It is almost six months since the day I fought with a family member and this blog eventually went dark. I wrote for two months on that story, and then stopped. It would be nice to think that the issue also stopped, that by refusing to write more about it I essentially exorcised it from my life. But by now we should all know better.
It is time now to revisit. It is, in fact, insistently necessary.
Many of the comments I recieved during the initial shock commented on my strength, or my rationality, or the capability demonstrated by my reaction. I remain grateful for the support and kindness, although at the time a part of me thought this was all a bit odd. I just did what I had to do, I thought. I did what I needed to do to survive and still be able to look myself in the face at the end of the day.
I commented recently on Under The Boot that although I have more issues than I can shake a stick at, most of them don’t make it to this forum. Most of them sit in a wasteland of stubbed text documents in a folder on my desktop, abandoned. What I didn’t mention in the comment is that even these stubs are an achievement for me. I keep them around long after they become just bits of digital clutter.
My family member and I eventually decided to leave our argument alone, brush it under the rug and go on with our lives, so to speak. Here’s what you have to understand for the rest of this to make sense: this is exactly the way I’ve dealt with every pyschological issue since I was ten years old. It has taken me years, tears, and a lot of wincing at my own stupidity to get me to acknowledge and address issues head on, to write down my musings, to practice self-awareness. Even now I’m not very good at it. I often approach problems sideways, wending my way like a crab.
I moved to Australia, I essentially erased my life and started over, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought to myself, Damn it, I have dealt with this. Enough is enough. This pain is firmly locked away in a dark part of my mind, if not exorcised completely.
Of course I was lying to myself. Of course that was complete bullshit. Of course it still hurts. Probing the wound is as easy as reading my archives.
I still, occasionally, cry until I’m exhausted enough to sleep. I still find my self-confidence weakened. And I still sometimes want to scream whenever my family member comes to the phone, flush with that initial childish anger:
I turned 25 last month. I’m just a kid. I’m not supposed to hurt this much.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Why did you do this to me?
And because I am brilliantly twisted enough to make even this into a completely personal guilt trip (instead of a partially personal one), I can’t help but think that if I were really as strong as I appear to be, things would be better by now.
This blog has slowed to a trickle, and if the truth be told, it’s not just because I uprooted my life and lost my Internet access. It is also because this forum has undeniably changed, and it’s becoming clearer to me as time passes that the changes are not for the better.
One of the reasons I like blogging is that I like to go back and read what I’ve written. I like to mine my old words for new ideas. I have not read back in several months, because when I try to I cannot get my family member’s face out of my head: their thoughts when they read my words, their concern and outrage. The red carpet of our living room that I stared at while they yelled at me over Thanksgiving weekend. I begin to think that I should just change the blog’s background to a picture of that damned carpet, and give up any hope of ever separating msyelf from that pain again.
What this means is that every time I open a new post and begin to write, the words feel ungainly and weighted. Everything is filtered through the lense of potential pain. The headline flashes: Who Might Be Reading This Time?
I wrote that I would continue to speak out because I recognize that speaking out helps people. I still believe that. I refused to move this blog, find a new place, go to ground and drop from the radar. I figured that doing so would be useless, the damage done.
But I didn’t manage to throw off the hurt and worry and blithely continue. Not just here, but in my entire life, things changed. My fantasies changed. My kinks shifted. Even the way I kiss my boy changed, for a little while. I tried to keep writing, keep teaching, keep fucking and playing, while it became increasingly clear that every time I wrote, taught, fucked, played, I was committing a political act.
I wanted desperately to retreat, to be safe again, to just sweep it all under the rug and get on with things, maybe in a different way, maybe the same. But I didn’t, because politically and personally I don’t believe I should have to retreat and disappear to make things better.
It is cloyingly noble, and it makes me a bit embarrassed. Especially with this next part thrown in.
I have to admit something, and doing so is painful in itself. I was not prepared for how exhausting it is when the only thing that keeps me writing is the uncanny idea that if I don’t keep writing, the sexual terrorists will win.
The initial explosion didn’t kill me, but the little everyday grinding reminders might yet finish me off.
Perhaps this entire thought process bespeaks of lack of “closure”, but I’m not so sure. I have been told many times over the years that I need to “have it out” with my family member. Have it out over what, I ask, and why? I remain convinced that it is not in my or my family’s interest to force a fight to death or disownment. I think that if I’m going to move forward, I’m going to have to do it on my own.
