Okay so I was browsing Tumblr at random today (BAD, BAD HABIT, GOTTA QUIT) to take my mind off eating disorder urges (ate too much breakfast because we fasted for 15+ hours again; someone wanted to purge, Laurie and I said NO WAY), and in the process of stumbling across several "fandom" blogs and lgbt+ content I realized, NO WONDER I FEEL ASHAMED ABOUT LOVE. IF THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE SEE IT AS, I WANT NO PART OF IT.
Let me elaborate.
For a long, LONG time, I have been practicing outright denial, even blatant HATRED, towards the FACT that since childhood I have been VERY queer. I am absolutely not cis or straight, no matter HOW I try to force or imitate it, and God knows I HAVE TRIED far too much, hello chronic trauma.
Nevertheless, I still can't really own it because in the world out there, queerness is hypersexualized.
It is. THAT'S why Catholic folks-- like me!-- largely despise the whole concept of "queerness", which is summarized quite well in the loaded etymology of that very term: something "perverse" or "abnormal," a thing most peculiar and odd and eccentric, crooked and oblique. Twisted. Imperfect. Wrong. And yet... it all boils down to the misuse of sexuality, doesn't it? How many straight folks treating their sexuality as a disgusting toy are called "twisted?" It's almost normalized, in American culture, but it's "accepted," because it's "straight." Meanwhile you have transgender queer kids in genuine unselfish love who are demonized for the sole fact that they were born with the same external biological bits. It's ridiculous.
Listen. You all know that one of my morbid obsessions is sexuality, thanks trauma, although I daresay the trauma only happened BECAUSE I was "queer" in the first place. That's horribly obvious, too. But even back then, I hated how ALL of the world I was exposed to treated sexuality. Even in cishet Christian culture, I was told that "if you're born with these chromosomes, you MUST look and dress and speak and act THIS way, and you MUST be sexually attracted to people who look and dress and speak and act in the OPPOSITE way-- because that enforced binary separation was highly emphasized-- OR ELSE you are an affront to God. Oh yeah and you MUST get married and have children and have an American Dream™ house and job and everything. There is a NORMAL TEMPLATE and you MUST ADHERE."
...And I couldn't. God knows I tried. But I couldn't.
But I cannot fit this gaudy "internet gay culture" garbage template either.
I'm gonna try to be bluntly honest for the rest of this entry. It's the ONLY time I can be honest, and it's also the prerequisite for poetic language. I can't heartspill if I'm not letting my heart do the talking, all red and raw and real.
Tumblr has a lot of fandoms. Most of the "content creators" are young and emotionally volatile-- I know I sure was at that age. But... there are some "evil forces in high places" that prey on that. That's why I hate the "lgbt+ movement," NOT the people. The "movement" feels utterly toxic. It's so promiscuous. It makes me feel like, If I say, "hey guess what, I'm also queer & trans*" that people will automatically think I'm a profligate, because the public image those terms seem to project is admittedly one of debauchery. I'm so tired of it.
Also. You all know, if you've followed me for any number of years, that I am also xenophilic, which means that yes I do get "aesthetic crushes" on human girls and guys now and then, but if I'm going to fall head over heels for someone you bet your blue-eyes they're gonna be alien.
If and when I fall in love the odds have shown that it's going to be with a creature that others call a monster.
Oh now THAT is a loaded term, and one that has ALSO been vulgarized, disgustingly so. There's an entire online subculture of people who are "teratophiles," which basically means "attracted to monsters," which is one step away from what I identify as because the terato folks seem to focus on more beastly things-- almost to the point of zoophilia. And again, it's all way too sexual, and that disgusts me.
...Still. There's allegedly a common note in all of that, which I do resonate with: "monsters" are associated with "otherness", the experience of rejection and marginalization for being "deformed" in comparison to the "healthy norm." Which brings us back to queerness-- and also neurodivergence, which is VERY PRONOUNCED in my personal experience.
