My brain was now going a mile a minute. Presented with the most confusing and (I was rapidly realizing) most painful event of my life, I felt an overwhelming need to answer the questions that were swamping me.
How can someone who knows me so well understand me so little? If someone insists that the decisions I make are immature, how do I tell them they’re wrong without sounding like a child?
More important than what to do is why to do it. But to understand that, I first need to know why this happened. Why did they react so badly to what I’d written? Why do they think kink is wrong? Why do I think kink is right?
Instinctively many of us dismiss the criticisms of outside sources as the earmarks of the close-minded. I refused to do this. I know my family; it would be difficult to raise a smart, liberal, proud and inquiring child within a family that was not also smart, liberal and full of inquiring minds.
Often when I’m presented with problems I immediately gravitate toward a specific solution. I then dismiss that solution as too hasty, spend a massive amount of time thinking about the various aspects of the problem, and then eventually, more often than not I arrive back at my first conclusion.
This is what I began to do. Still miserable, still shredded, I threw myself into a frenzy of intellectual debate, hammering away at the aspects of my life that had been exposed and censored. I ignored the heaviness of my body, the exhaustion, the tears that kept on springing up at awkward moments. Even with the blog down, I continued to feel inexplicably naked.
And then, something very remarkable happened.
You happened.
This happened.
Comments, emails, phone calls. Online chats, offers for dinner dates, offers to sit and listen, of protection and distraction and chocolate chip pancakes. Caring, gratitude, and sympathy.
I said in my earlier post that I’ve become very private with my pain. I’ve whittled my support system down to a few key people, painstakingly cutting off vulnerabilities, building walls and learning to handle stress and pain by myself.
When I took this blog down, I expected some response. I expected people to ask, to offer support, and I also expected that, similar to my past experience, I would close myself off and decline these offers. I didn’t think I was asking for help. I rarely manage to ask for such things.
The response I expected was not the response I got. I found myself flabbergasted before what I could only understand as a flood, an onslaught of support and validation.
I felt loved.
I waited for the response to end. It didn’t. And then, another remarkable thing happened.
I realized that sometimes we need help to heal ourselves.
I understood, for the first time in six years, exactly why communities are valuable.
Thank you.
Not surprisingly, because I felt loved I started thinking about love. Love and relationships, love and family. For the first time I calmed down enough to appreciate just how much pain that other person must have gone through to say the things they said to me. What happened between us didn’t happen because they were being vindictive or cruel. Those words that hurt me so much were spoken out of love.
They were worried about me. Angry with me. Frustrated, upset, caring. Frightened for me.
This conclusion gave me the first kind of hope I’d felt in four days. Love, after all, is a much better foundation to begin from than hate.
9 Comments
Am I correct in that the rest of the blog has returned from limbo?
Eileen. You are a remarkable person. Take care … have fun … and keep writing if you can. Your writing is probably as important and helpful to many, many others as it is to yourself. Just MHO.
Hi Victor,
Not yet. Bits of it; when I took it down there were almost 90 entries. I’m working on bringing them back up as I think more about what my plans are for the future.
Nick -
Thank you.
I’ve avoided commenting because I’m not sure I can say how happy these posts make me. It’s gotta be tough work - the writing itself, and all the wracking and debating that inevitably comes before it. Thank you thank you thank you for doing it.
I wasn’t really sure what to say or how to relate, but yes, coming from a place of love is infinitely better. Do you think that if the family member was speaking from love and scared for you she can be reassured?
There are a lot of splits in our community but I hope that when push comes to shove we take care of our own. I look forward to reading your blog should you decide to continue writing.
“Why do they think kink is wrong? Why do I think kink is right?”
You are. What you call kink is just is. Many do not know it yet, and may never know, but you should consider that your DEFENSE, in fact ELICITS OFFENSE. Think about the dynamics you are familiar with…
Absolutely delicious entry.
Alisa-
Reassured? I don’t know. More likely to be willing to work this out? Most definitely.
Sod-
I disagree. It’s not enough to say that things “just are” right or wrong and be content. That’s a weak position to debate, and shows no efforts at self-awareness.
“It’s not enough to say that things “just are” right or wrong and be content”
I say: “Just are” period. I believe these should not be qualified (right or wrong or any combo of the two.)
Such qualifications are valid ONLY when applied to one’s personal choices, or communal values which are based upon principles of peaceful, consensual co-existence. There’s more self awareness in striving, even fighting, to uphold your TRUE identity, to educate others of what is integral to what makes you, despite expressions of judgement, than in exerting ANY effort to change yourself in order fit into what others carved for you. Do that, and you are no longer the same, you are, for better or worse, SOMEONE ELSE! That too is your choice.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, don’t *feel* it (as in, aren’t wired that way), and haven’t thought about it, kink *does* look pretty wrong. You’re hurting someone else - emotionally and physically - for fun, or you’re being hurt for fun. From the outside, that looks wrong, and it hits a lot of social buttons.
From the inside, as we all know, it’s More Complicated Than That. But not everyone is able to make that jump, even if they *do* think about it. (A comparison: my parents know I’m poly, and they understand that I’m not cheating & so on. They accept it (slightly reluctantly), but they don’t *understand* it, and they have a lot of social conditioning that says that it is wrong and weird and so on. I accept that I’m doing something that does not fit well in general societal norms, acceptable though it is within my social circles, and that the best my parents & I can manage is that slightly uneasy acceptance.)
Love is a good thing, yes.
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