When I say I’m getting my freak on, I mean in my daily non-sexytimes life. I’m not getting any, sadly, and I’m not in a place to do something about it. Maybe I’ll make it goal for next year–just to get laid, I mean. I’m not looking for a relationship, and I don’t really want to date. I miss sex–that’s about it.
Before that, here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked about how I actually like most of my differences now. And back to the post.
See, I’m not a good partner. It’s funny how people get uncomfortable when I say it–just likpeople were uncomfortable when I’ve said that I would not be a good mother. Or that I was fat. The last one is particularly humorous to me because of how deeply embeded in American’s collective psyche it is that ‘fat’ is a deep insult. “You’re not fat; you’re just fluffy.” No, I’m fat. F-A-T.
I think this is part of my neurodivergence, but it’s also me working hard to accept parts of myself that I used to hate. I loathed my body until my medical crisis for several reasons*. Sometime in my early thirties, I made my peace with being fat–though I did not like it. It wasn’t until my medical crisis that I fully embraced my body.
Up until that point , I thought of it as a vessel for my brain. I felt separated from it, though I will say that Taiji helped me integrate my brain and body to a certain extent.
Back to me being honest about myself. It’s amusing and bemusing to me when people think I’m saying something negative about myself when I’m not. I am fat. I would not have been a good mother. I am currently not a good partner. Well, I can’t say 100% as to the last because I have not dated anyone in a decade and a half, but I’m just assuming I haven’t made enough progress in that arena to be a good partner.
See, here are the problems. One, I alternate between clingy and emotionally distant on a fairly regular basis. I want to be close to someone until we are actually close, and then I want my space. I really like being alone, but there’s some deep programming in me that kicks in when I’m around someone I’m dating.
I don’t want to focus completely on the other person, but that’s the way my brain works. At the same time, I can comfortably date two (or more?) people simultaneously. I am happy when my partner is happy, including if they find love with others. However, I get jealous if I don’t get enough attention myself. And insecure. Like, no amount of love is enough. I try to keep it under control, but sometimes, it seeps out. It’s my anxiety, and it’s difficult to keep a grip on it.
It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to keep my anxieties at bay. That’s up to me. Many times, it’s a struggle that I allow to consume me. I try not to let it out. It’s not the best way to deal with it, but it’s not the worst, either.
The thing is that it’s tricky to figure out which weirdo parts of me that are different that I actually like and don’t. I’ve spent so much of my life being reactive and defensive, it’s hard to know what’s real to me and what isn’t. I’ve had to bat down rigid gender stereotypes from my mother since I was seven. It might have been before that, too, but I don’t remember much before that age.
Actually, I don’t remember much of myy childhood at all. What I do remember is me feeling left out, severely depressed, and thighly restricted in what I was allowed to say, think, and feel. Oh, and being my mother’s emotional support person. That started when I was eleven, and it continues to today. She calls me her therapist, and she’s only half-joking, if even that. Whenever she calls, my heart sinks. (I initially wrote ‘stinks’, which is apt, too.) I have to steal myself because I know it’s going to be a trial.
My mother has strong ideas of what is right and proper (even if she doesn’t follow them herself. And, of course, she has excuses for why it’s different for her). She’s convinced that I’m a contrarian for negative reasons. Then again, she attributes most of what other people do that she doesn’t like to malice rather than just a difference of opinion. She has such a narrow point of view, it’s nearly impossible to talk to her about anything.
On the other hand, she’s easily swayed by really definitive voices–especially male ones. It’s a direct contrast of opposing traits, and while I can be symppathetic to her because I am a mass of contradictions myself, at least I’m aware of it. My mother? Not so much.
When we were talking about my brother being autistic, she mentioned that she wondered if she was as well. At first, I dismissed it as her wanting once again to co-opt other people’s issues as her own (if I have a cold, she had one that was worse. If I have trouble sleeping, it’s nothing compared to her sleep problems. I want to stress that it’s not deliberate on her side, but it’s inevitable), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had many of the hallmarks for autism–the female version.
She does not empathize easily with other people (which took me a long time to realize because she’s a psychologist); she’s very rigid in what she thinks is wrong and right; she is not good in crowds; she can’t do small talk; she does not like to be touched. Now, it’s difficult to untangled some of this from being Taiwanese, which is part of the problem. Also, the hyperfixation is something she does, too, and the difficulty of detaching from said obsession once she’s latched her teeth on it.
One pleasant memory I have is when the two of us used to watch sports together. Football, tennis, baseball, and basketball. Oh, and several Olympic events. It’s funny because my brother and my father had no interest in watching sports, so this was strictly the female (at the time, I identified as a woman) members of the family enjoynig a traditionally-manly hobby.
More later.
*One being that I live in a society that hates fat people, especially people with female-coded bodies. Two being my mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and endlessly nagged me about being fat until I finally put my foot down thirty years later.