(no subject)
As most of the people who will actually read this journal know, the last three month or so have been... hectic and confusing for me, mostly thanks to the women involved in my life. I fell for a girl that I met through the Pride and Allies Club at my local community college, and became so enmeshed in her life that when she, a lesbian, admitted that she had a crush on me, I didn't even think twice about my answer. I would begin a week of events that would cause me an amount of emotional pain that has been rivaled only twice: a series of really bad days that would prematurely end my freshman year at Northwestern University with a series of suicide attempts, and the second conversation I had with Carol after having not talked to her in over six months, when she told me she'd been raped. This morning, I learned that this girl has officially fallen head over heels for someone, presumably a woman. I've been involved with the GLBTQ community and supporting the decisions of that community for a LONG time(9 years now), and I've never been closer to throwing in the towel and saying "I hope I never meet another lesbian or bi woman in my life" than I am right now.
There's a modicum of the societal bias towards bi women (you just have to read the advocate to realize that BOTH lesbians and straight men commit this hubris, but I'm not gonna go into the gender politics of this country) and heterosexist bias here, but most of that feeling is the intense internal self-loathing that has developed from making a complete fool of myself for the last several women I cared about, and then grimacing at how much their successive relationships have proven my favorite saying "nice guy's finish last; as do women who prove it." To see why, you just have to look at a list of the people I was truly attracted to/cared and have been left or rejected for someone else:
Carol: Matt and some guy in Kentucky.
Teffie: Mara.
Mary Ann: Rachel and Sean.
Logan: unknown woman, and before me, Jin-hui.
Considering how each of those has turned out so far, there isn't an example of good judgment in relationships on that list. There are only two, maybe three, people that I wouldn't be insulted to find my name next to. Call me superstitious, but that makes me not want to date anyone... because apparently I do something to people that makes them leave me and then make exceptionally bad decisions or be pretty miserable afterward. My logic then follows that if I truly care about someone, for their sake, I should stop feeling the way that I do to save us both the heart-ache. These musings led me to write this piece, reminiscent of why I earned the nickname "FIST":
I look around, but instinctively know that there is no one in the basement of my apartment building at 3am. 12 pounders, real “heavy bag” gloves, hang limply from the end of my arms. I send my cellphone skittering across the concrete floor, to lay dark and silent next to people who I could call with it. I slide to the balls of my feet, languidly twisting my hips to slowly release the caged beast that has been clawing at my ribs for the last 16 hours. I begin slowly, building my momentum, glove meeting leather in a steady rhythm, working myself through a progression of strikes that my body slides in to as easily as a sailboat slipping beneath 15 foot swells on the Bering Sea.
Finally unhindered, my mind follows my body into the roiling seas, and each jab punctuates a thought like a carriage return at the end of a paragraph. These seas act like a gigantic trommel, tossing the smallest selfish thoughts through the earliest. The first thing to fall through is my concern for money. Financially, I manage, soon to be working 60 some hours a week between 4 jobs, even though I’ll pay 500 bucks a month, plus utilities, for a room in a house that needs more work than my character, and volunteer as a tutor at the Tacoma Rescue Mission to cut down on the cost of food for myself. My parents see their son working that hard on something non-academic as a step backwards, but they don’t know that my boxing and work are pushing me much farther than academics ever did.
That’s why I started boxing, so that I didn’t have to slow down. If I don’t keep my brain running, I feel like eventually my past would catch up with my present and future and tear them to shreds. It’s hard to escape that thought for me; the last three years have been littered with more tatters than anything else. The holes have had names like Northwestern, Carol, Americorps, Mary Ann, Logan, transfer applications, April 16th, 2007, and any number of others. Each one of those holes makes me wonder what I can do differently, what I can do better. Why did I deserve a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance to get this all right when many don’t get more than one? I know the margin for error is shrinking; this time, I have the hopes and aspirations of three other fighters resting on my ability to hold things together.
My heart aches when I think about the question one of those people asked me three days ago “Are you gonna be my daddy?” I and his mother know the answer to that question is no. She’s nearly ten years my elder and there’s mutual respect, but we’re both interested in other people as long-term companions. Yet, until someone better qualified comes along, I can’t help but take that role on, for the boys’ sakes. I hope each meeting of glove on bag holds at least part of the hard lessons that I hope to teach them, because I haven’t had half the struggle any of them has had, which is pretty embarrassing considering I could legitimately be the father of two of them. If I don’t learn these lessons, it’s going to be hard to teach them.
I get to the end of my normal routine, my arms and legs aching, my left wrist splitting where I broke it punching the steel side of an elevator three months ago. It isn’t enough, and I add another set of punches, just like I have every time I have a chance to come down here. I push myself in an attempt to reveal the inner and outer strength I know is buried under the things and people who I let knock me down, over and over again. I’m actively trying to break my body and mind in half, to prove to myself that I can survive getting knocked down, getting off the mat, broken hand in tow, a few more times. Only I really seem to appreciate that both my mind and body will be broken more often than not before I reach my goals, but that I WILL get to them.
