Let’s talk more about traditions and why I’m against them. In the last post, I veered sharply into waxing poetic about K because she just gets me. I marvel that in our thirty-plus years of friendship, we’ve only vigorously argued twice. And it was for like five minutes each time. I don’t have to suppress myself when I’m around her, which is so damn refreshing.
It surprised me that we hit it off so well because quite frankly, I’m not used to that. I can make the small talk and act all polite and shit. I can make people feel like I’m their bestie when I have no interest in them whatsoever. I get the charisma from my father and the push to be the social lubricant from my mother. That sounds gross, but I don’t know quite how to put it.
Asian people put a lot of stock in face. Saving it and allowing others to save it, to be precise. There was such a heavy emphasis on face in my family, and I thought it crossed into secrecy. In other words, it went beyond what was standard and normal in Taiwanese culture and crossed into dysfunction.
My parents had a very byzantine unspoken maze of rules that they just assumed I (and my brother) would know. My mother made it quite clear what she expeced in some ways (such as me being the perfect doll daughter tha she so dreamed of), but had so many unspoken expectations that I only discoverd as I tripped over them. And not because she would speak up about it after I bumped into them, but becauseof her negative reaction. Yes, I still had to decipher her response, but I knew it was negative. I could feel the disdain/upset/disapproval radiating from her when she was unhappy with me (which seemed to be all the time).
I was a miserable kid, and I first started wanting to die when I turned seven. Not coincidentally, that was the same time when I first realized I was going to die. I remember when I was a tweener, someone told me to enjoy that time because it was the best time of someone’s life. i remember thinking, “If this is the best it gets, then I might as well die now.” I was miserble all the time and in constant emotional pain.
Every step I took out of the norm was hard, but it was ultimately a relief. The big one I’ve talked about several times was realizing I didn’t have to have children. This was when I was twenty, and I can’t emphasize how much of a weight that lifted off my shoulders. It’s one hell of a realization to make at that age, too.
I have talked about how once you see a crack in the facade of society, you cannot go back. At least I can’t. Couldn’t. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see what I saw, and there was no way I could even try to be a normie. In fact, I went a bit feral once I started walking down that road. Most people rebel in their teens whereas I did it in my mid-to-late twenties. I affectionately call them my slut years, and I remember them with a real fondness.
It wasn’t jjust that the sex was good–though there was that.
By the way. Sex is one of my favorite things to do. Once I realized that what the Christian church told me about it was a lie (premarital sex was going to send me to hell), I fully embraced how glorious sex was. It was fun and messy and it made me feel alive. I had a great time laughing during sex , being silly, and being serious.
I would do it again in a heartbeat. I see no need to sugarcoat it or to pretend it’s not true. Another thing I learned in my thirties was that many people were not honest about sex. What I mean is that I was very upfront about how much I liked sex. I described it as me being able to have sex every day and still want more.
So many guys I dated loved it–until they realized that I meant it. It puzzled me how they were caught off-guard when I, indeed, wanted to have sex every day. It took me several years to sus out what was happening, but I finally did. Most of the guys I dated when I was in my twenties dated women who said they wanted sex, but did not. Or at least not as much as they wanted. So they were judging me by their exes, not realizing that I was being scrupulously honest about my desires.
That would have been something I could deal with if it weren’t for the fact that they got mad and/or upset with me because it made them feel inadequate. They did not understand that I could simultaneously be happy with the sex I’d just gotten and that I could have more. They were not mutually exclusive to me.
Again, this is the way that my weirdo brain works. It’s so frustrating to always have to watch what I say so I don’t freak people out. That’s when Iget back to tradition and how I don’t follow it just because it’s tradition. I need a reason for the things I do, and if I don’t find the reason to be good enough, I have a hard time doing it. It’s one reason I never wanted to be a parent–I would constantly be questioning the norm, and it’s hard enough as a single person–it would be terrible as a parent.
Not to say that a parent shouldn’t think for themselves, but I would bet there are some things they just take to be true. But, also, from what I’ve heard/read about pregnant people, they get questioned in ways that would enrage me. And touched by random straagers who want to feel their bellies(!).
It’s hard enough to just be me and navigate in the world; I can’t imagine trying to guide a little person through it 24/7.
That’s all for now. More tomorrow.