Little Voices

The voices in my head are pretty insidious, but they are still a part of me. They are still my own brain telling me things. It feels like it's my mom, or my best friend when I was 12, or teenage boys making fun of me. But really, it's just me. The sentiments may have come from outside me originally, but they are part of me now.

This feels important to clarify. When I worked as a domestic violence crisis counselor, there was something I used to tell the DV victims/survivors I worked with: It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Of course if someone has abused you it is never ever your fault. However, you are the one who has to get yourself out of the situation. You are encouraged to ask for help, and we will help you any way we can and find other folks to help you as well, but the ultimate responsibility for freeing yourself lies with you.

I'm not saying that insecurity and anxiety are like domestic violence, except in this small way: It's not my fault that I have this disorder, but it is my responsibility to take care of myself.

The thought patterns of insecurity, which I sometimes call the voices in my head -- they are not my fault, but no one but me can alter what is inside my own mind. They are me, they are part of me, they are not actually the voices of the people I took them from.

Giving Up Insecurity

Yesterday I decided I'm giving up insecurity. It's not quite like giving up smoking, or TV. You know when you've had a smoke, or watched TV.

It's more like breaking a habit, like biting your nails. You can't smoke if you don't have cigarettes, but your nails are always there, and if you're in the habit of biting them, you are likely to do it before you realize what you're doing. It requires a lot of patience and remembering to take your fingers away from your mouth when you catch yourself doing it.

Insecurity is like that. It's thought patterns, little voices telling you you're not good enough, not pretty enough, too weird, too stupid, too insecure. Thought habits can be broken just like biting your nails. Thoughts like this:

I'm not pretty enough. I'm just as pretty as anyone else. I'm prettier than her.

Comparisons are an insidious part of this. My goal is not to compare, negatively or positively, but just to be. I am. I don't have to be pretty, I don't have to be ugly, I don't have to be smart, or talented, or ambitious.

Just like Meg Murray, I am. The end. I am.

Penises and Anxiety Drugs

I met Chris that first summer after I had become single. Like most of my trysts, he and I were matched on a popular dating site; at the time my dating goals consisted of interacting with as many penises as possible.

Let me tell you, Chris had a nice one.

The first time we met in person was at a bar near my apartment. He was hungry; I drank and listened to him talk. Although he talked too much, he was pleasant to look at, if a little older than my usual preference -- 42 to my 34. I heard about his friends, his girlfriend who up and moved to another state, his job, possibly his drug habits. Maybe I learned about the drug habits later.

When he had walked me to my front steps, I meant to hug him goodbye but found myself disinclined to let go. When he kissed me, it made sense. So I asked if he wanted to come inside. He wasn't the first man I had asked inside since the breakup, I don't want it to seem like he was. But he was one of the first.

Come to learn, he had some beautiful tattoos and he really knew what to do with his hands. He was also thin and well-endowed so he could actually touch me with his hands while he was inside me, a new experience for me. Afterwards, we realized we had friends in common, or rather that his closest friends were acquaintances of mine, people my best friend from college knew through her husband.

When I called my friend, she squealed as is her wont. Yes, she knew Chris. Yes, she thought he was gorgeous. In half an hour she had me worked up about his potential as a boyfriend. Chris wanted a girlfriend, and had probably five women on his roster of candidates for the position.

The anxiety had started. Even though I hadn't been looking for a boyfriend, suddenly I wanted to see more of Chris, spend time with him, kiss him, fuck him, and be his girlfriend. He told me that he wanted a woman to take care of him, and I thought "I could be that woman!" He wasn't what I wanted, not really. I didn't really want a boyfriend who wanted taking care of, and certainly not one who was a walking pharmacopoeia who regularly drove while stoned. Suddenly, though, the idea of being someone's girlfriend again seemed irresistible, and my anxiety grew into a beast taking over my middle. I wanted it, I didn't want it, I wanted to be rid of the fear and stress. I called him and tried to talk him into being my boyfriend, thinking that I'd feel better if he just said yes, dammit.

He didn't. Although he seemed somewhat open to the idea, he thought I was too young and he didn't say yes, and I was so mortified at my behavior that I didn't talk to him for two weeks. When I finally reached out again, he let me know that he had decided to date another woman exclusively.

It was after that episode that I decided to see a psychiatrist and be put on anti-anxiety medication, because I realized I was making decisions based on what would make me feel better, rather than what was best for me. My experience with Chris hurt, a lot. However, he was a catalyst for what later felt inevitable -- my reliance on meds to keep my anxiety in check.

I'm not totally convinced that I want to be on drugs for the rest of my life, but relationships are scary as fuck and I don't want to navigate them anymore without the drugs.

What My Brain Did

Last night just before bed, I got an email from Partner asking if we could move our usually scheduled weekend date from Saturday to Friday night.

Not a problem, right? Sure, if I'm free Friday (I was), we can do that, no sweat. Unfortunately, we had been considering a possible camping trip for this weekend, which I had assumed would have to start on Saturday in order to get set up before nightfall. Never mind that it's ass-cold and I probably don't want to sleep outdoors in November, even though Partner is a furnace.

So when I got that email, my brain did its thing:

1. He's either forgotten or doesn't care that we had been discussing going camping together. 
2. If he doesn't want to hang out on Saturday, he doesn't want to go camping with me. 
3. I wish he would talk to me about it before just deciding not to go camping with me.
4. He's probably going to go camping with his other friend, who is much more outdoorsy and buff than I am. He likes her more than me and would rather hang out with her than with me.
5. If he asks me questions like that, it means he would rather do something else than hang out with me and I'm being an asshole if I say no, especially if I don't have a reason other than "I don't like having Saturdays free; it makes me anxious." 
6. Camping is his thing he does with his other friend; obviously he'd rather do that with her. I'm soft and weak and haven't slept in a tent since 1993, and I can't sleep without earplugs and a shower before bed and I always have to pee right after I get sleepy enough to fall asleep.
7. I want us to have our own things that we do together. My hobbies aren't good enough.

