So being unselfish and sheilding the people I love from my current soul-searching turbulence isn't working. It turns out that to a person they're pretty perceptive and they all wanted to know what was going on, so I tried to explain some of it, and failed. This is going to be my attempt to explain a part of it.

First, front-loading (as K would say): this is something I'm trying to work out in my own head. If any of it sounds bad, don't panic; I'm not currently considering any radical lifestyle shifts. First I need to figure out how I really feel, and *then* figure out what I want to do about it.

so.

Well, baby, i've been here before
I've seen this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah....

When i got out of my relationship with Ragged Robin, I identified pretty firmly as polyfidelitious. (In other words, someone who wants a closed relationship between three or more people, all roughly equal. nobody who's sleeping with only one of the partners, for instance.) My ideal relationship was, and still is, a closed triangle with three women. However, I figured that there was no way I'd find two women who were both interested in me and in each other, so I settled down and started thinking of myself as pretty much monogamous.

It was pointed out to me that even polyfi people are still poly, and I very cautiously ventured out into the local poly community. I sat and watched for a very long time, unwilling to date within the community because there were no single women around, really. I began to loosen my definition of what worked for me as I observed happy poly relationships all around me, where there was a couple who dated people outside the couple. That was okay, I figured. I could do that too.

Eventually I started dating someone who had a male life partner. And I learned, over the course of that relationship, how very lonely I can be even surrounded by a group of people, most of whom supposedly love me. I did my very best to support her in her other relationship, being the good girl, asking nothing much for myself. I was also involved in a long-distance relationship with a girl in michigan at the time, but I seem to have lost all of my energy for LDRs. And eventually I left both relationships, because I knew I wouldn't ever get whatever it was I wanted there, emotionally or otherwise.

And even afterwards, I never questioned how I was going about polyamory. I never stopped to think, "Is this the right way for me to go about this?"

I started dating K when she was single; this, i thought, might be better, since I'd ostensibly have all of her attention for a little while. I forgot that I am, overall, an *extremely* low-maitenence girl unless I'm deeply involved with someone. I'm kind of like the philodendron of girlfriends--water me once in a while, give me a sunny corner, and I deal well with neglect. So she went to Hawaii and came back in love, planning houses and moves...and I realized that i'd lost all chance I'd had of being the most important person in her life. I don't hold a grudge because of this. I was happy for her and happy for J, who is as sweet a guy as they come, but I was very, very sad for myself. And I couldn't really figure out why.

I started to have intermittent episodes of depression, which went away as soon as I started focusing actual attention on myself rather than focusing all of my attention outwardly. I had integrated and hadn't yet begun to really process stuff from that, and aside from me being sad, all was well.

Until i started processing in earnest. And then all of the contradictory things I believed about relationships came to the fore.

I don't really like myself very much.

Okay, amendment to that. I like myself just fine. I'd be my friend, if I weren't stuck inside this body. I just don't think I'm particularly attractive, not pretty enough to merit more than a passing glance. I'm not your average pretty girl, though I've been told that I'm interesting-looking. What beauty I posess is all in my brain and in my soul...which is not particularly apparent upon first meeting me, since I'm so very shy.

I am not pretty, and therefore, I am not worth paying attention to. This was one of the primary lessons of my childhood, that the prettier you are, the more attention and adoration you deserve. And if you're not pretty, you should learn to be self-reliant, because nobody will ever provide emotional support for you.

I was an ugly duckling, that's for sure. But a lot of the time ugly ducklings aren't baby swans, they're just funny-looking ducks who read too much.

I was already pretty darned self-contained. I became even more so as the years went by and I turned more and more to my rich inner life, the place where I was always beautiful and I was always loved in the secret language. It was the one place that I could be graceful like a stalk of wheat bowing in the wind, painfully lovely to behold as a summer sunset after rain. I might be fat and clumsy and shy and worthless in my outside life, but inside i was free of all of that.

I learned, as time went by, not to ask for anything in case it might be denied. I learned to avoid the words "I want". It is still difficult, after all this time, to say them.

At the same time I was becoming self-contained, I also became an avid student of body language, after discovering that people who lie with their mouths often cannot lie with their bodies. I learned how to speak with my body, and the ways people spoke with theirs. To this day, i will always believe the body. It tells the only truth there is, the truth that the mouth will not admit.

I told myself for a long time that I wasn't worth what I wanted. Nobody could ever love me alone, even though I sensed dimly in myself the potential to devote myself utterly to another person. If it was the right person. If they could devote themselves to me.

I met the right person. and then i lost her. I don't know if I will ever find another.

I am finding myself returning slowly to the idea of polyfidelity, wondering aloud if open polyamory is right for me. It may well be that if I cannot find someone to be fiercely devoted to, being the philodendron of the girlfriend world suits me just fine. It may be that I decide to be single, that I reject the idea of couplehood entirely, that I decide to keep myself celibate and selfish for as long as it takes me to grow up enough that I can share myself as freely with the world as it seems to demand. The idea of celibacy grows more and more appealing every time I think about attempting to introduce someone new to my quirks and foibles, all the sexual things that seem petty and small and just plain icky when i put them into words.

It may be that I decide to give monogamy a try, should I ever meet an actual monogamous girl who likes me. Maybe it would make me happier than I am now, maybe it would make me unhappy in new and different ways.

Right now, as I am, I'm not actually getting any of the purported benefits of polyamory. I can't manage to find one girl who actually wants to sleep with me, let alone more than one. I don't have the time or the energy to have more than one romantic partner at a time, even ones that are distracted by other partners. I don't do NRE any more, as far as I can tell. Because of that, I'm never "in love" with more than one person at once. I can be attracted to more than one person at a time, but I can have a lively and interesting sex life all by myself, and as I get older the urge to be sexual with other people is fading. I can think, "Hey, I bet it would be nice to have sex with that person" and not *do* anything about it. Sex is a physical need, one that I can fill myself (although it's much better with a partner who knows my body well and has a healthy dose of empathy).

I still think that polyamory is a damned good idea. However, as a lesbian among bi girls and straight men, I wonder where my place is in all this. Am I, acting as I am, doomed to forever play second fiddle to various males? Is this really where I want to spend the rest of my life, as the philodendron in the corner, filling all my needs myself?

Maybe.

For the moment, it's enough for me to sit here and realize that I am questioning the need for relationships in the first place. Why am I doing this? What, exactly, am i getting out of this?

I understand better, now, why people get into relationships in the first place. This loneliness hurts. The idea of dying alone doesn't really appeal to me, though a life lived alone definitely has its attractions.

And I feel envious when I see all my friends and aquaintences in obviously loving relationships, people who are attracted to each other and committed to each other, who couldn't really imagine life without their partners. I would like to feel like that, like I belong to something larger than myself, with someone who I'm pretty sure will like or even love me no matter what. And who I can love like that and at least hope that they will always allow me to love them.

There's a small part of me that still hopes that even if I can't be pretty, I can still be worthy.

So that's my hallelujah. A tiny little hope.

A cold and lonely hallelujah.

Maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
and it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah...

previous entry   next entry
before | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | after

the new zero
| archives | reads | backstory | cast | what | why?
home
email