I've often been religiously shamed for "taking pride in my sin" in relation to those facts. I've tried so hard to be a cis girl who is attracted to men-- heck that was the entire focus of my life post-2018-- but I always fail disastrously, at the explicit expense of my mental and emotional health. And I always realize that I just can't fake it. I can force myself into cishet relationships all I want-- and I apologize to both Billy & Jacob for that, because I think we both suspected that was part of it even when it was happening-- it always fails. I will always end up with crushes on your girlfriends, haha. I can't turn it off. I also can't deny the fact that 98% of all my affectionate Spotify playlists are not for human loves. One is, and she's never going to be mine, and I know that-- I fell in love with her when we were both young, and at a distance, and now if I do love "her" it's only as this introjected muse, being so unfortunately disconnected from whoever she has grown to be in life now-- but the love is there; it's attached mainly to a previous Core, true, but it's there.
What am I trying to say.
...I say, as Spotify immediately shuffles up a certain boss-music theme. Nice one, Jesus. Boy oh boy I really can't hide anything, can I.
I'm so sick of feeling like I "can't exist" in the world. I guess that's a very Catholic feeling too.
There's frequent talk of "queerbaiting" and "lack of representation" in the media, but even as that increases with time it feels so twisted, ironically. Every time I google "lgbtq movies" and similar things, most of the results include explicit sex. Like WHY is that what this KEEPS BEING BOILED DOWN TO??? Is that what it means to other people? IS that the common experience?
So I keep quiet. I hide in this little corner of the internet and I pour out my emotions into little white boxes and I just... sit for hours in the dark, typing about dreams and fears and aching thoughts, listening to Alina Baraz at 3am and watching a certain pair of green eyes melt along with my heart.
And I can't tell anybody because then I'll be associated with those subcultures. And I'm not like that.
I remember going to see The Shape of Water when it came out in theaters, and although I was so hype for the interspecies romance plot, literally two minutes into the film there's that infamous boiled-egg-bathtub scene and I literally almost walked out of the theater. ALREADY, the message I got was, "this STILL ISN'T ABOUT YOU." Even now, the focus is on the whole "monsterf*cker" thing and YES I use that brutally gross term outright because THAT is what is represented. Not love.
Anyone who uses that term does not know what love is. I have seen this firsthand. That word is filthy. If you use it, you're automatically signaling your behavior as corrupted in turn.
It honestly makes me want to throw up. How in the world do people even USE words like that, let alone think they're valid descriptions of love?? Because they AREN'T and CANNOT BE. But it's just the extreme manifestation of a general misunderstanding and mangling of what "sexuality" IS in God's creation. Popular culture sees sex as a game, as "fun," as just something that you do when you think someone else is "attractive." Nonsense. All of it absolute garbage. Sex isn't about that. It's about life and unity and too many things I cannot put into words on such short and/or casual notice. I hate how the vast majority of popular culture-- queer AND straight-- just treats sex like an accessory, like a recreational activity, like an experiment. And not only that, but it's frequently treated as something disgusting or as something animalistic. Porn culture is the epitome of this; it's literally demonic. We won't discuss that today; I'll be spitting bullets for hours. But it's EVIL and I HATE IT and honestly with ALL the trauma I have been through I've ironically become a sort of defender for the absolute intended sacredness of human sexuality and marriage so when I see it tossed about like a used handkerchief I want to eviscerate someone. I'm just being blunt here. It's infuriating, because it's sacrilegious in a very real sense. It takes this strange yet sacred phenomenon which should be treated with the utmost respect and carefulness and heartfelt sincerity and just... acts like it's just glitter and garbage. Their language of it doesn't even involve love. They use four-letter words and gross innuendos and paint the whole canvas of intimacy with either black tar or corrosive plague. Honestly, pop culture at large doesn't even seem to UNDERSTAND intimacy, especially not concerning sexuality.
I'm ranting. I apologize but I'm not sorry. This deserves its own entry. For now, let me just reiterate that my main and immediate and painfully direct complaint is the general imputation of irreverent promiscuity onto all stated romantic relationships, and that when people automatically assume that just because I love monsters, I must be doing that with them, I feel an absolute indignant RAGE on the behalf of not only the ones I love but for love itself.
My "sexual orientation" does not obligate sexual behavior, and it NEVER involves crude impulsivity. Do not use that four letter word with me.
