Custom Framing
May. 31st, 2002 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueThe trouble is that I'm an exceptionally private person; we've been over this many times. As a result, the more things I have to say -- the more things I care about saying -- the more intensely secretive I become.
I can't tell you what an effort it is for me to write this journal entry.
A common mythological thread is the idea of the critical weakness -- Achilles' heel, or the hour of the night when the dragon turns into a beautiful woman. Even when dealing with a great mortal warrior, there is always a particular time of day when he bathes and his sword is across the glen. These weaknesses are necessary for the advancement of the story; they are the trick to having an undefeatable opponent which our hero can nevertheless best through observation, luck, and cunning.
Lately, I've been identifying with the dragon princess. Feelings of tenderness are very hard for me even when they have no specific focus; they overwhelm me with vulnerability, the knowledge that I'm advertising a soft underbelly. They veer very quickly into melancholy and I am forced to shut myself in a dark room until they evaporate.
(And before anybody gives me any shit about "that's what it means to be human" I would like to remind you that I did choose this form and I'm doing the best I can.)
Vulnerable me is understandably not somebody I want to show off unless I'm around people whom I can trust implicitly and whom I know can handle seeing it.
(You: You haven't written many journal entries this week.
Me: Right on.)
Oddly enough, the trust issue is not usually the one that trips me up. I trust people. I do. It's very easy to trust someone when you're pretty sure you could destroy the lives of everyone they know if they crossed you. That's even assuming they could hurt me, which takes some doing since I don't usually care what people who dislike me think. (It's a really good trick: if someone disagrees with me, their opinion must not be worth anything -- excepting certain exemptions.)
There is a reason that most people feel uncomfortable seeing someone naked that has nothing to do with social taboos. It's the intimacy of seeing someone vulnerable -- it's scary. It's why you automatically leave a room where someone is sleeping. It's why you put distance between your car and the motorcyclist on the highway.
That's what I run up against, which is why I'm more likely to break down in front of a total stranger than someone who is emotionally invested in me. When I love someone, I start protecting them.
I'm not even having a bad day.
I can't tell you what an effort it is for me to write this journal entry.
A common mythological thread is the idea of the critical weakness -- Achilles' heel, or the hour of the night when the dragon turns into a beautiful woman. Even when dealing with a great mortal warrior, there is always a particular time of day when he bathes and his sword is across the glen. These weaknesses are necessary for the advancement of the story; they are the trick to having an undefeatable opponent which our hero can nevertheless best through observation, luck, and cunning.
Lately, I've been identifying with the dragon princess. Feelings of tenderness are very hard for me even when they have no specific focus; they overwhelm me with vulnerability, the knowledge that I'm advertising a soft underbelly. They veer very quickly into melancholy and I am forced to shut myself in a dark room until they evaporate.
(And before anybody gives me any shit about "that's what it means to be human" I would like to remind you that I did choose this form and I'm doing the best I can.)
Vulnerable me is understandably not somebody I want to show off unless I'm around people whom I can trust implicitly and whom I know can handle seeing it.
(You: You haven't written many journal entries this week.
Me: Right on.)
Oddly enough, the trust issue is not usually the one that trips me up. I trust people. I do. It's very easy to trust someone when you're pretty sure you could destroy the lives of everyone they know if they crossed you. That's even assuming they could hurt me, which takes some doing since I don't usually care what people who dislike me think. (It's a really good trick: if someone disagrees with me, their opinion must not be worth anything -- excepting certain exemptions.)
There is a reason that most people feel uncomfortable seeing someone naked that has nothing to do with social taboos. It's the intimacy of seeing someone vulnerable -- it's scary. It's why you automatically leave a room where someone is sleeping. It's why you put distance between your car and the motorcyclist on the highway.
That's what I run up against, which is why I'm more likely to break down in front of a total stranger than someone who is emotionally invested in me. When I love someone, I start protecting them.
I'm not even having a bad day.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-05-31 05:43 pm (UTC)-Chad