So this is a rant, guys and gals. It started as
a very in the moment impulse when a former friend called me slutty, but I’ve
decided I want to talk about who I am and how I behave to these people I’ve got
in my life right now, and then to many people from my scattered past, in the
hopes of a response and dialogue. I’m feeling like I’ve reached a stage in my
life and I want the catharsis of closure and conversation to help me cross over
into being able to be a more loving, vulnerable woman.
I am note a writer. I wish I didn’t hate
recordings of the sound of my own (speaking) voice immensely, I’d find a way to
make this a broadcast and have a composite of all of you there, having this
conversation with me. Or I’d become a songwriter and write a song about each
and every one of you. Most of you, I’d like to note, are highly compelling
writers and speakers and general understanders of language; come back at me
with feedback: I’m trying to be brave here, to find my voice, and you’ve got
the option to input!
This is my life, in a way, and it deals with a
lot but it’s confusing and very few of you know very many details about the
three parts of my life I would say I have had, St. John’s, Reed, and Houston, that
have led me to write out this story about love and mistakes and my newfound
lack of regret.
I'm only going to share this composition with a small number of
people, in the hopes of their understanding me better, forgiving me, or I’m
just closer and want them to know me more.
The thesis of this message is that I can use my
own experiences, opinions and observations to argue that people who have called
anyone slutty to a person's face or behind it, who have said that to me or to
anyone or even those who've thought it and used the idea in their minds without
remorse, that these people are either really fucking misguided or a callous
idiot.
Personally this is a rant directed to create a
response in the minds of a very small number of people I know, in Houston but also
from everywhere I've grown up and lived. I hope and frankly I believe I'm right
that not lots of people think of me as a very slutty person, and that I don't
need to go into this for as many of the people on Facebook as could have read
this as the note that it was intended to be, because it is a quite personal
diatribe that evolved into an attempt to reach out to you and other people in
my life. This is afterall The Social Network we're dealing with; odds are
probably high that if I could have emailed this to you I would have. This isn't
supposed to be about the specific drama I have in my life at this moment, but
it is, as I watch them calmly from several feet away. But then now I’ve brought
up my past and the facets of this story are already changing.
“I'm not trying to talk about why any situation
came up or go into any details, this isn't a campaign, this isn't a war, I'm
just writing a response to one tiny passing insult amidst many in a recent
altercation which resonnated in my mind into something I have to share and
discuss in a semi-private but very permissive forum with people who's awareness
of life and opinions about society I respect.”
And regardless of the fact of having recently
been called a slut in a really intense moment with mitigating factors on both
peoples' parts, I also might as well clear some air from my past, be it fairly
ancient or a recent scab, with some women in particular that I do sincerely
respect. To you, if this reaches your attention: I have already tried, as much
as I could at the time, to express my remorse and own up to acting
inappropriately and apologize to you before, using my own awkward, overly wordy
terms.
Yes. This is also to at least make my own small
(and likely insignificant) amends to anyone I've ever called a slut or treated
disrespectfully in a smaller way, as in for instance acting a little
inappropriate by flirting/bantering too far or letting my friendly,
fast-to-care nature make me look like a wicked bitch who just doesn't give a
shit about propriety. Please tell me you know what I mean, I'm trying to make
it right now for the kind of things that everyone slips up on and does
sometimes, but that when you're the one disrespected it still really fucking
stings.
Even in a time of extreme anger and frustration,
I really resent that any person would try to upset me by calling me
"slutty." I've thought on this subject for a hot minute now, a couple
of days since it happened. I think it was childish and in the moment, although
I do understand that that was a specific heated moment. In general though, I
think that using the term slutty to take away any of my own or anyone else's
confidence is a narrow-minded and careless to the point of being cruel.
Any liberal, mature person who is thinking
rationally would doubt agree that using the terms slut or slutty, on a
woman or man, in any context, in the offensive way they are usually meant to be
taken, is perpetuating the despicable fact that those words exist to make
people with their own sexual histories (and mind you those are their own
fucking business) feel small and hurt. Definitely I also fail at this at times,
but always try to remember to embody class, even under heat.
My reaction is intense, my anger about the
word slut may be extreme, but I'd chalk that up to my life's path. I was
celebate for almost two years after a catastrophic one night stand experience
taught me that you (well, I) need healthy mental self-image and
a good amount of personal strength to be able to be intimate or just
sexual or both with anyone. We all have insecurities, but you can't pursue real
love if you don't understand that you can love and be loved. You have to love
yourself, too. No. You have to love yourself first. This is all very personal
to me and I am crying as I write this, but my background makes me feel so much
compassion for people who've gone the other route, who don't take time out to
understand themselves and go out again and again finding unsatisfying
relationships or choosing to live a life in which unsatisfying casual sex is a
part or a routine. I'm a very sensative person, I feel so so deeply the gambit
of emotions and fears or insecurities; I think I've felt all the same emotions
and frenzied opinions of my own self-worth that might seem
to motivate people who even I in my judgmental moments have considered
"slutty." Yes I have been guilty of it before, but this incident
really affected me and please don't call me a hater just yet. Using slutty to
describe yourself or your actions is your own identity-business, I understand
the basic idea of it as a synonym for being "sexually careless and/or
aggressive."
