weird

I wrote you a letter a few days ago–trying to explain how my ACE score is 9, which gives me weird problems.  I was abused and neglected in almost all the possible ways, as a kid and teenager.  The ideas I learned about the world, and the coping strategies I developed before the age of 2–I am very weird.

I can’t even sort out my whacked beliefs about the world, let alone correct or compensate for them.  So I’m cautiously moving forward, perpetually confused.

There can be joy in that–I’m an ever-lost baby, dazzled by everything!  The world is always new.  But it can be painful too, that other people seem to know what’s going on, and I’m constantly bewildered.

I built my whole life on weird ideas I think are fine.  Like a fish might not know the water it swims in, my own knowledge of the world as misperceived 40 years ago is hard to identify and rethink.

The letter I wrote to you was partly to apologize.  I’m very sorry you suffered for my differences.  I tried to be a good friend who needs ok things.  I never meant to fall in love with you–I intended to keep distance.  But I was so charmed, easily.  You amazed me and still do.

I need weird things, and have a strange collection of ideas about the world.  How could you know?  Early on in our friendship, I wrote long letters to you.  I explained a lot.  You never replied, and I don’t know if you even read them.

mail

I sent the ACE score letter to you, so in a few days, it might arrive to you, in a little box, with a parting gift or two.  Wrapping up our relationship seems valid, as something happened, though I still really don’t know what.

In a parking lot earlier, I was crying.  “Are you ok?” my spouse asked.

“Yeah!  Sad, but ok,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

I was crying because I was so ashamed, that I my sexual desires for you made you uncomfortable.  I never wanted to hurt you.  Felt creepy, like I was a sexual harasser.  It was pain, to have misunderstood reality so badly.  How could I have been so wrong?

Sometimes you seemed excited, but I obviously misunderstood.  Sometimes I thought your tenderness for me matched my tenderness for you.  Maybe you were just faking the whole time, or it’s very different for you.

I never learned how you experience sexuality, how those kinds of desires work for you, and you never told me what you want.  If you even want a longterm close and sexual partner, what kind of family style you like, whether you like monogamy, or any relationship preferences at all.  You could be one of those people who doesn’t do love and sex in the same relationship.  “Don’t shit where you eat,” I’ve heard some men say.

I know you were sexually abused as a young person.  I was too, in multiple ways, by multiple men.  But it affected you differently.  I walk toward my damage, and throw myself into healing and talking about it.  You sealed up like a tomb.

mystery

Being social is a mystery to me.  If I look like I’m doing a normal thing, that’s because I have duped you.  Never am I doing a normal thing.  I’m struggling to copy the behaviors of the people around me, while being as true to myself as I can.  I was telling my spouse the other day how the craziness, autism, and ACE score of 9 all add up to–I am totally fucked in the head.

I have the performance, which the outside world can see.  And I have the reality of my inner life, which is so important to me, and where I really dwell.  Two totally different things.

I’m trying to be a good friend, community member, stranger, organizer, activist, writer.  But none of that socializing comes naturally to me, so I’m constantly checking in, how I’m being received, and adjusting.

shame

That I made you uncomfortable with my sexual desire for you is a deep shame, for me.  The whole, generous, powerful desire felt like a real, caring, intense, honorable, ok thing, but was actually wrong.  Wow, what do I do with myself.  It’s shameful;  I’ve failed.  That I harmed you–I can’t handle it.

But I didn’t harass you–it’s not like you told me to stop talking about it, and I didn’t stop.  You’re the one who wouldn’t answer my questions, for so long.  And as for discomfort, you broke my heart multiple times, far more than discomfort.  You hurt me, with lack of follow through, the panic attacks in the night, and taking all you could get, with lack of communication.

I’m not saying I’m an angel, and you’re a devil.  We’re both complicated, and it’s weird.  I don’t want to dismiss you as a bad person, over simplifying you for my own comfort.

But again and again you hurt me, and never seemed to worry too much about that.  Or at least you never told me that.

sad

Being sad is valid.  I move through many feelings per day.  Crying is ok.  I’m doing the work of life–I feel it and let it go.  I cried in that parking lot, and as my spouse drove us home.  Feeling is one of the main things I’m here on earth to do.

Like I feel and let go of sadness, I love you and let you go.  I feel the shift, as the two week mark approaches–I figured I needed two weeks to get you out of my system.  Still talking to you in my head, but I let you go again and again, each release more complete.

I really wish I could be your friend.  But you always meant ten times more to me than I meant to you.  Begging for your attention was really not good for me.  You can love other people who attempt less difficult of a dive, need less, and don’t make you uncomfortable.

adult values

It’s a bad sign that the way you treated me made me wish I was regular size, conventionally beautiful, less disabled.  Anyone who inspires in me my jr high school values is no one I should be in love with.

I worked so hard to grow up.  Anyone who makes me doubt that hard-earned perspective and fat liberation is really no one I should expend my energy on.  Hating my body is such a waste of time.

Pleasing you wouldn’t work anyway, if you’re really looking for a regular lady, vs me: superfat, genius, voice hearer, and get weird messages from clouds.

I miss you, so much.  But I understand this is best.

Nest