If I could show you how it is to be me for a day, I’m not sure I’d want to. Not sure I’d want anyone else to feel the way I do every moment of every day, confused and cloudy and entirely ill at ease…although you might finally understand. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t understand it, and find the same old tried and true explanations for why I seem to hold such promise, but can’t deliver. Talks a good game but cannot lead, or drive for results. Can’t quite hold on for the win, get across the victory line. Maybe you’d do what everyone else has done over the years, find some expert analysis of 100, or a million, other people who are nothing like me but frustrate you in a similar fashion. Maybe you’d die what they’ve all done, write me off as a flash in the pan, a fraud, a ne’er do well and basically a non-conformist who simply refuses to get into line.
Like a lot of other folks, you might choose the easy route to dealing with me, which is to not deal with me. If you have any kind of relative or systemic power over me, you would probably decide I am simply not up to par and can’t perform adequately. There are ten other people who would fight for the chance to conform and take their place in the system, so I’m just not worth the hassle. You were never invested in my success, only your own, so any cost-benefit analysis will support the claim that I’m just not a viable cog in the machinery.
Over the years, I’ve been a heavily battered survivor of a fight for some cause I can’t define or explain. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s the battle for my life, for what causes me to be who I am, for what differentiates me from you or anyone else. As I have explained to many people, I’ve been fighting on that level since before I got here – difficult gestation, difficult birth experience, difficult time hammering my way into the world, trauma that was not recognized as trauma (just grow a thicker skin, why don’t you?). It’s almost as if I was a few seconds too late, or too early, for my life. I’ve never felt as though I was here in the right time or the right place, and still don’t.
On hearing that, some conclude that I never felt loved, that my childhood was rough, that I never got over the pain of my grandmother’s death…or the parakeet that disappeared…or the dog that suddenly vanished. Or maybe I was just terribly spoiled by overindulgent adults and never learned time management or self-discipline. Or maybe I’m just crazy, always going off about something or someone and always quitting when I’m ahead. The general feeling is that I have squandered the great benevolence that was bestowed upon me, and I can’t refute that. Can’t refute it, but also know there’s always been something missing from that equation, because if I had everything I needed there would have been no reason to wrestle myself into bizarre and dysfunctional shapes all these years.
If that sounds like self-pity, or victim posturing, that;s up to you. It simply feels like truth to me. In that truth, there is profound grieving, profound confusion, and profound mistrust. There is also faith, that something is watching out for me, that something is not ready for me to leave here, that I have some purpose in having been here. Juxtaposing that with the experience of feeling that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time is incongruous, to say the least, but that is what faith is at its core – believing in the unbelievable, accepting that I will never understand. That is not always my happy place, but it is one of the most constant.
There are a few things I’m sure of, but so many that I question. I’m mostly sure of my gender identity, but whether I’ve always been comfortable in this body is a deeper question. I’ve never questioned that I am female in gender, never felt compelled to explore anything else. Like a lot of women who also identify as lesbian, I’m secure in knowing where my emotional and sexual attractions trend. My gender expression has always been relatively tomboy, and remains so today. I have never had much use for makeup and femme accoutrements, and have always preferred a tailored preppy look to just about anything else. I’ve never wanted to emulate Princess Diana, but appreciate Robin Robert’s and Jodie Foster far more. I’ve never believed myself to be attractive, or athletic, so prefer to maintain a backstage grunge persona. Clothes are for comfort, not for show, and I look shitty in just about anything because I am short and fat. Sue me, but this is who I am.
Regardless of any of that, I am compelled to occupy my own unique space. That’s fine. At my age, it is no longer about the call of the wild but more about internet speed and the smell of the coffee in the morning, the glimmer of empathy, and the gritty affirmation of long-term survival. We all have our shit. I have learned not to compare my insides with others’ outsides, but I do have to cock an internal eyebrow when considering whether my partnership status is entirely my choice, or the consequence of aesthetics and circumstance.
In all seriousness, though, I will run rapidly away from any social scenes or places that smell of matching, pairing, dating, and the like that I might encounter at this phase of my life. If there is a single narcissist within a 50-mile radius, they will be glued to my side in 10 seconds or less. I want nothing to do with that. I don’t understand the entire phenomenon of relationships, dating, romance, or any of the sentimental puffery that we often expect from our social circles. I don’t understand the social queues, or the rules of engagement. I never have. I understand attraction, I understand flirting on a minimalist level, but past that I am entirely incompetent. That might be amusing if it wasn’t so dangerous; everyone doesn’t come out of the scene unscathed.
People, meaning women, have enjoyed my company. We laugh, we joke, we get comfortable, we get emotionally intimate. We feel safe. Then a line in the sand is crossed, where there is no sand and some unknown lshape was laid down in total darkness, and all of a sudden there are mixed signals and the grinding of mechanical propulsion gears I did not know existed. I’m accustomed to using the brake pedal when the vehicle is moving too quickly to be safe, but the fluid seems to leak a bit when words like “love” are littering the highway. I thought that was a self-explanatory word, but it is not. For me, love implies affection and trust and some degree of loyalty and consistency. For others…not so much. I don’t think we’re exclusively dating because that word makes an appearance, but I do expect it to be used responsibly, not casually, and specifically. Don’t say “I love you” when you mean to say “I really like you and enjoy spending time with you”, or “I have fun with you, and that’s cool”. I get confused when women throw out “I love you” at the end of a phone call when they really mean “OK, see ya later”. I get confused when women toss “I love you” in my direction while they’re explaining the inadequacies of their primary romantic relationship. I get confused when I expect more than casual talk, and get told that I move too fast and come on too strong. I get confused, and I don’t like it. I get confused, and it rarely ends well.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m even saying at this point, except that I’m tired of meeting people, falling into “like” with them, only to have them start tossing mixed signals into the air like fireworks. Don’t text me at night because you don’t want to be heard talking on the phone about deep stuff, emotional stuff, vulnerable stuff. Don’t create boundaries for me that no one else has. If you want to be emotionally intimate 98% of the time with me, but can’t invite me to have a crappy cup of coffee on any random night, then go and get your rocks off elsewhere. If I’m spending the holidays alone while you’re sitting in the seat of privilege with your mask of normalcy on, that’s a problem. I suppose you can have your cake and eat it too, but I’m not Betty Crocker and I don’t do dishes.
If you’re so happy in your relationship, why are you out here messing with me? If you’re so happy with your life, why are you complaining to me about all that’s missing for you? And when the whole thing blows up, I’m the one left out in the cold while you have triage and a support team to make sure you don’t fall apart. I’m supposed to keep it all to myself, lest we put you in a bad position and make a fool out of your main squeeze. And like all other privileged assholes, you come out of the whole mess unscathed, and with no consequences. That’s not how I emerge from the battlefield of a war I never knew I was fighting. But oh yeah, life ain’t fair. Thanks for reminding me, because once again, I forgot.
The Sound Hole 