jacktellslies: (Default)
i should explain further, perhaps. this is more than simply avoiding painful stimuli, although i would argue that the human brain is capable of sensing pain for no other reason than that we are meant to learn from it. we are meant to learn what not to do or how to avoid it or move with it or where our limits are or where they could be, and that, perhaps doing the same painful thing over and over again, if one gets no enjoyment from it, or if it serves no higher purpose, might be stupid.

no. i am more certain now that it is not simply that love hurts when it ends. it is that i do not like the experience of being in love. i am realizing that it is very similar to the feeling i have when i am called miss or when i have sex with a straight boy or with anyone too strictly gendered or when i find myself in a monogamous relationship. i am capable of doing all of these things. i can manage it. a few times out of every thirty, i might even like it. but it does not fit. it is not right. it is not what i want.

there are things that it has taken me every relationship i've yet had to learn. for instance, besides the fact that i think that i am a bit happier when i am with more than one person at a time, it has never yet failed. i hurt every partner with whom i've ever been in a monogamous relationship. when i was younger, this generally took the form of my cheating on people a lot. as a result, i thought the solution was to not cheat on people anymore. easy enough. but this time it worked differently. although the real issue was her complete inability to define boundaries, and the fact that she sometimes actually lied to me when i'd ask her questions about what was ok and what was not, the fact remains that megan dumped me for fucking her too much. i am a big kid; i'm done feeling broken or sick because of how much i want, if i ever really did feel that way. and i have been told that people do exist who want as much as i do. and i even believe, and hope, and fitfully pray that people do exist who could, perhaps, surpass me, and maybe even wear me out. but i've yet to be with anyone who displayed any evidence of this. so, the lesson that i've gathered from this thus far is that perhaps it is actually wrong to place any human being in the position of trying to keep up with me. there are logistical problems with this, obviously, as just now i can't seem to convince anyone in whom i'm really interested to do me, let alone two or nine of them. (which brings up an (un)interesting interjection: i'm being really particular all of a sudden. when the fuck did that start? and why now? god i'm so weird.)

that was only really relevant here as it compares to this: it has never yet failed. i have been hurt by every partner with whom i've ever been in an exclusive, emotionally intense relationship. there are, believe it or not, dear readers, ways in which i am a private person. there are a great many things that i do not like to say out loud, that i do not like to explain fully. and so it sometimes seems easier to only do this with one person. but i can never be comfortable being that open, being so very exposed. i do not want any one person to be allowed to see everything that is in my head and in my heart. i am happiest when it is spread out a bit, when i can say what i must without burdening anyone or feeling too much like i've been pinned and mounted.

i do not fear pain. i work with it, and i explore it, and i play with it, and i often find it useful. but i also know when to put it down. sometimes this fool knows when to scream back at the hurricane, and also when to come in out of the rain.
jacktellslies: (rasputin)
so, i have these fishhooks all over my body. i like them. i picked them out, each one, and i know what they mean, and i know why they are where they are, and why they are at all. i've two in my lip, and there are others. they are all mine. and i think that i will most likely keep it that way. this is not to say that i would mind being scarred or pierced by a lover. there is a difference. when i change my body, there is metaphor. when you change my body, there should only be blood.

i think that perhaps i am finally learning what it is to hide one's heart.

when i went dreaming, i used to dream of a fox. the things i meet in dreams are not always particularly gendered, but the fox told me once that she was all of the girls in the world. (the fox was a terrible liar, though, so neither you nor i should believe that.) at any rate, the fox and i used to steal one another's hearts. i'd reach into her chest while she was sleeping and i'd hide it away in a cave or in the hollow of a tree or in a crow's belly. and fox would steal it back, or she would steal mine, and we'd keep stealing and finding and hiding. at some point a third heart found its way into the game. she claimed not to know from whence it had come, and, of course, i did not believe her, but i still rather liked the game, and kept playing, and mostly thought her trickeries to be charming.

love does not come naturally to me. it never did. and i've realized that the relationships i've had with friends have been amazing. i have crushes on them that last forever. and i still tell people the stories, excited as if i was just meeting them, about these people who broke my head and changed the world and let me fuck them without ever asking for anything complicated at all. we spent time together, and we wanted the best for each other, and we helped each other, and we listened, but we were friends, and we never demanded that we loved one another, or that we belonged to one another, and we never hurt one another, either. we kept our cores. we were ourselves. we knew where our hearts were. and we moved away from one another, but it was not a terribly sad thing, and it was certainly not an angry or a painful thing. and then there are these other relationships. i do not regret them. but they hurt. and i feel as if there are these parts of them that i never wanted, that i never asked for, but that i was too stupid, and too weak, and i allowed them to happen anyway. when i talk about the people i have loved, i explain them. i show you what they did wrong, and what i did wrong, and why they were, or were not, worthwhile at the time, despite that. and i'm not sure i miss them. if i tell stories about them, it is because of the story, not because of their part in it. it is like i got so very close and involved that i wore them out in my head. or it is like the pain of it, the shock of seperation from something that intense, causes me to fight back, to push them out of my head, to erase. and either is unacceptable. the people i like, the people i will like, deserve better than that.

i do not like to make the same mistake more times than i must. this is especially true where the feelings of others are involved. i am writing this down because i think that i know it now. (although, if you are wiser than i am and see flaws in my logic, please, please, tell me what you think.) i hurt the partners i love, and they hurt me. love is neither something that i need nor desire. i do not like the person that i am when i love. to do something again that i know for a fact will hurt me and anyone that i may, in the future, really like, something that i neither want nor need, something that makes me worse rather than better, would be stupid, and it would be wrong. no more of that.

i decide where the fishhooks go when they go deep. i am the one who hides this heart.

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jacktellslies

August 2009

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