Tag: unthreading

002 – sexuality

Alright folks, today I want to write about something I’ve been sitting on for a while. And that is – my ~discovering my sexuality~ journey. It’s been terribly complex (still is), but I think I finally have some answers – answers that come with their sweet share of complex emotions – but for the last couple months as I’ve been riding down an intense heartbreak, I’ve also slowly been recognizing and accepting a new immense relief that’s been coming around. Something that must only mean that I’m at least somewhat beyond the muddy cloud of “WTF DO I WANT”. 

Weirdly, the last couple years have been full of a lot of open questions, most of which are still unanswered.. but over the last few months I’ve also just wanted to play around with writing a little bit more. @visakanv calls things like these word vomits, and i’d like to do the same. Right now this is just a note in my notes app, but I hope to set up a website or something in the next month or so, so I can start sharing them to a single sink.

So it seems that these answers come to me at a good time – a time where i’m motivated enough to try to make them coherent and share them out into the world. 

However, writing, thinking and talking about sexuality, though extremely interesting, carries a big obvious problem with it. It involves “coming out”. 

Now, coming out probably deserves a whole other word vomit by itself. It’s such a complex and personal act, so different for everyone. But I’ll try to write about it in the context of this piece. I was 18 when I’d realized that I’m not straight. So I picked the “bisexual” label for myself and then continued to do life “normally”. The people who needed to know knew about it and I was mostly comfortable enough with the idea of it. I did still operate on a “need to know” basis, and I think I still do, to a large extent, but I’ve been questioning it lately. I’ve always had a complex relation with “attention (seeking and receiving)” as well, and thus coming out was always something I’d been conflicted about. 

One of the biggest problems I always had with the idea of coming out was context. And I know now as I write about it that this is a problem with anything that is important or vulnerable to me. How do I, when I tell someone something about myself, capture the confusion and the story that exists behind that piece of information? How can I say “I’m queer” without always wanting to talk about the whole story? How can I say “I’m currently exclusively dating women” and yet hold back this simultaneous thought of “I know I sound really sure about what I want but I question this everyday.” And today I realize this comes from an unnecessary need of wanting to be exactly right, all the time. Wanting to be be precisely correct, to really live up to what I say, to not say something if I’m not sure about it. Only recently I’ve accepted that I cannot fulfill this need for myself. I can try my best, but of course my thoughts and feelings are subject to change. Nobody else holds this almost crazy expectation from me (as people rarely do), it was mostly inherent.

Apart from context, there’s the second big one. Shame. Any queer person (person who’s queer? i’m not sure what the correct usage is at this point) can probably go on for ages about shame, I’m sure, but I’ll save you, the reader, from that, for now. But in general, of course shame is a big rock. Even once I was beyond my “own” feelings of shame, there’s the collateral shame to think about (i.e. shame that my close ones might feel about my sexuality). I sound really chill in this paragraph I know, but I’ve only recently slightly risen above that. And I needed a really strong close person to truly help me see that.

The third one, and this one sucks a little for me to accept because I haven’t seen enough dialog around it – but the third one is a very selfish one – the risk of losing “free” attention from men (right now, and.. maybe even forever?). Addressing this opens two questions up – 1/ do I even want attention from men – if so in what ways? 2/ maybe I just don’t want it right now, and it’s probably okay if i realize that i do want it later? (The second one again ties back into the initial problem of context, and how hard it is for me to accept that “right now” is all there is.) This problem I think is very normal, and yet a little hard to accept. It’s probably the same as staying in a relationship someone’s not completely happy with – because they risk losing some of the things they like – generally comfort, normalcy, some sort of happiness, even if it’s not fully real? So, yep. It’s that. But of course I know what lies at the other end – probably, attention that I do want. Attention that I will maybe value more, maybe like more, maybe like in different ways. Possibly, real happiness. Or at least, more answers. Or at least, new questions.

Now that I’ve acknowledged and addressed the three big problems with coming out, I can safely come out. I don’t know where on the Kinsey scale I lie and I don’t know what my labels are – but for now I’m exclusively dating women and identifying as queer.

Now that I’ve addressed coming out, I come back to sexuality. (Do you see how amazing it is to unthread the levels of thoughts and feelings? ah I love it). (Re)discovering and accepting my sexuality has been so amazing. I’ve been developing new crushes left and right, I’ve been discovering how exciting it can be to have sustained eye contact with women, I’ve been discovering so much beauty in the world. I’m feeling super optimistic about the world and life. And the one that makes me the most happy – I’m finally accepting men for who they are. I’m excited about rediscovering them as equal members of the society who I might just not be sexually attracted to. This is the one I’m most excited to write more about, and hopefully I can do that in another piece. 

001 – all creative work is vulnerable

I’m stuck in a new place. I’ve 5 word-vomits sitting in my notes app, I’ve set up a WordPress website and everything, I’ve tried making one post public and hidden it again. Just five days ago I was super excited to write quickly and publish quickly, and get to ten published posts as quickly as possible. But today I feel like it’s a hard act, I’m feeling hesitant. I’m feeling hesitant about being vulnerable. Not about the writing per se, since we’ve established that we don’t need to worry about the quality, but about the content. It’s real, it’s raw. 

