digging out the claws
it's weird to try and untangle your personality quirks from the masking and obfuscation that accretes over decades of being in the closet. like, which are real and which are products of repression? it's hard to tell sometimes.
anything close to the surface is pretty simple: wearing leggings with shorts translates easily to a skirt and tights.
deeper things, especially into the psycho-sexual, less so: being sexually submissive when presenting as a boy... erm... the jury is still out on this one.
i always wanted (in order of intensity) to feel wanted, to be the object of desire, to feel safe, to allow myself to feel vulnerable, and to be vulnerable. presenting as sexually submissive was as close as i could get to creating a space for someone to fill those needs for me. sadly, it was ultra-rare for those needs to be met much beyond the halfway point. i could fill those spaces for another person, and i tried to - i felt like it was my "duty" as a good boyfriend after all. sometimes it worked, sometimes not. each time though it made me feel more alone and uncertain of myself.
but:
how much of that was a weird twisting of the social cues around the subjugation of women? unknown.
how much of that was a desire to not be complicit in the subjugation of women? unknown.
how much of that was an attempt to defy or undermine my own (unwanted) position in the patriarchy? unknown.
how much of that was a result of the PTSD surrounding the events of my very first break-up? unknown.
how much of that was the conflicting cultural messaging imprinted on a gifted but ultimately confused and innocent little girl - growing up in the wrong era, in the wrong body? unknown.
that's a ball of thorns that may never be unraveled. does it do me any good to continue to try and tease it out? sigh - unknown.
bondage is another aspect of that.. i can't quite untangle that from just needing someone to hold me tightly. and before you say "wow, that de-escalated quickly", i'm not entirely sure that there isn't some sort of neurodivergence issue going there. before hatching, during the worst of my depression, i found that laying pinned underneath my mattress was oddly comforting. so there's another ball of thorns, each thread knotted together in a way that i've been unable to pry apart, as of yet.
taking a step back from the deeply sexual even, i've always been attracted to women with a body type that i had an extreme amount of gender envy for: soft, curvy. where is that attraction coming from? was i actually attracted to them? or just jealous of their body? definitely the latter, but i still feel attracted to that type, so probably both? [tangent: maybe that's why my attraction to masculinity (aka, men) was always seemed so detached from a particular type]
so in moments of relative peace, (my ADHD and) i try and detangle these boxes of knotted christmas lights. i wish i could tell if it was actually doing any real good. and even when i think i'm getting somewhere it still feels like i'm pulling a squirming cat off my jeans, one claw at a time, but where one false move could end in bloodshed.
lol, that metaphor ended a little hyperbolic, but whatev.
anything close to the surface is pretty simple: wearing leggings with shorts translates easily to a skirt and tights.
deeper things, especially into the psycho-sexual, less so: being sexually submissive when presenting as a boy... erm... the jury is still out on this one.
i always wanted (in order of intensity) to feel wanted, to be the object of desire, to feel safe, to allow myself to feel vulnerable, and to be vulnerable. presenting as sexually submissive was as close as i could get to creating a space for someone to fill those needs for me. sadly, it was ultra-rare for those needs to be met much beyond the halfway point. i could fill those spaces for another person, and i tried to - i felt like it was my "duty" as a good boyfriend after all. sometimes it worked, sometimes not. each time though it made me feel more alone and uncertain of myself.
but:
how much of that was a weird twisting of the social cues around the subjugation of women? unknown.
how much of that was a desire to not be complicit in the subjugation of women? unknown.
how much of that was an attempt to defy or undermine my own (unwanted) position in the patriarchy? unknown.
how much of that was a result of the PTSD surrounding the events of my very first break-up? unknown.
how much of that was the conflicting cultural messaging imprinted on a gifted but ultimately confused and innocent little girl - growing up in the wrong era, in the wrong body? unknown.
that's a ball of thorns that may never be unraveled. does it do me any good to continue to try and tease it out? sigh - unknown.
bondage is another aspect of that.. i can't quite untangle that from just needing someone to hold me tightly. and before you say "wow, that de-escalated quickly", i'm not entirely sure that there isn't some sort of neurodivergence issue going there. before hatching, during the worst of my depression, i found that laying pinned underneath my mattress was oddly comforting. so there's another ball of thorns, each thread knotted together in a way that i've been unable to pry apart, as of yet.
taking a step back from the deeply sexual even, i've always been attracted to women with a body type that i had an extreme amount of gender envy for: soft, curvy. where is that attraction coming from? was i actually attracted to them? or just jealous of their body? definitely the latter, but i still feel attracted to that type, so probably both? [tangent: maybe that's why my attraction to masculinity (aka, men) was always seemed so detached from a particular type]
so in moments of relative peace, (my ADHD and) i try and detangle these boxes of knotted christmas lights. i wish i could tell if it was actually doing any real good. and even when i think i'm getting somewhere it still feels like i'm pulling a squirming cat off my jeans, one claw at a time, but where one false move could end in bloodshed.
lol, that metaphor ended a little hyperbolic, but whatev.