Can someone let me in? I’m cold.
I have always wanted romance and spontaneity and intimacy. Craved it, like most of us. I am twenty-five and I have hardly been on dates. Honestly, my life has been mostly devoid of romance and wanted touch and reciprocated desire.
When I am away from home, the possibility of being with a man seems much more plausible than it does in the Minnesotan suburbs. Being someplace else, there’s an energy of possibility - not to be someone new, but the opportunity to be who I am when I don’t feel boxed in. There’s this internal sense of shame I have carried since I was young. It’s only now beginning to take form as something I can identify, a voice that berates me, shuts me up, stifles my inherent self. That voice is so constant when I am home. From all my years of therapy, I know it originated from my experiences of neglect and abuse. And I know it’s more present here because everywhere I go in Minnesota, there are reminders of all of my childhood - the good and the bad. Often, even the happy memories leave me feeling disjointed.
These next words replace the blood in my veins with a sense of pathetic desperation: every time I have left home, all the trips, college move-ins, study abroad, and new jobs, an insurmountable motivating factor was because of the possibility of intimacy, of romance, of fun. You see, when my dad was alive, the space he took up in my life was that of father, husband, son. I was his source of self-esteem, companionship and will to live. In those roles, I had no space for other boys or men. My dad was like my boyfriend and I did not understand that until recently. I realized when all my girlfriends are talking about their relationship woes, I could always match what they were saying but instead of relating it to a boyfriend, it was my dad I was thinking of. He died nearly 3 years ago, and I am just now able to see the forest for the trees. These things take time, I know.
When my friends started dating, I was about thirteen. I wanted more than anything to be chosen too, for some boy to look at me and say kind words. Even when that did happen, I thought it was a prank - some bet that he would’ve made with his friends where he would win if I admitted that I liked him. My ability to trust was ruptured early on. Boys and men I have both desired and feared for as long as I can recall.
Through the years of becoming a teen, young adult and now full fledge adult, I have felt on the outside. Irrevocably flawed for my inability to relate to boys and men in the way that my girlfriends do. My experiences are different than anyone I am friends with. Abuse robbed me of my sexuality early on, and I have coped by adopting an attitude of anorexia. That is, on the outside I maintain control of my life and self by denying any desire of, touch from and need for a man. On the inside, I am yearning for it.
When I am around others, there is this sense of impending doom before they find out that I have never dated, never had true intimacy. In these situations, my mind is looping on the words I would say to to contextualize my lack of experience with that of my early abuse. I imagine telling all of this to someone and I can feel my internal organs rush to press against the front of my body like a child presses against the glass at the aquarium - eager, pleading, desperate. With this context, knowing my story, do you accept me now? You don’t think I’m a freak do you? Please, accept me now. I can’t bear feeling this alone any longer. It is like I am standing outside, waiting to be let in to the bar. Someone tell me the secret password so I can whisper it to the bouncer on the stool by the door and he’ll let me in to the party that is adulthood and sex and acceptance and fun. I want to have fun. I have been outside too long. I am cold. Is it warm inside? What’s the music like?