society – untitled atm

095 – curiosities and non-monogamy

There are things I do on a daily basis which help me maintain a sense of stability even as I try to keep with the various big crazy uncertainties of life. Singing, dancing, making lists, journaling, talking to and texting with people who feel like home, watching Schitt’s Creek, making and having my morning cold coffee— these are some of the things that allow me to cope with the big questions of life. These are the things that help me cope with my exploratory needs, even when those needs are incredibly anxiety inducing.

What are some of these needs, one might wonder. Lately, it’s been curiosities around non-monogamy. Which has bought up quite a bit of tumult within me, if I’m being honest. Yesterday night I realised how invested and attached I do feel about one of the existing connections in my life right now. There’s also a lot of discomfort around realising how ingrained within me the current monogamy mental model is. It’s not just me, of course, most people I know are quite monogamous and are quite happy with it as well. But in my current circles, I’m the only one who’s “trying” to check what I prefer. One of my friends identifies as polyamorous, but he has done so for pretty much the longest time and I don’t know if he struggled with any of this, and it certainly didn’t show even if he did. Another friend experimented a bit with all this— and I actually realised I wasn’t super supportive of his explorations when he was in the throes of it— I think I was of the opinion (without perhaps being very aware about it) that we don’t need to do things if they give us so much anxiety. (He would tell me about the amount of anxiety he would experience when his partner was on dates with other people and I would just struggle to understand why they (he and his partner) were putting themselves through so much when it was so uncomfortable for the both of them). Over a year later, as I’ve reconnected with the exploratory, curious parts of me, I realise that just because new things give us (me) anxiety, it doesn’t mean new things are bad.

I’m glad I’m able to hold and face this believe again and again, with various things in life. I’ve accepted that anxieties about all the plethora of things in the world aren’t “not going to show up”, and to “delete” them can’t be my aim. The aim is to just to be in touch with what new things are worth trying despite all the anxiety, and the reasons for which I may want to try them. (“What is worth trying” is also something we cannot answer in the present, but I suppose being clear about why we’re “putting ourselves through” something can help).

Whenever I’m faced with something that’s so non-conventional, I always automatically go back to the time when I first discovered that I liked women. Somehow, that wasn’t at all anxiety inducing to me. Maybe because I discovered that through love, or maybe because it was still within the limits of “my “open” mind” as it were at the time. Basically, somehow, I wasn’t inherently homophobic and was also lucky enough to probably not have too many (openly) homophobic people around me (which I believe is why I didn’t get influenced into taking on any external homophobia either).

The topics of gender and non-monogamy on the other hand, have been uncomfortable enough. But I won’t want to blame myself for the discomfort. It’s okay that it’s uncomfortable. And I know that I can work through it, also.

So yeah, I feel better now that I’ve acknowledged and laid out the discomfort and the context of the situation here. Now to the next part: if being clear about the reasons of something can help with carrying it forward, what are my reasons for wanting to explore non-monogamy?

I think it was triggered by realising I had some residual feelings for a person while I started to see a new person, and I actually felt for a (albeit brief) period of time I actually had feelings (and curiosities about more than a single person). (Side thing here— I felt a bit guilty about this, and I feel like the monogamy model is one of the causes for the guilt.)
Did some research and reading, and of course, having curiosities for more than a single person is just the starting point. Non-monogamy is not just about having these curiosities, it’s about a lot more— ie whether you have the wish to follow these curiosities, whether you have the bandwidth for it, whether you have the capacity for very open, honest communication with multiple partners and the ability to respect different types of boundaries AND the capacity to deal with the reverse, and lastly of course whether you have the willingness to then date only within the non-monogamous pool— because the reality does seem like it is an objectively smaller pool.
I do compare romantic love with non-romantic love as of now, sometimes though. I just feel like I’m a better friend because I have multiple deep friendships. And for the same reason, I just wonder if I could also be a better “lover” if I have multiple deep romantic relationships. I basically wonder if I could be more “secure” if I was non-monogamous. I’m reading a lot more about this and of course, it’s not like I’m trying to solve my relationship with myself THROUGH other people, like I know that the security essentially has to come from me, only me, and whether I date one person or two (or zero actually), that piece of the picture has to still be painted through my own internal work.. and yet, I just feel like being “forced” to do some of the work and having different types of structures and stimuli can help with it all. (Again, as it often does with friendships and all the other types of relationships.)
I’m trying to answer this very important question for myself: Why is it that we believe that we can only (romantically) love a single person at a time? Or whether it’s even true. If it’s true (for me), I may not end up caring about the why, but if it’s not true— I would really like to know sooner than later.

