hard times

Some recent discoveries:  hitting my forehead repeatedly against the wall is a good way to get a headache.  Punching the wall with my fist is a good way to get attention, until it starts to hurt.  And dealing with childhood induced shame is really, really hard, even if it’s not yours. 

We moved 3000 miles away from our families, and that’s what it took to get far enough away from them (and our lives) for M. to realize that she had been living a half-life in order to maintain her family’s approval and support of her and our relationship.  Now we’re moving back.  The pressure is building, and it’s starting to wear on us.  

In another universe, we might have planned things differently.  I might have applied to grad school somewhere other than the city where we lived before that’s a one-hour drive from all four parents.  But those decisions were made before the series of revelations that occurred this spring, that sparked the creation of this blog and the quest for a new community of queer friends.  But I’ve been accepted to a good school and given a scholarship.  She has one year left on her PhD.  It makes sense to live there.  

But it feels tremendously hard just to think about going back.  We will be right back into the thick of it.  We have changed profoundly; her change is internal and external, and mine is more an external expression of a true self that I kept carefully under wraps so as not to offend anyone or call attention to myself.  A new friend, here in this magical place, recently said I was ‘wild’.  Yes.  And I have never been recognized as such before.  I don’t want to lose this!  I think to myself, can I bring her back with me?

No.  M. and I have to do this alone.  Not truly alone, because of the new people we’ve met here online, but no one is going to march into the lion’s den and help us vanquish our foes.  Thank goodness for the people here who help remind us that we’re not freaks, we’re not the only ones who feel this way. Instead of being weird, we’re actually stereotypes within our community.  How refreshing! I can use one word to describe myself and you all know what I mean.  So it’s not all bad.  But it won’t be easy either.  Part of it is just admitting to ourselves that it won’t be smooth sailing, and getting the fuck over it already.  But it’s also a matter of letting go of relationships that used to mean the world to us — and that’s a really hard thing to do.

feeling heavy

To M.:  I’m sorry I’m moping around today.  I really don’t know what comes over me sometimes.  It’s as if all the fatigue and worry and stress builds up until it winds around my heart and saps all positive energy out of my soul.  I can stand back and abstract from myself and laugh, recognizing the ridiculousness, but I can’t stop.  And I can’t pretend I don’t feel this way, because you see right through me. 

I think it’s pms, and stress about going back home.  My conversation with my sister.   My head hurts a little.  Fear and anxiety about future what I’m going to do with my life.  I think sometimes I just need a time-out.  

I’m still figuring out what makes me feel better.  But in the meantime, I know this mood hits you the hardest, and that there’s no earthly reason for me to feel bad today, except that I do.  So, I’m sorry.  I know tomorrow will be better. 

guilt flowers

There’s been some trauma around my brother in law recently.  He’s pretty convinced that the best way to live life is to go along to get along, which roughly translates into ‘the person with the least status according to our patriarchal cultural norms should go belly up to everyone who has higher status in order to maintain perfect family harmony’ or something like that.  

M. has been going through a lot this spring, finally realizing and accepting her true self, her more masculine self, and is slowly pushing those boundaries out in advance of our returning home from overseas.  [there will surely be a long post about that one of these days...]  So her brother made an off-hand comment to her about the past, supposedly apologising for making it harder for her, so she took the opportunity to talk about it honestly with him.  Big mistake — he ended the whole long discussion with a bald assertion that she might be mentally ill.  WTF?

So, to ice the cake, he sent me birthday flowers.  A day late.  Big ones, too.  A dozen white lilies with 6 pink roses and tons of fancy greenery from the swankiest flower shop in town.  To top it off — pink champagne.  Yikes.  Can we get any more compulsively feminine?  The lilies made the whole apartment smell like a funeral home, so M. took them out and placed them on the AIDS memorial down the street.  

