Insecurities

I feel like we all spent the whole weekend talking.  I am seriously talked out.  But I am grateful that I am part of a family of people who believe in talking.  I am grateful that… that they, and I, are all willing and able to talk about what we want, what we feel, our insecurities and worries and perspectives.  And I am proud of all of us for how well we navigated… particularly today.  We were respectful, we listened, we assumed positive intent, we clarified rather than jumping to conclusions… (yes, even me!)  It was just a really mature and productive and fucking exhausting weekend.  But I feel a little more like a grownup right now than I did before.

Now, I’m free for a couple of hours before bed, and I find myself wanting to write.  I want to find that place where writing is fun and free and I’m not drowning in perfectionism and insecurities.  And I don’t know how to find it.  So I avoid writing.  But I think about it, because I want it.  Then I think about how miserable it is, and I don’t do it.  And I hate this cycle.

Internal drama aside, I also find that I have waves of insecurity over what I post here and who will be reading it.  My friends are awesome and amazing.  Ah Maze Ing.  Like, two different people called/texted me this weekend and spent ridiculous amounts of their time just talking to me and listening to me whine about my life.  And… before I wrote on this blog, that didn’t really happen.  We talked, but… they didn’t have the chance to reach out when I was struggling because, I never told anybody.  And because I have this semi-veiled way of communicating now, I feel like I’m more open and honest, even though I still can’t pick up a phone and call anybody when I’m in trouble, I can at least post, and I have good friends who are interested enough that they read here and they pick up phones and say, “Hey, are things better now? What’s up?”  And that’s a pretty amazing thing.

But I also feel even more panicky about posting certain things because some of the anonymity of the internet is stripped when real live people who know you are reading it.

Even though I KNOW that my friends, kinky and vanilla both are okay with who I am and aren’t going to be weirded out, or freaked out, or otherwise despise me for aspects of who I am… I can’t… act on that knowledge.  My body doesn’t believe my brain.

Sometimes I can get over it.  But other times I get seized with anxiety and I get a “What will ___ think if I post ____??”  And it’s not even a vanilla vs. kinky thing.  There are so many varieties of kink that I can make a case that even kinky friends will judge certain things I post if they are things that aren’t THEIR kinks… and of course all of that is ridiculous.  Of course it is.  But I can’t help be terrified every time.

I remember when I first shared something with Jayzon.  He was gay.  And very very solidly interested in men. I avoided sharing certain things with him for a long time because I thought he’d be… disinterested, at best, because… I’m a woman.  I thought that there would be nothing interesting to him in my experience, and, in fact, it might even put him off.

For a long time I only shared things that I wrote that were about two men… I didn’t share any of my writing that involved a woman… because I thought… he’d not be into it.

But ironically, when I finally did share something with him that involved a woman, he loved it.  In fact, loved it better than most of my M/M stuff (he did like Levis).  He brought up that little story over and over, and made suggestions about how the relationship could go…  He liked it.  And when I talked to him about it, he was, I think, slightly offended that I thought he wouldn’t.  He was my soulmate, best friend, angel…  How could I think he wouldn’t want to know something that was ME.  He loved me, and that meant all of me, and my most authentic writing came from being me…  whether that was Levis or a F/M piece, or being submissive, or anything else.  And that was such a lesson for me… that… because he loved me, all of me was interesting to him.

I wish it had been enough to teach me that universally.  But somehow I still believe that my friendships are fragile.  That somehow by simply existing too loudly, I can shatter them.  That there is something in me that people are just waiting to have laid in front of them as their reason to walk away.

Or worse, that something in me that I will reveal will make them uncomfortable with me… but they won’t ever tell me to protect my feelings.  That… I will become a perpetrator and I won’t even know that I’ve harmed their regard…

And so… I think about… posting about how we played last night, and how Sir re-established our dynamic and… I think about… how many times I’ve written things that… if I was going to make people uncomfortable, I’d bloody well already have done it.  But I feel that panicky feeling in my stomach and I can’t write it.

I think about writing a new Tem and John story… and I think about the warm feeling that world gives me, the comfort of their home and their dynamic that… is so warm for me to write, even when they are so… damaged and traumatized.  Then I think about people reading it and I panic.  Which is ridiculous because I’ve written like… 20 of those stories or something.

I think about extending the fantasy piece I was playing with last week…  leaning into that genre bending, seeing where it would go if I tried to blend kink in fantasy and… not knowing if it would be any good, not knowing if it would go down in flames, not knowing if people would be repulsed, not knowing if I would…  and I panic.

And I sit here and I feel like my stomach is a vice, rising up and tightening around my chest, and reaching for my throat and I… miss Jayzon… and… I just… I just… wish I could be free…

I wish I could be… unafraid…

Just… for a little while…

Just a night… a moment… when I don’t have to be afraid.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Like