Perspective

I've always considered my personality to be pretty malleable, adaptable.
My spirit animal is probably a chameleon - I can take the viewpoints and opinions of the people around me and make sense of them, understand them. Well, to an extent.
I use to hate this, because I thought it made me somewhat less of a person. It was like I didn't really have any views of my own and I seemed to be so easily swayed by whatever the people around me had been propagating and arguing.
Now, I guess it's changed. I'm still finding my place in the world, but I feel as though I've listened to enough, and learned enough, to articulate my own views in the context of others, and not be spoon-fed everything by my surroundings. Critical thinking, if you will (I had to get something out of an Arts degree). I found my perspective on the world, finally.
But having the malleable intellect that I do, even that was subject to change.

I've probably written about monogamy before.
I don't know what I said, but I can almost guarantee it's different from what I'm about to say.

Over the past couple of years I've had a lot of lovers, and a handful of partners who were more than just crossing specks of dust, or ships passing in the night.
We got together and moved forward together in the same direction. And I learnt a lot in all the time I spent with them. Yet the inevitable fact is that we, as two specks of dust, separated and continued on our own journeys.
I used to be so wrapped up in the happy ending fairytale, finding the right guy, falling in love. You've seen Disney movies, you know what I'm talking about.
God knows, I tried.
I really did.

I had guys love but ultimately get bored and leave me. I had moments where I drunkenly fucked up and made some bad decisions and said some bad things that pretty much rendered relationships void. I've had people who I couldn't be with any more due to geographic undesirability. But perhaps the worst of all was when, after all the mishaps, I was in a great, committed, happy relationship... except I wasn't happy.
It had nothing to do with the guy - he was probably one of the sweetest guys I've ever dated, and that's what makes it so hard. Why did being with him feel so wrong?

After much contemplation and deliberation and wondering if it was all a mistake, the answer hit me.
I don't need - no, I don't want a relationship.
Human company is something that I enjoy, and necessary throughout my life. But I don't find that level of intimacy essential.
I love my friends, and there's people I can turn to for sexual intimacy if I so desire, without having complications or commitments that I feel, to an extent, restrict my independence.
I felt like I was losing myself in relationships as much as the conversations I had on a daily basis, and now that I've finally found myself, I'm starting to think that maybe it was never my place to be in a relationship in the first place.
I guess this relates back to monogamy purely on the basis that I don't think there's any one person I really want to confine myself and completely share myself, and inevitably lose myself in, just yet.
And I don't think that's a bad thing.

More than ever with marriage equality rights debates, it seems now everyone is bombarded with the fantasy of a happily ever after, when in reality it doesn't have to be like that. I mean, I'm still perfectly happy. Maybe one day I'll find someone, but that doesn't have to be the conclusion to my story.
The cynical streak in me would go a little further to say that none of us are really fit for the happily ever after - it's not natural, and the people who've found it are just delusional.

But I won't - if you found love in this hopeless place, then good for you, I'm happy for you.

Though for the rest of you - don't feel pressured to live your life the way society says you have to. Most importantly, don't let your happiness depend on the lie that there is one single person out there that is going to make you happy, and that you have to find them.




"I'm gonna overcome this, paper hearts can't win this time
and all along I should have known this wasn't your dream, it was mine" - Firewater, Yellowcard


"And what would be practical, Theodore? To get married? And move to the suburbs, and become a home loving, child raising, God fearing imitation heterosexual? And for what? So that I can become another dead soul going to the mall and dropping off my kids at school and having barbecues in the back yard? That's their death, not mine. I'm a cock sucker. I'm a queer. And to anyone who takes pity, or offence, I say 'Judge yourself.' This is where I live. This is who I am." - Brian Kinney, Queer as Folk