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Nails on a chalkboard
Jul. 30th, 2014 12:06 pmOh livejournal, I only come to you when I can't find peace. I've been so quiet, that's been a good sign? I've been busy and it's been mostly good if a little overwhelming. But now...
I'm mourning the death of my normality today. Some things have happened. I need to tell you about them.
I read an article about the game Cards Against Humanity this morning. I learned someone I knew relatively distantly, but who'd knit a scarf I own and smiled a lot, died very recently. And my boyfriend doesn't want me to tell his family I'm poly or to go to pride with them (they're in town from the maritimes).
After I reposted that article someone said, 'me too'. And the only thing I'd heard said about it before? 'No one could feel that way'. Well, I feel that way. When you think something that I am or could be is innately hilarious and laugh about it when I'm in the room you hurt me and you lose my trust. Likewise, when you're ashamed of something that I am, when you're hiding it from people, not for my protection or on my say-so but because you don't want to be tarred with the same brush? You hurt me and you lose my trust. That's not a negotiable sentiment. That's the feeling of it.
I feel like I'll never be in a room where people aren't rejecting something that is me with half of their thoughts. I feel (as always, I suppose) that people love the abstraction of how forthright and open and honest I am about myself but don't want the consequences of being that way themselves and want me to hide myself just for them. I feel like I'm inconvenient to everyone except when I'm a symbol or entertainment. I feel like I can't trust very many people to be ok with my being who I am.
Thing is, I'm too invested in being myself at this point to stop. Thing is, you can't love me without loving those other parts of me; I don't know what you're loving then, but it is not me. I'm at a loss for how you could *like* me without being somewhat in line.
The song I'm listening to says 'what if I was made that way?'. I am made this way. I made myself this way if nothing else.
And I'm tired of it, but I can't put who I am away. I can't put it away and I don't want to, because I can trust myself to stand up for myself when I need, to protect myself when I need, and clearly I cannot trust other folks to do that for me. So this is what I get, tired but one foot in front of the other. Forever.
I've spent parts of my life wishing things were "worse" so I could feel like my emotions were legitimate. Dad was horrifyingly emotionally abusive: he ignored me, he said terrible things, he denied my feelings in all cases. I spent years wishing he'd hit me so my feelings that he was doing something wrong would be justified. Poly, sex, gender, orientation, nudism: I'm invisibled, the butt of the joke that friends laugh at, not mentioned, not on the list of choices given me, nothing that's done is a big deal. So I wish sometimes that people would say something truly awful, hit me, attack me so that it would be justified. Because being denied as a human, because not being included, because recieving defensiveness rather than empathy doesn't seem bad enough to justify my feelings.
Except it is. I feel these things, so it is.
And today I'm tired, but I can do nothing about it but go spend a couple days on the ocean with my mom who at the least does not do these things to me, who believes I'm worthy of love as I am, and hope she stays around for a very long time.
I'm mourning the death of my normality today. Some things have happened. I need to tell you about them.
I read an article about the game Cards Against Humanity this morning. I learned someone I knew relatively distantly, but who'd knit a scarf I own and smiled a lot, died very recently. And my boyfriend doesn't want me to tell his family I'm poly or to go to pride with them (they're in town from the maritimes).
After I reposted that article someone said, 'me too'. And the only thing I'd heard said about it before? 'No one could feel that way'. Well, I feel that way. When you think something that I am or could be is innately hilarious and laugh about it when I'm in the room you hurt me and you lose my trust. Likewise, when you're ashamed of something that I am, when you're hiding it from people, not for my protection or on my say-so but because you don't want to be tarred with the same brush? You hurt me and you lose my trust. That's not a negotiable sentiment. That's the feeling of it.
I feel like I'll never be in a room where people aren't rejecting something that is me with half of their thoughts. I feel (as always, I suppose) that people love the abstraction of how forthright and open and honest I am about myself but don't want the consequences of being that way themselves and want me to hide myself just for them. I feel like I'm inconvenient to everyone except when I'm a symbol or entertainment. I feel like I can't trust very many people to be ok with my being who I am.
Thing is, I'm too invested in being myself at this point to stop. Thing is, you can't love me without loving those other parts of me; I don't know what you're loving then, but it is not me. I'm at a loss for how you could *like* me without being somewhat in line.
The song I'm listening to says 'what if I was made that way?'. I am made this way. I made myself this way if nothing else.
And I'm tired of it, but I can't put who I am away. I can't put it away and I don't want to, because I can trust myself to stand up for myself when I need, to protect myself when I need, and clearly I cannot trust other folks to do that for me. So this is what I get, tired but one foot in front of the other. Forever.
I've spent parts of my life wishing things were "worse" so I could feel like my emotions were legitimate. Dad was horrifyingly emotionally abusive: he ignored me, he said terrible things, he denied my feelings in all cases. I spent years wishing he'd hit me so my feelings that he was doing something wrong would be justified. Poly, sex, gender, orientation, nudism: I'm invisibled, the butt of the joke that friends laugh at, not mentioned, not on the list of choices given me, nothing that's done is a big deal. So I wish sometimes that people would say something truly awful, hit me, attack me so that it would be justified. Because being denied as a human, because not being included, because recieving defensiveness rather than empathy doesn't seem bad enough to justify my feelings.
Except it is. I feel these things, so it is.
And today I'm tired, but I can do nothing about it but go spend a couple days on the ocean with my mom who at the least does not do these things to me, who believes I'm worthy of love as I am, and hope she stays around for a very long time.
