The New War for Independence

I was talking with my therapist the other day and she said “Tell me some positive things about yourself.” This is a difficult question for me because my self-esteem has been pretty much demolished over the past year, but after thinking for a few minutes I described to her some things I thought were positive, like loyalty and compassion. Then she said, “Those are good things but that’s not what I mean. I don’t want positive things about you as a friend. I want positive things about you as an individual. If you were going to a job interview what would you tell them to convince them you should get the job?” I tried to look at it from that point of view and said “Weeellll, I’m a quick learner?” She said “So are you smart?” I hesitantly said, “Yeeeeah, I guess.” She said “Then tell me that! What else?”

I had to think about it a little more, but I could come up with a couple of things, from which a whole list was born that had nothing to do with any other person, and I grew more confident about saying them aloud as we went along. I found it funny because it made me realize just how much of our self-worth comes from our perception of our value to other people, and how much of our true talent we belittle or only think of in terms of how it applies to our relationships. We’re afraid to acknowledge those things as special for fear that someone else might think we’re egotistical (I love how people label us or our feelings in order to manipulate us. Yes, yes. I’m aware that only I can accept that label or allow it to affect me. Blah, blah, blah. Easy to say. Not so easy to do. Hence the many reasons I have a therapist,) and we’re afraid to allow ourselves the luxury of just being talented for its own sake. (Does anyone else get confused when I interrupt myself midsentence? I swear that’s what my brain does all day long. I think I live my whole life in parenthesis.)

One of the problems with this viewpoint is that we get so wound up in who we are as a “we” that we forget who we are as an “I.” When the “we” no longer exists, it’s almost like “I” no longer exist either, until a new “we” comes along. Even in groups, couples who have been together for a long time become this sort of symbiotic entity where one does not endure without the other. Lesbians are very tribal. (It's a lot like “Survivor.” There’s even an unofficial tribal council where we kick people out when they displease the Powers That Be. Nobody actually knows who these Powers are, but displeasing them is bad juju.) When that dual persona separates, it throws a kink in the works and often times the tribe has trouble adjusting to the couple as individuals.

For instance, when I was a few (*ahem* more than ten) years younger, and married to my wife, we were kind of the Godparents to our particular tribe. We’d been together the longest. People looked to us as an example of what long term relationships were supposed to be. There were also strong expectations of how “we” (her as the butch, me as the femme) were supposed to behave. People referred to me as “P’s” Sarah. (I’ve abbreviate her name to protect the semi-innocent.) Not as Sarah the dancer, or Sarah the artist, or Sarah the Queen of Trivial Information. (All femmes need a royal title. Just sayin’.) My identity as a person was only as a part of my relationship with her. When she left me, the tribe imploded. Some people felt insecure in their own relationships as a result, because if she, the perfect butch partner, could leave, what did that mean for them? Others didn’t know how to deal with us as individuals and so coped by not dealing with either of us at all. I had to establish almost a whole new network of friends as an “I” rather than a “we.”

The other problem is that we as couples become completely dependent on each other for entertainment and affirmation. We stop doing things we enjoy if our partner isn’t into it. We stop doing things that don’t include our partners. We stop being an “I” and become a “we”, a single being with only one set of likes and dislikes, friends, interests, and ideas. Boooooring. An even larger complication occurs when one partner maintains an independent life while in the relationship but the other doesn’t, relying solely on the other partner for their social life, interests, and self-esteem. Gah! How much pressure is that?! Eventually, relationships like that stagnate and one partner, or both, wind up looking for something new, aaaaand cheating then ensues.

The point is that we need to fight the tendency to lose our individuality even when our “I” becomes a “we.” We need to take responsibility for our own self-worth because not only does it make us stronger people, it also makes us far more interesting and therefore far more attractive. Additionally, empowering ourselves makes it harder to be manipulated by people who haven’t grown enough to reach that stage for themselves. Partners who are not at that point can be insecure and try to hinder our independence to alleviate their own discomfort. We must not succumb to this pressure or any attempt to apply guilt, but continue to assert our right to independence while reassuring out partner that this is not a threat to us as a couple. It is a way to help our relationship grow and potentially bring us closer as we share our individual experiences.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

© Sarah Ultis 2012

Sometimes We Just Need to Be at Peace

Where's Skycap When You Need Them?

I really love to travel, so I fly a lot. I’ve become an expert at packing light and negotiating airport security. Unfortunately, when it comes to the rest of my life, I need a whole separate cargo plane for my emotional baggage. Most of it seems to revolve around feeling betrayed or misunderstood by people I trusted at various points in my life combined with a little OCD resulting in a generally angry, distrustful, defensive attitude that pops up at unexpected moments. OCD, for those not “in the know” on mental weirdness, is obsessive compulsive disorder. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations (obsessions), or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something (compulsions).” (A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia, 2010.) Hence, my occasional visits to Bedlam and source of my snarky superpowers. Heh.