In the meantime, I don’t know what to do about this blog. Maintaining it is both satisfying and upsetting. I have to work hard to get the joy out, like the whole thing is a vat of olives pressed one too many times.
Much of this sounds melodramatic and adolescent. I’ve tried to avoid that. It’s hard not to sound adolescent when all you want to do is whine that life is shit and it isn’t fucking fair. But it seems necessary to acknowledge this thing that is still happening to me, six months later.
The truth is, I feel damaged. I am terrified that the damage may be irreparable.
At the time I was devastated, yet confident. Now I’m just tired. I’m fed up with politics and censorship and bad writing and family drama. I’ve had enough, and I’m pissed that this pain keeps hanging around and making me cry on warm nights.
22 Comments
Oh honey. I feel your pain. All I can offer is that once I was in a similar situation, and unprepared for (and devastated by) the reality of someone I loved suddenly seeing me as someone despicable and pathologically deluded. The only reason I’m not still totally scarred is that it occurred to me that this person had none of the background that would make an exposure like this one comprehensible. So I swallowed all my personal feelings about BDSM, and went back to that family member with a calm, rationed explanation of safe, sane, consensual play–all the earliest knowledge that I’d forgotten was not common knowledge.
I won’t pretend that it made everything perfect. I know that she still doesn’t really understand, and probably never will–she’s vanilla like that. But it made the disgust leave her eyes, and while we will probably never speak of it again, I think she respects my life choices as much as she is able to.
I’m sorry to hear that this is still bugging you so deeply. I was one of the poeple that assumed that the silence here was due to being uprooted and (voluntarily) being thrown across the globe, but I can understand how that drama can be hard to deal with.
I hope you come to terms with this, because your writing is fantastic and it deserves to be shared with the world. Still, I don’t know if I can offer any advice, because I’ve never been in this situation and don’t feel remotely qualified to suggest a path to be taken. Hopefully someone who reads this blog can point you to one.
love and trans-american & -pacific hugs,
Týr
I have had many fights with my parents, though not over exactly this issue. I do, however, think I know where you’re coming from, and I offer my experience, for what it’s worth. I am older than you and have thus had more time both to think about these things and to feel that kind of pain - which doesn’t necessarily make me know more, it just gives me a longer perspective.
Anyway, I have come to the decision not to have things out with my parents. My father would feel guilty, my mother would enrage me by denying that anything happened the way I remember it. We would all be to varying degrees angry, in pain, and frustrated afterwards. Sometimes, if you can genuinely let go of the internal affairs of the family, it is possible to reach a sort of equilibrium. This doesn’t mean that one forgives and forgets, or that one thinks it was all fine: it means moving on, accepting that on certain points one’s family acted like idiots, also for not very good reasons. It often requires a detachment and often physical and/or emotional distance, but it is possible to let go of the contested issues without losing all closeness. It’s hard when one’s family wants to bring them up -I have to dodge conversations I don’t want to have while also letting my father know that I love him and that we don’t need to settle old troubles - but it is doable. If, like me, you deal with emotion sideways rather than head-on, it might even be an easier way to cope.
I offer this for what it’s worth, feel free to ignore if it doesn’t speak of your experience. I would miss your blog, even though I found it only recently, were you to give it up.
Most of the time I forget that people read my blog(s). Then someone I know talks to me about a post, or comments on the blog itself, and I become paralyzed about what they’re thinking about me and my post. It goes in cycles - though granted I don’t think I’ve experienced anything as uncomfortable as your interactions with your family member.
I think that while the public perceive certain expressions of sexuality the way they do, it’s hard for writing about them to not be a political act. But a blog is both for oneself and for its readers, and I think there’s a certain tradeoff there that needs to be made for the form of writing to be successful.
I do hope that over time you can find greater peace.
Quite comfortlessly I fear that life and self-expression can feel as adolescent and annoying at even twice your age.
For once I can’t even think of something glibly humane to say. By the time I was your age I’d cut my family out of my life. But you care about yours in a way I was never able to experience.
But you really are one of the tiny group of people with whom I share aspects of this particular species of atypical sexuality whose voice actually does matter to me. With both greed and affection I hope you will find a way to talk to us more comfortably.
