Sudden sapphic agita
Content advisory: This post contains mention of diet culture and sexual assault.
So, what caused the self-loathing that I alluded to in my very first post? It was disability-related, but only partly so.
I got divorced recently. It was a short marriage, and I asked for the split, but it was to someone who I'd known for a long time - or who I thought I'd known. But I'm not here to talk about that. What is important is that I'm still processing it. I haven't even thought about getting back into dating, at least not until recently. Then I was at a social hangout when I suddenly realized that a friend there is hot enough to melt paint off of a car. Yes, I am that oblivious queer. Living life, minding my own business, and then wham - sudden sapphic agita.
Gonna pause for a minute to offer an offramp before this gets wild. If gay stuff in general (or non-explicit discussions of queer dating in specific) bothers you, please head for the exits.
We good? -turns off stereo blasting Pink Pony Club- All right, let's move along.
Other friends at that gathering said that I should ask her out. I demurred for various reasons which I quite frankly can't remember. They were honest reasons (to a point) but ugh. Why, self? Why do I do this to myself when the brutal truth is that I haven't gotten any from a partner in fourteen years?
Yes, y'all, fourteen years. I joke that my business is like an ancient ritual site - sealed off for centuries, then discovered long after it was last used for its original purpose and then pondered by archaeologists. Pick your jaws up off the floor, it happens.
Remember how my first shrink said that there's a lot to unpack here? Here's part of it:
- Raised in a strict religious household where "purity" was emphasized over anything else
- Raised in 1990s diet culture, and religious diet culture (look up Weigh Down)
- Two military sexual assault incidents before my mid-twenties (one being a gang rape)
All of this means that it's very difficult for me to want to get physically close to someone, much less allow myself to even feel attraction.
Oh, and then there's the physical disability. You didn't think I'd leave that out, would you? There's the fibromyalgia, which means that on a truly bad day, I cannot be even lightly touched without pain. And then there's the connective tissue disorder, which means that if I lie the wrong way in bed, my hips start to dislocate. Sadly, unlike Shakira, my hips do lie.
I wish there was a happy ending to this, both metaphorically and literally. But as you can see, the first obstacle to overcome in this is... me.