I Needed to Put My Brain on a Shelf

Last week I needed reassurance from MC, the Mountainous Comedian who’s captured my attention and affection. So, like the self aware and confident woman I am I told him, right?

Nope. I did not. I was going through some shit unrelated to my budding relationship with my Mountainous Comedian (or My Cuck? He likes this title… I’m still adjusting).

…

Anyway, I was going through this stuff and I started to think that all men are akin to trash pandas who root around the garbage cans at night, scouring for whatever’s left of a woman’s dignity after the other humans eat their fill. I sought out to prove my theory right by telling MC I was anxious and in my head. I was sure he’d come back with silence at best and weaponized victimhood at worst.

Nope. He did not. He texted back.

What do you want?

I panicked. What I want is to have him tell me he also likes me lots. If only I could just fold a slip of notebook paper into a football like we did in high school before texting ruined dating. I could ask him to circle yes or no and we could skip off into the sunset like a Tim McGraw song.

But I can’t do that. We don’t have a row of desks separating us, we have half a state. We are reliant on texting and phone calls to stay connected between visits. A folded football wouldn’t quite reach.

I could have said “I want reassurance that you also like me because I really like you and sometimes it’s hard for my brain to know what my body feels when we’re together.” But, again, I made a fear-based decision and went left instead of right. I texted back one word.

You.

True? Yepper. The whole truth? Not at all. But, then I got brave…kinda.

What do you want?

You.

I replied back “yay” and then proceeded to spend the rest of the week looking for evidence that he doesn’t actually like me and is just into me for my sexual openness and that thing I do with my tongue.

I carried that overthinking energy into our weekend together. I was present in the sense that my phone was away and I was fully engaged, but I wasn’t completely open. The anxiety from the week had me afraid to speak up, afraid to say what I wanted from him.

At one point we were on the couch, curled up as close as two naked humans can be without it being called sex. I stared into MC’s toffee colored eyes a bit too long.

“What are you thinking?”

My body wanted to lean in. Wanted to tell him and for a split second I almost told him to his handsome silver fox face that I really like him a whole hell of a lot. I almost told him the reasons I like him (which are plentiful and not at all related to the fact that he’s into this whole cuckolding thing we’re building). Then, my brain alerted.

Telling him would give him power over me. I can’t tell him.

I quickly pivoted in a different conversational direction.

“Nice deflection. Don’t think I missed that.”

“I know you caught it.”

Then I made a joke and deflected again.

The trouble here isn’t about my fear. MC understands where it comes from and that it isn’t about him. Somehow he knows what I’ve dragged myself through without me having to share every detail. The trouble is that he called out my deflection because he felt disconnection in that moment and tried to pull me back. I resisted instead of yielding. I don’t want to fucking resist but I don’t yet know how to stay.

Were there things I wanted to say? Yes. I wanted to say so many things. I wanted to tell him how much I like him and why. I wanted to ask more questions about who he is and get to know more of him. I wanted a foot rub because my hyper-mobile feet always hurt. I couldn’t ask for any of that because I was too in my head. My walls were up. They didn’t come down until I was on my knees in his living room throwing all that emotion I couldn’t say out loud into a stellar fucking blow job that my brain finally turned off enough to utter one simple sentence.

“I really like you.”

The only trouble was before I sat back on my heels and looked up at his face, with his cock still in my hand he’d asked me for something just a little different.

“Talk dirty to me,” He’d requested, wanting to oblige my ask for his cum.

Talk dirty… and my brain came out with “I really like you.”

What. The. Fuck. Was. That??!!

My brain had finally turned off because MC had used his hands, mouth, and cock to spin me into erotic bliss so I could finally say the thing that was on my mind when he asked how I felt about us. Except that happened when what he wanted me to say was something along the lines of “I want your cum all over my tits.”

MC is both a good sport and not put off by a bit of silliness during sex, so we laughed this one off, finished what we’d started and high fived about both our propensity for laughing at ourselves and our bedroom compatibility.

