its called being assertive not selfish: notes on living with truama + relationships…

1: identified pattern: saying I don’t want to do something and doing it anyways..communicates weakness and allows people to take advantage, communicates that they can get it from me anyways, if I don’t care enough about how I feel not to do it why should they? I’ve got to learn to totally put myself first not them and its called being assertive not selfish

Yesteday’s counseling session was good for me. I got my ass kicked by my counselor and it felt good that and the fact that I took advil followed by four shots will make anyone feel good I imagine J (yes I’m fully ware of my escapism) Anyways, we talked about what it means that I have a pattern of abusive relationships and follow them one after the other, that I end up somehow communicating that it is ok for me not to get my needs met and therefore permit the abuse to happen. where and how I learnt this behaviour is written all over my childhood. As a woman living with a disability I was raised to put EVERYONE and everything else before myself, I was to ALWAYS come last if I was to be a good woman, if people were going to forget that I had a disability and perhaps look kindly at me and let me in the rant and all of my childhood abusers forced me to put their needs first. Even when I got raped I’ll never forget my mother telling me that I need to basically NEVer tell anyone if I was going to succeed in life and by that she really meant get married which I did and fucked up (by her standards anyways) so 1 for me, 1 for mom.

As an aside I really like jack..emotionally he actually takes care of me, I don’t feel like I have to struggle and fight for my needs to be met sexually and emotionally just financially na im be the prob. In fact he encourages to state my needs and tries to anticipate and meet them. With all my other lovers I feel like it’s a constant battle where people just want to take from you and will take as much as they can whether you are willing or unwilling. This makes me so fucking sad and angry at the same time because then it means they are being dishonest and don’t really give a rat’s ass…they have no real integrity. It also means that they are lieing if they say they care for m or at least what caring is to them is not what it is to me.

I was thinking about all of this because of red and my ex husband and his complete disregard for me and my needs, even the sexual/basest of needs. It looks like the same pattern is about to rear its ugly head in relation to red, I’m starting to get that feeling that I’m not good enough.unworthy and its such an alarm in my head: but it is immediately followed by double talk on my part, self doubt and hyper critical ness..(I’m like, no I know she is not him but we did have a relationship that was fucked in its own way but that I tried really hard to save from descending into the very abyss of hell, and it is the same me that she is dealing with post ex husband…) in reality I’m not used to putting myself in the centre of my own relationships with people and when I do then I feel totally and completely ill at ease..literally.

Red says that she wants to have intimacy cuddle, kisses, touches, caresses, no fucking, I told her from the beginning and have consistently let her know that I want to be more than friends but I can live with being friends..i want her in my life. I’m not sure about all that intimacy that goes no where. But she goes back and forth and in that process according to my counselor I’ve communicated to her by cuddling with her anyways and leaving the door so wide open (by making it abundantly clear that I want a relationship with her no matter the cost, I’ve pretty much said this to her- actual words) that I’ll do it anyways even though that’s not what I want making it harder for me to get me needs met when she can get all of her needs met. And at the same time get to FREAK out that we are having a not quite lovership type of relationship. I’m not freaked out at all, I’m like that’s the end game…I don’t know what her end game is. All I want is to have her (and she is presently a stand in for most of the relationships, future and presnt )in my life under the best and most long term conditions.

So it’s looking like it will be hard, hard to set up boundaries, hard to actually refuse to do the things that I say and know that I do not want to do, I feel fearful, that if I do not do these things or act the way that people want me to act then I’ll lose them. Isn’t that the way life is? I mean that’s basically what I learnt from the collective, that’s what I’ve learnt from most people in my life but LORD knows I’m working hard and trying to get to a place where I can be who I am and fully welcome and invite people into my life trusting that they will appreciate me for who I am, that regardless of what they do or are willing/unwilling to do I will have my boundaries solid and firm.

