It's getting bad again...
For all my patience these things should really start to be feeling worth it yeah? Navigating new intimacy (or lack thereof) just fading into uncomfortability the moment I try to make myself feel safe. I'll tell myself the same things....
I'm too forceful
Too hopeful
I want different things
I tried but not well enough
I believe my tarot cards too much
I'm needy
I'm too messy
I'm impatient...
All things I'm all too ready to help others work through.
An old friend caught up with me today, they called me 'it', it'd been months since I heard my other pronoun it was almost like a welcome and beautiful stranger. A conclusion about myself I came to talking with you of all people...
When a child today realized I was a girl they told me something strange. "You should be pregnant!!". Shouted callously...
It snapped me back to one of those places I where I knew I wanted to commit to a change. After a year or so of posturing myself with a former partner, the way a cis woman would comfortably climb into the structure misogyny as though it would keep her safe from the inevitable. "You should be barefoot and pregnant, any man would want to see you the same way.". I never knew I could feel validation like a pickle back chaser from one of the most vile things anyone has ever uttered to me... It could read only as "you know your place so well.". It's not lost on me that hearing such a statement from a small child simply uttering what they understand of the worlds biology while it's still simple. Feels just as grounded coming from a 51 year old who couldn't lock down anyone his own age... Maturity looks the same no matter who wears it.
It was these kind of statements that had me re-evaluating my intimacy patterns. Swearing off wild and reckless sex, focusing on myself, my own boundaries. Fulfilling myself in every other way while starving a retched eel out from my own primal urges. Perhaps I've sat with her too long, starved the creature but never found something whole to take it's place. I didn't so much as extract a parasite as remove an organ before convincing myself it was something I never really needed in the beginning.
Now I sit here terrified that you'll tell me all the things I'm afraid to tell myself. Remind me of all those dark flaws that I continue to chip away at, that I've let grow monstrous in the shades of my own grief.
Intuition tells me to fear the other that clings to you. To destroy that hot iron of trust I placed so recklessly in your hands. Hoping you were, you are, different...
But nothing's ever really different is it. My suffering is my own, and the shadows it's made will always scare away those who haven't managed themselves.
I'm supposed to be better than this
Give that positive self talk I spreech every single day...
Let's try it
"It'll work out. Avoidance is stagnation. Just because you're too much for some doesn't mean for all. You mean well and that's worth more than anything..."
It didn't make me feel all that better right now.
One of those phantoms loves to tell me a line I've worn like a wet blanket to shield from rain on a cold street. "Second to none but ALWAYS second to one..."
Staying feels like a mountain I don't know if I'll ever climb. But I'll try...
Leaving feels like burning again.
In the cycle of each year I feel as though I build new structures just for their foundation, their starting point, to beg me to tear them all down...
I hope it's different this time. Please PLEASE let it be different this time...
I'm getting tired of rebuilding.
All I wanted was to do it together...