I wish I could say my anxiety spiral ended after this. We spent the rest of our time together watching a movie, eating dinner that MC prepared while telling me to sit my ass down when I offered to help, and rolling around his bed. Before I left in the morning he made me an omelet and I ate one of the gluten free pastries he bought. But the whole time I was looking for evidence that it was all fake.

My brain wanted to find some clue that the man who visited the gluten free aisle at the grocery store just for me and checked the labels on every seasoning in his cabinet to make sure he wouldn’t hurt me when he cooked wasn’t really into me. Surely his comments about someday selling his house and moving out of state meant he was treating this as a temporary stop for his cock and not the beginning of a potential relationship. Right?

My instinct here is to say my brain is broken. But it isn’t. My brain is doing exactly what human brains are wired to do. It’s scanning for danger, alerting, and activating my run away system.

It wasn’t until days later when the spiraling finally released. And it did so in a way that might have cost me the budding relationship if MC weren’t the calm, steady man he is. By this point I was convinced of the following…

I was being used. For sure.
I liked him more than he liked me and I should avoid telling him so I don’t scare him off.
I should put up some additional walls, and maybe even reinforce them with steel rods so he can’t break through them with his sultry eyes and gentle-giant tendencies.
I should run.

Then, Mc asked me for something.

When we’re together next time can you do something for me?

Anything.

I want you to tell me what you want. Say I want you to…

Easy

Three dots danced and disappeared.

But you didn’t do that this weekend.

I had an in my head sort of week and carried that into the my visit with you and I’m grumpy with me about it.

I don’t think you’re used to asking for things you want.

There it was again. The seeing me thing he does. Fuck. I started sobbing at my desk. like full on ugly tears requiring tissues.

Why are you crying?

Because I don’t wanna be afraid anymore. You’re so sweet to me but anytime a want pops into my head I squash it down because I’m afraid I’ll be too much. I can write all of this stuff out in letters I never send you, but I can’t seem to get my body to accept the safety in real time yet. I’m frustrated about that.

He offered some reassurance and then I told him what happens in my brain.

Wanna know something fucked up in my brain? It’s a flow chart… kind of

If I tell you what I want you’ll either say yes or ignore my want.
If you say yes I will fall for you even more.
If you ignore me then all men suck. End of that flow chart stream…
If you say yes and I let myself fall for you then you have power over me that you’ll use to hurt me.

So if I don’t want things then the flow chart cannot happen… cue the shutting down of wants.

Then, I came up with a brilliant plan.

Let’s get a white board so when you ask me a question or I have a want I can write it down to avoid deflecting.

If you break out a white board when I cover your tits in cum, I’m out.

I asked for his help when I deflect.

I usually flag it when I see it but I can’t read your mind. There is no way I can tell if you want to tell me something and are holding back. Let’s work on this. If I ask a question, you answer it without fear. If I catch you deflecting, you don’t deflect a second time.

First of all, this is so hot. your boundaries… wanting to be patient with me but holding your limits… I’m into it. Yes. I want this. also, I want you so bad when you’re like this.

I can’t act like a cuck all the time.

I wish I could say that was the end of my anxiety spiral. It should have been. As I’m rereading the text messages while writing this I’m thinking “Honey, this man is good, and he’s clearly into you because you’re a lot of fucking work and he’s just like, okay, this is what we’re doing….” I couldn’t see that in the moment, though. I was convinced I’d become too much. Again.

I told my friends about it. They told me (lovingly) my brain was broken, and that MC would probably be delighted to know I was really into him. Did I listen? Nope…

I texted MC while I was in this spiral.

I explained things.

I over explained

I doubled back and circled around to clarify.

And then he called me.

I let it ring. I fully intended to not pick up. There was no way I wanted to talk to this man who was most certainly a master manipulator.

I relented on the last ring.

“Hey.”

“Babe. I read your texts and you’re clearly in your head too much. I’m heading to an open mic but I wanted to reach out so you weren’t just spiraling like this all night. You need to put your brain on a shelf. You like me. I like you. Let’s just have fun and enjoy that. The rest will figure itself out.”

