The emotionally unavailable men I have been close to, and now an emotionally unavailable enby–it’s so painful, I show up for love and touch, and get clear messages that are lies. This beautiful, brilliant person signals to me that they care–they’re emotionally competent and responsible. Then I’m dropped afterward like a hot potato, treated like “nothing significant happened here.”
It’s bewildering. The person who held me so sweetly is now acting like I made up the closeness that happened. It’s gaslighting. Fuck that–I won’t do that anymore.
It’s a cliche, the emotionally unavailable dude and sex. But it doesn’t have to be sex. It can be any kind of touch. I’m getting a clear: you matter to me. But if a few hours later, they’re gone as a ghost, what just happened? It’s confusing. My body believes it–my body is in love, completely. My mind is what’s puzzling afterward, like wait–what was real! You can’t act like that wasn’t real.
The “nothing significant happened here” is so chilling. It’s the worst loneliness I know. That’s a crying in the shower kind of lonely. This amazing miracle touched me, and we did something beautiful. But no–I guess I made it all up. I’m not significant to them. I am not worth truly holding.
misogynist
The emotionally unavailable person can tell themselves I’m needy, unstable, codependent, hysterical, crazy, or whatever misogynist bullshit works for them, to make it so I’m bad and they’re good. But the bottom line is, No. I can’t live like that.
If they want to feign intimacy and do touch in a mostly meaningless way, they can do that with someone else, someone who doesn’t need meaning. Preferably with another dude–someone like themselves.
The problem is, they don’t want someone like themselves. They want someone like me, this vulnerable lusciousness. My love is good. My tits are heavenly, my attention is the smartest, and my heart opens really wide. They love that goddess energy.
So they’ll keep trying for a while, taking advantage of my generosity as long as I keep thinking I misunderstood or blaming myself. Or as long as I buy their trauma story and feel sorry for them for their weaknesses and accept the harm.
danger
The hormones pump through me and convince me I’m safe. But it’s a lie–it was danger the whole time. To a degree, I can identify that myself. But I step into it anyway, for the pleasure of relationship and learning something new. A person is a miracle, worth more than anything.
But no–not worth me sacrificing my well-being. I gotta get out. I reframe things and work hard to find a way not to get hurt. But they are not working hard. They are fucking the next person they’ve duped, smoking weed, sleeping, working, or watching cartoons.
I mean it’s not their life project, to love. They think they’ve been dealt a bad hand, so their only responsibility is survival.
I don’t fuck around–I treat everyone like they matter. My responsibilities are much bigger than survival. I’m not so entitled I think the rest of the world exists to meet my needs, on my terms. I’m on earth for something bigger than that.
My trauma is vast, but it’s not a reason it’s ok for me to hurt people. It’s not ok to hurt people. Small incidental hurts while you’re doing your best are fine. Having a whole deal based on deception is not a small hurt. It’s 100% wrong.
how men are
People tell me that’s just how men are. Or that’s just how people are. Everyone is using everyone, so hop aboard.
No. I refuse to believe that we’re on earth to use each other. Many people know how to love. It’s not just me.
The dick isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth handing over my well-being to selfish chaos. It puts me on a roller coaster. I feel it all. Most people seem to live in denial about it, check out, or anesthetize themselves rather than face reality and do better.
I watched my mom do that with my dad. Denial was my mom’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She was trying to keep the family together and keep my dad alive by brainwashing herself daily and praying to Jesus, for my dad to be good to her and to me and my brother. Daily self-brainwashing is not how I will live.
prayer
So I pray to my body:
Dear beautiful fat queer body, please stop showing up for the long delicious hugs from unavailable users. Stop trying to do friendship with the selfish ungiving. Their touch is a scam.
Brief heaven is not worth that creepy dropped feeling afterwards. You are not making up that creepy dropped feeling.
The creepy dropped feeling isn’t your dysfunction–it’s their selfishness. Please stop blaming yourself for having emotions.
They cry that no one is there for them, as they create the conditions where no one can be there for them. It’s self-sabotage, and I don’t need to step in and interrupt. I will see what they’re doing and walk on by. Please, feet. Walk on by.
No one is allowed access to my body and soul, and then afterward act like nothing significant happened here. Being a fully formed adult means I comprehend this now, and I won’t live like that anymore.
2 replies on “nothing significant happened here”
[…] rich emails that I never sent, I realized you had no attention to span to read them, let alone do anything significant with me. I sent the emails to myself to clear them out of my drafts folder and pretended you were […]
[…] could fully relax because you were ok with that. I thought from the response my body had as you held me, it was obvious. Hormones pumped through my body–it felt like hot […]