Interior

[greenstorm]

I used to be very good at vulnerability, here and elsewhere in my life. It comes much harder for me now.

The essence of vulnerability is tearing down walls and expectation. It's putting out what's really there. In that way it's easier as an objective process, easier with a little emotional distance.

The thing is, I have no emotional distance from myself. I love my life, very much. I'm invested in it remaining, and vulnerability threatens that.

Still, trying to be right, proper, good all the time, it's tiring. Then I come here to write and nothing really happens.

With the end of the relationship with Blake, and during it to some extent, I was told some things -- in anger -- by a smart person who was motivated to get a reaction from me. At the time it was ridiculous, but those words do sink in. I don't want to allow him power, but sometimes power can be taken, and I don't think I'm doing myself any favours by pretending it away.

I actually wrote a post awhile ago, letting my own voice stand, but I think maybe it's time to put some of the received messages out there. Many are contradictory to my experience of my own life, but they whisper loudly some days.

It's not fair to one person I love if I also love other people
No one will ever be able to wholeheartedly love me if I do not return the favour
Love creates obligation
Other people deserve my presence and attention
Sex is not its own purpose, but instead a powerful currency
Sex is disgusting
Sex is all-powerful
A physical connection between people is dirty, wrong, or something of which to be ashamed
Love is diminished through being shared
Comparison can only diminish the things being compared
I have never experienced real love
I am not capable of empathy
It's not real love unless you deny important parts of yourself to enable it
Nobody could love me, but instead keep me around in the hopes of easy sex
Sex creates obligation for continuation of the same
Thinking before I act is manipulation
I am selfish and heedless of what others need
I ask for too much
I give too little
I am diminished by the company I keep

It's a heavy list, and there's a lot more in there. I'm still mostly numb as I write it. I can see these things in my mind but I'm too exhausted to care about them.

And really all this is mostly setup. The punch line, the one that makes me so tired I can barely write, that shuts my eyes and sends me curling into bed, is that I love people, plural, quite a lot, and that I want them to love me. And of course there's some of that happening now, with the heavy curtain of guilt at all my actions lifted. Despite explicitly negotiating that it was okay for me to be like this from the very beginning (and how is that a thing to negotiate, rather than 'should we be together given that I am like this?') I've spent so much time worrying, fearing, and so very much time guilting almost every time I received a text message from a person of potential attraction, hugged a friend, thought fondly of someone... oh gods, guys, I'm too tired to follow my own sentences from beginning to end, but I want to get this out there. I refuse to keep it in here much longer.

I don't think he was ill-intentioned. How could this have happened? How could we not at least have parted sooner, with less destruction all 'round? Is he really damaged, or just... hardened, grown a carapace to protect what he always was?

How do I avoid this again? What do I even want, now that the world is spreading out in front of me? How can I avoid the 'who' of what I want stealing away the 'what' again?

Oh, I give up for today. Be well.

Comments

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Many of the items on that list speak to me as well, in that they are the messages I have often gotten from my lovers, short-term and long. My own list of biggies would look more like:

• My standards for trustworthy/respectful behaviour from someone I'm having sex with are too high
• I'm only good for a fling while waiting for a "real" relationship to come along
• I am too "easy" with people I care about which is why I earn my own poor treatment
• Lovers will never consider me worth it if I become less "easy" than I am
• I should be uncomplaining and grateful for any scraps of emotional/sexual bonding I get with people other than my current long-term relationship, because I'm basically unattractive due to:
  • already being involved with a man I don't intend to leave
  • having anxiety and trust problems
  • being fat
  • not trying hard enough to appear more attractive
  • etc...
• I'm just too emotionally fucked up to expect anyone in their right mind to want me
• I will always be the "dirty little secret" if I ever get involved with anyone else apart from my current LTR because people are ashamed to admit to being involved with me

>I love people, plural, quite a lot, and that I want them to love me.

So very much this. My experiences throughout my life have too often shown me that loving too easily and too freely makes the recipients treat that love as if it is nothing to think of. It almost feels as if because I didn't make anyone work for it, I'm putting across the unspoken idea of "you don't have to act like this means anything." And when that tacit (mis)understanding comes across in their actions, it's like a knife in the gut, each time; when I realize that someone didn't think much of me at all, it triggers quite literally a shock reaction of the kind that numbs me all over and makes it incredibly difficult to remember what it felt like to trust them. It's...quite frightening to go through.

That makes it pretty difficult to continue to let myself love new people. I'm incredibly fortunate in that my long-term relationship is becoming more deeply and positively connected, because without that I quite probably wouldn't be able to think of life as being worth living at this moment. But it's hard to trust other people, even non-strangers, to treat my regard with the respect it's due, and I intensely miss feeling as if it's safe to fall in love.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

Lucky for me, most of my people are AMAZING and don't do this to me. It means I am not uet sure how to come to terms with it though.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Quasi-shamanistic use of dissociative experiences helped in my case.

[sheistheweather]

Perhaps he and you were fundamentally not a good match. It happens, and it hurts. I don't know what else to say, but I wanted you to know that I read this.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

This was clearly true, and thank you.

[dillen-dagen.livejournal.com]

Listening and holding the space for you.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

:)

[graydon.livejournal.com]

Love means different things to different people. It's not a single concept, feeling or set of social rules. Those messages are (where they're coherent) the voice of someone to whom love means something quite different than it means to you, and to many other good, reasonable people.

Many of the sentiments about sex are (I think) just plain wrong and unhealthy.