I drop to my knees, offer a small prayer of thanks to all those people who helped me survive just one day longer, and strip off my gloves. I head for the showers, knowing that after 10 minutes under the warm water in my apartment, no one besides me will know the sweat, the blood, or the collected insulation dust settling into my hair was ever there. My knowing is more than enough for now.
Rereading and writing all of this has left me pretty drained. I don't even know if half of that makes sense, I'm just left with this smothering desire to hold Nat for some reason. Cynically, I feel like that's probably because she didn't play games. I'm gonna end this post before I get myself in any more trouble. Peace out.
There's a modicum of the societal bias towards bi women (you just have to read the advocate to realize that BOTH lesbians and straight men commit this hubris, but I'm not gonna go into the gender politics of this country) and heterosexist bias here, but most of that feeling is the intense internal self-loathing that has developed from making a complete fool of myself for the last several women I cared about, and then grimacing at how much their successive relationships have proven my favorite saying "nice guy's finish last; as do women who prove it." To see why, you just have to look at a list of the people I was truly attracted to/cared and have been left or rejected for someone else:
Carol: Matt and some guy in Kentucky.
Teffie: Mara.
Mary Ann: Rachel and Sean.
Logan: unknown woman, and before me, Jin-hui.
Considering how each of those has turned out so far, there isn't an example of good judgment in relationships on that list. There are only two, maybe three, people that I wouldn't be insulted to find my name next to. Call me superstitious, but that makes me not want to date anyone... because apparently I do something to people that makes them leave me and then make exceptionally bad decisions or be pretty miserable afterward. My logic then follows that if I truly care about someone, for their sake, I should stop feeling the way that I do to save us both the heart-ache. These musings led me to write this piece, reminiscent of why I earned the nickname "FIST":
I look around, but instinctively know that there is no one in the basement of my apartment building at 3am. 12 pounders, real “heavy bag” gloves, hang limply from the end of my arms. I send my cellphone skittering across the concrete floor, to lay dark and silent next to people who I could call with it. I slide to the balls of my feet, languidly twisting my hips to slowly release the caged beast that has been clawing at my ribs for the last 16 hours. I begin slowly, building my momentum, glove meeting leather in a steady rhythm, working myself through a progression of strikes that my body slides in to as easily as a sailboat slipping beneath 15 foot swells on the Bering Sea.
Finally unhindered, my mind follows my body into the roiling seas, and each jab punctuates a thought like a carriage return at the end of a paragraph. These seas act like a gigantic trommel, tossing the smallest selfish thoughts through the earliest. The first thing to fall through is my concern for money. Financially, I manage, soon to be working 60 some hours a week between 4 jobs, even though I’ll pay 500 bucks a month, plus utilities, for a room in a house that needs more work than my character, and volunteer as a tutor at the Tacoma Rescue Mission to cut down on the cost of food for myself. My parents see their son working that hard on something non-academic as a step backwards, but they don’t know that my boxing and work are pushing me much farther than academics ever did.
That’s why I started boxing, so that I didn’t have to slow down. If I don’t keep my brain running, I feel like eventually my past would catch up with my present and future and tear them to shreds. It’s hard to escape that thought for me; the last three years have been littered with more tatters than anything else. The holes have had names like Northwestern, Carol, Americorps, Mary Ann, Logan, transfer applications, April 16th, 2007, and any number of others. Each one of those holes makes me wonder what I can do differently, what I can do better. Why did I deserve a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance to get this all right when many don’t get more than one? I know the margin for error is shrinking; this time, I have the hopes and aspirations of three other fighters resting on my ability to hold things together.
My heart aches when I think about the question one of those people asked me three days ago “Are you gonna be my daddy?” I and his mother know the answer to that question is no. She’s nearly ten years my elder and there’s mutual respect, but we’re both interested in other people as long-term companions. Yet, until someone better qualified comes along, I can’t help but take that role on, for the boys’ sakes. I hope each meeting of glove on bag holds at least part of the hard lessons that I hope to teach them, because I haven’t had half the struggle any of them has had, which is pretty embarrassing considering I could legitimately be the father of two of them. If I don’t learn these lessons, it’s going to be hard to teach them.
I get to the end of my normal routine, my arms and legs aching, my left wrist splitting where I broke it punching the steel side of an elevator three months ago. It isn’t enough, and I add another set of punches, just like I have every time I have a chance to come down here. I push myself in an attempt to reveal the inner and outer strength I know is buried under the things and people who I let knock me down, over and over again. I’m actively trying to break my body and mind in half, to prove to myself that I can survive getting knocked down, getting off the mat, broken hand in tow, a few more times. Only I really seem to appreciate that both my mind and body will be broken more often than not before I reach my goals, but that I WILL get to them.
I drop to my knees, offer a small prayer of thanks to all those people who helped me survive just one day longer, and strip off my gloves. I head for the showers, knowing that after 10 minutes under the warm water in my apartment, no one besides me will know the sweat, the blood, or the collected insulation dust settling into my hair was ever there. My knowing is more than enough for now.
Rereading and writing all of this has left me pretty drained. I don't even know if half of that makes sense, I'm just left with this smothering desire to hold Nat for some reason. Cynically, I feel like that's probably because she didn't play games. I'm gonna end this post before I get myself in any more trouble. Peace out.