Tag: ramblings

Learning the space I fit into, balance, and how to ask for it

As a young child I was very much a loner.  I didn’t often fit in, and often didn’t care to.  I was usually content to play on my own, or have a single close friend.  I spent a lot of time in the woods or fields by myself when we lived in the country, or playing with my stuffed animals alone, or creating tracks for my matchbox cars of sand and pine needles on vacations in Lake Tahoe.  I think when I switched schools five times within four years in my pre-teen and early teen years, that was the first time I tried to fit in, because I did feel a little isolated having absolutely no friends.  It wasn’t even that I minded the solitude all too much, but that I saw everyone around me with a multitude of friends around them and I felt I was doing something wrong.  In my middle and later teenage years I came out of my shell again, I was a constantly hyper and outgoing creature, a whirling ball of energy and charisma among the crowd of oddballs and outcasts I found.  Since identity is more firmly formed around that age, I figured myself to be an extrovert.  I neglected to notice how starved I was for attention and affection at times, and how I was also going through the tumultuous and confusing time period of raging hormones for the first time. I’m sure now those things motivated the intensity of my extroversion.  I would flit from one house to another with my amorphous group of older friends, and thrill myself in the time spent on the astroturf, the unofficial hangout of every misfit teen, making new friends of absolute strangers on a whim.

Time passes, and in recent years I’ve been rediscovering myself.  There was a lot of time in between my early years of discovering my identity and now.  There were years of alcohol induced haze, tumultuous years of abuse, years of dysphoria and confusion, years of heartbreak and loss.  On the other side I began my transition, I began pursuing fulfilling career paths, I began forming healthy relationships and nurturing the few I had through those dark years.  I began to reform my identity and I found it hard to be around people at times.  Often it was just more tense, less easy and comfortable than being alone.  Sometimes it was enjoyable, but exhausting, draining until I hit a point where I’d pushed myself too far to social and felt sick and anxious for days after.  I decided I must be an introvert, I learned to stick up for my space and boundaries and aloneness.  I also battle co-dependency and swung myself far in the opposite direction to break my ties to a toxic style of existence.

This new discovery of introversion culminated in my living on my own for a short while after the folks I lived with chose to leave, or I asked them to do so over a period of time because I knew I needed space.  I was desperate for space really.  I craved being left alone, saw through rose colored glasses some idealized dream of wandering off into the wilderness and becoming a hermit on a mountain.  I looked forward to living in a small household of just myself and Kelev, a person with greater independence then I had ever reached by that point at least.  Then the one I hadn’t asked to leave, Kelev, chose to move out as well for a time.  I had my space, it was terrifying and glorious.  I loved that while I kept in touch with the friends and partners and loves that I cared for dearly, that there were uncountable moments in my day where I was floating unattached to any other person.  There was just myself, my thoughts, and whatever tasks I set before me to complete for the day.

Then time passed, not much time, and other folks moved in, folks I was close to and working on founding an intentional community with.  They are comfortable to live with, and Kelev is comfortable to live with during the half of the time he spends here.  But I still value my alone time greatly and need it on a regular basis.  I also became more active in my local poly community and had sudden bursts of social energy, the like of which I hadn’t experienced since my teenage years.  After years of being so introverted that I never wanted to leave the house and interact outside of my little zone, I wanted to go out and meet new people and have new adventures! I remember the word ambivert, a mixture of introversion and extroversion.  Does it fit?

Sometimes I am very high energy for my introverted partners. I want to constantly be on the go, I feel cooped up when in the house too long.  I want late night runs to all night eateries, the pounding of music at the hookah bar or on a dance floor, the thrill of meeting a new group of strangers.  Sometimes I’m too introverted for my partners as a whole, I fear.  I need space, I sometimes struggle with wanting to take a week of silence from social interaction but knowing it would hurt the people I love not to hear from me for that long.  It may likely drive me a bit up the wall too, after a day or two I’d be reaching out to people left and right.  Or maybe I wouldn’t, I want to experience aloneness, and even loneliness, and bask in isolating and silence for a time.  When I am around the people that I love, the people that thrill me, it’s a high.  After a couple days of constant contact I’m exhausted and anxious.  This feeds self doubt.  Am I good enough for the people I am close to if I get exhausted and edgy from just the company of others?  Is there something wrong with me and does it make me incompatible for partnership or living with people or sharing closeness?  No, I don’t think so.

