dec 27th
Stef was over here the other night. It was a bit trippy, considering the few interactions we’ve had were littered by some type of possessiveness over men (who really aren’t worth the breaking of a sisterly bond). They observed Jon & I acting romantically towards each other, as we have been for a few months now – since before you left. None of this is your business, but I get the feeling you already know. I want you to know that it’s still none of your business and though you’re allowed to react to startling information however you choose (you chose to subtly shame me over text, without actually coming out and saying what you were upset about). You did it in a jesting manner, that spoke as though you and I had some shared secret about the true nature of who I am to you and, I would assume, most men. You see me as a succubus. A selfish witchy woman that engages sexually with friends and brothers alike without any accord for the feelings or emotions of the ones she’s betraying. I think even just a year or [certainly] two ago, I would have agreed with you unquestioningly, but see I have questioned it now. I have questioned why it’s so taboo to date friends or brothers – especially when you love them both. What’s really the merit of pretending you don’t have feelings for someone, to spare the jealousy and insecurities of another? Just that. The person winds up not knowing, cutting off a potentially helpful relationship (which is what sparked Jon’s and my fling) so that the *first* lover doesn’t have to sit up at night wondering “what does he have that I don’t? why is she doing this to me? she’s trying to get back at me…” and on and on and on. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it at least three times: I do not take things personally, and nothing that I do is intended personally. I made a vow to myself this past summer that I would no longer indulge the insecurities and egos of little men, by allowing their entitled emotions and fragile mental states influence actions that were purely MINE. So when I’m fucking your brother, it’s not because he’s better than you (to be totally honest, you both make love in the same strange ways, you’re bigger – which isn’t necessarily better, just the diametric opposite kind of insufficient that his penis is – but both of you want to be on top when we 69 and that’s just weird) and it isn’t to spite you. It’s because – in a really similar situation to this one, at the Brewer’s farm when you came back from that ten day trip & I was sooo happy to see you that I was jumping all over the place, dancing with you, kissing you, feeling so alive in my love for you for the first time in a hot minute (distance really does make the heart grow fonder, Zach), you suspected me of being ingenuine in my affection for you because I wouldn’t spend the night with you; effectively wiping out all the built up affection that I’d had for you, because I realized nothing had changed. I was still the source from which you desperately wanted sexual gratification and to have it “whisked away” at the last minute was OBVIOUSLY some type of ploy against you. OBVIOUSLY I was seeing somebody else later that night where he and I would snicker over the great cuck I’d made of you – getting you all hot and bothered like that, then spending all my libido on him! Ha-HA! Got ‘im AGAIN!
No. No Zach, that is the product of self obsessed insecurities in which every action the other person makes is translated to be some type of reflection on you, even when it has nothing to do with you. You seem to hold these conflicting views of poly armory, in which one person can love multiple people, but when I’m doing it, it automatically translates to me not loving you truly. You couldn’t be more wrong. The night after the Brewer’s Hideaway Folk Fest, I was really upset the next day, because I had felt so empowered and free when you were traveling about those ten days – giving me the space of freedom to miss you again – crave you again – and things had gone so well when we were dancing together and having a great time. But I refused sex to you by not staying the night and you got assumptive and insecure and jealous and decided that if I wasn’t crazy enough to see you to spend the night & sleep with you, I must be seeing some other person. Must be lying to you again. And yeah, I know I lied to you once: it was the conflicting knowledge within me that I had promised to tell you when I started being sexually active with other people combatting the knowledge that my sex life is nobody’s business but mine. I had a moment of cognitive dissonance and couldn’t bring myself to degrade that empowered knowledge within me to submit to some man’s possession of my sex
Anyway, afterwork the next day, I needed somebody to talk to that was unassociated with the situation, that I could be totally free with and pour out all the battles that had been going on in my mind: had I really crossed a line? were the things that felt so empowering to me just selfish strikes at the other person? I talked to your brother, and in doing so was able to entirely wipe the neurotic psyche that was battling my empowerment & arguing it to death COMPLETELY off the table. I was able to see the truth in what was going on. Jon reminded me that you’re a white man, and that you were socialized to possess and that’s why white men have this code of “no hitting on Zach’s girl” “if Zach’s girl makes a move on you, the only honorable way to handle it is to turn her away and shame her for straying”. Even though my sexuality was outlined specifically to not be possessed by anyone: Zach’s girl, I was still being shamed by you for possibly being with somebody else, even though I was sitting in my kitchen making toast when you called, you jealous lout. And you’re still doing it. You’re still shaming me in this way that implies I’m a woman who knows she’s been doing bad things and you’ve just now caught her. ‘You can’t fool me,’ the tone of your texts beckon a wagging finger. Well, you’re making a fool of yourself. My loves are my loves. They say nothing about you and your knowledge of “where we stand”. When I’m loving Nathan, I’m loving Nathan. When I’m loving Jordan, I’m loving Jordan. When I’m loving Jon, I’m loving Jon. When I’m loving you, I’m entirely present in my love for you. Making your Christmas gift sent me back to all those memories. Pouring through journals from the first night I met you, the second time we met & screwed, the whole backlash from Stef & you telling me that your heart belonged to Stef (I didn’t want your heart, pee brain, I wanted your cock), and then seeing you again the following summer. Being with you again. Going on adventures. I felt such strong nostalgia that I had a great outpouring of love for you that I released & sent your way. And then you responded with an emoji and a heart. “Well, okay,” was my reaction “he must be somewhere else mentally”. And then you attempted to call me out for being ingenuine to you – over a text. How can a text sound ingenuine. And rather than try to understand where I’d been coming from you did that ‘misbehaving woman’ routine on me. There’s this way that I feel after I talk to you about our relationship – or more specifically – about my other relationships that makes me feel like a child who’s being shamed for something they should have known better about. And it’s your right to react however you wish to, but for the sake of my own growth and not allowing those that I love to make me question things within myself that feel pure and honest and I know are right, I think we ought to either talk this out once and for all or just say goodbye to each other. There is no room in my life for people who see demons in the empowerment of my gender & the exploration of myself. No room for me to bend to the insecurities of weak men anymore. I want to be friends, I want to be lovers, but I can never shake the feeling that you need sex from me in order to love yourself completely and that’s just not what I’m here for. I’m tired of questioning myself when I’m being myself because you interpret that self expression in some way that makes me into a witch that’s willingly and knowingly toying with you emotions. Your emotions are yours. Mine are mine. I don’t interpret your actions as some manipulation of who you know me to be, is it so much to ask that you stop doing it to me? And I know it isn’t. And I know that you’re not trying to do it – that’s just how you experience it. Which alerts me to the real problem: you still just don’t get it. You don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman in this society. You don’t understand why I do the things I do – and that what I do has nothing to do with you. Remember what my view of love is? Understanding. You’ve given me a lot of it in the past, and I, you. But in the past few months of our interactions, I’ve felt that understanding drain away, replaced by jealousy & possessiveness. First with Nathan. Now with Jon. (I guess you were never threatened by Jordan). The past two times I’ve talked to you through the cell phone, I’ve come away feeling like that child that ought to know they’ve been misbehaving, and that isn’t okay. I want to be close with you Zach, but I’m tired of being suspected around every corner by your insecurities.
Sincerely,
Not your girlfriend, not your momma, Just Evan
evangelinewords 