Seen, and seeing
Jun. 2nd, 2022 06:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormNot too long ago I wrote on veiling or masking. It had been a serious concern in the last few years here, since joining my current job and living in this town cautiously. I've downplayed myself, I've dimmed myself, because I planned to be here a good long while and that was how I thought I needed to get along here.
It was killing me. Hiding like that isn't what I do; it's fundamentally opposed to how my actual self exists in the world.
So I was veiling at work, I didn't have a lot of local social going on, and Tucker who was my local person requires a level of gentle handling; I've needed to be gentle to evoke his "no" when he has one, to speak and then pause and wait for answers. I've done this because I deeply value who he is. It also means there's been nowhere I'm unrestained. He's learned to construct a space I can storm about until my energy winds down but it's a service he's doing for me and it takes something out of him.
One of the many strands of the situation here ("new person" henceforth "J" for awhile) is that I feel I can be unrestrained. When I was 15 or 16 and discovered the name Greenstorm, that is *me*. Storm is in there for a reason. I can have such energy of self and it likes to rise up and shake everything around it sometimes. J *meets* it. I do not choose my words with him. I raise my voice and he raises his voice and we both continue talking at the same time, over each other, and still listening, for whole sentences. I say "that is bullshit" if something is bullshit, and believe me there is some bullshit sometimes. The conversation rises and quiets and rises again in a rhythm that is not entirely drawn from me, but also from him. I mean, it's been awhile since I've opened into a new person like this but also it's been so much longer since I haven't had to ease things out of someone, haven't had to evaluate my words, since I've just been full on.
My mind and my emotional surety both feel matched.
Especially at this point in my life, when I've been hiding so hard and so long, this is so healing to me. This is a safe space for me to not only be myself but to defend myself and to push back. This is the only space where, if I'm not correctly seen, I can lean the full weight of my self behind my words and force it. Because it feels safe I'm not falling into old verbal abuse habits; I am not tearing him down and I don't feel the urge to do so. But I can say "I am not a fucking lady" and just-- you know, I never get to say that. And he'll argue right back, a whole thing on how my autism is one of the main reasons he likes me or whatever, at volume, with energy.
We don't contradict each others' experiences, but we're very clear about our own.
And it's a surprising situation because all this is new to him. These are deep waters. Poly, gender, autism, for that matter environmental approach: there's not a lot of normative to cling to. Folks like holding onto their structures and I demand some level of dismantling and rejecting dominant society. Really I demand a high level of that. He's rolled so fluidly with it all, which is why when we hit a piece of stray mono stuff the other day it was so jarring and so deep for me. I mean, it was very clearly his mono stuff and not a reflection on my behaviour but it was also one-true-love-ism and that sense of love being small, finite, guarded, trickled out in tiny bits in only the approved direction. For me love is all about seeing someone deeply and accepting and supporting that self and I had felt nothing else from him but being loved, being seen, being supported. To hear words come out of his mouth, then, that love should be kept small and contained, that if it was felt outside the appoved societal context that was *wrong*, well.
It was like running into a wall at full sprint. I lost some teeth and got knocked on my ass. I could say "what kind of fucking love is that, that wants to keep everyone caged and prefers everyone unhappy?" but it knocked the wind right out of me still.
In hindsight it's not surprising there'd be something like that lying around. What, I'm supposed to expect that someone who's been exposed to these ideas for two weeks has fully onboarded them, processed and integrated them, figured out his internal system and how they apply to his heart and his behaviours, and then clearly and proactively communicate everything to me in the middle of this whirlwind? I know perfectly well if I'm going to be training wheels then if I don't act to steady and moderate the whole thing it will fall over sometimes. That's why I complain about being training wheels.
And to be fair he's recovered quickly. 24 hours and he'd done most of the processing; there's a bit more I need to prompt. I've removed myself from the sex/romantic part of the situation until there's been more clear conversation about expectations and until he's actively sorted out his entanglements more clearly.
I have been so reactive around this bit. Mono-normativity scares me. People always leave me to be in a more normative relationship, in the end: I'm a vacation for folks, not a commitment. Josh and Tucker are precious to me, held in my heart forever, because they are unshakeable on my place in their lives regardless of who else comes and goes. I just assume on some level that everyone else, and especially anyone who espouses any form of hierarchical relationship anything, will disappear entirely as soon as they find someone more suitable.
I thought that had happened here. It took a bit of conversation to make it clear to me that it hadn't.
It will take both more conversation and some actions in the real world to make clear to me what, exactly, is happening.