What I do think is that I still have a lot to learn about standing up for my boundaries.  I need space, every single day I need some measure of space.  I need to be better at defining my needs for space.  With one of my partners, when I ask for space, they leave the room and wander off on some adventure, returning in a few hours and messaging me to ask if I still need space or want company.  With another partner, when I say I need space, he retreats off the bed or couch we are sharing, to a space nearby but not quite as adjacent.  With another partner, when I say I need space, he disentangles his body from mine if we are cuddling, and maintains a nearness on the same bed, but with minimal or no direct contact.  With another partner, if I say I need space, he leaves me be and doesn’t talk to me at all, sometimes for a few days, until I initiate contact again.  These are wide variations.  When some are too little for me to satisfy my need for aloneness, and some are too much and make me feel like I have done something wrong and upset someone because of a complete lack of contact, I need to speak up.  I am a balance, inside me is love of excitement and deep vulnerability, emotional closeness and intimacy, and thrilling terrifying social interactions that are new and push my comfort zones.  Inside me is a love for solitude, for the coldness of an empty bed, the silence of an empty room, and a lonely walk with only my own thoughts for company.  I know that both my exuberant need for extroverted moments or my absolute need for introverted time alone may mean I’m not quite suited to everyone else’s needs or preferences.  That is okay, but I won’t know how comfortable I can get and how much my partners will make space for my needs and allow me to grow into them, until I better learn to express them and find my voice.

Magical moments

The sky is a deep gray, almost black, with a hint of deep violet peaking through underneath.  The ambient light from the city is too persistent for the sky to ever hit a pure black note.  I drive across town at night more often these days, and there is this perfect moment that I capture almost every time.  Music has a certain quality when played in the car, it fills up the whole space with no apologies and you can lose yourself in it.  Usually when I feel as though I am losing myself in a sensation, I dissolve, which is what makes these moments so special.  With the sultry violins and deep drum tempos of viking metal, or Alice Cooper wailing out a song of heartbreak, or a bagpipe helping tell a story of a war once lost in Ireland, the music takes hold and gently guides my thoughts, and then I hit this magic point where the city around me crystallizes.  Suddenly everything is starkly clear. The colonial buildings with their discordant Victorian touches, some neglected and left to crumble after standing a hundred years, they are beautiful to me in this moment.  The city is trapped between buildings of rich living history, new cold modern growth, and the constant decay that permeates the low income neighborhoods of every town.  It feels raw, each person in the street with their own story, each brick laid by human hands, and driving through the puddles that muddy up the streets I feel a connection to everything around me.  I belong in the country, but the haunting quality of the city at night captures me in those moments every time.  There is an endless feeling of loneliness and connection in those moments.  Every time I lose myself in the feeling of realness, of a world with such clarity where the sights and smells and emotions overwhelm, I feel alive with a vibrating intensity.  It is a specific moment that I only seem able to capture in the city alone, with the music blaring, as humanity unfolds around me.  Somehow despite my life being filled with so many brilliant people who bring me joy and love, and so many exciting adventures and new growth, I cherish these moments just as highly.  They feel like magic.

There are other magical moments in my life.  Ones where the whole world seems perfectly in place, everything gains that shiny extra-real character, and being alive is the most wonderful thing.  I want to freeze the moment I felt when I found the perfect coffee cup, when I held it and knew it was just right.  I was bent on minimalism at the time, still am in my way, but that perfectly crafted material object that was completely the opposite of every style I normally like, fit into my hand perfectly and just gave me such profound joy.  A fucking coffee cup.  Every time I use it, I get a shadow of that moment replayed, and it enhances my day, subtly lifting it a bit above ordinary.

Once when walking I saw a patch of daylilies growing over someones garden fence.  I stopped and just stared while people walked by, I had forgotten the color orange could be so beautiful and intense.  I suppose depression plays a factor, maybe most people live in a world that is bright all the time, but I know that mine won’t always be and hasn’t always been.  The precious jewel of a moment where a flower becomes the center of the world and can take my breath away, I cherish that.

Lately I’ve recognized there magical moments more and more.  It started with driving home across town at night more often.  My life changed radically when a partnership that had centered around cohabitation suddenly became one of distance.  It was a good change, one that strengthened that relationship, and also pushed me into a focus on my own personal growth, but it was a hard change.  And nightly drives alone became a familiar trend, after I spent the day laughing with him at his father’s home where he now lived, or dropped him off after a day at our home where he still spends near half his time. Those magical moments when driving back happened more, and it clicked in my head that this was not something that had to be an infrequent gift of chance.  I could learn to cultivate these moments, but really immersing myself in my experiences and welcoming the world in.  I could learn to live in moments of beautiful clarity, feeling vibrantly alive wasn’t a passing fancy anymore.

