Ampersands and Trust

[sorcyress]

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.

Comments

stuffffffff

[woozle.livejournal.com]

Wow. This post sends my head off in a dozen different directions; I'll try to stick to the most important ones. (And I hope I've correctly understood the gist of the dilemma (dilemmae?) you face...) [ In retrospect, as I edit and re-edit, I realize that I've gradually homed in on what I think you're talking about... but bits of this were written when I was still hunting around trying to figure out what that was. So it will probably seem a bit uneven, but those bits seem too important to not say. ]

(And it turns out that this is over 4300 characters, so I'm gonna post the rest of it separately, as a reply to myself, and hope that it is small enough...)

Re: stuffffffff, part 2

[woozle.livejournal.com]

First of all... (I think you must have read this (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/The_Hyperfamily_Idea) (I have vague memories that we've even talked about it a little), but just in case you haven't...) in light of what you've said here, I would probably want to make sure there was something in there about different levels of permanence -- that some family members could be more year-round residents, others could be part-time, and some would be like visiting best friends. I think I alluded to that, but I don't remember what I said. When I originally wrote it, there was a particular friend I had in mind who would probably have spend most of her time separate from the group, and I felt it important to make sure she felt safe-and-wanted even under those circumstances.

Second... it sounds a little like you're assuming that what you want from a relationship is somehow unfair to ask. For example, it sounds like you would like to have the freedom to disappear for long stretches of time, but also to have the security of knowing that your family will always be there when you're ready to come back. Perhaps there are other things you would like, but are thinking you couldn't reasonably ask.

It might be helpful to make a list of these things. Don't worry if they're fair or not; fairness comes in working out what compromises you're willing to deal with in order to get what you want. Just wanting something isn't a crime, and it's very important to know what you want -- to be aware of it consciously, so that it doesn't try to manipulate you below your conscious radar.

And maybe they're not as unreasonable as you think.

Note: it's much easier to deal with someone running away, from time to time, if one understands the probable reasons -- or maybe I mean "understands what the reasons probably aren't". When Jenny would "run away" (e.g. disappearing over lunch when I was looking forward to a nice long conversation), I tended to assume it was something I had done, which of course I had to find her and fix. In a sense, sometimes it was -- demanding too much attention from her -- but it wasn't always, and my assumptions only made the matter worse. If I had understood from the beginning that this was just part of her nature, I could have dealt with it better (leaving aside my general screwedupness at the time).

Third: if you don't feel like you want to be a non-detachable fixture, then maybe that's not what you need to be. Whatever you do end up belonging to, you shouldn't have to chop off a part of yourself in order to fit into it. Be who you are to the fullest extent -- that's what I care about.

My personal experience has been that it's much better to work out what you want and design a relationship around that than it is to try out other people's pre-packaged ideas of what relationships should be, and hope that they're close enough.

Another thing which seems to be true is that you shouldn't necessarily leave a relationship (or start one) just because that's where the Story seems to be going -- because that's what would happen next if it were a movie. I think that idea played a significant part in my thinking on at least two occasions, and it really shouldn't have. (If we're being written, somehow, it would be annoying if the plot were so predictable.) Hopefully you're not falling for that sort of thinking. The question should always be, what do you want? (...which can include someone else's happiness -- but if it doesn't, then I don't really see any virtue in pretending it does. Be what you're like, be like yourself...)

"Being scared of intimacy" strikes me as too simplistic of an explanation -- a little like "Story" thinking. Maybe it's right, but picture me eyeballing it suspiciously... Intimacy itself isn't scary, I shouldn't think, but maybe something about it is. Being thoroughly examined, and possibly found wanting? Not being able to escape from someone else's disagreement by just walking away? Something. Try to figure out what it is. (Maybe more than one thing.)

Avoid the mortgage, though. I have a whole bunch of related thoughts on that, but it's another kettle of worms entirely... Bring it up if you want more rambling ;-)

Re: stuffffffff, Appendix (probably should be removed for health reasons)

[woozle.livejournal.com]

I've spend a couple of decades now as part of different ampersands.

The first one that lasted any length of time was pretty informal - and generally a happy thing, because we both knew that although we would gladly settle together in the same house and live there forever if the opportunity arose, we didn't feel bound by the rules of courtship (much less "marriage") which assumed we were doing certain things (which we weren't) and that we wanted certain things from the relationship (which we didn't). There was the freedom for other ampersands to appear, at any angle. And they did, and it didn't always work in a clearly positive way for me, but it never felt negative.

I think part of why I left was because it seemed like destiny was pulling us apart, and I was tired of fighting destiny.

The next one I went into only reluctantly, giving myself lots of arguments which had been handed to me by society and which largely turned out to be bogus for me (though not for the other person, who has now remarried). I remember thinking "okay, it's time to get serious about this if you really want something lasting."

But it was a mistake. It was a little like (entirely fictional metaphor) trying to get BBC America on cable, and finding that the only package which included it was mostly sports channels. It was supposed to be the right solution for getting what I wanted, because there was no other solution offered, but the people who put together the package had a completely wrong understanding of what my interests were.

In both of those cases, I think I let expectations and the Story -- the expectation that the narrative was inevitably heading in a certain direction which it would be foolish and impudent of me to resist -- play too much of a part in the decision-making. I could have made different decisions, and things probably would have turned out a lot better.

And of course I am now in another informal ampersand, and that fits much more naturally. It's also a little awkward because on the surface it looks like the more formal type, and people tend to assume that it is that type, so we get some of the negatives of that type completely without having chosen it. And we are tremendously tied down -- but that comes from mistakes made earlier, not the ampersand itself.

And yeah, it feels odd to put that ampersand on emails and other places... but only (or mainly) because I know people are making assumptions that don't fit the facts, and there's generally fallout whenever we violate their expectations.

--

Hope that's useful.