patience ❎ @patience@witches.town

@hypatian my mind blocked her name from my memory, but her face, the perfume she wore, and the eyeglasses frames she wore (bizarrely, an identical frame to my grandmum's at the time!) continue to be indelible fragments of that, idk, assault

@hypatian the trauma relevant here [tw obviously] was when i was 17 and making out with a cis girl of 20 who was bigger than me and who pinned me down w/o consent and left me terrified and helpless (she also had the car to get me home). so idk if that figures into my intimacy matrix or not

@hypatian apparently so, sometimes likened by folks as basic a bodily function as a BM in the morning

as for kissing, i love kissing a lot, but in the past two single-night experiences i've had (one was a one-night stand, the other is open-ended theoretically), the kissing was the overture to the implication of sex, so the communication in that kissing didn't feel like much in the way of communication from them at all, but more like basic primal language rather than conveying fondness vis-à-vis lips and hands in the proximity thereto

@hypatian precisely

@hypatian these are good points, thank you

i find it baffling, because in effect so much of what a lot of people learn from attraction goes back to, like, tween/teen years, of starting with hand-holding, then kissing, then :gasp: making out — all of it part of an intimacy matrix one builds up on as one grows older and into adulthood

at least, i *thought* this was the case. perhaps it isn't and that's literally there's grindr and sort of basic hook-ups where fucking happens before names are exchanged, idk

maybe two sexually traumatic events in my childhood/teen years stunted me. i've never joined dating sites cos of stuff like this

@hypatian i thought hand-holding and embracing were just as important as kissing and touching and other stuff with fewer clothes on?

@hypatian yeah i don't get how getting to know someone through communication — speaking, body language, physical contact — can't be part of the erotic intimacy matrix, or how this must be categorized reductively into a "not-as-sexual" department. [sidebar: i'm certain there are hundreds of tumblr entries and arguments about this kind of thing, but i mostly avoid tumblr and don't want to be mired by that here).

"demi-sexual" is literally saying one is half-sexual or half-sized in their sexuality [everything after this is redacted because it becomes an unnecessary hot take about 'totus-sexual' and nah]

another thing i was told today, this by a friend i respect, is that i'm "demisexual", and i was "what" — all because before i feel safe to get erotic with someone, i want to hold their hands first because a hand-holding communicates a lot about that person. without that knowledge, i end up in an erotic situation where i'm working with little information about who that person is

how is this "demisexual" or "semisexual" or whatever? i'm not half-sexual!

i'm stunted

we did some EMDR work, which means this stuff is going to be bubbling up all night and into my sleep (whenever i can get to sleep) for the next night or two

i resent not being able to have a chance to participate in a function of society we all take for granted without either structural barriers or post-trauma from when others categorically stood in my way. i resent what it's made me become

my cptsd therapist insisted today that i'm not only "talented", but "multi-talented", whereas i am known to say (and certainly said to her multiple times today) "i can never be…[$variable]"

also, i said: "yeah, the depression meds have put the symptoms into remission for the first time in a long while, but i no longer have dreams or ambitions or goals or targets any longer because all my goals were either fulfilled by my work/effort or they were denied or deprived from me specifically or structurally. i also never, ever thought i would live this long, and i didn't plan beyond what i did. unless the ones denied become un-denied, then idk how it'll change"

@Morgane pretty much my reactioni when i first heard it in summer ’96, though it tickled my funny bone that first time and i remember laughing so hard that i cried and could not breathe. i was also 23

@Morgane you will probably either laugh or be all "wtf, no" id you look up the Nine Inch Richards parody from 1996 of that single

restless legs, why won't you give it a rest

@Morgane well, by the time i was able to do so (with the help of a benefactor), it was 13 years after i voiced as trans and began my transition. by then (2004), nearly all of the people i knew who had started their transitions around when i did (and who started well after i had) had completed genital surgery years earlier then i had. this left me extremely anxious and increasingly desperate. that was not a pleasant period of my life

i would not wish that on anyone, and i hope you do secure the means for surgery sooner than later <3

@Morgane quite so!

i completed genital surgery, like, 13yrs ago, so i've been w/o T all these years (and without a need any longer for cyproterone/spironolactone)

maybe five years ago, there was someone i was dating who made me feel pleasantly erotic and in touch with my body, but she was still dysphoric with her own body and wasn't in a place where being more intimate was possible. anyway, yeah. bodies are weird, but we have a much better sense of how endocrinology works than the average cis person!

@Morgane thank you! the problem is the new antidepressant works, except its side-effect is restless leg syndrome, which makes going to sleep extremely difficult! fortunately, i've just started a different kind of medication to reduce the restless leg symptoms

@Morgane these days, what i'm working against is a literal zero T count (which you sort of need in small amounts in order to feel horny)… plus two anti-depressants which kill sex drive. but i'm very slowly working on all of this as a medical "project" with my doctor: once the antidepressants and side effects are being managed OK, i'll be working with her to add small amounts of T. (a decade ago, i'd have a tough time believing i'd be saying this, but bodies are weird that way)

@Morgane it took me 11 years after voicing to get there to a place where i could be erotically and intimately in touch with my body enough so that the dysphoria didn't consume me into panic. for me in particular, it was only maybe a year or two of that before external life incidents made that more of a challenge. (my life experiences are not common, so fear not)

it's a great feeling, isn't it :)

@Morgane i don't have any answers, but it's great that you've found this place and that you're now able to do so without old distractions/dysphoria standing in the way <3