Ampersands and Trust
Jan. 22nd, 2009 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressI 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.
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no subject
on 2009-01-23 03:48 pm (UTC)We all have fears. Fear of being alone, fear of being together. I'm afraid that I'll never find permanence because I am too difficult a person to deal with for any extent of time. I'm still sort of scared of the idea of permanence itself, even. Stagnation scares me, but the thought of not being alone, being emotionally, spiritually (and physically) homeless scares me more. I'm scared to be trusted because I'm afraid I will fail those who trust me. I was scared to learn that my boy wanted to be with others; not because he loved me any less, not because I wasn't "enough", though those thoughts certainly dwelled in my mind, but while I knew it conceptually, it has been difficult accepting it in reality (though I think I have been doing well there). I'm afraid of getting stuck in trying to conform to expectations, any of the masks that I wore/wear to keep my (easily assailed - I'm not good at defenses) walls invisible, so that eventually I'd lose any ability to be myself. I'm also afraid of not living up to my and other's expectations, most of which are in my head, I admit.
Some of my fears are more instinctual: fear of dogs, fear of dark, lonely spaces. When I was younger I was afraid of basements and tunnels. These fears I do not think I will ever get over entirely, because they are too base, too ingrained, though I force myself to deal with them when I need. However, those of the paragraph above? Those are fears that only humans are complex enough to be cursed with (I think; I can't say for certain, but I certainly wouldn't wish them on another species), but they can be dealt with, because we're strong, (and you are a very strong person if I ever saw one) and because we are not alone. We need each other, not just one person, or just S.O.s, but parents, friends, teachers, mentors, the guy on the street who holds the door for you with a smile, the homeless person you give your leftovers too. We need and want to be needed. Life is too short, too confusing, too hard to go it on your own. Life is not a test.
Thinking about relationships over the past month, I came up with my working idea of what I think a perfect relationship for me could be. Rather, having someone to come home to each night (emotionally especially, but preferably literally too), but at the same time not being afraid to wander in the day (day and night are not to be taken literally also) because you're confident in your love for the person waiting for you at home and confident in their love for you. Though I fear if finding that, especially such confidence, is even possible, for someone as insecure as me.
Okay, all this emoting is giving me a headache; we'll talk later, okay?
Also: I had a dream about you last night. Remind me and I'll tell you about it.
Much love,
Herbert.
no subject
on 2009-02-10 08:02 pm (UTC)*hugstight*
The being able to come home to someone at night is a common thread in the way that I view love and life and poly. Part of the reason I think I'm able to deal with poly so well is because, with both my SOs, even if they spend time with other people, I know that eventually, they will return to sleeping with me.
Love back!
~Sor