excited. What’s around the next corner? Will we kiss? What will his mouth taste like? Will his skin feel good? Will he smell like desire?

Honesty, laughter, fighting, loving, fucking. My feet in a river. Grass against my skin. A blood moon.

Potential.

The eternal “what if…”

So what the fuck have I been doing for the past few years? Denying myself. My needs. My desires. I have them – and I fooled myself in my marriage into a belief that above all I needed mental stimulation. All I needed was brain food right? None other. Bullshit. Is there anything more absurd than not being true to yourself? Even my vibrator had dust on it during that marriage. That’s how far I had gone in shutting down my needs.

Have I lost passion? No. But I subdued it. To fit in with someone else’s concept of how realty should look. Will I do it again? Never. My life. My happiness. My bliss. My passion. My excitement. I will feel alive. I will have butterflies in my stomach when I think of him. I will not hide in my head the way it has been so easy for my dad to do. This does not mean I don’t want space. Time for just me – that’s healthy. I need it in order to thrive.

But I also need skin on skin, licks, kisses, firmness, gentleness, roughness. To be challenged in all the ways a lover is supposed to.

I tell my children over and over again that Shakespeare line – “This above all, to thine own self be true.’

The disturbing part is that I usually think I am. Until I know I am not. Then I am left with no option but to terminate the dishonest behaviour with speed. I can’t keep living with a pattern or thought process I know is flawed or harmful. It’s not in me.

Those questions and the intense look as he asked will stay with me for days while I continue to unbundle this.

Sometimes the hardest questions are the most valuable. Even if they do make you squirm.