Posts tagged with "reflection"

let us have our tongues

It’s not that I don’t want to write about how things are slow­ly chang­ing, I just nev­er seem to have the chance. Nowadays, my pri­or­i­ties are sur­vival else­where, and the writ­ten word isn’t the out­let I need any­more.

Besides, every time I try to get a thought on a page, I get lost in the scope. My think­ing con­stant­ly goes fur­ther and fur­ther, as my under­stand­ing of the world moves beyond the things that affect only me. It’s made me a more patient, com­pas­sion­ate, and empa­thet­ic per­son. But by the time I fig­ure some­thing out, the feel­ing is gone, and words are no longer rel­e­vant.

slider

I’ve been try­ing to leave my cam­era at home too, a way of forc­ing myself to savour each expe­ri­ence. It’s a del­i­cate bal­ance between that and my ever-present need to doc­u­ment every­thing. I’m dis­cov­er­ing that mem­o­ries aren’t as vivid as pho­tographs, but they live longer in the implic­it part of the mind, and both are food to an intro­vert nonethe­less.

Days with­out a way to cap­ture the world around me are nev­er easy. I want to take pic­tures of sun­light and sum­mer and sweat and sex, but life has­n’t been so much about events as the reg­u­lar­i­ty. The moments I share every day with the peo­ple I need, or the time between when I’m recharg­ing and heal­ing. The things worth appre­ci­at­ing are more fre­quent, but all the more fleet­ing too.

the loving dominant

My rela­tion­ships func­tion best in a one-on-one con­text, when I’m giv­ing a sin­gle per­son my full atten­tion or vice ver­sa. I see myself as the dom­i­nant most of the time. But pow­er flows from the bot­tom up and I’m a pleas­er too, so I fre­quent­ly assume the sub­mis­sive role cause I enjoy it (need it?) so much. Knowing that I can make peo­ple hap­py is some­thing I thrive on.

At heart though, I’m a very dom­i­nant per­son, and I nev­er real­ized I was miss­ing an out­let for those ten­den­cies until Shawn hand­ed me the remote as we were about to watch Game of Thrones. He read me well enough to know that I enjoy tak­ing care of lit­tle details, and he’s even more of a pleas­er than I am, so he gave me con­trol, even though I rec­og­nize that he’s the more dom­i­nant per­son1.

Over time, I’ve become the one to do the talk­ing, to decide what we do, to make the small choic­es that remind me I have wants and needs as much as any­one else. Shawn’s a per­son I respect, and he’s nat­u­ral­ly “bet­ter” in the ways that are impor­tant to me, so being in con­trol when we hang out has been real­ly ful­fill­ing. I’m get­ting bet­ter at speak­ing out about things that both­er me and think­ing of myself and being stronger in gen­er­al.

  1. I high­ly val­ue intel­li­gence, so it’s nat­ur­al for me to sub­mit to more intel­li­gent peo­ple, and he’s way more intel­li­gent than me. He’s also a lot stronger of char­ac­ter. [↩]

a quiet moment

I took a break from gui­tar. Not a con­scious deci­sion, just days that were busy enough that I did­n’t think of pick­ing her up, which means I don’t even know how long I’d stopped. All I know is that it was long, cause I feel the strings vibrat­ing through every piece of wood that touch­es my body now, one of those sen­sa­tions you stop notic­ing after enough time.

I haven’t had much to say either. Nothing seems impor­tant. At the same time, I’m try­ing to move away from this social media over­load, where so many peo­ple speak only cause the pow­er to do makes them believe they should. It’s mak­ing the gaps between my entries longer and longer, and I won­der if I’ll even­tu­al­ly stop writ­ing alto­geth­er.

getting dressed

All I have are mem­o­ries of lives I lived so long ago that I feel like I’m watch­ing them in 8mm. The friends and the lovers, the love and the hate, the cycles and the pat­terns. I’m only now sort­ing out the mean­ing of each one, maybe cause I’ve final­ly grown enough to under­stand myself and my rela­tion­ship with the world at large. It’s com­fort­ing to see how far I’ve come when com­par­ing the per­son I am now to each per­son I used to be.

But such progress came at the cost of my inno­cence; we aren’t always ready to learn the hard­er lessons, and sur­viv­ing some­times means we change in ways that pre­vent us from becom­ing the peo­ple we’re meant to be. I’m try­ing to take back that inno­cence now, cause I know my hap­pi­ness is at stake.

not today

Summer has been over­cast, if not rainy. It’s great. I can keep every win­dow open, and the whole day feels like it’s a dew-soaked morn­ing on the verge of a sun­rise. It’s enough to make me believe that the real sum­mer is nev­er com­ing.

girl playing cello

These days I’m still recov­er­ing, still learn­ing to treat myself with com­pas­sion. Sometimes it’s a blur­ry line between that and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. I don’t know how I feel about parts of my life, parts I nev­er ques­tioned before, and it’s a strange uncer­tain­ty to be car­ry­ing.

That means I don’t know how to act around most peo­ple, some­thing I haven’t had trou­ble with since I was a kid. I’ve been avoid­ing most social con­tact, while spend­ing time with the few peo­ple who know me well enough to hurt me. Sometimes it’s like walk­ing on a tightrope, wait­ing to fall off. Everything is an exer­cise in vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Luckily, they’re the right peo­ple to help me through as well, the right peo­ple to put my trust into. This is how I learn to love again.

pugs

I’m learn­ing to be self­ish too, espe­cial­ly at a time like this. I’ve real­ized how impor­tant it is to be oblig­ed to myself, instead of con­stant­ly putting aside my feel­ings for the sake of oth­ers. That means under­stand­ing what I need out of my rela­tion­ships, instead of try­ing to make them what I thought they should be. Sometimes that also means mak­ing sure I spend enough time alone.