Really, I do want to blog more often. Ideas strike me at odd times, when I’m driving, in the middle of the night, when I’m waiting for a client, and I think ‘I should expand on that, I should write a blog post’ then evening comes around and a few minutes of peace and quiet for contemplation, a space in my day allowing me to put my thoughts down, and I just let my brain scatter over reading posts on public media, and wandering through everyone else’s words. Maybe it’s just laziness, and maybe it’s just easier to not delve to far into my own emotions.
This blog is called ‘Anonymous Dyke’. I had nothing to do with naming it, I was given the blog already in progress, already named, after expressing that I wanted to start blogging again. The original owner had stopped blogging but kept the site, it seemed like a perfect fit. I embrace the ‘Anonymous’ part of the title, theoretically feeling freer, knowing that I can express myself without exposing my love to known scrutiny. Do I embrace the ‘Dyke’ part of the title? It’s certainly how I would define myself, a word we use around this home all the time. Sometimes, though, I feel a little constrained, as though by it’s title the blog is coercing me to stay on topic, to remember that defining feature and not stray onto the path of the non-dyke things in my life. Of course I know that’s bullshit, that I can write about anything I damned well want to write about, and I do. And realistically, the stuff I want to write about anonymously is mostly the dyke stuff, not because I’m closeted or ashamed or any of that, in real life I’m out and loud and proud and political, you wouldn’t have to get any closer to us than our driveway to know that queers live here, with our bumper stickers and pride flag. But because the stuff I think about, the stuff I want to put down anonymously, is the stuff of love, the stuff of emotion, the stuff of the relationship I have with this woman who shares my life.
Introspection is the stuff of life, these are the thoughts that have the power to create us, re-create us, as we carefully examine each layer of being, deciding whether to keep or throw out. Sometimes I feel that my flaws are like styrofoam, indestructibly sitting in landfills, biding their time and resurfacing no matter how hard I try to discard them. This love, this lover, this woman who has captured my heart and soul, she is the catalyst exposing each fragment of myself that I would change if I could. Our selves are so different, we bring each other to our knees sometimes, trying to be best selves for the sake of each other, and finding our worst selves have not gone far. To be sure, I am not blaming anyone here, least of all myself. Nor am I saying that our lot is a bad one, that we are nothing but a struggle of negativity. There is more raw love in this relationship than in anything I’ve ever seen before, and that love comes equally from both sides. Sometimes it seems like this, that she is a rock, solid and stoic, almost cold in her discomfort with all things emotional, the strong silent cowboy hero of long ago movies. She is a rock but the foundation is on a fault line, beneath the surface cracks are coming through, earthquakes of emotion that rock our world close to bits sometimes. I am a hurricane of emotion, everything felt is expressed immediately, strongly, without hesitation, but underneath that hurricane there’s a solid structure, a foundation that cannot be taken down by even the strongest winds of emotion. Sometimes life here is like living through a hurricane with an earthquake underfoot, but sometimes her stoic calm and my solid foundation find each other, interlaced into a strength larger than either of us would ever have independently.
I take a look at the styrofoam, this indestructible mass of flaws that I seem powerless to discard. But these are not flaws, these are bits of self, as much a part of my being as any quality I hold dear to. It is only in this form that they are negatives, styrofoam is a menace in the landfill, styrofoam is a menace when it’s litter. Things that do not biodegrade can be reused, recycled, repurposed. These bits of me just need to reconfigure, to find their way and use, this is the true challenge. And this one I accept.
