Wednesday 11 February 2009

Sadness & Arousal.


Maybe it isn't that surprising that the two would go together.
They are after all, a part of being alive, feeling alive.

Still, it is a powerful tonic that I drank this week.
It is not an isolated feeling, I've felt it before, just a few times as strongly as this though.
Once before, years back now, I felt it with an unequalled intensity, but that was because it was grief.

My ex partner was in the deep belly of grief, the sudden loss of a young family member brought unsettled darkness. We sat there together night after night, grief wrenched her body and I held her wails in my cradling arms until they softened but the rawness was still there. The rawness became passion, laced with tenderness and we were fucking. Hard. I remember thinking then that it had been devouring, like a need to suck and take all of the life there was in the room so it existed. Life was still there.

And then to now. And indented with this most recent experience. 
In one moment I was softly gasping, in the next I was softly sobbing. One lead to the other, and then they were both merged, like a pool of tears and arousal slopping around in my gut. Every part of me felt so fully and viscerally connected to him, I had clammy cheeks and it all stayed with me throughout the day. It needed a leather belt to thrash in to it.

I'm not grieving, but sometimes there is just a sadness there. A beautiful life-connecting sadness. If you feel something so intensely then maybe it's only natural that a contrasting emotion would then appear; joy tipped in to sadness, or sadness and joy always there together teetering on the edge.

There is not really a purpose to this post, it is just that the feeling won't leave me, so I wanted to try and understand it.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There very much was a purpose to this post sweety...and that was your wish to understand the feelings. Sometimes they can be so powerful, its only through writing them down that we process. I completely get that.

I also completely get the link between death and sex....the urgent need to grasp at life with every part of our beings and to find release for all the emotions we feel through the act of both taking from and giving to another.

A wonderful post lovely one....lots of love and hugs xxx

selkie said...

sometimes it is impossible to separate, to actually identify the emotion - if strong enough, if compelling enough - it overwhelms simply with an intensity that leaves you reeling.

and I think at the end of it- when someone feels so deeply, so strongly, the need to connect on a physical level with another human soul is not to be denied ... it grounds.

Anonymous said...

Good Morning Olivia:
Such a touching and insightful post, written so softly and beautifully like poetry. The comments here have said all the thoughts that I was also thinking, but so much better than I could. I will add this tho....It feels to me like all of the deep powerful emotions seem to come from the same place,they get all twined up together creating very similar if not the same visceral reactions. For me it often takes a lot of distance and time to have some clarity and the clarity changes as time passes.
Soft and gentle hugs for the lovely and sweet being that you are
AG

Moi said...

Oh My...it's often the most intense happiness which then opens the door to all that's not that. For me, it's like, when the light shines, it allows the shadow expression. Two sides of a coin, to ends of a stick. All just part of the whole...all gifts...all "what is."

Beautiful post, Olivia. Thank you.

Mark said...

Sadness and arousal, pleasure and pain ~ you've described eloquently this peculiar and intricate relationship and how it can make its presence felt. An odd symbiosis maybe and never more so than when emotions run high but as you point out, part of the human condition and something most would recognise.

OliviaManners said...

I'm so late to reply to your comments and I apologise for that.

Thank you so much for them all!

Olivia
x