As they arrived:

I cut them down to a manageable size:

 

The worst thing?  In one of his verbose emails, he ended with the fact that he and his wife ‘finally clicked’ with me, last summer, after 13 years of knowing me, and condescended to show her family ‘pictures of the two of us together’, as well as of me playing with their daughter.  Way to be welcoming.  He did admit that though they [finally realized] that they ‘really like’ me, they understand that I ‘might not like them very much’. Well, I liked y’all a lot more before you spewed hate all over me and my gal, know what I’m sayin’?

So, ever the kind, gracious person, soaring on gentle wings above the fray, I send a polite email thanking him for the flowers.  He responds with an implication that he can’t wait for us to have children — this after explicitly telling M. that he thinks of adoptive children as less than biological ones.  Full stop.  End of story.  I ask you — how does he think we’re going to get them?  [Just for the sake of argument, since that particular possibility is OFF THE TABLE.]  This is also the guy who revealed that ‘exclusive monogamy represses men’.  [No kidding.  Man, it represses me too...maybe I should go out and cheat on your sister...oh wait, is that not what you meant?  ha ha, so sorry...] 

Just for a contrast, the lovely sunny flowers that M. got me, at the adorable street market nearby:

Thank goodness, someone in that family has some taste!

the gender binary

I was on the phone with my little sister, trying to explain why I over-indulged on my birthday, trying to explain why these new British friends are so different.

Me:  M. and I have decided to accept that we’re not really normal.

S.: What do you mean?

Me:  Well we’re just not as normal as we’ve been pretending to be — you know, our experience isn’t really like most other people’s experience of growing up…

[not saying:  well we're lesbians, we have lots of slightly kinky sex, she's as butch as anyone, we've been exclusively together since we were in our early teens, what seems normal to you about that?]

S.:  Okay…

Me:  You know, the gender binary is pretty significant to us…

S.:  Ummm…what’s that?

[pause]

Me:  Well, you know how society kind of has categories of behaviour for people?  People are sorted into male vs. female, and do masculine or feminine things.

S.:  Like what?

Me.:  Like, girls wear pink and guys ride motorcycles?  Haven’t you noticed that M. tends more toward the masculine spectrum?

[I am really digging myself into a hole here...]

S.:  M. wants a motorcycle???

[Jesus, she really doesn't get it!]

Me:  Don’t we all?

[Definitely time to change the subject...]

Me:  Well, these friends are really cool, and we really get along with them.  They’re our first lesbian friends.  That’s why they’re special, and being around them makes me forget that I should NEVER try to keep pace with a Brit while drinking.

[not saying:  these friends are the first people we've ever been around who like the fact that we're gay, who recognize the things we do as making sense, who see us and accept us as what we are:  a butch/femme couple.  It's the most profoundly liberating and affirming thing that's ever happened to me, and I drank too much because all the filters I usually have on my behaviour, all the things I do to protect myself from people, are totally gone when they're around.  I trust them.  But, they drink a lot more than I do, and I should try to get that particular filter back, and stop drinking so damn much!]  

Guess I should tread more carefully when venturing into gender theory with a novice, however well-meaning…

time goes by…

Today, where I live, I went to bed after midnight — technically on my 30th birthday.  And this morning, when I woke up, it wasn’t my birthday yet in CA, where I was born.  Time is a funny thing — fluid and shifting and slippery.  I suppose for this reason, I should not be upset that I’m turning 30.  It’s not like I’m a different person today than I was yesterday; I don’t look different, I have all the same clothes, I live in the same place, I sleep with the same person.

But I do feel different.  There are parts of me that feel like I wasted a lot of time in my 20s, sitting at home being miserable when I could have been out in the world doing things.  And now they’re over.  And part of me wants to scream, ‘I don’t know how to be 30!’  But no one knows how to be any age — we just are.  Because time goes by.  I’m going to have to learn how to be 30 by doing it, and then (god willing) I will learn how to be 31, and 32, and 33…  

It’s really a complete coincidence that I’m having this birthday right after such a huge change in my life — maybe it’s a convenient marker, to delineate my old sadness from my new confidence and happiness.  I guess I feel different, in a good way.