That’s what my fear, really is about that if I don’t do what people want or say then I wont have them in my life, it makes it hard for me to even acknowledge my needs/ wants and by the time that I do its too late. I wish I could have helped out EVEN more and did this with my ex-husband that’s someone else that I did love so much that now I’m not even willing to let him hurt me anymore, I want to protect some of the good times that we had, the warm fuzzy moments that get eroded by every nasty thing that he does, the same with red, I’m fighting to hold on to the moments where I feel I actually experienced what it means to be/ feel loved and to share that with someone. That’s all love really is, isn’t it?

the return of red

I have a real weakness for red, its real, it compels me to leave the house, agree to social events that i wouldn’t normally as long as they can somehow coincide/give me a fucking excuse to call, text, visit so  there i am leaving  message so hopefully its been two weeks and i haven’t heard a word, i’m quietly going crazy, so texts saying that she coming right now to meet me, i abandon my friends for drinks with her, i spend my last $10 bucks fronting like i’m not dead broke on a tanqueray and a fudge marshmellow brownie. Apparently shes skipping her school work to say hello i want to ask her why in the fuck? did it take her two weeks and a VERY convenient call from me for us to meet. I don’t. I’m playing the femme girl here, i figure i’m still on probation, I do tell her that i’m very anxious- understatement of the year, my stomach was so tight, i don’t think i was breathing. i sat there are told her about the two weeks somehow the topic of sharing our written work came up and were both paying for our drinks and heading out the door.. you guessed it to her place.

We talk, this time, i exercise self restraint and composure, i want nothing more than to hold her, kiss her, tell her i missed her, that she shouldn’t stay away for so long instead i sit, arms folded and try to talk eventually through everything we talked shared parallel traumas, i confess that i want more, i move to her bed, she moves under the covers and we get to touching but the sex, the touching felt more like an excuse to refamiliarize ourselves with each other, like there was this internal pull, it was hardest, one of the hardest sex i’ve had with anyone, the attraction was there, the wetness everything but there was something else too, major hesitation on both our parts. I’m hoping it gets easier. I’m looking forward to it getting easier.

Usually sex is a sure banker for me, its simply, its about my body, i  get turned on, i can do casual sex even with my ex husband there are no strong attachments in the act itself, this time EVERYTHING, every moment had meaning and it was clear when she pulled back and i know she could see when i did.

When you know someone that well, can you just fuck? the thing is there’s gotta  be more in this for me than just a good fuck..that kinda easy to get.

She asked me what our future looked liked and i’m like i don’t know, how do i tell her that i’m not really planning on leaving anybody for her but i dont want to “cheat” on her, its like my insurance policy.  I see her again on saturday , i’m meeting her friends…thats the other thing i’m like you do you want to hang out at some naija club with 19 boys or go to some 19 dude’s house to get high and flirt and gist and shoot the shit. I’m like yup i do have a therapist, nope i’m not on medication though i seriously considred it and yup i did just use all my money last month to buy a leather jacket and a banging pair of shoes in spite of my anti capitalist rhetoric and no i dont know who wrote the latest book, reading art display..i’m not in the scene for recreational purposes AT ALL.  I’m in the scene strictly to network etc, no intersections of personal there, i’m not trying to save any world any more at least not right, its means no protest in my new shoes, cant march in heels (as if i wear heels but i can dream) just i’m not there anymore.

I think about electric can openers, the new LCDPlasma Tv i want for my living room, the upgrade kitchen aid food processor i want for christmass, a new leather couch, my hair, acrylic nails..not the activisty girl i used to be,i’m not sure she understands what i mean when i say that. In fact i cant stand most of the activististys especially on the realization that most of them are rich or have rich familiies that enable their whole walk around pretending/acting poor.

Red is NOt one of them, but she blends, i dont, i dont even try. I’m wonderiing will she wind and grind with me on some naija nite at a club to say 2ghots igwe? time will tell.

Yesterday and for the better part of today…all i’ve got on my mind is pussy, pussy juice, the taste of her, the familiarity, excitement mingled with regret of the how limited the way we knew each other was back then, that she wasn’t there as i grew, changed, shifted that i wasn’t there for her evolution either. It made just want to cry. I wanted to promise right there as i held on her, the place where her legs meet her thighs, my tongue in her pussy, my facing rubbing hard against her little just shaved pussy hairs, that i would try my darnest to make sure that this time, we defy all limits, that this time. i’m as open, childish, giddy, EVERYTHING as much as possible. No holding back…it’s gotten me heartbroken yes but never regret. I hate feeling regret. It just signifies waste.

No more, I’m so ready. fingers crossed.

hope and its utility for survival as resistance

Its taken a lot, so much has happened, i’m already failing a class in my final year of university even as every single of my professors and peers constantly affirm to me that i am brilliant academically speaking of course. The reality is that i am supremely low functioning. I used to be considered Type A personality, super crip who just gets shot done. Now i do it not cos i enjoy, not cause i even really want to..i do it because i have to live. I have to survive and i have to succeed. I need money to live a life or leisure or even to support the kind of chang that i want to exist in the world. Its what jeeps me going..just going.