Eileen, it kills me to hear what you’re going through. I’m sorry you’re still in pain. But I want you to know that your blog — your writing — has been of incredible value. Your kink — your writing about your kink — has helped me, and my wife, navigate the minefield of finding our legs with BDSM. When I started out, the three blogs I read regularly were pretty much you, Dev, and Ms.160. And your blogs are still the ones I read most avidly, because the three of you put human faces, human feelings, and genuineness on the BDSM blogging scene. You guys, and the men in your life, helped wipe away (for me) the same negative stereotypes and ideas about BDSM that your relative seems to buy into. I don’t know where we’d be without you all and your writing.
I’ll admit — as the post you link to shows — that I don’t see everything that’s going on under the surface, but what I do see has been of massive help to me. I know that doesn’t undo the damage you talk about, but it needs to be said — your writing has value, your insight has helped peoples’ lives, and your lifestyle has helped other people who might otherwise still be fumbling along in shame and self-loathing and buying into the same stuff your relative was influenced by.
More than that, the fact that you’re out about your kink is an inspiration for those of us who haven’t built up the courage yet.
I don’t know, maybe I’m not making sense. But I wanted to say it anyway.
–B
I’m sure I speak for everyone reading this, that I wish I could give you a big hug right now.
The thing is, 1, 5 or maybe 10 years from now, who knows, but someday, this will get better.
Things will get better.
I promise.
I don’t know what I should say, Eileen. Of late, I haven’t been all that popular among this group of bloggers, and I fear that what I might add wouldn’t change that. Further, I’m not sure it would be taken in the spirit that’s its intended.
I can recognize your pain. You know your friends have empathy for you; they did before, and they have it here again. For six months you’ve received hugs, and warmth, and sympathy and love. Most importantly, from the people you love back, even from the people of the family that has hurt you. But none of it helps. And that’s because nothing anyone says means a fucking thing.
You want to live above ground? Then get up on your hind legs. You want to stop hiding? Then pick up a spear and go kill something. Get up and get the food that will sustain you. Because this tear-soaked porridge isn’t what you need. You’re fed up and you want to cry? Well boo hoo.
Honest, I’d be sympathetic and all but let’s remember that in the dictionary the word falls between shit and syphilis. Living is hard. Living has always been hard. And six months ago you found out that some of your lifestyle choices had consequences. Well, gee, I guess that makes you just about the only person in the world who ever had to give up anything because they made a decision. And now the cost is breaking your ovaries. Poor you.
You’re better than this. Or you’re not. You’re tougher than this. Or you’re not. Which one pisses you off more when I say it?
You want to be a writer? You want to put your words out to be dissected by ever jerk and asshole that comes along? Then you better develop some calluses, girl. You better get a thicker skin. Cause what you’ve had up to now is nothing. This has been from people who love you and have been ready to forgive you.
You better get it into your head: some of the people who read you will NEVER forgive you. No matter how kindly and softly and considerately you write. There are people who have chosen to hate writers who produce children’s books. And I’ve read what you write. I’ve read what you want people to read. You don’t write children’s books.
Last thing. Yes, yes, this all sucks and you’ve cried. But don’t go and pretend that you’ve haven’t gotten some good, reaffirming orgasms (in the very least emotional) out of what you’ve produced to date. Don’t con me, or any of these people here. You love it. You want more of it. You’ll pay the price tag even if it kills you.
Get used to it. This is life. Tough shit for all of us. Get on with the program and throw the porridge out.
I was thinking pretty much what Axe said - perhaps with more time, your perspective will change a bit, and it will get better. For some reason, I suppose it’s the reference to “six months,” I keep thinking about when my dad died - yes, it was devastating at first, but I also had a sense of purpose about it. Go back to college, finish the semester, direct the play I was doing as planned. But about six months later, it hit me, hard. And I thought, “why now? why aren’t I past this part? Where did all this grief come from NOW?” It’s just the nature of trauma, I suppose, that it doesn’t come along in an orderly time period. With all this rambling, I think my point is that how you feel at six months isn’t necessarily how you’re going to feel at one year, or two, or five. You won’t know until you get there. You may always hurt from this, and you may always have difficult family dynamics from it. But you may find your attitude about blogging continues to shift as the time passes further from that one particular incident. Let it happen. If you don’t feel like blogging right now, there’s no law - from us, your readers, or from inside you, saying that if you don’t blog, the terrorists win - saying that you must. It can be as simple as that. And perhaps when you let some time pass and see where it takes you… you’ll see when and if you truly feel like blogging again, whether it’s changed for you and become something different, maybe even something better.