So life is a process, this is a process, but at least this process is happening to my whole self, while I am clearly and firmly able to be me, out in the open. I am grateful for that.
It was killing me. Hiding like that isn't what I do; it's fundamentally opposed to how my actual self exists in the world.
So I was veiling at work, I didn't have a lot of local social going on, and Tucker who was my local person requires a level of gentle handling; I've needed to be gentle to evoke his "no" when he has one, to speak and then pause and wait for answers. I've done this because I deeply value who he is. It also means there's been nowhere I'm unrestained. He's learned to construct a space I can storm about until my energy winds down but it's a service he's doing for me and it takes something out of him.
One of the many strands of the situation here ("new person" henceforth "J" for awhile) is that I feel I can be unrestrained. When I was 15 or 16 and discovered the name Greenstorm, that is *me*. Storm is in there for a reason. I can have such energy of self and it likes to rise up and shake everything around it sometimes. J *meets* it. I do not choose my words with him. I raise my voice and he raises his voice and we both continue talking at the same time, over each other, and still listening, for whole sentences. I say "that is bullshit" if something is bullshit, and believe me there is some bullshit sometimes. The conversation rises and quiets and rises again in a rhythm that is not entirely drawn from me, but also from him. I mean, it's been awhile since I've opened into a new person like this but also it's been so much longer since I haven't had to ease things out of someone, haven't had to evaluate my words, since I've just been full on.
My mind and my emotional surety both feel matched.
Especially at this point in my life, when I've been hiding so hard and so long, this is so healing to me. This is a safe space for me to not only be myself but to defend myself and to push back. This is the only space where, if I'm not correctly seen, I can lean the full weight of my self behind my words and force it. Because it feels safe I'm not falling into old verbal abuse habits; I am not tearing him down and I don't feel the urge to do so. But I can say "I am not a fucking lady" and just-- you know, I never get to say that. And he'll argue right back, a whole thing on how my autism is one of the main reasons he likes me or whatever, at volume, with energy.
We don't contradict each others' experiences, but we're very clear about our own.
And it's a surprising situation because all this is new to him. These are deep waters. Poly, gender, autism, for that matter environmental approach: there's not a lot of normative to cling to. Folks like holding onto their structures and I demand some level of dismantling and rejecting dominant society. Really I demand a high level of that. He's rolled so fluidly with it all, which is why when we hit a piece of stray mono stuff the other day it was so jarring and so deep for me. I mean, it was very clearly his mono stuff and not a reflection on my behaviour but it was also one-true-love-ism and that sense of love being small, finite, guarded, trickled out in tiny bits in only the approved direction. For me love is all about seeing someone deeply and accepting and supporting that self and I had felt nothing else from him but being loved, being seen, being supported. To hear words come out of his mouth, then, that love should be kept small and contained, that if it was felt outside the appoved societal context that was *wrong*, well.
It was like running into a wall at full sprint. I lost some teeth and got knocked on my ass. I could say "what kind of fucking love is that, that wants to keep everyone caged and prefers everyone unhappy?" but it knocked the wind right out of me still.
In hindsight it's not surprising there'd be something like that lying around. What, I'm supposed to expect that someone who's been exposed to these ideas for two weeks has fully onboarded them, processed and integrated them, figured out his internal system and how they apply to his heart and his behaviours, and then clearly and proactively communicate everything to me in the middle of this whirlwind? I know perfectly well if I'm going to be training wheels then if I don't act to steady and moderate the whole thing it will fall over sometimes. That's why I complain about being training wheels.
And to be fair he's recovered quickly. 24 hours and he'd done most of the processing; there's a bit more I need to prompt. I've removed myself from the sex/romantic part of the situation until there's been more clear conversation about expectations and until he's actively sorted out his entanglements more clearly.
I have been so reactive around this bit. Mono-normativity scares me. People always leave me to be in a more normative relationship, in the end: I'm a vacation for folks, not a commitment. Josh and Tucker are precious to me, held in my heart forever, because they are unshakeable on my place in their lives regardless of who else comes and goes. I just assume on some level that everyone else, and especially anyone who espouses any form of hierarchical relationship anything, will disappear entirely as soon as they find someone more suitable.
I thought that had happened here. It took a bit of conversation to make it clear to me that it hadn't.
It will take both more conversation and some actions in the real world to make clear to me what, exactly, is happening.
So life is a process, this is a process, but at least this process is happening to my whole self, while I am clearly and firmly able to be me, out in the open. I am grateful for that.