I first saw the words “all art is vulnerable” on one of Timothy Goodman’s posts, and it resonates a lot from time to time. And while I’m not at the stage where I can call these word-vomits art (hence the title), the feeling’s still the same, of course. And since I’ve taken up this project at a time where most of my “battles” have reached their brim, of course all of my writing is going to be about all of it. At present, there’s three big rocks in my life that are not fully resolved and sometimes (often) cause me a lot of shame and pain. They’re 1/ my body dysmorphia, anxiety and occasional depression, 2/ my sexuality 3/ my relationship with my work. I’m also aware that they might never feel fully resolved and that’s okay too. But of course they’re going to show up if I talk to anyone honestly. And of course I’m going to be honest in a word-vomit, how can I not be? 

So I guess I need to accept that the only way I can write, write, and write, is to accept the following few things

  • These three things are a big part of me 
  • These things do cause me some shame and hence I’m a little afraid to put them out into the world 
  • There’s things that people will think (if they read this) and opinions that they will form 
  • There’s a big part of me that worries about what they’ll think and what opinions they’ll form 
  • The only way out is through 

Well, there it is. Maybe it’ll be easier now. A lot of amazing people have said a lot of amazing things about vulnerability. It was slightly over a year ago when I’d first seen Brené Brown’s – A Call to Courage. This was the first time someone had made me think about life from the lens of vulnerability. Nobody had ever explained the word better than she had done it, or at least – nobody had ever talked about it the way she had. And I knew then that that’s all there is to life. Vulnerability and connection. So, I know, that it’s okay that I’m feeling this, and that maybe I’ll continue to feel this all the time. Yet, it’s hard. So I’d love to think about, in a little detail, what I hope to achieve by being vulnerable with these word-vomits. Why should I publish these? In the best case scenario, what do I get? In the worst case scenario, how do I cope and continue doing it anyway – if I need to? 

I do have some experience with being vulnerable on the internet, so I’ll probably consider that as well.

How have I been vulnerable in the past and how have I benefited from it?

  • I started posting “artsy” pictures on Instagram a few years ago. I think I’ve developed as a “photographer”. I started from super basic stuff, really really basic phone camera stuff. Got a good amount of validation from various kinds of people – people whose skills I admired, people whose tastes I admired. Unexpected, genuine compliments. Great conversations. Confidence. Development of skills. Development of taste. Stronger connections with some of these people.
  • Then, I started posting some music stuff a couple years ago as well. This one was actually harder since it was much more vulnerable, since I’d had negative feelings about my voice in the past. I also posted videos, which was very hard too since I’d had negative feelings about my ~aesthetic~ in the past as well. Regardless, a similar thing happened. The compliments and validation made me genuinely wonder and eventually believe that I’m not “as bad” as I’d thought I was. I ended up starting singing lessons. I got better. I started owning the fact that I like to play music / sing. I even started dreaming about composing music someday.
  • Lastly, I joined twitter and started posting about my body dysmorphia and anxiety. Again, terribly hard when I started. Got a ton of engagement on all of that “content”. But so much to be grateful for! I remember it being super scary when more and more IRL friends started following me. But it opened the door for amazing IRL conversations as well. I realized I like conversations. I realized I like meeting and talking to new people! (Something I’d never thought about myself before.) I met new people through Twitter – it was pretty cool.

I mean, it’s all here. It’s all good things. So let’s get to the next question. 

What do I hope to achieve from this project? 

  • For starters, it’ll probably be a good additional point for the next time I’m questioning something like this again. Instead of 3 points in the previous paragraph, I’ll have 4.
  • Just based on evidence, I’ll probably be a slightly better writer at some point of time if I keep doing this. Or at least, my perspective on my writing could become more holistic. I could become okay with calling it writing instead of constantly calling them word-vomits.
  • @visakanv mentioned this in his reasons for doing this, but yes, I’ll probably be a different person by doing this, and doing it publicly. And I’m excited to meet her!
  • Of course, I could make some new friends because of this, have new and/or deeper conversations. Good ol’ connection. 

In the worst-case scenario, what happens, and how do I cope, and go on if I need to?

  • People will know of details about me that they decide they didn’t really wanna know. I suppose they wouldn’t tell me if they realize something like that. So I wouldn’t really know that they thought something like that. Even if they say something like “oh you’re being too vulnerable”.. well, what is too vulnerable? It’s me. Of course I could be judged for these parts of me, but that’s probably a small price to pay for all of those benefits I listed above. So I’m sure I’ll cope.
  • I mean that’s all there generally is, right? Fear of judgement. The one that I feel most vulnerable about is my sadness. I don’t know. There’s this one word-vomit that’s super raw, reading it makes me feel a lot of pain. Now, I’m not assuming that a third person will feel it just because I do. But maybe I’m scared of the feelings of pity. Nobody wants to be pitied. Well, compassion is different from pity. So maybe people will know how to be compassionate instead. Regardless, I wouldn’t know. Or I probably wouldn’t care in the grand scheme of things etc. So I guess I’ll cope? I guess we’ll see. 

Okay, things make sense now. I’m not sure in what order I’ll start posting these. In the order I wrote them or in some other order.  But I think I’m ready.