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

A Momentary Departure

*WARNING: This will not be the usual relationship drama that you are accustomed to. It may, in fact, be a complete and spectacular train wreck. Read at your own risk.*

A couple of days ago, I made the mistake of posting an article on Facebook regarding religion and the hypocrisy often involved with that. Chaos then ensued. (My cousin calls it "good discussion" and really she's probably right, but I hate arguing so it felt like chaos to me.)

I know, I know. Please refrain from bludgeoning me with blunt objects. Anyone with half a brain knows you never, ever talk about religion or politics in a public setting if you don’t want to start a war, and it’s rare for me to bring it up because I consider my beliefs private. I don’t want to debate them, I don’t want you to tell me why you think I’m wrong or why your beliefs are more right. Each of us believes what we feel is right and I would almost guarantee that no one ever changed their mind from having one of those kinds of debates.

Anyway, the title of the article was “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay." (Read it if you choose, but don't come scream at me until you hear me out.) The author uses Christianity as his primary example, and he gets a little caught up in the passion of the ramble, but his main point is that every group has extremists, and every person has judged someone for being different than we think they should be. I can’t imagine a single person in the world who wouldn’t stand up and say that they believe we should be kind and loving toward our fellow human beings, and yet all of us have had a moment or two when we have not behaved in a loving or kind way because we didn’t approve of something someone else was doing. If you say you haven’t, I’ll call you a liar.

It happens. We’re human. Part of being human is being flawed. The problem is that there are people who use their beliefs to justify hate and harm, and while they are often the smallest part of any group they are also generally the loudest. There are some amazing people out there from every faith and walk of life who quietly and tirelessly work to be the best people they possibly can be. They touch lives every day with love, acceptance, and the calm expression of the things they value, and they never make the evening news because they aren’t holding signs that say “God hates fags” or blowing things up. My grandmother was one of those people.

For all the years that I knew her, my Gram had this kind of quiet peace to her. No matter what insanity was raging around her, she had this serenity that would just wash over me every moment I was with her, and no matter who I was with or what I was doing she always just welcomed and loved me. When I would talk with her about some drama I was having she would share with me her faith and means of coping with crisis in her life. She never pushed, made me feel that my way of doing things was wrong, or left me feeling that she was judging me. She'd just say "Well, whenever I've felt like that I always pray, and then I feel better. Sometimes I have to pray more than once, but I just keep doing it." If I recall correctly, she and my grandpa were married more than 50 years by the time she passed away, and I asked her once how she'd managed to stay married that long. Her answer was the same. She said "Well your grandpa doesn't like to talk too much, so when he wouldn't talk to me, I'd talk to God." She fought leukemia for much of the last part of her life, and most of us never knew until near the end. When the doctor finally told her it was time to make some arrangements, she spent more time comforting the people she would leave behind than she did worrying about herself, and when she passed away, she went with a joy and peace that I'd never seen before because she had faith that she was going home. Her passing left a gaping hole in my life and the lives of so many others that she touched. There are a lot of things I've lost faith in over the years but I always believed in her because she always believed in me, no matter what. And she prayed. A lot. Rest in peace Gram. I miss you every single day.

It is those people who can change what people think because they live it and share their inspiration with love and acceptance rather than hate and judgment. They provide an example of what a life lived in love really looks like. The people who scream and wave their signs proclaiming their disgust with the world only serve to close minds and hearts to any message they may be trying to send. So what I'm saying is this: If you want to change the world, do it with love. If you want the world to hear your message, share it with joy. And if you want to make a difference, make it one person at a time, through the example of your life, and not the paint on your sign.

*We now return you to your regularly scheduled relationship rant.*

© Sarah Ultis 2011

“The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”
― Mother Teresa

Road Rage

Have you ever looked back over the course of a situation and found yourself running for the fire extinguisher to put out the flames where your hair has caught fire? It’s not one particular event that leads to the sudden need to spontaneously combust, but the building of one event upon another and another until the little trail of tiny flames becomes a giant bonfire of rage. My most recent breakup has been like that for me this past couple of weeks, though we separated months ago.

When a relationship ends it sometimes it takes awhile for the details to all trickle down. The “more wrong” person hides things so he or she doesn’t look like the “bad guy.” The “less wrong” person refuses to accept any responsibility for his or her own contributions to the relationship’s demise. Usually, when I finally get to that post-relationship “aha” moment, it’s a relief, regardless of the information gained. I’m a “Why?” kind of girl, and I need that answer in order to process things. When at last I understand the reason for what happened, I can look more objectively at whatever part I had in it, heal, move on, and rebuild. Not this time.

This time I’m more angry than I ever remember being. I’ve had people cheat on me. I’ve had them take advantage of me financially. I’ve had them do both at the same time, but this time I feel like everything I ever thought was good about myself, things I was proud of, values I spent a lifetime building, were taken, twisted, and used to manipulate and betray me, and now I don’t know who or what is left inside this battered shell. Even more enjoyable, the void left where those traits were continues to fill up with anger and hate till it spills out into the rest of my life. I’m angry. All the time, at everyone, for everything, especially myself.