Time goes by, and I have to let it.  (I can hear my mother now:  consider the alternative!)  Long ago I heard someone say that women reach their sexual peak in their 30s, while men reach it in their teens.  Hah!  I would say I hope that’s true, but it seems unnecessarily harsh to my 40s and 50s…

Happy Birthday to me!  I hope this year rocks!

160 marks

I need 160 marks to leave here with what I came for. This year has been rough in a lot of ways — I’m back in school full time for the first time since graduating undergrad a looong time ago, and I’m not working.  Working has always been a huge part of my identity, and I’ve been feeling a bit off all year without a job.

So I’m in school, not working, living in a foreign country, and all my classmates are almost a decade younger than I am.  No problem, it was all going fine.  Well, in a numb sort of way.  Then M. finally woke up from the sleepwalking nightmare that was her life, and I had to face up to all of the bad enabling things that I was doing, and finally admit to myself how sad and angry I was, and how sorry and angry I am on her behalf, and then poof! two months went by, and all of a sudden, it’s time for finals.  

At this point, I couldn’t care less about my grades.  I couldn’t care less about this university, or the diploma I’m supposed to be getting.  I’m living one second at a time — which makes it damn hard to study — especially when the sun is out and there’s a smokin’ hot woman in the other room oozing sex appeal.

So.  160 marks:  40 for each class, 4 classes in all; then it will be done.  160 marks, so I can get on with this precious amazing thing that is my life right now.

school stress

I tend to hate school, especially when heading into final exam period, so I am extra crabby these days.  I’ve just finished my last assignment, so it’s all studying all the time for the next three and a half weeks.  I’m hoping that M. can stand to live with me as I spray flashcards all over the house.  Luckily there are a few fun events ahead to liven things up a little… 

It has always seemed like the most unfair thing EVER that exams happen in May, my favorite month, the month with the best weather, and my birth month.  In fact, this year I have exams before and after my birthday.  Meanwhile, the weather is absolutely gorgeous — warm and sunny, late late beautiful evenings, everyone out on the sidewalks in their cute summer clothes…the last thing I need is to be inside studying!  And who the hell cares about first order conditions anyway!  Just take the derivative and be done with it already!

I digress.  I’m super excited that my next school adventure has a nice civilized exam schedule — everything done by the first week in May.  That leaves plenty of time for strolling around with an ice cream cone, preferably from JPLicks, and extra preferably cucumber flavoured.  Now that’s the life.

Woman or girl?

M. recently questioned my use of the word ‘girl’ to describe myself.  It drives her crazy to be called girl.  Obviously, some uses are not cool; I don’t relish it from a middle-aged straight guy, for instance, nor from my mother.  And I don’t deny that I am a woman, even a wife (though that’s embarrassing now), but right now I am using ‘girl’ to allow myself to remember that happy feeling of young-womanhood that I hardly got to have in the narrow window between moving out of my parents’ house and moving in with M.  That freedom of motion, the confidence of a youthful sexy body, the feeling that the world was my oyster — it just fits me better!

on submission

I confess I had never really thought about submission before it came up on sugarbutch. (damn that blog makes me think.  a lot!)  The conversation has continued, on various blogs that link to that one.  But I was unsure how I felt about the discussion; I felt a bit alienated.  I thought, ‘why are all these other femme women obviously getting off on this submissive element in their sex lives?  why am I not?  Is there something that requires it of femmes?  Is it just this one little corner of the community, coalesced around this one forum, that’s getting off on this dynamic?’  Lots of questions.  [And I know that there are butch 'bottoms' and femme 'tops' and everything in between, and I'm not pigeon-holing anyone, etc. etc. etc...]

