Tag: sadness

insurgent

CW: weight issues.

The emotion has inertia, it stays, it continues, it grows and surges within me like snow piling up in the darkness.

There are people who meet loved ones every day, who experience touch on a daily basis, confirmations in the physical space. This feels like some impossible dream, a mirage. How long ago since I was anywhere near it? Thirteen years, I think.

I believed I couldn’t have it, didn’t want it. I felt certain that only very very few rare people would ever be able to love someone as queer as me (that is, someone who wasn’t comfortable with their assigned gender), and that I could only feel comfortable with very very few people. I assumed long-distance would only ever be the option because the chance of meeting someone like that who additionally happened to be near me, that was exceedingly unlikely. I mourned and made peace with this, and assumed it wasn’t something I could hope for.

More to the point, I believed I was so introvert that being near someone on a daily basis could never work. Since I needed so much time alone, unpredictably, to manage dysphoria, I assumed that even fewer people would feel comfortable in any relationship with me, and that those would be the ones who similarly were like cats, generally reclusive and not predictably present. So in some sense I mourned the above less because I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it anyway.

In the relationship I started about as I began transition, I sensed when we were together that somehow, I could feel safe with some particular people around without needing to escape as much to time alone. The part of my introversion which was recovering from baseline misgendering miasma of being closeted faded, and I realized it a possibility, yet still hindered by lack of other people. As I transition further and meet more people, I don’t feel as alien any longer to such a large fraction of those I meet – still the majority, but in Babylon a sizable majority can actually see and interact me as I am.

So the excuses are fading and the need is there and I feel envy and hunger and sorrow and self-sympathy and longing and cold, cold, wanting warmth.

Where do I take this? Tinder and therapy, presumably. And yet another need to lose that weight, because while I am pretty to many, I could be pretty to more, and the more people would give me a chance through some initial spark of interest, the more a chance to find people who want to be near me and cuddle and nurture me regularly. I’m cold. But I’m used to things not being easy, so I’ll manage. I’ll do my best, every moment of every day.

craven

Waking and feeling rested and in control, but with all the unresolved challenges present. They are not existential but practical, so they don’t paralyze me. I know I can be here to face them so I will. But I also feel I am small before the fullness of the world, and I feel my body and mind straining. And that is fine and as it should be, as are my emotions around it. Do they have a name? I want to say vulnerability, but not sure that is right.

Mostly I crave so deeply right now to be held. A wish I have not had in this way for very long, during isolation or focus modes or self-seclusion for dysphoria. I want to wake next to someone, want to be touched and held and maybe cry a little in their arms for no reason but that it’s there. I want touch, physical nearness. My long-distance relationships are as central to me as anything, and I cherish what time we get, but my everyday life still lacks touch. I need that, I realize. I need being close to someone, being seen, skin against skin, lips against my forehead, hands in my hair, warmth beneath my fingers.

I don’t think I’ve let myself recognize just how much I miss that, now that I’m beginning to be able to receive it without needing to escape to tend to my fortress walls. I want to be held when I am most defenseless, and I want glancing touches and casual nearness when I am joyful and energetic.

I stopped daring to believe I could have it, so I wouldn’t let myself be sad for not having it, wouldn’t acknowledge I want it. I must have it, somehow. I must be open to it, and try to seek it out however I can. I don’t really know how but I feel I am in a position to try.