Tolkien Butler Remorse

🔊 Listen to Post Like any other kid of my generation who had parents who were very much in love, as much as I liked Disney as a toddler, eventually I matured into Tolkien. Because I was a nerd there was some Asimov. Because I was an African American nerd, there was also Butler. So by the time I was forming romantic ideals, I knew that I did not want to be the  idiot who fell in love with strangers. I definitely did not want to be the sucker who fell under some malevolent magician’s thrall or got stuck in some strangely attractive monster’s lair or even mistook someone with a similar talent or capability for someone worth bonding with.

I was not that sort of sucker, so once I became sexually active, I shagged and sometimes dated my friends. This way I would know what I was getting into. I never regretted this. This is how my marriages happened.

I don’t know what I was even thinking, breaking that pattern. Looking back on the costs of my experimentation, I feel I short changed some people who really do love me. I might not have wasted as much time and energy as others, and the damages were minimal, but that is time I could have spent with folks who actually care and mean well. That is time I could have spent working. If I had all that time back, I would be rich by now. I would just settle for the time I spent being heartbroken in the aftermath.

I feel like I made all the mistakes Tolkien and Butler warned us about. It feels pretty shitty.

But I learned my lesson well.

Even being sad about it is kinda stupid. The sadness of being heartbroken over people I’d have avoided in a different context, feels kind of out of place now. It’s like someone I used to know was sad about those people, but it’s no longer me. I look back over old blog posts and understand it was me, but I can’t relate to that person anymore. It is not who I was before my relationship with Shai changed, and it’s not me now. It’s like there was someone else at the wheel in that sector of my life who is now dead.

I am sure that person really loved those guys, but she’s dead now. I don’t love those people romantically. The last one, I don’t even respect or admire enough for there to be a seed of romance there. Even if I was completely wrong in thinking he was trying to get rid of me on purpose or play me like a yo-yo, he shut me out instead of proving me wrong. If I was that disposable to him after a year, he doesn’t just have a problem with me. He has a problem with women. We’re a function, and if we’re not compliant enough, we are useless to him.

Most of my exes though, have grown into people I can hang with. Apparently the chemistry was on point spiritually almost 100% of the time. The only one I can say was just fucking wrong was the narcissist. For the rest, it took the time it took for them to see me beyond a function. I didn’t have a problem seeing their value, but because of the culture here, they had a problem seeing mine. That might be the case with the last one. Who knows? Some time needed to pass and some experience needed to be had before they could see who I could be to them. Sadly because the context of the relationships was artificially accelerated because Disney and monogamy culture creeping in where it definitely didn’t belong, there was the unnecessary drama.

I wonder if I’m Darth Vader-ing, but in a positive way. Now that I’ve actually had a body part amputated and replaced with a sort of machine, something in my subconscious signaled a transformation. I am now a transhuman, which is something I’ve given considerable thought to creatively in my past. New improved me has let go of some inhibiting human nonsense that doesn’t serve my true humanity.

Past me let a biological need drive her into a course of behavior that doesn’t suit the Nicole who is now physically not purely her biology. Soon, in February, I will be experiencing that in stereo. Now that I’ve been through it, the fear of it is gone, and I would be happy to exchange any of my parts for better functioning mechanical ones should they ever be a source of pain or illness. I am willing to embrace the technology and understand that there is nothing wrong with being less natural if it allows me to be more thoughtful and humane.

So I’m accepting and embracing the reality of the world I live in. This is not a safe place to entertain the thought of any sort of commitment to strangers. Not only does nothing good come out of it, but any potential good that could come from it is killed by artificial attachment. It’s not that I feel or felt nothing for them or them for me. It’s that the feelings weren’t happening within a framework that could preserve all parties’ emotional safety and dignity. To engage in those kinds of “relationships” required both undue risk and deception that the risks did not exist or were not relevant.

Basically, they were like a volatile truth wrapped around a giant western entitlement culture scaffolded lie.

I’m not lying to myself anymore, and I’m not going to lie to anyone else or support the lie. I’ve deleted my online dating accounts except one that the site is now for Gay men, so I can keep up with LGBTQA+ events.

End of story.