October 7th, 2007

I didn’t set out to become some sort of sexual deviant, not that that’s what I’ve become. In all reality I set out to be a nun. I wanted to be pristine, close to god, and the first in line to go to heaven. When I’d given that dream up by the wise age of eight, I converted the same desires into a plan for a solid Catholic marriage. My grandmother still presses this dream into my hands every time I see her, somehow hoping that my short hair and tolerant words might be fluke signs; I might still become her saint. The advantage of my adjusted plan, a good, strong husband of god and all the children that our modest sex afforded us, was that I wouldn’t find myself stuck in a convent for the entirety of my life. Seclusion didn’t fit into my life plans- how could I be president if I were a nun? In holy Catholic matrimony I would find both religion and some semblance of actualization. That was my hope.

My dreams began to revolve around egalitarian white picket fences and average family afternoons. I believed that my life could have one real path: school, college, graduate school, marriage, kids, career. The lines were distinct and everything had its place. Almost, that is. I wasn’t prepared to interpret my thoughts about women.

I knew lesbians and gay men. They were friends, neighbors, people I respected, but they were other. They existed, but they were separate from my personal paradigm, token friends and characters in my own staged show. Sure, I thought about women when I masturbated, but didn’t everybody? So I thought about them pressing me against a wall, that was a normal teenage thought to have. Or maybe it wasn’t, but it just meant that I was open and accepting of people. It didn’t make me gay.

My first sexual experiences were with men. Later on, I would quote those experiences of horrid, passionless single nights as proof that I was simply not a heterosexual. Despite the tiniest nag that those experiences might not have been exactly a fair sampling, I wanted so badly to define myself, to fit in, to belong. I wanted an identity. So when a beautiful woman offered me her hands and her body, I slid happily into my modern box.

All the desires of a life, moving in and out of age and location, the absoluteness of every discovered want, how is it that life can feel so real at every second? To be nine, to know that life has more in store, but to have no plane of reference, no concept of what more might entail. To be twenty and to still hold fast the belief that what one wants then is what one will always want- perhaps this is the soul of naïveté. How disillusioning to find yourself, a proclaimed lesbian with a broken heart, looking at men with a twinkle in your eye? Yet it was even more confusing to go home with one and watch, almost disembodied as he pressed his advantage without ever stopping to ask what I wanted. We fucked on his huge, empty bed, and I wished that it would just be over- that I wouldn’t hate myself too much in the morning. Another one night stand, another series of unfulfilled wishes.

Why am I still attracted to men? It can hardly be explained, and other than my perverse need to explain everything, I really have no desire to pick it apart. I like whom I like. I meet whomever I meet. I follow the guideposts of feelings. Most times this is enough.

I find myself craving the solidity of my ex. The knowing that each night she would tell me she loved me. The comfort of good sex. Even after all the self-prescribed growth inversion, all the weaknesses indulged because I knew she would carry them, because it felt good to have someone who would carry them, after it all, I still miss the assumed right to cuddle, to kiss, to love.

I’m scared of this process of taking each day as it comes. It’s terrifying, at times, to rise to a moment’s unexpectedness. Finding new feelings and realizing that old ones have passed is unsettling for a woman who has tirelessly sought an anchor to believe in, to trust in, to depend upon.

There is a certain honesty in the act of sleeping alone. The reality is that each night I go to bed alone. I have slept alone every night of my life, even when I shared my bed. The loneliness felt bitterer, more hidden, whilst waking next to a cherished body, the pain more acute when my partner was an unknown quantity. Sharing the warmth of a comfortable sleep with another leaves the illusion of solidarity without the removal of reality. The truth is, thus far, that I am the only being with whom I am. I join the paths of others, I listen, I love, I journey, but I do those things in tandem at best and in solitude the rest of the time. This isn’t to say that I prefer sleeping single, as that couldn’t be further from the truth, but my reality remains.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of becoming emotionally close to someone who I couldn’t at least imagine being with forever, yet I’ve had three one-night stands. Are these two realities unrelated? Inter-related? Here I am, a woman out of the closet twice, a seeker and a lover, involved in a Polyamorous situation. Relationship? I am not in love with multiple people, though I could be. The object of my affections is most definitely involved with others. How in the world did I find myself here? I would have thought that by now I would have decided exactly what and where I was to be. I thought I had those questions worked out.

Here I am, each day a pleasant surprise of new feelings. This good little Catholic girl, this refugee of a broken lesbian relationship, is creating something with a man who has a girlfriend. Why does confusion follow me? I feel fear tonight- the unknown pain, the possible aches and division, the mystery of my heart, all unquantifiable. No promises can be made, no absolutes. I don’t want finite answers and I don’t want promises. I know that I have nothing to be ashamed of and that there is nothing to fear but my thoughts. I have faith in the process, faith in God, but that doesn’t take away the years of habit, worrying about how things might end before they’ve even begun.

What do I want? I want to be happy. But that question begs another, more poignant question- what do I not want? I don’t want to be surrounded by chaos. I don’t want to hurt friends. It seems not to matter that I remind myself that the current problems are not something I could have prevented, I still feel responsible. Not solely responsible, but culpable nonetheless.

I acknowledge that these are not my issues, that I have control over my own actions alone. And though everything might resolve neatly, I am more inclined to believe that it won’t be simple. If I were my own friend I would probably use patronizing expressions while reading this. Shouldn’t I have known that this would be difficult? Shouldn’t I have avoided it? But who can avoid their own journey? Even avoidance of a path is an affrmation, however negative, of that path.

I need to sleep before fatigue overwhelms me. So for tonight, goodnight.