I want to matter to you

i realized the main thing i want out of sex is soul connection and validation.  my spouse and i have a deep emotional connection. 

but other people, it’s not that i need the orgasm, conquest, stress relief, learning, or to feel powerful.  it’s not athletic, expected, or entertainment.  it’s if this amazing person wanted me, that would mean i was Good.

it’s silly because of course i’m good.  i don’t need anyone to prove i’m good with their body.  but that really is my main motivation.  if i fantasize about having sex with someone, it’s mostly i want to matter to them.  in my fantasy, i whisper, “i want to matter to you.”  because if i mattered to them, that would mean i was Good.

that’s what i wanted to tell you about therapy yesterday.  i’m trying to get approval from my dad.   the thing about my dad’s suicide is mixed with that.  trying to save people because i couldn’t save my dad.

approval

when i was 13 years old, i fell in love with a professor i had.  it was a whole saga, and it went on for about 28 years.  i tried really hard to get his approval.  i thought he was better than me.  i always blamed myself for chasing this asshole for so many years. 

but the other day i got really mad that he did that to me.  i was like a toy to him.  he didn’t have to do that.  i always blamed myself.  but his behavior was reprehensible.  

i did that same thing with multiple people over the years–mostly white guys older than me who i looked up to and thought were better than me.  they ate it up.

so it was a big deal to realize it was mostly about my dad.  all that pain, then bad behavior, then more pain.  i’m not doing that anymore.  but it’s a lot of work.  i always turned the anger inward, as anxiety and self-harm.  to turn the anger outward scares me.*

family

i was afraid i was wrong, to seek validation that way.  my therapist told me how with food–some people use food emotionally for comfort, to numb feelings, for company, for reward… but then some people, it’s just nutrition. 

whatever issue, trauma, pain someone had in their family, it can be expressed through food or sex.  i guess also drugs, maybe shopping, gambling, other brain reward pathways that have a powerful hold on us.  it was helpful for me to recognize that. 

also she was saying how kids blame themselves for everything, because it’s too scary to think adults are clueless and bad.  so if i thought it was my fault my dad was violent, mean, and didn’t love me, of course i would develop some problems, thinking I’m not a good person, that there’s something very wrong with me, to explain the way he acted.

i took in my parents’ ideas about me as truth, when i was little.  later i could reject those ideas, but the damage was already done. 

nurture

i wanted someone like my dad to approve of me, but no one like my dad can approve of me, because they are too selfish, angry, violent to even see me, let alone value me and love me right.

aw, what a bummer.  so there are a lot of ways i can nurture myself and try to reclaim my personal power from this violent white guy who’s been dead four and a half years.  wish me luck. 

you know me.  i like ritual, prayer, self-care, art, journaling, pilgrimage, ancestor worship, nature time, embodied healing.

add it up

The above is a series of txts I sent my friend last night, tying together the threads of my dad’s violence, his suicide, how I seek validation through sex, my habit of chasing white guys I think are better than me, and how to stop.  I had known all these things individually, but it helps to add it up.  “I want to matter to you” is a sentence I would like to stop saying in my imagination.

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* The anger feels like a force of nature inside me, like a tornado is going to fly out of my cunt and rip apart some single-wides in Kansas.  Too dangerous to let loose.  But it’s either the world that will suffer, or I will die of the anxiety and self-harm of turning it inward on myself.