A Shadow Life
So… I talk about it often but never do it. I probably should try NOT talking about it and ACTUALLY doing it… but… baby steps.
I’m going to try to write more. Like… Every day. For a year. I don’t know why I decided to do this. It did lead to an interesting conversation with Sir and sub brother. They pointed out that a year seemed really ambitious and why didn’t I try writing every day for a week first… then I could extend my goals. But I felt that a whole week seemed way too overwhelming to commit to!
There were crickets as they both stared at me.
So! Rational Shadow has decided to make a commitment of on year. Yeah. We’ll see how this goes. Honestly, if I do make it, I expect 360 days of it to be utter crap and maybe 5 days I’ll write something worth something. To whom, I dont’ know, but “worth something” as measured by my arbitrary, judgmental standards for my own existence.
Something has been bothering me lately (besides dying and my creeper doctor and surviving the last four weeks of the school year – which is probably why I’m not actually afraid of dying at the moment…)Â A man I follow on Facebook is a writer and does a blog (and Facebook) about writing and being a writer and supporting writers, etc.
He has started a new feature on his blog about once a month where people can post links to their own writing just to do a community writing share type of thing. And I thought, that would be cool, there’s actually one, or maybe two, posts on this blog that I almost like and would consider polishing up to share with people (besides the masochistic ones who already subject themselves to my writing by willingly coming here).
But, he posted it on Facebook with a note to leave a link to the writing in the comments. I post on Facebook using my real name, and my face, and my Shadow self does not, cannot, exist on Facebook connected to my real name and face.
I choose this because of my profession, because of discrimination, because I live in a country where Trump won the presidential election, because… even among “open-minded” communities, I’m considered an aberration, an outcast, dangerous, crazy, “dark”… for who I am, how I was born, how I consensually and lovingly live my life.
This makes me sad.
It makes me sad often in my life. There are always moments that come up. This is just the latest one. I post pictures of food I make sometimes on Facebook. Then later I think about posting another picture on this blog, but I have to think about whether anything in the picture I post here could be connected to my Facebook picture (background? plate patterns? did I catch my own thumbprint in the picture and will stealth crazy technology be able to scan it and decipher my identity?) And it is probably extremely unlikely that anyone would so much as care enough to try to compare… or even travel in both this and my Facebook circle (with a couple exceptions who I trust with my thumbprint…)
Likewise there are moments and thoughts and life events that I’d share on Facebook, because, they are my life… but I can’t, because, they would reveal things that I can’t afford to have publicly known. And so, every time I post something I have to think. I even have to think about my pronouns lest I slip into using “we” instead of “I” and someone’s suspicion is aroused.
I always have to stop and think. Because that’s what it means to live in the closet. It means always being afraid. Always looking over your shoulder, always hiding part of yourself. And it sucks. It hurts. It’s tiring. It makes me sad.
And the worst thing is… I’ve internalized it. And this isn’t to say that it’s all in my head and I’m being irrationally paranoid. The danger is real to me if this became known. But having lived in the closet all of my life, having silently absorbed the cultural expectations, stereotypes, judgments of who I am and what people think of people like me… I can’t even escape them in places where I am safe… like my own blog.
If I think about posting something about Sir and my relationship, I hit anxiety. I often push through it because I want to share that part of myself here, but every time I hit anxiety. I have mild anxiety writing “Sir” to refer to him rather than his name, even though that is the way I address him at home most of the time and it feels natural and comfortable and safe when I’m with him to say it, but to say it in front of an audience, even a safe one, the anxiety rises.
When I write that I was punished, I feel deeply compelled to defend it… to justify why it wasn’t abusive or wrong or cruel or inappropriate. When I write about ownership, I cringe because the context is so highly specific and so highly charged outside of this context that when I say it I wish I had a different lexicon to describe who I am… words that are not also associated with non-consent, with violence, with abuse, with oppression…
I feel I constantly have to justify myself…Â even to my own blog… to people I trust… I feel the need to say, “But not in a bad way…” behind each dangerous phrase.
And even after a lifetime of being who I am… literally having these feelings back to my earliest childhood memories, I still doubt and question whether maybe there’s something wrong with me. Whether with therapy and medication and “correcting” myself, these feelings will eventually go away and I’ll become “normal.”
I don’t let it stop me, anymore, from living and loving who and how I choose. Though I credit Sir with most of that, as he creates the space for me to do that. Without him, I would lack the courage to be as fully who I am as I am right now.
But I resent and regret that the thoughts still rise. That the sweetest moment with Sire this evening, first was simply a sweet moment, and then became a sweet reflection, and then became, “I want to share this moment with people,” then became, “They might not understand,” and then became sad, silent, isolation.
I’ll share it anyway.
Tomorrow.
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