stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
Status: offline
|
Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I don't have any expectations when it comes to a relationship. All it needs to be is with someone I accept and who accepts me, that we can share things and occupy the same space or environment without harming each other, and that we both want similar things out of a relationship. I tend to see issues and baggage as part of the whole, complete person, as they tend not to be the sort of baggage you can set down, pick up or leave somewhere. My only criteria is whether that person is a victim or a survivor.
Do I have issues and baggage? Yes I do, much of it coming from childhood, my childhood as the 'unwanted child' together with the abuse plus the fact that I'm transgendered and still going through gender reassignment. This has excluded me so far from being a primary partner in a relationship and the relationships I have had have been those 'lesser' relationships where I have been no better to someone than a second option. I cannot deny that some of these issues and baggage do impact on a relationship because they do, and it's always been a case of me waiting for someone to get beyond this and discover me for who I really am.
Quite a lot of the baggage and issues were not caused by other people but were also self-inflicted and caused by me. This is notably during my 'man thing' period in Poland, years of living in complete denial, my earlier years of success in theatre up to the period when I got married and started abusing alcohol. Then you got the years before when here in the UK I would form unhealthy BDSM relationships with 'dommes' who were essentially very angry and bitter women and I would be their emotional punchbag and let them take it all out on me. But it was my marriage and the 'vodka years' (anything up to a litre of vodka a day) which proved to be the turning point and I realised that I was killing myself and hurting the people around me who were close to me.
I didn't approach my Warsaw domme as a 'save me' submissive but this is what happened, I was not only 'saved' but also 'found' and it was my years in her service and my moving back to Warsaw which provided the turn around in my life and formed the basis of me as I am today. Getting through the transition was a requirement of service but she took me apart piece by piece and had me go through myself and find answers to some very difficult questions. My years in her service were marked by my biggest successes in Polish theatre and led to my 'angry years' when I started writing and putting out short controversial dramas to 'get back' at society. This was when she released me, insisting that I needed to come out and stop living 'the double life'.
So many times I have heard 'if you don't love yourself you cannot love anyone else' which is something I disagree with. What if you have never been loved? What if you don't have any concept what love is? Sure, I guess you can use your imagination but I don't see how accepting yourself, caring about yourself and looking after yourself can equate to love. I'm not necessarily writing about myself here, I have a much more positive image of myself but some of the people I have put out on stage have been people with very little or no self-esteem. Part of my own problems are down to the fact that as a child I was taught to believe that I was unacceptable, and all along I have to cope with the same message coming from other people for being transgendered which appears to be a pretty effective barrier to date preventing me finding that person and that relationship.
I've come out of the box and this is how I live, out of the box, and I don't really have any desire to go back into any sort of box. This is not any sort of attempt to show that I am 'different' or 'alternative', I'm just me, but I notice a trend among people in 'the lifestyle' who come out of the box, and then go back into another box but yet claim to be outside the box. Therefore from my own perspective there's no difference between this BDSM community and wider society as I still get told I'm unacceptable by some. But then again was I expecting any difference? No, I wasn't.
But then I can turn it round and say that many people are just unacceptable to me, for example those who believe that an interest in kink and BDSM replaces some pretty basic social skills or even basic relationship skills. I know my worth and value as a person, a human being, and don't see myself as anyone less or inferior simply for the way I am or for my being transgendered. I work with homeless people, people who are also deemed in some ways unacceptable by others, people who also have baggage and issues, some to the point where they are unable to function normally. But you know each and every one of them is someone.
It's like with this 'no drama' that some people keep coming out with. Drama is good, at least from my perspective, because something is changing, something is happening, there's progress, learning, development, activity, but then again here I'm talking about when drama is effective. I think people confuse 'drama' and 'melodrama', which is something totally different. To me life is just as much drama as it is comedy, suspense, thriller, tragedy, or anything else. The problem only appears when there's too much of say thriller, tragedy or even comedy - here I'm talking of the slapstick variety when nothing you do comes out right and everything you attempt falls apart.
So much is down to one's perspective on people and life. Yes, I can look back and see that all I have behind me are failed relationships. But this isn't the way I see it, because to me a failed relationship is simply a relationship which didn't live up to my expectations and I feel this is a negative way of looking at relationships, people and myself. Surely the fact that there was a relationship in the first place, isn't this a success? But this is where you find some people have problems, the relationship ends and yes, it tends to royally piss them off, but then what happens is that they get angry at the person and instead of rising above it, letting go and moving on they get all caught up in stuff like resentment and hatred and decide that they're going to carry the emotional wounds throughout their life.
This is perhaps why I have become a minimalist. I have gone through so much in life and found and lost so much that anything else from this point forward is largely academic. Home is an apartment here in London, but my essential home is really not much more than a large suitcase or holdall and perhaps a cardboard box. I live simply, frugally, I meander through life, and am both free and individual. I live for today, have a concept about tomorrow but don't really have much idea about next week. It's the same with relationships and people.
I am stable in my instability and consistent in my inconsistency. I genuinely fear no one and nothing. The only way to know if a relationship works or not is to give it a try. This is my only promise. I promise to try.
_____________________________
CM's Resident Lyricist
also Facebook
http://stella.baker.tripod.com/
50NZpoints
Q2
Simply Q
|
Money or ME - 
Profile
RE: Money or ME - 
RE: Money or ME - 
RE: Money or ME - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread