The Thickness of the Ick

why feeling ALL of your feelings (not just the ones you like) is the way to creative and erotic freedom

Well, hello again, dear reader <3

I hope you’re having a wonderful Sunday.

Tonight I’m going to share a bit about how to navigate that challenges we can face when we feel a little ick as we embark upon a creative pursuit.

Here we go.

Earlier this evening, I went to set up for my annual New Year’s Eve self portraits. The problem was… (well, I thought, at first, it was a problem) I didn’t feel very turned on. I didn’t feel excited, aroused, into myself. I didn’t feel that juicy juicy creative Eros flowing.

And for a moment I sat there, reeling in irritation, frustrated that I wasn’t immediately revved up and ready for action. 

Oh… wait. That’s not how eroticism works, now is it?

Before I go much further, I need to say that erotic energy is creative energy. I’ll write a more detailed post (series? probably) later, but for now: creative energy - the same energy we’d used to draw, paint, sing, write, dance, build, make pottery, knit - is erotic energy. 

We don’t always feel it that way, because we often skip the proverbial or literal foreplay and instead use our energy through forces of habit (i.e. mechanical/predictable sex, always doing the same online yoga class, rigid eating habits, etc). However; when we DO take the time to warm ourselves up and get really present in our bodies - that energy opens up a whole different process - a truly CREATIVE (not habitual) process.

Now back to my little “problem.”

Sometimes getting really present means feeling the ick. Cause, ya know, it’s just… there. A little layer of crust atop the yumminess inside. My ick? I was a little overwhelmed, tense from organizing and researching all day, and a little all up in my head about it. I was thinking too much and subsequently winding myself deeper into the anxiety of not feeling the creative juices flowing.

Which makes perfect sense, because creative/erotic energy is felt IN THE BODY!

A big problem we face is that we tend to think the ick is all there is. And because we resist actually feeling it, we don’t give ourselves the chance to experience what lies beneath.

Here’s what I’ve learned. The ick is most often a thin - much thinner than we think - layer that dissolves within minutes when we let ourselves just feel it. When we think about it, we make it last longer and we build its intensity by contracting our awareness around it while simultaneously resisting feeling what it is we’re aware of. 

Imagine that moment you’re about to kiss someone, hovering millimeters away from their lips, but never letting your lips actually meet, for hours, days, YEARS! Now imagine that but way less hot. That’s what it’s like to resist feeling the ick. Or anything, for that matter. And unfortunately, lots of us resist feeling our feelings for our whole lives. I mean, I went 10 years without crying. And that’s not an exaggeration. Which is also to say that, if I can regain the power to feel my feelings, so can you. 

I digress. Back to the portraits. I’ll paint the scene.

I notice I am frustrated, but then… I notice I’m resisting the feeling of frustration.

I notice I am resisting feeling exactly. what’s. happening. right. now. 

And then, ahhhhhh. I breathe. 

And I feel a sense of relief. 

And I cry a little cause, well I’m kind of a cry baby, but like, in a hot way.

And I wriggle around on the floor and feel my body. 

And then I put on a dark and dirty trip hop playlist and DANCE because I know that’s a surefire way to move from the muck to a much more joyful place. 

What I’m really trying to say here is, it’s not quite as difficult to experience joy and pleasure and our multitudinous erotic selves when we stop thinking we’re supposed to be happy all the time or automatically turned on with the flip of a switch. 

We go through a lot in a day. Build up tension, frustration, resentment, stress, and whatever else it is we manage to collect as we move through life. If we never tend to that stuff (i.e. feel it and release it), it can become overwhelming, and we wind up anxious, depressed, in chronic pain, and sorely void of the depths of transformative eroticism and creativity we could be experiencing.

If, however, we make a daily practice of FEELING the feelings built up in our bodies, instead of ignoring or numbing ourselves to them with distractions… the process is really not such a big deal. And we can move through it with relative ease. And then we’ll likely become more turned on, more readily, because the layer of ick is not so thick.¹

One last note on feeling our feelings. When I say that, I don’t mean thinking about  or intellectualizing our feelings, and I don’t mean sitting still and meditating on them (not that traditional meditation is a bad thing... this is just different). I mean physically, in our bodies, FEELING. Feeling whatever is there. I mean sitting and breathing and noticing that knot in your back and feeling the pain and breathing into it and releasing it. I mean writhing on the floor in a glorious struggle to crawl out of your too tight skin. I mean feeling the joy of dancing, walking, singing. I mean releasing the pent up tension in growling, howling, screaming. And my favorite - bringing it all together in the beautiful act of fucking. 

Now, I strayed a bit from the self-portraits scene, but suffice to say, as I danced, the ick dissolved into a sea of bliss as I felt myself becoming more and more alive and aware and turned on by the sensations moving through my body. Before I knew it, I was stripping down for the camera feeling hotter and more vital than ever. 

Alright. Enough of me. I hope you’re having an enchanted evening.

Happy New Year!

xx

Faye

1. Is there a correlation between the thickness of the ick you have built in your body, and the thickness of the cock that is the magic key to help unlock it? Maybe! I think so, anyway… Idk… maybe take a survey of your favorite sex toys (human or otherwise) and pay particular attention to the dimensions ;)