#probably because of her own hitchhiker past. so she understands Some reciprocity

[bogkeep]

apologies for i must whine about my family once more

mom: ugh it was so much easier to buy 3 big cartons of milk from the previous brand, now i have to buy FIVE cartons, it's so annoying

related to The Milk Conspiracy, i went grocery shopping with my mom yesterday. it went something like this

me: mhmmm

mom: but it's the principles

me: absolutely

mom: you make things so difficult for yourself by having principles

me: life is very difficult yes

mom: maybe it's not worth having principles

Thank You For The Sage Advice Mother........

cut to tonight, one of the fantastic beasts movies is on tv, and she's trying to convince me to come watch (in lieu of another movie we had planned)

me: i'll pass, ive lost my taste for harry potter

mom: oh harry potter is not in it, it's just the same universe

me: i've lost my taste... for the whole universe....

mom: but these movies are so well made! i love them!

me: that's great, i unfortunately have lost the ability to enjoy them. i don't suppose you know what jkr has been up to?

mom: i don't care

me, Absolutely Not Getting Into This: have fun with the movie :)

my mom can do and think whatever she wants, it's fine. i just get really annoyed that she keeps talking to me like a naive little boy who knows not the ways of the world when i'm literally turning 30 in a month. some years ago (when i had a full time job) she commented on my monthly donations to the red cross and doctors without borders, two reputable charities that i trust, saying it's a poor financial decision... recently she told me i'm really sensitive and get easily offended and upset when she's just trying to give advice. like how am i supposed to explain that just because *she* thinks having principles is a chore and waste, i can't seem to quite turn them off? and i definitely do Not want to explain how much i'm biting my tongue and try to be really strategic about picking my fights. but wow yeah thank you for respecting my lifestyle and differing opinions. so gracious

[agameofme]

5/42: September 2018 and My Strange Ongoing Search for Love

42, as many people know, is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, according to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, it’s an answer that only serves to raise questions, since nobody knows what the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is, and thus they have no idea what to make of this answer.

This month, I turned 42, and it raises questions for me as well. Am I getting any closer to the kind of life I want to be living? It doesn’t feel like it. But, then, how do I get closer to such a life? How do I not let the bitterness of yet another empty year piled atop all the others get to me? Will I ever find what I’m looking for? Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like it gets increasingly unlikely with every passing year.

This month also marked five years since I last met someone who cracked me open, someone I wanted to be there with and for, someone I wanted to see and know and to be seen and known by. I guess most people meet people all the time who they find attractive and interesting, people they could see themselves being with. It’s not that way at all for me. I’m too guarded. I don’t know how things work for most people because they don’t work that way for me. I try “dating” through dating apps and whatnot but it just feels all wrong. It’s not what I need. I need friendship first, fun and trust and closeness and safety, sincerity and realness and depth, before there can be anything else. Sometimes I look at dating profiles where people talk about sex and I feel like an alien, because even though I’m 42, in terms of my experience I’m 17, and I’m insecure about my body, and I don’t understand at all how people can start there, rather than being concerned with whether or not you even like each other as people first. It’s so foreign to my entire experience, or, rather, my complete lack of it.

My therapist occasionally mentions confidence. The idea that confidence is attractive. Sure, of course, I get that. I want people to glimpse the person I could be, to see what I have to offer. But I can’t pretend that I’m not extremely inexperienced, and sometimes extremely lonely, and also extremely particular, a person locked up who can only be opened by someone who holds the key. I can’t pretend that I’m the same person I would be if I knew love better than I do. I’m not. We are all changed by touch, warmth, love, closeness, or by the lack of those things. By the lack of someone to give those things to, who just by receiving them makes us feel like our own love is valuable, too. Who reminds us, just by being there, that we are worth knowing and loving, worth going places with, worth sharing a life with. And so I can’t pretend that I’m an ordinary 42-year-old, with an ordinary amount of experience, and not someone who still loves with the excitement and the fear and all the uncertain yearning to be seen and known of a 17-year-old.

I played Gone Home again recently. There’s a journal entry in which Sam reveals the doubt she carries inside that Lonnie, the one person who stands out from the crowd for her, the one person with the big gold star around her, could ever look at her and see something that special, too.

And Lonnie answers her question with a kiss. 

The truth is that I’m still waiting for that first experience of validation and reciprocity, where I know, for once, that I stand out for someone who stands out for me. I still don’t know how that feels. So I enter those situations, if and when they come along, with all the trepidation Sam feels in that moment, as she falteringly gives voice to her longings.

It’s not that I haven’t dated anyone the past few years. I’ve dated a few people, but it just felt wrong. They were all cool people in their own way, but none of them had what it takes to open me up. They were too serious for me to loosen up and play and be silly and have fun with, like the 17-year-old in me still wants to do. Or they were too closed off themselves. Or...something. They just weren’t right.

Where’s the dating site for people who hate dating, people like me who need organic connection and friendship first, that maybe then evolves into something else, if it feels right? What are those of us who need to start there supposed to do?

That person I met five years ago didn’t reciprocate my feelings, but one night, they held me for a while. They knew how I felt and were, I’m sure, trying to comfort me, though of course my pain wasn’t their fault, and they didn’t owe me anything. But that’s the kind of person they are. To them, holding me was probably no big deal. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But there’s been so little touch and closeness with people I actually really like in my life that, for me, it remains the single most powerful and important physical experience of my life. I knew it wasn’t real, not in the way I wanted it to be, anyway. I knew it wasn’t the connection with them I’d hoped for. And yet it felt as if the chorus of angels from Daft Punk’s “Touch” was singing inside me.

“Hold on. If love is the answer, you’re home. Hold on. If love is the answer, you’re home. Hold on. If love is the answer, you’re home.”

It almost felt, for the first time in my life, like I was home. But I knew it wasn’t real, just like it’s not real in the song, as we learn when the chorus of angels abruptly cuts out. Just a dream. An illusion, that leaves the character in the song needing more.

While I was in their arms, they brushed their thumb gently across the skin of my arm, and the whole world started vibrating. After spending my whole life dissociating, fleeing into my own imagination from the pain and upheaval in my own home growing up, from the shame and anguish of gender dysphoria when I got a little older, I finally felt fully present in the moment. Totally safe. With no desire at all to be anywhere but right there. I finally knew what it was to feel like I was right where I was supposed to be.

A few weeks ago, I glanced at their Instagram for the first time in years, to see if anything’s changed for me, I guess. It hadn’t. Their eyes still brought my walls crashing down. Looking at them still made my heart swell with some mix of admiration and adoration and yearning. After all this time, I still miss them so much.

I hope I don’t have to wait another five years to find someone else who cracks me open. I really hope that next time I do, that person feels something for me, too.

So here I am. I’m 42, and yet…

I’m still Elio, for whom one person stands out on the dance floor.

I’m still Sam, for whom the simplest touch with the right person can feels very intimate.

I’m still Yorkie, completely inexperienced, young and old(er) at the same time.

I’m still Diya, who needs to start slow…

And I’m still Min, who sees the signs.

The odds are against me, but I can’t give up.

Wish me luck.