Hot flashes. Loving myself. Anger at being touched.

I'm becoming unenthused about hot flashes. When they happen during sleep, they come with very strong emotion. I can meet this emotion if I sit and meditate, but lately I've been resisting. I just want to stay lying down, dammit! I commit now to sitting and meditating when this next happens. Otherwise, I sometimes spend a large part of the night lying down and feeling unhappily agitated. And then, the next day, feeling sleepy.

I continue to practice "I love myself". In this moment, I'm not feeling the magic of it. But at other times, I do. Well, OK, a little of the magic is making itself apparent, despite my habitual pessimism. When I don't allow my delusions, it's clear that loving myself is the only way forward. Who will love me if I don't do it myself? When I do the practice, the warm, tingly, pleasant sensation of metta practice appears in my chest, throat, arms, face. This is a sensation that has been associated with metta practice for me ever since my long retreat at the Forest Refuge. But along with this pleasant sensation is sadness, fear, and longing. Sadness for ... I don't know what. For the life I have missed by not loving myself before now? Fear of the things I must give up to love myself, familiar things that provide comfort even as they frustrate and disappoint again and again. Longing ... for something ill-defined ... something that just hasn't taken shape in my mind.

This practice seems to have led to small changes in my experience. In recent weeks I've surprised myself by acting outside of habit. By not reacting badly to something that used to make me react badly. By being kind to myself. Sometimes I even notice the thought, "Oh, I love myself--I can't push myself" or "can't punish myself ... if I love myself."

When I wake with a hot flash, the strong emotion I feel is something like anger, but it's rounded, not sharp. And it contains a powerful longing or desire. And it feels SO big. Last night when I was awake with it, Z asked if there was anything I wanted, anything she could do for me. I said "no", but wondered whether I was blocking out what I really wanted and needed.

When Z kisses or touches me, anger arises. And the anger is uncomfortable. Previously in my life, when I've felt that, I've thought, "This unpleasantness means that this touch is something I do not want. I will ask the person to stop touching me." Then I would ask them to stop, and they typically would, and I would then feel sad. Or, I wouldn't ask them to stop, then feel really bad that I had failed to show respect to myself.

But feeling anger at being touched ... grrr ... finding this so hard to put into words ... the last couple of days I've chosen to allow the touch and to allow myself to feel anger. And to take the point of view that this is not disresectful to myself. Once yesterday I was tired of working with the anger and at that point I did ask Z to stop touching me.

With Z, often the touch brings up sexual desire.