Angela and Liz

I'm not a victim of circumstance, I'm just scared.

Okay so I wanted to start this letter this way, because I want to make sure that you know this part is true. I like our relationship 100%. Not 90% not 40%. I love living with you. I love the madness and our clothes and our house and our everything. Everything. I even like that  

you don’t want to have sex with me. Can you believe it? I can’t. But I obviously do. Because I let the behavior go on too. It isn’t just you. I can see that you are only protecting yourself from me/you. **I have rubbed your nose in my sexual trauma for years** I don't even really know if this is me saying that, or just saying what you want to hear. I really don't know. I really was acting just how I wanted to. But maybe I was pushing my shame agenda, never consciously. Who ever knows. It was me striving to get personal satisfaction from you. Love. But you do love me and I do love you. So this is why I want to move forward. I want to cut past the bullshit. This is a letter about me to you. **This whole letter is seems totally selfish in it's intentions and just shows how fucked up I am. But I'm really trying to help just I don't know how/terribly**

Anti gay imprints- defense mechanisms most likely “identifying with aggressor”

1. This is something that is born through trauma,

2. This defense mechanism is integral to them, so open hostility towards it is seen as an attack on all of you, people don’t come in fractions

3. These voices are trying to help you avoid more trauma

4. They are totally natural and the correct response to the situation you were in, but you aren’t anymore. So even those voices were needed once, now they aren’t

5. Think about when a clueless friend is trying to give you advice about a situation and they say exactly the wrong thing. And you think “you’re totally talking about yourself or something else or don’t understand the situation.” The best response is “I love you and I get you’re trying to help, but you’re not”

6. You can’t combat these voices. That will create chaotic cognitive dissonance. You have to accept the voices as your own. Admit that you are part of them. Admit they are part of you. You have to make friends with your shadow.

1. If I have been saying one thing, and you are hearing another thing, it shows there is some projection happening

1. Normally integrated/ identified with piece of yourself that you have picked up, likely picked up from identifying with aggressor.

2. This is born from trauma

2. Manifests like a mask over time, skews perceptions

1. Having your projections evicted often feels like an existential attack.

2. Projections only feel external, but they are very much internal

3. Since the projected view is now not reality, not identifying with the projected aspect of you can’t be felt without a host. Making it hostless feels like actively cutting it off. But it isn’t actually like that, it’s more like an eclipse.

1. Make sure you know it isn’t an attack on you. Or a betrayal. I’m sorry that you felt I have betrayed you. And it’s because I did. But I was really only punishing myself through you. And I’m sorry. That was wrong. I’m sorry I was too proud to admit it sooner.

2. It feels personal because the expectation functions as an extension of the psyche.

4. I want to be a team with you. Liz, I love you and I am beginning to understand. I love everything we already have, which is so much. I’m sorry I expect so much of you. But it’s because I love you and I want you to love me the same way. I want you to be happy like me. I truly believe this makes me cherish our relationship even more. I don’t want you to be who I see you as, or who you want to be or whatever. I just want you to be you and happy. And I guess that to me means seeing you like me. That physical validation for my strife. To me, sex means acceptance. I don’t know what it means to you. This is the good fight. I hope you want it to work with me too.

5. In the end, you’ll have to reorganize and integrate your projected parts so they don’t need a host to feel like your whole self.

1. What is an example of this?

6. There are usually reasons why people don’t want to identify with what they’re projecting. Many have an imprint of those voices in their head that they don’t want to accept.

7. Reconciling the “gay is bad” experience is really truly cognitive dissonance. It makes sense to exile all the thoughts to force your subjective experience. You want to see what you want to see.

8. How to fix, recognize they are your own thoughts. You don’t have to negate them or fight them. But accept the condemning voices in your head, they are a part of you. But that doesn’t give them power to rule your life unless you let it.

9. Reestablish current relationship

10. Build it strong and loyal and loving

Are we sexually traumatized?

Do we just sexually traumatize ourselves?

We are constantly projecting in any circumstance. But I don’t want to be the victim with you. I don’t want to be the victim to me. I am not the victim of me anymore. I was a long time ago, but I have been changing. And now I’m not. I am not a victim of my sexuality. I accept my sexuality in whatever form it comes in and how I feel at that specific time. That’s the best definition I can do today. Sometimes, that includes trauma for me. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg. But I have to assume sex and trauma are and will always be linked for me. But I want to make you feel good. I want to make you feel good, so I’m coming to terms with what that might actually mean to you. Or to me. Or to both of us.

Liz, I know you are afraid you can’t satisfy me. I hear you when you say it, look how many people I have been with and how many I choose to keep sleeping with. I could say I could change, but honestly, I don’t know if I can or when it will happen. I really don’t know. I assume I won’t always feel this way, but I don’t know what to change to make it happen. Or if I could, or if I’d really even want to. My feelings don’t really change about it, but how I present the situation does, which makes it confusing especially to me. I accept this about me, and I must enjoy it. Because I keep doing it. It’s because I want to. I used to do it as a victim, but sometime recently I’m not doing it as a victim anymore. My mentality has changed but my actions have not. This may make it look like I haven’t changed. But I honestly have. I don’t feel guilty when I sleep with other people in myself. But, at the same time I do because I feel like it hurts you. And I kind of like it, but I know it’s sick. But I like sex and trauma to be attached to each other. It’s comfortable for me. I just get it like that. I don’t want to sexually traumatize you. I really fear that. But at the same time I really do. It’s sick, right? All points seem to point to the fact that we shouldn’t have sex, we should just be friends. But I want that. I want that from you. I need that physical acceptance, of you, of me. I have definitely found myself wanting more and more aggressive play since I met you. But maybe that’s just been me snowballing to now, I have always been deviant. Long before you. I think it’s what I like, but really I don’t ever know. I just do what feels right at the time. Right now, I can honestly say I really want to love you tender.

