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Ampersands and Trust
I don't want to live my life
On one side of an ampersand1
Even if I went with you
I'm not the girl you think I am
And I don't want to match you
'Cause I'll lose my voice completely
(Ampersand, Amanda Palmer. There's a little bit more to the chorus, but it's not important to the way I interpret the lyrics. Me, interpreting things, it's enough to make a cat laugh.)
To me, ever since the first time I really Heard the lyrics, actually Listened to them, instead of just letting the music wash over me as I am so wont to do, I realized that Amanda was talking about something that terrifies me. On one side of an ampersand? She (I) doesn't want to be part of a pair, oh look, there is AmandaandBrian, KatandAnyone. No. Just please, no.
And my fear terrifies me.
I've been alluding to this, bits and pieces and slipped words. A sentence here and there, nothing anyone would notice, not without being able to see the big picture. And the brilliant part of talking to you and you and you is that no one besides me ever gets to see the big picture.
Call it want of freedom, call it my own asexuality (which was never asexual somuch as aromantic, I realise) call it fear of intimacy, call it all or none of the above, it's still there. I'm beginning to get to an age where I can get into relationships that last forever, last the rest of my life, last until marriage and beyond, and dear gods.
Dear gods, I'm petrified.
This...These feelings, the way I love people now means I don't want to lose them. I've been able to enter every relationship safe in the knowledge that it was going to end. High school relationships don't last, silly, people are too different. Hell, the fact that Blue and I made it almost a full year is inherently boggling, a year long relationship? At fifteen, sixteen? We were freaks.
I don't have that safety anymore. I can't rest easy in the knowledge that it will, eventually, end.
Oh, of course it still will. I don't fool myself, my prediliction for older men2 means I tend very towards people who're at enough of a different place from me that eventually we will fragment, and that's okay. I'm alright with losing love (though I never want to lose friendship). But sometimes...I fool myself. Or my mind fools itself. And I realize that I don't want it to end, not ever.
And ye gods, with that realization...I want to run.
I want to run and run and run and hide and be all by myself for a long long while and that's terrible. It's escapism of the worst sort, it's shutting myself off because I just can't accept the idea that maybe it's okay to have someone else there to support you. Because maybe I don't have to go through all of life alone. Because maybe I'm not the only one who can take care of me.
Because maybe being independent is lonely, and maybe being as truly free as I feel I want involves building walls so thick and high that I'll never be able to see the world through them. And I do like the world.
Growing up is scary, but why does it seem so much safer if I could just manage to do it alone.
I...I guess all I'm trying to say is that my therapist was right (damn her) and I think I'm scared of intimacy. I already knew I was scared of opening up, for reasons I've never been able to grasp. I'm scared of perfection for reasons half rational (as hard as I try to achieve it). I never realized that I was scared of safety.
If I flirt with everyone, smile and flounce, keep myself from never falling in love, then no one can ever care about me, and I'll never care about them. All hearts will be safe, unbroken. If I need to bury my face in a shoulder, I just have to turn to the nearest Toy, held fast in walls spun of quick-witted bullshit, rapidfire excuses for the tears on my face, my Need for arms around me.
And I'm sure that would work much better if I never slipped. Heels are pretty, sure, but I still trip, and tumble heart over head into love. And being in love means I have to care, have to be intimate, have to actually let myself open and be honest --I'm terrible at being honest, not in a way that causes me to lie, but in the actual speach, actually getting myself to the point where I can say the words that I need to sometimes. I'm getting better --I've been getting better for most of the last year, learning how to say I need help, say what's going through my mind.
I think I've been falling in Love. Not just loving people, I'm good at that, used to that. Ever since I first managed to tell Veronica that I loved her (not in any weird way, just as a friend, do you understand?) so very long ago (when such words were not to be spoken) not a day has gone by where the phrase hasn't passed my lips. But being in love? That's a lot harder. A *lot* harder, and it keeps happening, once, twice, thr...
I don't know what I'm going to do about this. At the very least, oh, does it feel good to write. I half whispered earlier, tears carefully hid from my eyes "I don't have a home" but I *do*, I so very do. My home has always been my words, given a blank page and a nudge in the right direction, I can weave myself a safety so strong I can almost feel the phantom arms protecting me.
I suppose what I'm going to do is let myself be open. Force myself from running. Maybe sometime I'll find myself on one side of that ampersand, and maybe I won't mind it so much.
I think it's time to face fears. To figure out why they are, and let myself defeat them. Let myself be serious, for once in my life, because for once in my life, I have found something worth being serious about.
