Jesus It's 2015!?

Good morning. I just woke up to the fact that it's 2015 and I haven't written a blog since the Blogtober experiment of 2014. For those of you that are reading the posting time and notice that this is well into the afternoon yet I started with good morning, then you'll be lost here. It'll take a certain type of mind to follow whats to come here on What's Next? in 2015.

You see dear reader I plan on taking you along with me in the search for answers this year. Also, fuck, yes I realize that's it's February and I'm talking like I'm making New Year's resolutions here. Just, relax and follow along. I've come to a simple conclusion that I can no longer think my way out of the problems that I face in life. Thinking is so 2014. What I've come to realize is that my feelings are what are going to wake me up this year. Feelings. Those gooey, sticky, yucky, slimy, feeling.

What is to come is what I'm calling:

How to be More Intimate: 

One Man's Journey from Emotional Barriers of Fear to Open Loving Relationships. 

So let me put a stamp down here and let you know that what follows on this blog is going to be sticky and gooey. Yucky and sometimes slimy. If you're not in for a whole lot of Truth and a good bit of answering of hard questions then you might want to unsubscribe. Mark it down. February 1st is the date that you'll need to reference back to when you log on one day and ask yourself, what the hell is all this? Don't worry dear reader, there will still be a lot of rambling, some sarcasm and my natural charm throughout this blog, but there will be times when this will get a bit ugly. For those of you that might want something else from my writing, I am starting a new blog as well about some of my hotel life stories and I hope to have that up and running soon. Think about my twitter posts and expand them into whole blog posts. What you're not on Twitter? Good for you. It's a waste of time. But if you are, seriously, follow me @HolyCityAndre Now, on with the next chapter of my life and this blog at What's Next?

So about three weeks ago as I was about to get into the shower I realized that my left testicle had swollen up to about twice its normal size. Oh, you thought I was fucking around when I said things were going to get real on this blog did you? Yeah, real real. Still with me? Ok...
So as I was getting in the shower I noticed this swollen ball and you can probably imagine the thoughts that were running through my head: Oh shit, this is it! I've gotten cancer, I'm going to die! Oh I'm so young and have some much more to live for! Oh whoa is me! I'm going to die in pain... Ridiculous right? Real Ridiculous.

After a trip to the local clinic and $800+ in medical bills, my doctor determined that I had epididymitis. Now, there are several causes of epididymitis, and a few of them point to STDs. However, I figured out quickly that I had no fear of that and more likely my condition was caused from a bacterial infection. Ok, here you go, have two weeks of antibiotics and call us if it doesn't clear up. Two weeks go by, the pain and swelling go away and I figure I'm in the clear right? Wrong. A few days after I came off the antibiotics, the swelling and some of the pain returned. Uh oh.

So what I, along with my girlfriend, decided to do was what I should have done to start with and that is do some research and find more home remedies and herbs to combat this infection and cure it the more natural way. Also, what I had failed to look at is how it was that I got this infection brought into my life to start with. Why did I need to experience this and what was it that I had to learn from this experience? One of the things the infection has done is it has taken away my ability to have sex. Not my sexual desire, or physical ability, just the practicality and actual 'ability'. Nobody wants to spread infections to their partner. Gross. What I didn't consider was what all that leaves behind...

Think about your closest partner that you've ever been sexually active with. If you took away the sex from your relationship, what was left there? You both liked video games? Cool. You both liked movies? Awesome. You both enjoyed long walks on the beach at sunset? Nice. Those are activities, hobbies, and interests. What they are not is intimacy, closeness and honesty. Having an open honest conversations with your partner in life is not an easy thing to do at first. It takes practice. Being truly close to your partner is not always comfortable. Feeling their moods, their pain, their worry, their joy, their ups and downs is not always the funnest thing to be around. However, it is what leads to the meat of any relationship and that is... intimacy. Not sexual intimacy. Just intimacy.

Intimacy: Closely personal, A close familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person. Typically develops after a certain level of trust has been reached and personal bonds have been established. 

So if there isn't sex to distract there isn't warmth to comfort and there isn't open honest communication, then there isn't a relationship anymore unless you have real intimacy in the relationship. So maybe my ball swelling was there to take some of those things away from me and force me to look at what was left. Forget the scare of cancer to death. Forget the pain and swelling. What was there for me to lean? Oh, that just leaves... um... you mean I need to talk about my feelings? How this makes me feel. Well I feel...

And that is where this has led us dear reader. I've taught myself through the years that I'm not allowed to express my real emotions. "There's no crying in baseball." I'm not allowed to do this, or I can't feel that because that would mean ________. If I can't allow myself to feel those things (anger, sadness, separation, love, fear) then how can I share them with my partner? How can I understand when she tries to share them with me? What's the point of having a relationship if you aren't sharing those things with one another?

So why haven't I been sharing things like this all along? Well there were the rules that I had to follow and... the fear. That's right I was afraid. Still am to be honest. I'm afraid of a lot of things when it comes to opening up my emotions to the world outside of my own mind. What if I can't control them? What if other people see them (read about them in a blog) and then judge me for that? Oh no! Oh well. The time for that is over. The time for me to start examining how to express myself and how to love myself and my ability to be intimate is now. I can't afford to have another ball swell up, another kidney stone, another pain in my ass from some pain in my ass. I'm done with that. Sorry it had to come to that for me to realize that my emotional repressions were causing my physical pain and preventing me from having the type of intimate relationships that I (and all of us really) want in my life.

As I sit now, by ball is still a little swollen, my body is still cleaning itself out, and my mind is still trying to take over an emotional task. I can't think my way out of all of this. I can only allow myself to feel my way out of it and into something so much better. I can't promise you anything here other than as I come across an emotion, it's going to appear on here and you're going to experience this journey with me. Like it or not.

A Course in Miracles: "Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer only because I believe in them." W-188.