We talked a bit more and I admitted that I was afraid that the difficulty I’m having opening myself up to him would cause him to get sick of me. Trying to reach someone who keeps weaving like Barry Sanders approaching the end zone is exhausting, I imagine. We talked about some strategies to help with that. Then, MC told me he’s happy to be patient, but he does very much need me to dissolve the defenses. He checked in a few more times, made sure I was doing ok.

Just like that, he took my anxiety, saw that it needed some attention, offered reassurance, and bossed my bratty overthinking ass around. Then, he made me laugh. We hung up, he did his thing on stage behind the microphone and I put my tiny human to bed.

Then, I sent him a picture. It’s an Amazon box with “Molly’s Brain” written on the side on the highest shelf in my kitchen.

Later, we texted some of our usual banter.

I redefined pillow princess as “ happily surrounded by pillows and getting treated like a princess by the guy I’m dating.”

He’s a lucky guy.

Idk. I’m kinda a guarded bitch sometimes… but he’s patient with me.

Well, maybe you will blossom.

We talked about things we like in the bedroom, and out of it. I told a couple stories about my kids, and I fell asleep after sending a note about how much I like his smell.

The next day in my therapy appointment I told my therapist to buckle up because we were going on a ride. I showed her my brain box on the shelf. Then, I filled her in on all of this…although I left out the blowjob scene for her benefit.

My therapist is definitely on Team MC, as are all of my friends. No one seems to be on team “hide in the closet and avoid intimacy” other than my very confused and overthinking brain. We came up with a few ideas to help get me over this hurdle, and I shared them with MC.

Where do we end up? Not a clue.

But I can tell you that I can’t imagine a better man to go through this part of my life with. Since I met him nearly 9 months ago, I’ve separated from Wasband, filed for divorce, entered a domestic violence rapid relocation program, published a book, lost my father in law, and finally started sleeping through the night for the first time in ten years. My defenses? They make sense. I’ve never had a love that didn’t hurt. I would really like one, though, and for better or worse, I’m a romantic optimist.

…

At this point if MC had a dollar for every time I’ve deflected a vulnerable conversation topic over the past months he’d have enough to take us both out for dinner and drinks. But he’s still here, still reminding me he’s not sick of anything, not even my brain that needs to sit on a shelf sometimes. He tells me I feel safe to him.

I feel like he took one look at my traumatized ass, heard my anxiety spin, announced that I was his, threw me over his shoulder and is proceeding to pull out the hurts one by one. Those walls I wanted to reinforce with steel rods? He’s just dismantling them and I want to let him so his love can hug all the parts of me that need it.

He’s going to read this article once it goes live because I always send him the ones I write about him and I don’t care that he’ll know that I like like him. I already told him. I didn’t fold it like a football note from high school but I did send him a letter on my favorite dragonfly stationary because sometimes writing it out feels safer.

He didn’t weaponize my affection. He said “That was very genuine and sweet. Thank you for opening up to me. That means a lot and puts things in a better perspective.”

“What do you mean by better perspective?” (My damn brain was scanning his words for danger still.)

“A better perspective of us, silly pants.”

Now, a day or so later, as I’m finishing this story I came to a new realization. I’m not scared anymore. I’m excited for the next time he asks me a question that lights up that “run” button. He saw the spiral and he held me through it without judging me for it. He also held his boundaries (hot as fuck, that). I can’t wait to take a breath when I feel that panic, because I know I’ll still feel it. But I’ll stay, I will choose to stay open and remain in whatever moment he pulls me to. His safety has me devoted, my fear of intimacy is evaporating. I suspect I’m meeting a version of me that’s never had space to exist before. I can’t wait to look in his eyes and answer him with an open, honest heart because that’s what the fuck he deserves.

Molly Frances’s writing explores what it means to be human: relationships, families, sexuality, mental health, and growth. When she isn’t writing or working with clients, she’s either on a beach or reading (or both) or dancing with abandon. She lives with her children, a rescue pup, and too many books.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.