Let myself fall in love. One, two, not quite three times, and see what it's like not being totally alone. Contemplate marriage, a mortgage, and a wall that does not encompass me alone.
We'll see.
&Sor
MOOP!
1: Though, to paraphrase Magus, it would not be terrible to live life on one side of an incubus/succubus. [/obscure Nethack joke]
2: And my beautiful younger woman exception is a whole different sort of case, and one I don't wish to discuss here.
On one side of an ampersand1
Even if I went with you
I'm not the girl you think I am
And I don't want to match you
'Cause I'll lose my voice completely
(Ampersand, Amanda Palmer. There's a little bit more to the chorus, but it's not important to the way I interpret the lyrics. Me, interpreting things, it's enough to make a cat laugh.)
To me, ever since the first time I really Heard the lyrics, actually Listened to them, instead of just letting the music wash over me as I am so wont to do, I realized that Amanda was talking about something that terrifies me. On one side of an ampersand? She (I) doesn't want to be part of a pair, oh look, there is AmandaandBrian, KatandAnyone. No. Just please, no.
And my fear terrifies me.
I've been alluding to this, bits and pieces and slipped words. A sentence here and there, nothing anyone would notice, not without being able to see the big picture. And the brilliant part of talking to you and you and you is that no one besides me ever gets to see the big picture.
Call it want of freedom, call it my own asexuality (which was never asexual somuch as aromantic, I realise) call it fear of intimacy, call it all or none of the above, it's still there. I'm beginning to get to an age where I can get into relationships that last forever, last the rest of my life, last until marriage and beyond, and dear gods.
Dear gods, I'm petrified.
This...These feelings, the way I love people now means I don't want to lose them. I've been able to enter every relationship safe in the knowledge that it was going to end. High school relationships don't last, silly, people are too different. Hell, the fact that Blue and I made it almost a full year is inherently boggling, a year long relationship? At fifteen, sixteen? We were freaks.
I don't have that safety anymore. I can't rest easy in the knowledge that it will, eventually, end.
Oh, of course it still will. I don't fool myself, my prediliction for older men2 means I tend very towards people who're at enough of a different place from me that eventually we will fragment, and that's okay. I'm alright with losing love (though I never want to lose friendship). But sometimes...I fool myself. Or my mind fools itself. And I realize that I don't want it to end, not ever.
And ye gods, with that realization...I want to run.
I want to run and run and run and hide and be all by myself for a long long while and that's terrible. It's escapism of the worst sort, it's shutting myself off because I just can't accept the idea that maybe it's okay to have someone else there to support you. Because maybe I don't have to go through all of life alone. Because maybe I'm not the only one who can take care of me.
Because maybe being independent is lonely, and maybe being as truly free as I feel I want involves building walls so thick and high that I'll never be able to see the world through them. And I do like the world.
Growing up is scary, but why does it seem so much safer if I could just manage to do it alone.
I...I guess all I'm trying to say is that my therapist was right (damn her) and I think I'm scared of intimacy. I already knew I was scared of opening up, for reasons I've never been able to grasp. I'm scared of perfection for reasons half rational (as hard as I try to achieve it). I never realized that I was scared of safety.
If I flirt with everyone, smile and flounce, keep myself from never falling in love, then no one can ever care about me, and I'll never care about them. All hearts will be safe, unbroken. If I need to bury my face in a shoulder, I just have to turn to the nearest Toy, held fast in walls spun of quick-witted bullshit, rapidfire excuses for the tears on my face, my Need for arms around me.
And I'm sure that would work much better if I never slipped. Heels are pretty, sure, but I still trip, and tumble heart over head into love. And being in love means I have to care, have to be intimate, have to actually let myself open and be honest --I'm terrible at being honest, not in a way that causes me to lie, but in the actual speach, actually getting myself to the point where I can say the words that I need to sometimes. I'm getting better --I've been getting better for most of the last year, learning how to say I need help, say what's going through my mind.
I think I've been falling in Love. Not just loving people, I'm good at that, used to that. Ever since I first managed to tell Veronica that I loved her (not in any weird way, just as a friend, do you understand?) so very long ago (when such words were not to be spoken) not a day has gone by where the phrase hasn't passed my lips. But being in love? That's a lot harder. A *lot* harder, and it keeps happening, once, twice, thr...
I don't know what I'm going to do about this. At the very least, oh, does it feel good to write. I half whispered earlier, tears carefully hid from my eyes "I don't have a home" but I *do*, I so very do. My home has always been my words, given a blank page and a nudge in the right direction, I can weave myself a safety so strong I can almost feel the phantom arms protecting me.