Recently though, the people in my life that i walked away from have somehow managed to reenter my life and it seems like they never left. I feel loved and feeling loved makes me feel responsible, like i should be living, like i should be accomplishing something in other for me to be around them and not fuck them up..not offer them pain and not offer them the horror that i’ve recieved in my own life.

I had to walk away from a relationship, no looking back and now we made out, flirted and came very close to fucking. She is someone who i have loved so completely and uncompromisingly that when i left heri felt like part of my joy/hope/expectations of joy in this world shifted. But our reunion is not quite like in the movies, its a tortured yet beautiful one, there was excess everywhere, i marvelled at the fact that we walking walking on the streets of toronto together, laughing talking smoking, that i met her friends and i started to check my self, to see if i was good enough for her. This girl has my heart, i could marry her in a quiet quaint little house in kenya, learn kiswahili and forget about everything besides her and the shape of her wondrous boxer clad backside. I am so ready to pack it all up and be a good wife: she is my fairy tale of african lesbian love.

Not of this is grounded in reality. In reality, i always hold myself back back, for fear of being vulnerable, rarely share my deeply cynical, jaded thoughts and i dont even try to sound intelligent, i’m too busy trying to make sure that my hair is perfectly coiffed, lip gloss on, must get good grades, keep good job to keep her around. I’m too busy making calculations of how to constantly present myself in the best light to her as desirable..i dont want to tell her this cos then she will be worried about my insecurities and how they spell doom.

Why do i love someone who looks and me and sees fat disabled trauma survivor, who sees cute and viciously harmful. there is no trust. why am i still in love with someone who thinks i was hatefull towards her because i left an abusive situation that she was not yet ready to live. I am not in love, i have love for her, i always will but at the present moment i am deeply infatuated with her and the idea of two young african lesbians who speak the same academise holding it together.

This is what i would say to her if only i could pick up the phone and call or even send her the email…but we are doing things diffrently i’m giving her space that she appears to need and this means so much to me that i want to take it slow and make sure that i’m being honest to myself every step of the way.

Dearest red,

yes it is true, that i have a completely romantic ideal about what our relationship should be. It is true that i wish i could go back to our relationship and what it could have been without the context that we found each other. I say this, verbalize it and inform you because i agree that it could be a set up for the both of us. Afterall even the good old days were not so very good, sometimes. but every relationship has its ups and downs, i do not expect perfection. i expect trust, honesty, intimacy, commitment and a shared life. When i have said that i loved you, you asked what that means to me i didn’t have the answer then but i know that this is what it means for you. That you are definitely one of the people that i considered spending the rest of my life. I gave you care, you gave me care, we once shared a deep bond that i continue to cherish.

Red, even though sadly what we had is gone, past tense. I see this meeting of our now as an opportunity to build to hold each other, to view and perceive of each other as we may, an opportunity to make up my own mind about you based on what i see, hear, and am exposed to and share with you. i believe in new beginnings. I’m not very good at leaving everything up in the moment and going from moment to moment. I need a little bit more security and commitment if i’m going to be fully open and vulnerable.

I am not afraid, i’m not even afraid of getting hurt or fucked up..life comes with fuck ups. I am not one to regret whole relationships. I am ready when you are.

I cannot say that i’m going avoid everyone who has “issues” we all have issues and i am the queen of issues. But i can promise my hardest to be honest, to be loving, caring, thoughtful, sharing even of the scariest and darkest moments all in good time. I’m begging for you to give us a real chance, to be open to the possibility of a loving relationship between us. Thats all i can really ask for or hope for given our shared past.

Most importantly, I’m hopeful. Thank you for that.

Always In love

I say infatuation because i felt longing, desire and pleasure that touched me deep inside like the response to a far distant cry when she kissed me, i could feel the hunger and want in her lips as they met mine. Also because although i already have love for her am i compatible with her as a lover? if the answer to that was yes, then i’m in love. But we are yet to find that out…She didn’t have to tell me that she’d missed me. Is it possible for us to start afresh. I cannot help but consider the possibility that this story can only include some kind of revenge on her part if she feels like a jilted lover. This is to prove to herself that she can indeed hurt me as much as i hurt her but thats ok. Isn’t it. I get to wake up beside her, grind up against her in the club, share breakfast without any awkward instead comfortable silence then sign me up? Is that the masochist in me?

Given the way that power works in this world can she love me complete with my sexual deviousness, disabiity toruturedness and all. will she even give me a shot or does she just want a good fuck? thats the one thing i dont want.