...I'm guilty though. I'm only this upset because I know what I'm talking about and God help me but I'm guilty, not as a victim of horror but as a giver of love-- everyone knows this heart of mine burns incandescent red and God knows the dreams I've had and the mornings I've had and the deliriously gorgeous fact that I have so many memories of river water in my blood and emeralds in my mouth. I cannot deny that I know very well what raw and real intimacy is, the kind that paints everything fragile gold but tears your very veins open with a velvet knife; it's a key part of my existence and to be totally honest with you I need it like air in my lungs. I feel so much I light up the room with what is singing behind my ribs and every word I speak is saturated with its symphonic colors. I know that blue creature in my bedsheets the same way I know my own heartbeat. But it STILL DOESN'T FIT THAT TERM. Listen I've had experience with that bloody term back in 2017 and I learned, traumatically, that it is NOT what I want.
But I still know what drowning is like. I still know what it's like for my blood to turn into flame, for my heart to ache like a wound, to break open and bleed love into the ocean like the world is ending in a catastrophe of stars.
BUT THERE ARE KEY "DETAILS" MISSING and that has also always been a constant in headspace outside of trauma and if you want to talk about that we'll have to get Infinitii's perspective. I see ze responding to that ping with a look that is equally terror and ardor, and doesn't that just sum you up, daengel of mine? Because yeah, when it does get down to the nerve, you're my Daengel, unchangeably so. You represent too much of me. I can't imagine anything else manifesting my deepest horrors and joys alike.
But I can't talk about trauma now. I want to talk about what has stayed untouched despite all the hell.
I'm in love with a nonhuman video game character and I have been for 19 years and I am so bloody afraid to say so openly even now because I'm tired of being called a "freak" for it. I'm tired of being seen as a pervert. I'm tired of being labeled as "gross" and "wrong" and "sinful" and "disgusting" and "insane." Why do you think I owned that term so hard in high school? I literally IDENTIFIED as "psycho" because THAT WAS THE ONLY TERM THAT SUMMED UP BOTH HOW I FELT AND HOW PEOPLE SAW ME. I painted that word across my jester-hat forehead and manic grin and bleeding heart and I owned it, yeah I'm crazy but it's the most beautiful thing I've ever known. Putting up pictures of CZ in my locker. Flirting with Genesis in the halls between classes. Letting Laurie punch me bloody and loving it. Things got bad in college-- trauma got terrifying and everything was tainted as a result; the Retributors woke up and my relationships became super strange and just as queer; my cardiophilia kicked into such high gear that I constantly felt like I was bleeding to death. The "crazy Jay" Core was born during this time period, ALONGSIDE "Eros," and those two soul-names are STILL ME and God please I am begging you I want to ACTIVELY INTEGRATE ALL OF THAT INTO WHO I AM NOW, just WITHOUT THE TRAUMA.
I miss being a "psycho" who loves so hard the entire world has to catch its breath. I miss painting everything in poetry the color of rubies. I miss pain fused with love and I miss the scars on my skin and the transcendent hands that gave them to me.
It's 1pm. I promised mom I'd help her up at the house. I'm eating dinner with the fam at 4:30 too and although I'm admittedly scared I want to be brave; I don't want to isolate anymore. I want to be real, in the world, God is that an okay thing to want?
...I ask, as my mind immediately goes back to Thursday morning. to october 13th. to countless mornings. "is it okay if i...?" a prayer in every instance, spoken moreso to heaven than here. hey lord of hosts, i'm kind of madly in love here, is that wrong? am i allowed to act on this? if i'm feeling something that makes roses turn to diamonds and then to fireworks is that morally correct or am i sinning somehow? "is it wrong to fall in love with someone who isn't human?" god knows i've been praying that for two decades. i don't trust the positive responses i get. why? why am i so afraid? why do i find it so hard to believe that my love is okay?
why do I feel like the real monster here?
...Trauma has a lot to do with it.