Not sure if all of that made sense, but if it didn’t, just know this: I encourage you to think of yourself as a person first, and a blogger second, and do whatever the person needs right now. I absolutely love your writing - but doing what’s right for YOU is the most important.
The only thing I have learned in my 39 years on the planet, is that pain lasts. It lasts from childhood, and it lasts from yesterday.
Joy does too, though. So cling to that.
Learn from both.
Tell others what you learn.
It’s really the only way the world gets better.
You wrote ” I’m just a kid. I’m not supposed to hurt this much.”
Sweetheart, that’s when it hurts the most.
Hang in there. You WILL find a way.
(thank you B for your kind words above)
Alexis! I wondered if you’d ever be coming back. You may not believe it, but I am even glad to see you. And yes, I do understand the spirit in which your comment is meant to be taken.
Essentially, I agree with you. You’ve said, “Life is hard, you need to get over it.” As opposed to my other commenters, who’ve essentially said, “I’m sorry life is hard, I hope you get over it.”
Well yea. I’m not stupid, Alexis. I know living is hard. I know things would be a lot easier for me if I just toughed up. I know that to be a sucessful writer I will need to figure out a way to deal with criticism and hatred.
And you’re right. The things that are being said here may be temporarily soothing, but they don’t actually help, and what you’ve said doesn’t “help” either.
Truth is, everybody knows what I need to do (including me) and no one knows how to do it (including me.) The process is not only unique but essentially private. Find the food that will sustain me? I don’t know what that is yet, and until I figure it out I’m still going to hurt.
Honest? You wouldn’t be sympathetic. You want me to just get on with it, maybe even get myself to a point similar to the one you’re at. Maybe you’re impatient even. Yes, I’m impatient too. I’m pissed off that I haven’t figured everything out yet, and that the skin I’m growing refuses to grow any fucking faster.
But I do think it’s important to acknowledge and record how this issue is affecting my life. And I’d like to figure out where I’m trying to go, because although living is hard, I don’t want to end up being resigned to the idea that things are just gonna be shitty, and that’s the way it is.
You said:
Love me? Yes. Forgive me? They didn’t forgive me. I decided not to ask them to.
I hate it when people use this argument at me. Even when it’s couched in sympathetic language, it still boils down to saying that I should hurt less because other people are hurting too, or I should talk about hurting less because by talking about it I steal the soap box from other people who also want to talk. Both of those statements are illogical, and neither of them are helpful.
So yea, you can tell me to get over it because I know as well as you do that I should. But please, don’t tell me to get over it because other people have, or other people need their time to suffer.
You said that I’ve gotten some “good, reaffirming orgasms” out of what I’ve produced to date. You’re right. Absolutely I have: I love my sexuality, and I love what I’ve done in this blog. I didn’t intend to con you all into thinking that I regret my previous actions.
But will I pay the price tag even if it kills me? Why would I keep paying the price if I don’t keep getting the payoff?
Last thing: Curiously, I do write children’s books.
I remain convinced that it is not in my or my family’s interest to force a fight to death or disownment.
I notice that you seem to be implicitly assuming that those are the only two options; that reopening the discussion and coming to a conclusion whereby both parties are able to respect each other even if they wouldn’t make the same choices isn’t an option.
That might of course be true; you would know that better than me, obviously. I just wanted to make sure that you knew you were making that assumption.
My experience of coming out to my family as poly is that they still don’t really approve or understand, but I am patient & keep plugging away at it :) Which doesn’t mean having explicit discussions about it - just treating it as a part of my life which comes into conversation the same way as any of the rest of my life. And eventually they’ll get more relaxed about it. For me, that’s a way of asserting myself and refusing to lie to keep the peace, without actually pushing things into a pointless fight. I still find it bloody frustrating at times, that they *still* don’t really accept it.
Good luck - I know it’s tough.
Fair dinkum.
“Curiously, I do write children’s books.”
I am…overjoyed at the thought that you may one day have an impact on the learning and development of children around the world.
I am not out in this community but I’ve been reading the community’s blogs for many years. Eileen, your situation has compelled me to come out of hiding and to speak to this. I myself was in a very similar painful situation. I am also 25 and feel old from the situation.