I suppose what I'm going to do is let myself be open. Force myself from running. Maybe sometime I'll find myself on one side of that ampersand, and maybe I won't mind it so much.
I think it's time to face fears. To figure out why they are, and let myself defeat them. Let myself be serious, for once in my life, because for once in my life, I have found something worth being serious about.
Let myself fall in love. One, two, not quite three times, and see what it's like not being totally alone. Contemplate marriage, a mortgage, and a wall that does not encompass me alone.
We'll see.
&Sor
MOOP!
1: Though, to paraphrase Magus, it would not be terrible to live life on one side of an incubus/succubus. [/obscure Nethack joke]
2: And my beautiful younger woman exception is a whole different sort of case, and one I don't wish to discuss here.
no subject
Heh, i do forget to do that sometimes >.>
It's always good to see that.. i had to write a post-it note & hang it by my computer to remind me that Talia likes long comments back when i'd go on & on & on in her elljay because i was always so sure that i was annoying her with them ;p
That said, sometimes stuff does get stuck in my head because i guess it is zooping around so quickly in there that i can't quite pin what i'm thinking down. i think possibly part of what was in there was this horrified notion that you thought/think that you cannot allow yourself to love and man, all you need is love and if you don't have love then what's the point & so on... so you see this is the very base of my being & i freak out a little (regardless of whether it's appropriate or not) if i think i see someone who is not going to have the benefit of knowing love.
But i was also confused because you are one of the most loving people i know and then i thought well, she means that other "love" and then that reverts me back to the long discussions W&I have had about "what is love anyway?" and society's expectations & whatnot and us probly getting way too spastic about the whole thing.
And see, i thought we had that love thing in common so i was confused about how opposite we were and then i realize i'm doing that Black & White thinking thing again whereby it doesn't have to be All or Nothing, does it?
*remembers to breathe again*
i often feel like i think too much but as Swinger once told me quite a long time ago, i don't think too much, i just listen too much.
no subject
Do I need to write a post-it note for you telling you that it's okay and encouraged to write 'em in my journal too?
*smiles* Thank you for caring about me, lovely Har girl. I promise that I have a lot of love in my life, and I don't think I could ever actually pull away from it. For all I say I wouldn't mind being freed of all platonic obligations, I think I'd get lonely, and that would be a damn shame.
I don't mean that other love. Well, I mean, I largely did for this one, the sort of love I feel for a significant other rather than for a friend. But the pulling away thing...yeah. :/
*pets* Love you babe. I'm glad you listen. I like it.
~Sor
no subject
And if you want to write a post-it knote (*leaves first-thing-in-the-morning typo because it amuses me*), i'd love it! Your other one is a beacon for me.. even on days where i don't believe it. i make meself look at it anyway. You Wrote It. It Must be True. *nod*
i just waaaaant to beeee youuur frieeeeeend.. and Rtizy'ssssss and Swingerrrr'sss... i want to be Special to you guys and not be annoying and drive you awaaaaay (another miswriting to the harddrive by ex's)...
*dooks* I Love You Too. i will always care. And i'm glad you don't mind me listening (& reacting). i'm glad you like it 'cause for all my "ack, i should go away & leave these people alone Forever", i wouldn't know how to be any other way.
*hgugles againgain*
no subject
I will try and remember to write it and send it!
You are my friend, okay? Do I need to say that louder? You are my friend! And I love you, and think you're wonderful.
(And seriously, if I ever meet your exes in a dark alley, they will have some explaining to do. *growls*)
*pets more*
~Sor
no subject
Thank You! And especially today, i needed to see this comment for i have been full of self-hate, doubt, and anger & despair and it's all just hormonal sleep deprived crap but it sneaks in through the edges, y'know? You saying it louder never hurts, heh.
. o O (Sor thinks i'm wonderful! *poingpoings*)
(Heh, get in line! i have had a few offers to beat up Chas, which amuses me greatly... Rick (Mel's dad) you don't have to worry about... his own stupidity got himself killed several years ago: He was a diabetic & refused to take care of himself :P)(For some reason, i did not feel any remorse when i heard that when they found his body it had been dead for several days >.>)
*dooks happily*
no subject
(I kinda had fun with that)
Some people don't really deserve remorse, I think. If he hurt you, and he's gone, just let it be.
~Sor
no subject
Aye, and considering my propensity to feeling guilt about such things, it's rather amazing that i was able to do so without any. *lets it be*
no subject
~Sor
no subject
. o O (shoulda used this icon for my other response)