And then:  a few days ago, during an amazing marathon day of sex, things got pretty intense.  I won’t go into details, mostly because I don’t think I have the writing skills to pull it off, but there was a not-particularly-subtle element of dominance on M.’s part.  And I was unbelievably turned on by it, especially when she immobilized me with her fist in my hair.  When I found out later how much force she had used on my body, I was shocked.  And floored by a wave of desire.  In the moment, I had said she could be rougher.  She held back because she didn’t want to really hurt me.  I don’t know if she would have done it at all if I hadn’t practically been begging her.  So that’s an interesting dynamic in itself:  is she that kind of top?  Would I actually want her to be?  It’s hard to tell how she feels about it.

It made me reflect on how I felt during all of this.  I felt safe, protected, like I could give myself over to her care and surrender utterly.  I feel sometimes like I have to have this shell of armor when I’m out in the world; why — because of the unwanted attention (see earlier post), because I’m afraid of showing the world my true self, because I don’t want to show my emotions — I’m not sure.  But with her, I want to be open.  I want to let her into my deepest soul.  I want to see what she does with it.  

I wonder if it’s also partly because butches get a lot of crap out there in the world.  Their claim to masculinity is constantly under fire.  They have to fight for it, never let their guard down.  I think something that’s true of femmes is that we see through the cockiness to the vulnerability underneath.  We do ‘that thing’ where we validate them, we see them, we truly get what they’re about and love it and want it.  I wonder if this idea relates to my newly-felt desire to give over to M. the most ‘masculine’ power I can — the power to take me any way she wants to.  It will be interesting to see where this goes…

Buddhist jerk? Not possible, right?

Wrong.  I have been attending the local chapter of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), studying Buddhism in a low-key way.  I was really stressed out last fall, having panic attacks for the first time in my life, and I thought meditation might help calm me down.  It has!  But the most recent class I’ve taken has been with a guy, ordained, who just rubs me the wrong way.  

He’s smug and smarmy.  He sits too close to me at the tea break.  He doesn’t ever shut up.  And he has absolutely no sense of humor.  Honestly the only reason I go back every week is that there’s a super-cute girl in my class…who does actually talk to me sometimes, and who *might* be gay…

So the other week, he started spouting off about how the world couldn’t possibly sustain a population of 9 billion people, that there just wasn’t enough food.  And another woman in class, from South America, said ‘I think that’s a racist statement — so often that kind of language is used to say that poor women should have fewer children, as if it’s their fault…’  He tried to shoot her down, and she was maybe going to let him, but something in me just wasn’t having it.  

So I piped up with a rant, saying ‘If we stopped feeding grain to cows, and turning it into ethanol, and started feeding people with it instead, who knows how many people the earth could support?  200 years ago Malthus thought that population disaster was imminent, and look at where we are now.  There’s simply no proof that the world can’t support that many people — the only thing we’ve managed to demonstrate so far is that there are tons of things that we are unwilling to compromise on or give up for the sake of justice and fairness.  What we have is a distribution problem, and it has existed since there were fewer than 1 billion people on the earth.  People starve to death all the time, and always have, not because there isn’t enough food for them but because they are too poor to purchase it.’

He feebly responded that he really didn’t think the world could support that many people (oh so repetitive and lame) and finally admitted that maybe western society could do with using a little less of the earth’s resources, and that what is really at stake is his precious lifestyle and standard of living, and I considered my case won.  The thing is, I do think that there wouldn’t be any problem with having fewer people on the earth; it’s just that this discussion so often turns into ‘there should be fewer people on the earth, therefore poor brown women should stop having so many babies’.  I think that’s hogwash — if you think there should be fewer people on the earth, DON’T HAVE KIDS. If you’re worried about there not being enough to go around, USE LESS STUFF.  And don’t give me that crap about starving people in India, because I could see that he brought it up just to tell us all that he went on pilgrimage in India.  I could tell by the little self-congratulatory smile of pity and compassion he had on his face.

I had way more fun than a good buddhist should have smacking him down…but hey — I’m not the one who’s ordained!