It’s started over four years ago, and I think I put the nail on the coffin 9 months ago. I’m still suffering from anxiety over it. It’s so painful that to this day, unpacking the trauma will still cause me to cry until I have no energy left. I hear you when you say you feel damaged. I still feel damaged and I have only faith to rely on hoping that the damange is not irrepairable. I hear you when you say you did what you needed to do to survive. I want to let the forum know, it’s truly a fight for survival. I felt like I was gasping for precious air.
You said “The initial explosion didn’t kill me, but the little everyday grinding reminders might yet finish me off.” I get that. I had cease to function. The hurt had seeped into every fibre of my muscle and I couldn’t rinse it out. I think my face has permenently changed from the initial explosion as if the psychological trauma was physical.
I am happy to say that I found a place to heal. I’m not 100% better but I’m on my way. I survived and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done and the act I am most proud of. I’ve created my own psychological badge and wear it with honour.
I want to be here for you. I look forward to the day you create your own badge and wear yours proudly.
I told my family (or rather told once they discovered at 16) The look in their eyes does dim and diminish with time. It took over a decade for my Mother to say to me “I guess your still the same child I gave birth too, and your still the same child sitting at my table now” (close enough, better than a perverted freak!?!)
Parents and family see ‘kink’ as some how being their personal fuck up in raising you. Be yourself once they realize all the other great qualities they as family gave you are still intact..they will forgive ‘themselves’
It’s not that your parents and family are ashamed of you…they are ashamed you didn’t follow the path of the ‘norm’ they worry life will be hard for, they already know life is hard enough in the vanilla world with out being ‘different’
chin up Ellen stopping what you do in effect just gives they more ammunition to believe they are right in saying what you is SO wrong.If they see you happy eventually they might accept all the aspects of life (although choice to ignore it in public)
you are who you are…not like you can change it.
Eileen -
So this is one of those posts that I flag and want to comment on because of course it breaks me and then I never get around to doing it because it breaks me. You know, one of those. The hugs, the sympathy - you know about them.
I adore you. I cannot speak highly enough about your writing. And there are things I want to say that I don’t know how to and don’t want to say here. And these are all a bunch of highfalutin’ I-statements leading up to the fact that damn I owe you an email.
Hoo.
Boston Boy, then you’ll be overjoyed at Leanne Franson, professional children’s illustrator. While her adult web comic, Liliane, Bi-Dyke is on hiatus, and more about bisexuality than BDSM, she’s definitely A Friend. Check out the archives. She has a queer family children’s cartoon on the web, too.
If anyone here is being melodramatic, it’s Byron:
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost, except a little life.
Okay, he wasn’t here, but I invited him. These lines have been going around in my head since I ably and calmly saved my family from certain doom this November, only to find that afterwards I’m dealing with emotional implications. And if I were strong enough I would feel fine now, too. Thinking of you with love, always.
[hugs]
This post made me feel really sad, because it’s exactly like you’re living one of my worst fears. I think I know what you’re feeling right now about your blog, because I have felt similarly before but to a lesser extent. And yeah, I think it is really brave of you to keep writing in public.
Anyway, when confronted with a similar but a million-times-milder situation, I chose the less brave route, and locked my journal. I’m a coward, but I don’t think I could deal with any fallout right now. I feel like not having to worry about this gives me the room to find my courage (again? or at all, perhaps).
The thing is, even when you shouldn’t have to do something, well, we live in a world where lots of things shouldn’t happen, but they do anyway. And sometimes you have to take the pragmatic approach. I love reading what you write - I don’t think you should ever stop writing openly. But maybe what you need is to create a new safe space for yourself, to write what you want to there, without worrying about any of this. Then, *after* you have written it there, think about what risks you are willing to take posting it here. I don’t know if that’s a useful suggestion, but maybe it will help make it less painful to write if you can separate out the writing from the worrying. Maybe you just need to take some time to rest from the struggle, and get some breathing space and regain your confidence.
I know things will get better. I hope you’ll start to see positive signs of that soon.
I keep meaning to come back here and thank you each individually for your thoughts and for sharing your experiences, but I find that I’m going to have to move on from this. But thank you, everyone, especially those folks who came out of the woodwork to comment.
Post a Comment