It all comes back to our childhoods, every time, and our lineage and ancestors. About the shame and the fear and the hate. I’m over it. I’m ready for love. I’m ready to accept love from myself, and from you. I feel it for myself. I want you to be a part of it, because you are such a big part of it for me. We’re special together. I have always described it to people like when you can hold on to someone and spin even faster when your hands are crossed. Other people are and have been special and integral to our journey too. I don’t want to deny that. I have always been on a search for myself in others. I find the way I do that best is through sex. And that’s okay with me because that’s just me seeing my own love and nonsense in other people as well. Even if I express it in weird ways. You’ve been hurt, I’ve been hurt, so has everyone else. The same amount of time (a lifetime). And the same amount of intensity (no matter what you’ve been through, we’re all still from the same chart). Everyone has the same fears it’s just what we end up doing with them. I want you to count on me, but first I needed to be someone that I could count on. I’m ready and I want you to be too. You aren’t responsible for my happiness, I am. Look at all the good things we do for and with each other. Look at all the ways we make each other great when we are just being ourselves. When we decide we want to do good by ourselves. Maybe we can make this thing a good thing, too. I feel like you can count on me now. I don’t know how sleeping with you will change my life and my relationship with you, but I know it will. And I think I can handle it.

I believe what you’re jealous of with me is my ease at giving acceptance. You don’t think it could be for you. What you see is me reflecting my love for myself in everyone else. I think that’s what you’re jealous of. I think you want that for yourself. I do think that’s what you really want. You really want my love but you don’t know how to accept it. I want to show you how to. I want to work through it with you. Not because I have it all figured out, because I don’t. Obviously. I have my own s**t that I deal with but I’m dealing well. Finally! Still, I don’t know how I feel about making amends with past relationships. I don’t want any of my relationships to end because I love different parts of me that I see in everyone. Sometimes I see some things I don’t like. I know I do some trauma, but I also do good. I am not bad or good. And recently, I have been doing really well by others. I have been encouraging my friends to all fix their relationships, and working on myself in the process. Seeing in them what I want to see in myself. It has brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction, helping people feel secure and accept themselves. I’m practicing over and over again. I need to be shown how to make something work. Asking questions I want to ask you. Things I’m afraid of the answers to.  Not that our relationship is broken. Because it by no means is. But I don’t know how to help myself.

For a while yes, I did feel like I was the victim of you. I felt there was something there and you didn’t want me to have you. You wanted to keep me far away. I know you made no moves and I pushed for it. I am pushing you liz. I don’t want to. And I don’t think you do either. I mean, we’re here. We have a home and we have chosen each other time and again. I could have made it work with Michael, or David or anyone. That’s something about me Liz, I can make it work with anyone. But I want to be with you. You deserve to be courted and I want to court you. And provide for you. This isn’t just a flux dream. You have lasted, and it isn’t just because you make me wait. But I’m sure the unresolve is part of it. It’s the love story of the century to me: Will you choose me or not? Who knows. I sure don’t. But I love getting to hang out with you and be there for you. Not because I have to be, but because I want that for you and for me. I have been living my whole life with selfish intentions. Always looking out for number one, but I was defending myself against myself. Against you. Against feelings of insecurity and doubt. The unknown. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m not scared of myself.

I think that’s what it is about sex. You don’t really know what you like until you like it. And then you don’t know if you ever liked it at all in the first place. Or how you got there. Or why you do what you do. You just know who you are. It’s really easy for me to try and be the victim but I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m not even sure what I’m into anymore. I’ve never been sure. I know it all just makes me weird and turns me on. Is that a thing? Because it is to me. I accept pleasure and I accept love and myself. I deserve to be happy and in love. I want that for my life, and our life specifically. Why you? Because I have decided to love you. I’m not passive in this. I never have been, but I pretended to be, because I was scared if you knew. To try not to ruin everything, but at the same time I did things I shouldn’t have, because I wasn’t happy and I was acting against myself. I am happy now. I get it. But I’m an active participant. I was scared too. I’m still scared. But it comes from a place of love. Not of hurt anymore. I want to love you because loving you is loving me. I want you to feel that way too.

Timing has never been my strong point, and I never have been one to show my deck of cards. I want to change that. I want to take timing and f**k it. I know you’re here and you’re not anywhere else so I have to assume it’s where you want to be. I want to court you too, but I want you to tell me how. Tell me what you want. I really want to know! I want to know how to love you in a way that you understand. And from over here, it seems like you like me most when I don’t want you. I want to see what's causing that. for me and for you.

I’m not going to leave you. I won’t leave you. I love you because I love me.

Reviews

[David Jae]

There's a lot of passion and emotion here, but I think that it needs to be tightened up. It feels a little rambling to me and it would benefit from a second draft.

Your characters come through well, however, and they add to the power of the piece.