![[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
Hm? I must be misreading this — taken at face value, you seem to be saying that polyamorous relationships can't involve love. Obviously that's false — what are you actually saying?
no subject
What I meant to say is that polyamorous relationships can't involve love.
no subject
no subject
You mispelled "lust." It's got a "u" and an "s" and a "t" in that order, after the "l," and you've added in a bunch of extra letters.
no subject
I will say this: poly people (including the person whose journal you're posting in) certainly believe they are (or can be) in love with multiple people at once. They form long-term relationships with one another, some lasting longer than you've been alive, and they're pretty indistinguishable from long-term monogamous relationships. They argue, they make up, they miss each other, they poke each other's noses, they buy houses together. Most importantly, they say they're in love with each other, and I think they're the ones who get to decide that, not me and not you.
There are a lot of people in this world who think homosexual couples aren't really in love with each other. They say it's just misguided lust, that it's unnatural, that proper romantic love can only work between a man and a woman. Those people piss me off to no end, and I suspect they piss you off as well.
Just sayin'.
no subject
I don't really think Ky was trying to say polyamory is necessarily unnatural so much as not always gone into with the best intentions.
(Although I guess that could be said of all relationships, so.)
no subject
Agreed; that was unnecessary. I was trying to say that an unknown teenager and I are going to have such different perspectives on love that we aren't likely to reach agreement in an LJ comment thread, but it came off condescending instead. Apologies,
This is my taking a deep breath comment.
Advance apologies if any of this came off harsher than I intended.
~Sor
Re: This is my taking a deep breath comment.
Polygamy, I can wrap my mind around. Anyone can get married. I can understand being conflicted between a few people. But to say, "Heck with it, I'll just pick all of them" seems selfish and lazy and dishonest. Selfish because you're putting your desires for sex/cuddling/Deep Conversation/whatever over the people you supposedly "love," who are forced to share you. Lazy because you can't be fucked to figure out what you really want. And dishonest because you're telling each of your "significant" others that they are Special and Unique Snowflakes meant for You, you're telling yourself that each of them is Equal to the others.
It degrades everyone involved.
Re: This is my taking a deep breath comment.
It seems you are operating under a different definition of the word "love" than we are. It's probably going to make productive dialogue difficult. To me, love is about an emotional connection and sharing and caring and lots of other things, but it's not inherently about exclusivity or possessiveness.
My experience is that love is not a scarce resource: my giving love to one thing doesn't diminish my ability to give love to another person, and I expect the same of others. (Note: time is a scarce resource, and allocating it in a poly setting is significantly more difficult, but that difficulty exists within monoamory, and not being able to spend infinite time with someone doesn't mean I love them any less, just that I don't have infinite time.)
I hope this helps give you a better sense of where some of us are coming from and why we might find it hurtful when you deny the existence of the emotions we feel.
But....
You can say it's not for you -- or you can say it doesn't fit your definition of [romantic] love -- but since the word is commonly used with very similar meaning in non-exclusive contexts ("I love my family") and none of the dictionary definitions (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love) seem to imply exclusivity (with 1a2, "attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers" seeming the closest to the usage we're discussing), I don't think you can say that polyamory violates it universally, or that it can only be used in a way which implies exclusivity.
And if everyone in it is a consenting and informed sentient being (consenting to what? having more than one person love them (by their definition)? how terrible!), I don't think you can say it's screwing anyone over either.
Seems to me that one would be screwing someone over more by forcing oneself to choose between them and someone else: "Oh, sorry, you're a great person and I'd really like to love you forever, but I've decided you're inferior to X over here, so I love them forever instead."
"Lazy" also doesn't make sense; it's more work to keep multiple close relationships going.
I suspect that there may be hard-wiring involved, here; some people may be inherently monogamous. Others clearly are not, and it's not just a matter of people being exploitative -- or else poly people would always be trying to hook up with mono people, rather than with other poly people.
And now you probably hate me, so I should stop rambling. (I've got plenty of conservatives I could be alienating; shouldn't waste it on real people whom I'd rather not...)
Re: But....
~Sor