There’s probably a few more things here but I’m actually really satisfied with the last point, I think that’s the crux, really.

Phew, that was a lot. Stay alive folks, cheers xx

082a – happy and jittery

“Everything is real” is my new cope to life instead of the earlier cope that was “everything is fake”. Well, it’s more like when you find the things you actually like and resonate with it’s easier to say that everything is real. Or maybe it comes back to the connected detachment theory that is “everything should be honoured but nothing matters”. So this would be somewhat equivalent to “everything is real but also everything is fake”.

I’m really happy these days and I know that happiness comes with a lot of vulnerability (such is the nature of happiness) but something I’ve learned is that nothing lasts forever so now I really make it a point to enjoy the happiness while it lasts, and be grateful for it for as long as I can be.

The universe and life will of course continue to ebb and flow but we gotta really enjoy the good stuff, it’ll be hard to cope with the bad stuff otherwise.

I want to take some time out to find and join dance classes soon because I really feel called to it and I’ve been delaying (procrastinating) for a while now.

I also discovered a superb spirituality treasure trove which I’m excited to explore more, especially as it also has a bunch of stuff on relating art and spirituality, which is something I’ve been thinking about anyway.

Admin tasks are still very tedious to do but I don’t know if there is a way to get around to doing them, since we do live in a society after all. Maybe the trick is to do them as soon as possible, so they don’t linger on my head and creative negative feelings. I’d like to work on this a bit so I can reduce the tediousness.

Being consistent with a meditation practice is still something that I need to incorporate because I can keep thinking and talking about spirituality but it’s only when I engage (or not engage) with the thoughts am I truly attempting to practice it. I cannot keep talking about the thing if I truly want to access any of it. (Related)

My mind is still active though, and I need to go back to cutting caffeine a little bit because I definitely find myself getting affecting by that a bunch.

The main thing on my mind right now is still “how do you do tasks that do not feed your soul”? Like really, how do you do them? I sometimes feel such visceral resistance to them that it becomes almost impossible to do them. Maybe I need to sit with the resistance. Or maybe I just haven’t accepted that some of them are really, actually important.

I made a list though, at least that’s some progress.

Okay, that’s all for now. I’ll be back soon! xx

026b – on softness and femininity

Random thoughts from the past have been visiting me lately. Mostly good stuff, thankfully. Memories from my childhood, often a source of comfort and warmth in the cold summers of San Francisco. What a contrast from the summers of New Delhi, eating mangoes at my nani’s house. I remember the one time I was sitting next to her watching TV, and she softly held my palm in hers, told me how pyaare and soft they were. She said she’s old now, so her hands are rough and wrinkly. I told her how I thought they’re rough because she works a lot, I’d read something like that in a book. She laughed and then accepted that without much argument.

I value the softness of my skin a lot. The one other time someone’s opinion of it affected me this much was when I was around 19. The first boy I was ever intimate with. He’d whispered a soft “wow” when he’d touched my arm, and I genuinely felt happy and grateful to have my body loved by someone. There’s something about softness and femininity being related that appeals to me, it appeals to the girl who’s always been “tomboyish” growing up. I suppose she cherishes it because it’s a visible mark of how feminine she is, something that sticks with her regardless of how she presents – regardless of the clothes she wears or the haircuts she sports.

It took me a while to become comfortable with myself and my body, years and years of misery and therapy and coping, but I think I’m finally getting there. It’s incredibly liberating, as I always knew it would be. I would imagine days like this as something from a piece of fiction, something I knew I wanted but wasn’t sure I could get. Something I was working towards but not actively so. I always thought that societal acceptance would be the easiest path to self-acceptance (even though I knew that sounded wrong, somehow), but I think it was also some sort of rejection at this stage of my life that actually sped up the process of my self-acceptance. I’d been putting a lot of effort into myself when this one brutal rejection came my way. It was devastating, but somehow made me reach a point of “I don’t care about anything anymore”. Or at least, I attribute getting to that point to that event. And with that lack of care came a lot of forced acceptance. You could perhaps call it “giving up” as well, but eventually that evolved to a healthier version of care – i.e “I do give fucks, but mostly only when I want to”.

I don’t have a lot of structure for this post, since I followed a bit of a “I’ll let the words take me where they want to” approach, and though I’m not unhappy with it, I’d love feedback if anyone happens to read this – was this as confusing as it feels to me? Thinking about Rilke’s lines now – thinking about what he said about soliciting feedback on your art. If you delve deep inside yourself, and you create art out of that knowledge and awareness, you wouldn’t have to solicit feedback. I suppose I haven’t delved inside all the way, yet.