![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
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
~Sor
no subject
no subject
Keira sweetie, I am painfully insecure, even now, even after being able to say I've gotten significantly better in the last year. I have weird brain things (the denizens), feel more useless than useful when trying to help with tasks (especially cooking, exception dishwashing) and am, well, nineteen, and prone to fits of emo and fits of hyperactivity where I'll suddenly realize just how out there I'm being, and become embarrassed. I'm...not really a desirable long term package.
I still don't always trust that Marc's not going to suddenly come to his senses and break up with me. I still don't always trust that my best friend Veronica isn't suddenly going to come to her senses and stop wanting to hang out with me. I hate to say it, but I think there's really only one person beyond myself who I do trust enough to expect that we could last forever, and she's my goddamn clone --our brainspace reflects off each other in so many other ways, is it any wonder I've been lulled into a sense of security with her?
(And I still get so very jealous when she flirts with other girls. It's stupid, especially as we're both poly, and I don't care, but oh, I am so scared of losing her sometimes.)
Soyeah. I'm willing to try things in the long term. But I've a minor fear of commitment, and I Just Don't Trust People like that. I may want it to be long term, but I'm far too paranoid to ever expect that out of anyone else.
It might be defeatist. It is non-trusting. And this is probably way more behindthewalls than you were looking for.
~Sor
no subject
I expect the relationship will last as long as it wants to, which could well be forever (and that, given the previous, would be preferable), but knowing full well there are many reasons it might end.
(I actually have entered into relationships I expected to be short-term, but that was where an imminent long-term separation was expected, and is a special case.)
no subject