When I got into work this morning, we talked about it a little online, and he was all, "I wasn't sure you were up for it, and why can't we go on Friday?" 

I had wanted to release a little of the emotion by describing it to him, but I had forgotten that online chat is the worst medium for that and he got pissed off. I actually have a rule about not discussing emotions via chat because that's always what happens, whereas when we do it in person I am able to stress much more easily that my feelings are only feelings and I'm not blaming him or making him responsible for them. It really helps me to describe my feelings and name them, and to do it out loud to the person with whom the feelings are related. 

The weird thing is, I'm not that anxious about this situation. We're supposed to hang out tonight, and I think I can explain what was going on for me then. Obviously, I'm somewhat anxious since I'm writing about it, but it could be a lot worse. 

Problems I Don't Have

Today I have been making plans with a friend to go to the movies. My friend has recently started living with her (monogamous) partner. Since the partner has moved here to be with her, she can't leave him alone of an evening because he will have nothing to do. He doesn't have other friends in the area, and apparently can't spend time on his own. To be fair, her roommates are having a party tonight and I would find it weird to be at a party at my partner's house when my partner wasn't there.

Another friend of mine moved in with her partner about half a year ago. Once that happened, it became impossible to spend an evening with her without him, because she couldn't leave him alone either.

We all have known people who once they acquired a partner, especially a live-in partner, were never to be seen again sans partner. A common feature of modern life, it separates single people from partnered people in an ugly way. Couples do all things together; singles look on, jealous. A single person spending time with a couple can feel like a third wheel. Couples can smugly show up together to parties. Coupledom is what we're supposed to aspire to.

I don't want to be like that. I don't envy couples. I've been that person, and it wasn't good for me. I want to be my own individual person, and I want my partners to be their own individual persons. Part of me wants to have a talk with my friend about her partner needing to make his own friends, but most of me thinks that's a lesson people need to learn for themselves. I don't know if I'd have listened when I was in the thick of it, if someone would have told me. But it sucks to be thinking that someone was more fun when they were single, an individual, free and untethered.

I am that. I go where I want, I do who I want. I spend time with my partner when we make plans together, and we sometimes do go to parties together or spend time with other folks together as a couple. But most of my social time is without him, and I like it that way. I want our time together to be special. I want my time to be special with everyone who is important to me.

Drugs!

There is a big ol' stigma to taking psychoactive drugs in our culture. Any drugs, really, but psych meds especially. We should be able to teach our minds to not worry or be depressed. But over the years I've become less and less forbearing of pain.

Once when I was in my 20s, I threw my back out while bending over to tie my shoelaces. I spent the next five or so days in agony, but I still went to work. I could barely move, but I rode the subway and sat at my desk all day. If you've ever done that, you know that prone is really the only bearable position, followed by standing. Sitting down is excruciating. I would take breaks every so often and go lie on my back in the staff lounge. If that were to happen now, I'd be on my back taking muscle relaxers and whimpering, not hauling my ass to work every day.

It was the same with anxiety for many years. I bulled through it, pretending it wasn't happening, and being angry at myself that I couldn't just turn my brain off. It was only in the past couple years that I decided that psych meds were a thing I could avail myself of.

This is not an uncommon story. Plenty of people don't realize that drugs can help them, or they think they don't deserve help, or their problems are bad enough to require pharmaceutical intervention. It's probably not true. If drugs can improve your life, why not try them? (Hah, if my middle school self could catch me writing that, she would probably kick me in the shins.)

I do still struggle with the idea that the drugs might be masking legitimate problems. However, this seems less and less likely, as I have a normal amount of concern about issues that need addressing. Just yesterday, I decided that my partner and I needed to have a conversation about the way we plan to spend time together, because it wasn't working for me. I was a little nervous before this conversation, but the process was smooth and I didn't freak out, which would have been unnecessary and probably inevitable before my latest round of meds.

Openness

When I think about poly, the word "open" comes up a lot. Relationships can be open. People can be open to various relationships.

Since everyone has their own idea of what open relationships are, this is what I mean by it: A relationship where the members are free to have sex with people who are not part of the relationship. This could mean that the partners can have casual sex with others, serious relationships including sex, friends with benefits, etc. People can be monogamous (or "monogamish") and still have open relationships, if they are having sex only and not relationships with the other folks. I think polyamory can be closed as well, for example a quad relationship where there are four people who have sex with each other but not with anyone else. 

Right now I'm thinking more about openness as in openness to ideas. I have a hard time with dating, not because I don't know what I want, but because I'm open to various different relationship configurations. I don't want to miss out on anything because I just wasn't open to it.

So here are a few relationship configurations I think I would enjoy:

• A long-term casual sex friendship where we met up once a week or a couple times a month for fun sexy times, but didn't hang out much outside of that.
• A long-term romantic relationship where we hung out once a week and did date stuff and had fun sexy times.
• A long-term or even short-term relationship with a male-male couple where both men were bi and into me.  
• A romantic relationship where we spent less time together than once a week but the times were very pleasant.
• A relationship that was essentially a friendship but we also had sex and that didn't make it weird.

I suspect that it's not useful to consider these all separately, as they can definitely bleed one into another, but I'm feeling frustrated right now, both with the lack of relationship possibilities in my own life, and with my inability to follow up with the couple that I do have.