Thursday, May 30, 2013

What I Want for Myself

This was written a while ago, and just rediscovered.  I should add that I am now married to the man I was dating when this was written, and I have a boyfriend (albiet long distance) that I care about very much.  I still have many of the same fears--of my primary relationship getting boring, of getting caught up in lust and NRE, and being abandoned.  But I am working on acknowledging these fears and then letting them be, rather than letting them consume me.  Some days they totally and completely still do.  Other days, I feel free and am able to bathe in the complete and utter awesomeness that is loving and being loved by two very different and wonderful people.  Oh yeah, and it's lots of hard work too! ;) More to come on that!


11/27/11

I want TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO SPEAK MY MIND. I want to feel honored for my thoughts and feelings.  I want to be respected at work and in society.  I want to know that my sexuality is not dirty and meant to be used against me.  I want to be strong.  I want to have the courage to stand up for myself and trust my intuitions.  I want to say “No” even when it is hard.  I want to find a way to be myself in this world, as a woman, a writer, a mother, and a sexual being. I want to be free of sexual and emotional abuse.  I want to be a healthy role model for my daughter.  I want her to know that her body is beautiful and that sexual pleasure is not dirty.  I want her to know about safe sex and have the courage to say “No” to men if she doesn’t want to sleep with them.  I want to support other women in their struggles to freedom and womanhood. 

Fuck equality.  Men and women are not equal—what does that even mean?  Men and women are different, and have much to learn from one another.  I want to learn to love and respect other women and not simply be jealous of them, which just perpetuates the cycle of female hatred and oppression.  I want to believe in myself, and trust that I will be okay, no matter who does or does not love me.  I want to stand on my own two feet, trust myself, and follow through on the things that I want and believe.  I want to make choices that are empowering in my job, personal life, and sexuality.  I want to choose my relationships, and when to have children. 

I want to live a life where I feel that I am doing more than just going through the motions.  I want to make healthy choices and take care of myself and my body, even though it seems so much easier to take care of others.  I want to live a life that engages me deeply, both in and out of work.  I want to do something that I care about.  I want to make changes in my life, and in the world.  Grandiose, I know.  But what is the point of being alive if we just exist and then die?  Shouldn’t we do something while we’re here?  I really don’t know the answer to that one.  Sometimes I think that I push myself too hard to be something in the future, and I miss what is right in front of me.  Sometimes it is better to just simply and fully be in the present, rather than trying to be something profound in the future. 

I want to learn to let go of the belief that something is wrong with me and that bad things are my fault.  I want to see myself as strong and beautiful, even though I am not perfect.  I want to educate myself and my daughter about ways to be active in the community and connect with other women.  I feel safe with women. 

I do not feel safe with men because it all feels about sex.  Either they want you, or they don’t, and the first can lead to rape and abuse, and the second to abandonment.  And I am afraid to be without a man.  I used to like being single.  It was lonely, but I could do what I liked all the time.  And there was the allure of new relationships.  I love (d?) NRE.  I was addicted to the attention and the hormone rush.  I suppose it is because I never felt beautiful unless someone else told me I was. 

So there’s the exciting beginning of the relationship, and then the guy is either a clingy freak because he is loser (but on the upside, he wants to keep you because you’re the best he’s ever had), or he is actually a really decent guy, and then you just begin the process of becoming bored and losing interest in one another.  Then you just have the same kind of sex, fantasize about other people, and so it goes.  It’s more friendship at that point.  I don’t know—is that super cynical of me?  I think that people need each other, especially when trying to raise children, but romantically and sexually, things die out pretty quickly.  And that scares me.  I feel like that destroys the fabric of traditional relationships

I used to be so jealous, because I knew that my boyfriends were looking at other girls, and thinking about them when they fucked me.  It felt like it was because I wasn’t good enough.  Now I know that biologically, everyone does this at some point or another, and it wasn’t personal.  It just still hurt.  And I would get bored too.  The sex would get routine, and I’d have to fantasize to be able to have an orgasm.  So in a way, that’s what brought me to polyamory.  The idea that you could be into multiple people—well, we all know it’s true (I think fantasies and affairs illustrate this)—was nothing new. 

I was just tired of it being this dirty, unspoken secret, where you felt dirty for wanting someone, or worse, had an affair.  So I wanted to confront it in the open, and see if there was a way to share, to learn about myself.  I also thought it was stupid to just abandon people you care about because the sex is no longer hot.  What if you could have different relationships with other people, and what if these relationships fulfilled different needs and made the other relationships easier?  Now my boyfriend can just be himself, and doesn’t have to bear the responsibility of meeting all my needs.

At this point, we don’t actually have other partners, so I am learning to simply embrace this mentality, regardless of real partner actuality.  I am learning to let go, and let things be as they are.  If we have sex, great, if not, okay.  I just need to learn to love myself without the approval of others, and then it won’t matter what others think, or whether or not I am successful.  It might be harder to make ends meet, and I might have to make other choices that are difficult, but maybe then I won’t feel as though my life is at the mercy of others—particularly men.

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