Sexeteria

Do you remember adolescence?

That stage when you suddenly realized the childhood things that once brought you pleasure now just didn't seem to "fit" you right anymore. Suddenly you weren't able to comfortably settle into them like you used to--they hadn't changed, but somehow the lens through which you viewed them left them somewhat duller--they seemed too simple, too one-dimensional, too...well, immature. You began to feel a desire for more complex, adult challenges, relationships, situations. Your body yearned and ached, sometimes literally, for these new things. But...and this is what makes it adolescence...your body and mind weren't adult yet. Because the yearning sets in before the new things can be realized and experienced.

Do you remember what that felt like, how awkward, how frustrating, how sometimes frightening? You knew what you didn't want anymore, you had some physical/emotional sense of wanting something other, but you were still a bit afraid to plunge directly into fully adult experiences and behaviors to get that thing. And in fact, even if you had been ready, you just didn't know where or how to get those things, or even what they actually would look or feel like, so that you could recognize, capture, and be them.

And as if that inner turmoil were not confusing enough, the external world decides to turn you into its own personal Pushmi-pullyu. You want to be adult, but you're unsure of how to--and instead of helping you make that journey, the real adults in your life start sending you mixed messages--wavering between continuing/desperately desiring to still treat and protect you like a child one moment, while demanding you "grow up and act your age" and pushing you into complex social situations the next.

It is a challenging time and the adolescent wavers on the brink, a sometimes falling back into the safety of familiar childhood comforts and behaviors, then rushing forward headlong to test some new adult behavior only to realize they haven't really gotten it down yet, and it's going to take a lot of fucking up and false starts to get into this new state of being.

It's a time few people remember with fondness. You often hear people say if there's one time they'd never go back to, it's their adolescence. You can almost see them literally shudder when they say it; you can see them remembering how they felt--the bad hair, skin, clothing, the awkwardly, half-evolved (or too quickly evolved) bodies, the social faux pas, the feeling of desire whilst fearing one is undesirable, the feeling of being nowhere good, and wondering how the hell long this was going to last.

I bring this up because I suddenly find myself in some similar kind of state to this, but this time emotionally, not physically, as it is when one is a teen. (Although, ironically, my body is evolving quite rapidly during this time into something else, as well.)

I've been working hard to sort through the muck of issues surrounding my rape as well as many, many other related and unrelated unhealthy patterns I'd absorbed over my life. I wanted--I want--so desperately to feel better, to get better. And it's been working. I've managed to see my evolution happening right before my eyes. It hasn't been easy, but to see the evolution has been rewarding. I am starting to feel better, and more healthy. Where I saw hopelessness before, I can often see hope now. I don't have as many negative impulses. I don't fall into depression very often. I don't think the world is a sad and fucked up place anymore. I feel on the whole so much better.

But it also leaves me in an awkward emotional phase. I know what unhealthy looks like now. I have many more tools with which to recognize it and cut it off at the pass. And I have some general idea of what healthy looks like. But for so many years, I've never lived there--I've never experienced it, I've never surrounded myself with people who were in that place.

In fact, I did just the opposite.

I once said to a friend something like, "I know my people, and I always let them know subtly that I know them." I did. I knew my people. My heart meshed with their hearts. I sought them out.

This reminds me of the film Hedwig and The Angry Inch. I remember hearing these lines from the song "The Origin of Love" years back, during some of my darkest hours, and thinking, yes, this is just right, this is just how it is:

But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We call it love.

That was what I looked for and recognized. That is what bonded me to people. I could see that the pain down in their soul was the same as the one down in mine. And I loved them, and I showed them, and then they loved me. We brilliant, gorgeous, sad, troubled, angry, misanthropic, hurt, damaged souls--we "got" each other. We held each other. We told each other it was okay.

It felt good to be understood, to be held, even if it was in a place we all felt pain staying in. We didn't LEAVE that place, we just comforted each other IN it.

But now, something has shifted in me. I've done it myself--I've purged some of my pain and the habits that come with it. And now, because of that, I find I can't be in that place anymore. I can't receive the same comfort, even when I do it all the exact same way I did it before. Like trying to put on my favorite old children's clothes on my budding adolescent body, things are tight, uncomfortable, awkward. They no longer FIT.

I still recognize those people who were my people; they're the only ones I have ever understood; the only ones I've been able to communicate with. I want the comfort of them still, of not being alone, of if nothing else is to be shared, sharing our pain, of showing them I get it, because I do still get it. But the thing is, I don't FEEL it anymore. Now, I can only sympathize, not empathize. I feel distanced from it in a way I never did before.

I'm told this is a sign of getting healthy. But now here I am, standing awkwardly in some kind of emotional adolescence, midway through my life. I don't fit with my old people anymore. They feel the impact of this emotional distance, and I feel it, too. I see us getting more and more cut off from each other every day, even as I hold my hands out to them, even as I feel the pull of every new person like that I meet. Old habits die hard.

But I while I no longer fit right in my old world anymore, I also don't fit with whomever my new people will be yet. I don't even know who my new people ARE. I have a vague sense of what they are NOT. I have a vague sense of what I would like them to be. But how to find these people? I've never encountered these creatures...I was too busy with that other life, that other perspective. I don't know how to act in this rare company, how to grow into this new healthy "emotional adulthood," as it were. I feel awkward, in some kind of no-woman's-land.

Like an adolescent, I feel unready and afraid of this new state of being. I feel strange in my skin. I feel I couldn't possibly be accepted into this world of mysterious adulthood, because I don't know how to act in it. I feel I will be called out for a fraud, ridiculed, made ridiculous in my grand entrance into the party with my first attempt at grown-up-girl makeup and clothing.

And I feel a deep sense of loss and pain at having to leave behind those I have always loved most. It feels almost like a death; very much like grieving. Like leaving your family to move to another country across a vast ocean and knowing you will never, ever return again--that their precious faces, which held so much comfort for you in the past, will fade and disappear, never to be touched by you again. The pain of this; the mournfulness and nostalgia...it is almost unbearable.

And I feel guilt at leaving them in their pain, as well. They already hurt so much; how can I hurt them more with my leaving?

And I am afraid to leave my old people. If I leave them...they will be hurt, and they will not take me back. And what if I fail? Who will be left for me? What will be left for me?

Who is going to be there to hold me while I pass through this valley from one state of being to the other?

I must let go those behind me, whose embraces now no longer feel like comfort, but only holding back. And in the world in front of me, well, those there are fully realized and don't even see me yet; they don't even know I need a hand up.

And perhaps to enter their world, one must not need to have a hand up.

Which means for now, like every adolescent, I must walk there all by myself; I must learn myself, through observation, trial, and error. It feels like perhaps I will only be embraced once I finish the journey and arrive at the house on the hill. And then the embrace might just be my own, and that will be enough. But right now, I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about anything. I can't see my future; I can't see what I will become, I can't see how long I will be alone, between these two places, and I am afraid.

I feel very alone. More alone than I've felt in a very long time.

Growing pains are a necessary part of adolescence. But they hurt like hell.

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This entry has been extremely hard for me to write for some reason...it took me stopping and starting for days to finish it. Now that I've written the final line, I don't want to go back and reread because I'm afraid I'll delete it. I'm hitting publish without editing, so please forgive any errors or confusing parts.