I know I'm talking about love but forget the
idea that I'm suggesting you need to love someone to sleep with them. Love
yourself, friends. Everyone can be successfully spontaneous and have terrific
sexual experiences, I've had my own and I prize them all. I guess this post
must be entirely self-centered and I'm just resentful that someone could make
me feel somehow dysfunctional and unworthy of love. Maybe I'm too proud
of my whole ability to embrace cerebrally-driven celebacy, my history of
willingness to be a bit reserved, and my not tricking myself (or not often)
into believing that I personally am the type of person who can have one-off,
random sex if I am at all lacking in confidence or if I don't feel equal to my
sex partner. Maybe it's because, although obviously everyone has their own
ideas of what constitutes hooking up, messing around, and having sex, I
challenge anyone who's met me since my recent move to call my sexual practices,
habits and history "slutty." This is not the point where I delve into
dissecting my Montrosian sex life. It IS the moment when I admit that
I take great pride in two of my abilities: I can go out to
bars or parties independently, expecting to meet up with friends on the
spur of the moment or ready to make a good time of it on my own, and I can
go home alone still feeling great about how my night turned out, or take
someone home without feeling any kind of social or mental pressure to
go beyond engaging in whatever kind of playful fun we decide together
that we want that evening.
I know this note hasn't been about the concept
itself enough. I'm just taking this entirely too personally. Bare with me and
please comment, if you comment, moreso about generalities that come to your
mind to point out or discuss than about my use of personal narrative.
Who's that notorious slut, and why? Maybe not
everyone needs to have times when their sense of a personal-moral self and
their hormone-driven mentality clash and you do something stupid, but I have.
Sometimes my sexuality has been directed in ways that were inappropriate. I
don't judge myself for the times I've put myself out there physically, to enjoy
myself or to reiterate caringness in a relationship but always either way in
the pursuit of feeling connected to another person. I've always tried to be
mindful when I hurt any partner or person involved. Like I wish I could
tag one girl but I'm glad I already told her "I'm sorry for last
Spring," a period when I remained infatuated with a boy long after he
began dating her, before I left Reed. I'm proud that I told another
girl that I not only like but also respect her, because it's the total truth.
But sometimes my way of saying and doing things isn't enough. My recent
life has taught me that I can be too literal and not attuned to
recognizing lapses in communication. And I can be escapist about experiencing
intense positive or negative emotion. In truth that's because,
well aside from those everyday intimacy issues, I have a highly well-managed
case of bipolar disorder that used to be one huge hot mess of a case of bipolar
disorder. And in building from the rubble of my life at age 19 I taught myself
something about mindfulness: you're demented if you don't believe that I am
capable of experiencing the extreme elated highs and dark, painfully empty
lows, I just have had to become pretty skilled at stepping outside of myself
and examining that intensity, blocking it off as not a part of me or
hopefully meditating on the logic behind any such feeling and turning it into
more normal types of joy and depression. You know, those kinds I'm told normal
people go through.
Basically, I'm being super honest today and part
of that means admitting that I am actually an emotional alien. Doesn't mean I
don't feel genuine care and friendly love, doesn't mean I wouldn't do so much
for so many of you. It means I've got a Jedi mind trick up my sleeve and I can
try to teach it if you'd wanna learn, BUT with it comes an ability, one rather
hard to control sometimes, of placing yourself outside of your emotional mind.
Obviously for me that means going either into pure fact and logic or it's a
trip into Wonderland where my parents are my model of a happy couple,
my sister doesn't look at me like a target board, critical of all
the bullet holes at the edges of the circle, I've always known that
I'm cute and that it's okay that everyone has their own body type/metabolism,
and for whatever reason I've already figured out how to love.
Honestly I'll be embarrassed later to admit
this, but truthfully mindfulness, staying in a moment with a specific lover, is
the hardest sexual challenge I face. I think I've always assumed on a
cold, base level or I just know already in my psyche that I and the other
person haven't done enough of whatever the goddamn hell it is
you do to feel truthfully connected to each other. Early sexual
relationships have also taught me to expect the other person to realize I'm not
enough (or to their credit that I'm not ready to forge that connection).
So. Surprise! I have trust issues. I feel bad though for so many of my
sexual partners, because I have this habit of taking
something incredibly stimulating about our being togetherness and
vibing off of it to start visualizing or creating in my mind the feeling
that I'm experiencing that exhilaration with someone different, a crush or,
honestly, that fantasy I've got of "the one first person who makes me fall
in love with him." So I take the pleasure from the real experience
with that partner and direct it (through mid-sex daydreams)
into fabricated future moments and scenarios I'll have with others or
under different circumstances. I hope that doesn't make me a horrible
lover, but I have to say that I think it doesn't because I use awesome brain
power and physical prowess to make sure those happy endings make it into my
freaky spank bank, or whatever. It's actually a problem I am learning to
remedy. Now, for instance, if I take a pilot home and he flies out tomorrow I
consider that and then, if I do get drawn out of reality, I take him with me,
as is, and mentally imagine making it into the mile high club together.
Whether I mention it or I don't, that guy gets on the plane that next day and
I've been told men think about sex every eleven seconds, so maybe I spark his
imagination when he does get up to go pee.
These women and men and other people that I
have had less episodic incidences with deserve the energy I'm putting into this
note.
Fuck all the haters, I'm doing this right now
because I decided to do something today that will have been worth doing when I
look back in the future.