I am enraged that I allowed her to manipulate my decisions. She told me things so I’d do what she wanted. She didn’t tell me things to prevent me doing things she didn’t want. Rather than being honest and allowing me to take a step back while she sorted out her feelings, she hid things so she could sort them out without the risk that I might choose to take care of myself and move on. I’ve talked about intuition, and there were warning signs all along the way, but I ignored them. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because there was always some crisis going on in her life that took precedent: her health, her job, her “walls” caused by her own previous break up. I set aside my own fear and concerns to let her deal with hers. I was kind, understanding, patient, loving, generous, and self-sacrificing, and I find that I don’t want to do or be any of those things ever again because she took advantage of them, eventually wiping out the entire core of who I am. Adding insult to injury, she seems to be getting everything she ever wanted, thanks in part to my clearly misguided sense of kindness and fair play. All I want to do is scream at everyone to stay the hell away from me so they don’t get mowed down while I run around like Femmezilla with my hair on fire.

In the midst of this chaos as I chew daintily on the neighbors’ rooftops, casually swatting helicopters from the sky (Femmezilla SMASH!), along comes a woman who thinks I hung the moon and treats me like a princess. Instead of hiding trying to self-protect, she just lays it out there, the good, the bad, the ugly. She says “This is how I feel and where I’m at. I know you’re in a bad place but I’m here, I care, and I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” Holy hand grenade, Batman! What is this new devilry?! Femmezilla feel…..(cocking head to one side, car-antenna-toothpick prying shingles from a molar) not so bad. I feel not so bad. I might even venture to say that at times I feel almost (gasp, could it be?) good. Trust me, I still spend the majority of my time rampaging through Tokyo, but every once in awhile, this 50 foot tyrannosaurus is wearing a pink tutu and princess tiara, and feeling kind of silly stomping around. I'm still not sure that it's safe to stop being angry, but I'm open to the possibility that not everything I thought was good about me is a liability. Don't be hatin' on my tiara.

© Sarah Ultis 2011

Welcome to Bedlam

Commonly referred to as “Bedlam”, Bethlem Royal Hospital was the first asylum in England for the mentally ill. While Bethlem in its new location is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric housing and treatment, investigation in previous centuries has revealed the monstrous torture inflicted upon residents in the name of medicine.

There are times that relationships have felt very much like being in Bedlam in the bad old days of water torture and electric shock therapy. I get little flashes of intuition, hints that things are not as they seem (also known as “she’s cheating”), but when I talk to my partner about them she assures me that my concerns are unfounded. (“Sweetheart, she’s straight, married, straight and married, just needs someone to talk to…” Insert excuses ad nauseum.) Up till now, I’ve loved and trusted this person, and I don’t really like what my flash of insight might mean, so I want to believe what she tells me is true, and yet my gut still tells me that something is wrong with this picture. This scenario repeats as needed until I begin to feel that I must be losing my mind with my attempts to reconcile the “truth” of my heart and the “truth” of her words but the “truths” can’t both be true so one “truth” is true but one “truth” is a lie and my brain can’t tell if I am being lied to or if I am lying to me until I can no longer tell the difference of the truth of the “truth” and the lie of the “truth” so it just rolls round and round and round beating me against the walls of my rubber room while I sing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”. AUGH!

Then finally, one deep, dark, night in the pits of despair a tiny piece of evidence comes to light and she can no longer deny what I have known all along. She’ll try to explain away the proof of the lie in her “truth” and for awhile she may succeed in convincing me that even my own eyes and ears have lied to me, but little by little I will shake off the shackles, releasing the raging, tortured, madwoman inside me with a primal scream of hellfire and woman scorned.

There has to come a point when I listen more to my intuition than anything or anyone else, but there are so many factors that can influence that. How do I determine when unsettled feelings have legitimate purpose and when they’re simply fueled by fear and the ghosts of relationships past? I’ve tried upfront discussion, I’ve tried “trust, but verify”, I’ve tried “wait and watch”, I’ve tried “ignore it and hope it goes away”, but all these methods of dealing with it have all come down to the same simple truth. That truth is that no matter what I need to start listening to that little voice inside (the intuition kind, not the schizophrenic kind) and treat myself like a friend, rather than someone I don’t trust or even seem to like very much. When my friends tell me there’s something wrong I believe them. When they’re sad I comfort them. I have their back when they need someone to go to bat for them. The least I can do is give myself the same courtesy.

* And femme ladies, take it from me. If they’re hanging with your butch, they’re not that straight and not that married.
Bedlam. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 22, 2011 fromhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/58154/Bedlam.
© Sarah Ultis 2011