That Nowhere Feeling

Lying in dappled sun thinking about time and the way it burns / slowly like paper or a joint and is unstoppable – being thankful is desperate sad –

the world is throbbing in front of our eyes

night time walks legs so tired from dancing and my body feels soft like crumpled paper.

30 + hours of transit making me feel like a  blobby reflection, slowly sinking into some other universe.  I thought at first I was  questioning things  but my thoughts are just brainless static humming spirals in the headachy heat of Seoul airport. I feel muddy and empty.

grappling with a realisation that has been a long time coming

I think as a woman a part of me is inherently queer (i think this of all women, to an extent) but growing up i have internalised deeply the belief that male attraction and male love is the most valid and self-fulfilling thing i can have. My thoughts and feelings, my work, my beauty, worthwhile only in the eyes of masculine acceptance. My sense of self worth as a girl swells in the love of a man and fades, gently, when that love dries up. This kind of love isn’t sexual. I don’t even know if “love” is the right word. It’s more a soft wash of approval that confirms me, that makes me intrinsically more valuable . 

I knew as a young girl what I know now, what I’ve always known, that the affection I feel for women is more meaningful and real than anything. That it would make me whole, if I let it – but I can’t. What I desire will never be more important to me than my need to be desired. Loving somebody perfectly will never matter more than being loved, in the way I have always thought I should be loved.

I’ve learnt how to love men too, as fully as I think I could love any girl. It helps that I feel a kind of illusory thumbs up stemming from the world I see, the world I have always known. I love a man even now, too much to go inside myself and uproot the darkening knowledge that I have carried this far. I carry it quietly and without burden. I think many women carry it too; a latent queerness that softly watches the bloom and fall of het romance, and wonders why there is so much fear.

Wrapped in the gentle warmth of someone who loves me i feel complete, confirmed and vital. But sometimes in the moments I’m alone, away from that, I think about that other part inside of me. I give it light.

I’ve found the biggest barrier with critiquing aspects of the Patriarchy, and framing the factors behind the annihilation of our environment as inherently “masculine,”  is that I’m overly wary (weary) of guys getting their feelings hurt?

I’ve been told my whole life that the destruction of the Earth is a Capitalist problem, that it is a Personal problem – that it starts within “me”. But thinking like this makes me angry because I know it isn’t really true. The subjugation of the environment has largely correlated with the subjugation of women (elements of colonialism intrinsically linked w this).  The power structures that objectify/oppress/discard aspects of femininity and female empowerment  are the same structures that objectify our planet; that see no problem with decimating entire ecosystems (including our own) for personal gain. I kind of see Patriarchal vanity, and deeply repressed fear, as a root cause of this kind of unnatural violence.  “We” as a people did not decide one day that burning down a rainforest for its rich soil would be ok. “We” did not save money by pumping waste into the heart of delicate seabeds, culling everything from the krill to the whales that feed there. These were decisions made for us, justified by powerful egos and indifference to the consequences.

But identifying something as inherently Patriarchal always seems to polarise people who don’t understand that Masculinity is not necessarily Male and I’m sick of fighting with guys who’s voices are literally louder than mine just to recognise something exists. Let alone try and dismantle it. I feel uneasy just thinking about it ..

I have been sharing lots of pics of things I like that might be considered commonly liked (symbols of female beauty glowing sunsets, pink flowers, my friends naked skin) even tho they are “trending” or whatever. I think it’s a bad mindset to reject things based on mass appreciation/to think rejection of a trend is any less a trend in itself. I had to personally accept this (that I am mostly a product of impressions and my interests are heavily influenced by capitalist structures). That beauty is commodified. But there’s also beauty in commodity. I like the way sunsets break across the sky and moments later break across Instagram. I like the way commodity can extend to a feeling, a sense of gentleness//quiet moments of sadness  and people want to share that and feel it together. Hopeful that the internalisation of structures that are ultimately damaging/structures that define worth and beauty in terms of personal profit/might also have room for something that is ok.