A maelstrom of confidence and self doubt

It is hard to feel authentic.  I don’t see myself as a person that struggles with self confidence, I have a great measure of confidence in my opinion, but I have also realized I have a great measure of self doubt.  I always see a lack of self confidence portrayed as thinking poorly of yourself, self hatred, having low self esteem.  I don’t feel like I have low self esteem, I don’t find myself to be unlovable and quite to the contrary, I think I’m pretty damn fantastic.  I adore myself for being a quirky, loud, queer, oddball of a dude.  Lately though, I’ve been struggling with impostor syndrome and feeling like maybe I am not good -enough- or not real enough.

Part of the issue seems to be a feeling of lacking authenticity.  I often have a lot of complicated feelings in my mind, many lines of thought and emotion going on at one time.  It isn’t always possible to express all of that, sometimes I lack the time, sometimes I lack the words, sometimes it isn’t all relevant.  When I give someone a window into how I’m feeling or thinking, but they are just getting to see the part of the scenery visible through that window and missing the whole landscape, I feel inauthentic.  I also feel there is a lot in my mind that isn’t appropriate to express, that I want some measure of privacy for, or that does not fit with the person I am working on becoming. I know I have a right to some measure of privacy, but it contrasts starkly with the version of radical honesty I once practiced.  I also feel that in writing, I want to bare my soul, allow light into all of the dark cracked places of my mind, but it is hard to do so without feeling raw and open in a painful and violated way.  I almost have a desire to be the instrument of my own violation at times, to rip away everything I can hide behind and feel exposed in ways that make me intensely uncomfortable, as though that pain may be a release or way to rebuild.  It also could be terribly unhealthy though, so I dip a toe in here and there, testing the waters of pushing my own limits.

Lately in my life I have found a sense of community and of acceptance in various circles, and that gives me a feeling of home and of comfort that I have craved for a long time.  Like everything I experience though, it seems to be on a pendulum, my emotions swinging back and forth, back and forth.  I feel loved, accepted, a sense of belonging, and with that comes heightened energy and a zealous leap into my sense of self and identity that is -too much- to express in some avenues of life.  I can be a fabulous outspoken beacon of queerness when among my amazingly accepting social circles, a part of me that is not at home when at school or work or in the brightly lit aisles of the grocery store.  I feel alive and electric, able to dance and flail around in all my manic rainbow glory.  And then the pendulum swings back and I wonder if I’m pigeon holing myself into another narrow identity. I try and describe myself, I see the person I am in any one environment, and I feel like I am a person of a thousand faces, some more authentic then the others, but none truly whole. Sometimes I want to gasp for air, broken on the ground, unsure of how any person can be themselves when yourself is too much to be.  Then I feel more self-doubt because how can one person be so fucking melodramatic and still be real.

It’s a funny thing, confidence mixed with self doubt. Knowing you are someone you yourself can adore, but not feeling seen.  Feeling seen too much, but only through a window.  Feeling naked and raw, and still too private and closed off. Feeling alive and bursting with life and then so unsure of your realness that you worry you’ll disappear into a shadow and fade away.  Wondering if anything in your mind makes any sense, if its a mania fueled daydream, if you’ve regressed to a melodramatic teenager, or if this is just your normal.  Hearing that emotions are valid, but not being certain that these particular emotions are, or even if they are emotions at all.  I wonder if this is all too personal.

Much of my life is focused around emotional and personal growth, learning, and trying to help others.  I give advice and can relate experiences shared with me with ones in my past.  I try and connect the dots to tell a story, to write about what I know of a thing and maybe offer that up as a living sacrifice of words.  Then I realize fuck, I don’t actually have much of the knowledge base for this.  I haven’t spent the last ten years doing historical research that makes me an expert or even a novice in this subject.  I have the sentences spinning in my mind that I’ve gleaned from reading this article and that, I have the lived experience of one small person in a vast world.  I feel like an impostor.  I read about impostor syndrome being all too common and how to fight it.  I think about how maybe that applies to people with a wealth of knowledge far greater on my own.  I toy with not caring, pushing forward anyway and putting my voice out there with a stubborn resilience.  I wonder again if that voice has worth.

I am left thinking, am I real?  Who is this person I have become that speaks and writes and is never good enough? I hear reassurance, I don’t want reassurance, I don’t even know if I want confirmation or understanding.  Sometimes there are just too many thoughts, too many faces, and too many questions in my head and I want them to have somewhere to go.  I don’t know if I can reach a point where I do feel authentic and honest and raw, but there is a need for it inside me and this is an avenue to try.