Now I don’t have the kind of OCD where I have to flip the lights 12 times in a row and start over if I’m interrupted and lose count, or use a new bar of soap every time I wash or anything like that. My OCD is mostly mild and internal, but still annoying as hell. My brain will latch onto an idea and run around in circles beating it to death. Something will trigger a memory of an event, sometimes twenty years ago or more, where I felt betrayed or misjudged, and I’ll have an imaginary conversation in my head with whoever the culprit was for hours at a time saying all the things I feel like I didn’t get to say then. By the time I can unhook my brain from the crazy train I’m feeling all the same feelings I had at that point in my life for no apparent reason. It’s not like this person can actually hear me, so I don’t feel relieved that I’ve expressed myself, and will often repeat the same conversation again and again the next time I have one of those moments. In fact, I would venture to guess that most times, the people I’m angry with don’t even remember me or think about that event at all, so I’m allowing them to remain and have power in my life while they’re off merrily living theirs without a care, the wankers. How dare they not remember and obsess about this event that has traumatized me for years? So frustrating! I demand equal obsession!

So, as I’m trying to make some major changes in my life I find this baggage is becoming heavier and heavier, contributes to the conditions I’m trying to change (primarily the whole extra person’s worth of body weight that I wear like a suit of armor to avoid detection. Fat is almost like an invisibility cloak I swear.) and I’m bloody well sick and tired of carrying it around anymore. I have a therapist, (I don’t know why, but I always hear that word in my head in a snooty, nasally voice like Mr. Howell from “Gilligan’s Island”…. theeeeerapist. Bwahaha! Squirrel! Perhaps I need to add Attention Deficit Disorder to my list of mental issues. Hmmmm……..) who recommends the letter writing/burning routine, which does help somewhat. Write, forgive, release, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repe…. Er yeah. You see my dilemma? I need a way to break the cycle and really let go of that suitcase full of crap and not keep picking it up from baggage claim. It’s probably the only time in my life I wish the airline would lose my luggage.

I have been able to unload some of my larger items, but it took years and also generally involved a conversation with the person who’d hurt me. That’s not a possibility in some of these cases, and I’m tired of waiting and working on it. I need a way to let go of this stuff now that doesn’t rely on the participation of anyone else and I’m not sure how to do that yet. It may be as simple as saying “Ok, enough! I’m done with you! Be gone and never trouble me again!” and really meaning it. No matter how much it whines or cries about airline food I just have to keep refusing to pick it up, and not let anyone tempt me with new ones, even if they are Louis Vuitton in red leather with lots of bling. (Oooh. Shiny!) AUGH! Don’t make me stab you with a knitting needle…….

A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia (2010, February 11). Obsessive-compulsive disorder. PubMed Health. Retrieved April 17, 2012, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001926/

© Sarah Ultis 2012

Hello Operator

It seems like ages since I’ve posted here, probably because it has been. Between holiday madness, a new obsession with knitting (shut up, I’m an edgy knitter ok?), and a fantastic, long-lasting fibro flare up I’ve hardly had the time or energy to be my usually snarky self. Something else I’ve discovered is that when things are going well I have far less to be sarcastic about and am therefore less inspired to write.

Sometime around the beginning of November things started to make a shift for me, romantically anyway. About a year and a half ago I started a friendship with an old friend of my now ex who lives in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. (I’m in Arizona.) We texted and Facebooked, but she is a flirt and made my then girlfriend mad so we stopped talking for awhile. She got a girlfriend of her own not long afterward and so the ex made peace and we were able to talk now and then without making waves. When things with the ex started to get bad, she was a good supporter without over-stepping any boundaries, and when I moved out of Hell House she continued to be a loyal friend. In October, her girlfriend headed off to London (yes England, the wanker) to be with some woman she’d met on the internet. Suddenly we’re both single at the same time and through mutual commiseration a budding romance sprang up.

The funny thing about accidental romance is that since you weren’t planning on it going anywhere you don’t bother to hide all the weird, yucky stuff that you normally avoid showing at all costs when you’re trying to court someone. (Yeah, yeah. I like old words. So there.) This has led to a far more honest relationship much earlier than you would normally get there and without the usual fight(s) or tears. I don't remember the last time I had a relationship that started out as simple friendship. It almost always starts with romantic intentions from the beginning which sets up all kinds of annoying expectations.

Now ordinarily I hate long distance relationships for about a zillion reasons, primarily the fact that you can’t actually see how someone behaves. You get little pieces of time together where you’re both on your best romantical behavior, (yes I also like making up my own words. Perhaps there will be a Butch/Femme Project dictionary in years to come with all my glorious wordaliciousness) while you visit for a week or a weekend, but in between, all you have is what they tell you via text or through those looooong late night phone calls. And you can say whatever you want then. You can tell stories about your high school glory days and pretend they still apply even though you’re in your mid-thirties and the only thing that’s still relevant about high school is that you still have a teenage mentality of angst and victimhood. Or how you live with your ex but you're just roommates now, even though someone forgot to tell the "ex" that. It takes a long time to get to know the real person when that's all you have.

Enter technology. *insert fanfare here* Now with the fabulous invention of Skype I can spend every evening chatting with my girl, or watching movies, playing a game together or any number of other things that weren't possible before. There's still the potential for the information blinders, but with the webcam it's like having a little window into her life. I can see how she acts with people she lives with, which tells a lot about a person let me tell ya. And it's kind of like dating Victorian style. You can spend time together, but there's no touching and there's almost always a chaperone tromping in and out of the picture.

I'm hoping that between the unique start, slow grow, and a hand from modern technology this might turn out to be something really special. If not, I'll at least be able to knit a parachute to escape with before we crash and burn.

© Sarah Ultis 2012