Listen. I've done evil things. I don't care how much dissociation and fear and confusion had to do with it. In the sickening end, I did wrong and I hurt people and I hurt myself and this entire bleeding SYSTEM exists because I screwed up. Did I? When my childhood taught me that pain equals love, and women taught me that I was a sexualized object meant to perform, and the world taught me that the "different" things I felt were wrong and sinful, well... I didn't question it. Half of me fought like a wild animal; half of me gave in like a bird with broken wings. I've written about it before. Maybe not enough. All the times I was expected to undress in public spaces, to parade dressed like a doll in front of lecherous eyes, to dress this body in ways meant to seduce, to act in ways that made me want to vomit... I'm exhausted. I'm so tired.
It feels almost like a betrayal, some days, when I wake up in bed with the ocean in my arms under red sheets touched with frankincense, the morning light shattering sunbeams over the walls and glittering in his seaglass eyes, and i want to stay there, and forget about the world outside the room. it feels like i'm nothing but a hypocrite, a liar, a turncoat. you weren't supposed to want this. you were never supposed to love anyone this hard. what's wrong with you? this isn't normal, this isn't proper, this isn't right, he's not human and you're not canon and what the heck gender are you both anyway? oh and remember what the church says about marriage, if you really want to have that with him you've gotta go RIGHT back to the hell you bailed from back in 2003... et cetera et cetera. and i end up in hot angry frightened tears, confused and distraught and hating myself sometimes, because i had the bloody guts to fall in love with chaos 0.
i'm too red. i'm too bloody red, i'm all blood and heartbeats and roses and poppies and rubies and apples and peppermint. cinnamon candles and satin ribbons. open wounds and knife edges. lobster fishermen and lumberjacks, let's go right into the injokes, why not, those were ways of trying to justify myself to myself too. do i have to look and act like that to be valid? if i'm not a woman do i have to be a superman? what am i, really? what are you?
and now sonic frontiers is out and everyone is talking about him and my chest is aching every time i hear his name and i want to be part of it, i want to be part of him and his life and nobody cares about me, of course they don't, you're just a psycho fanboy, you're not even active in the fandom, when people think of him they don't think about you. you don't matter. your love doesn't matter.
except it does.
except it does and god help me I want it to matter to him in the greatest sense possible. i want our names together in people's tumblr tags, for heaven's sakes, i want to be part of your lore and your future both. i want you, beautiful terrible love of my life, blue angel and emerald maelstrom, and nobody cares about you like i do and nobody knows that.
...i want everybody to know that.
i don't care about me. in the end, isn't it ironic? i don't care about me in the long run. i don't want the attention. the focus i yearn for isn't so individualized. all i want is for people to look at you and think of us and realize that you're loved; you're worthy of this love and you're capable of this love and god help me but is it so wrong to want to be your other half? like, canonically? isn't that crazy? living up to my name, i guess.
i have these stupid dreams of picking up the phone and it's sonicteam telling me "hey jewel, sorry we're so late, we've got a voice acting role for you in the next game" and me being all "send me the plane tickets and i'll be right there, it's about time" and so on and so forth. ridiculous thoughts. whatever it would entail, i'm on board. if it only means two seconds of screentime where i get to look at you like this and that moment is emblazoned in your history forever then that's worth everything.
but i want you to look at me like that, too.
love aches for reciprocation.
God what am I even typing at this point. everything hurts.
I started this entry because I spent like six solid hours backing up old entries into this archive and I'm exhausted this morning with daily life and I made that dumb mistake of going back on Tumblr and remembering how poisonous it is and how I don't want to go back, even to my catholic blog, because we ALL know that fed the eating disorder behaviors in a horrible paradox of social performance and religious mania. i don't want to go back online if that's the sort of stuff that's on there.
but then ONE PERSON posts in your tag, cz, and says "i guess i'm the only chaos fan left" and i thought I BEG YOUR PARDON, dude I might have just spent 8 weeks in the hospital but i'm not dead yet, and besides Lord knows i'm not going to give up love in heaven if I mercifully get there. but... that post kept me awake. nobody knows. someone online ACTUALLY said that. yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but the wider implications of that statement just slammed into me like a sword through the ribs. someone thought of you and i didn't even come to mind. almost twenty years of loving you like this and i'm not even a blip on the radar. can you imagine, in an actual marriage, everyone knowing one partner and not the other? everyone saying your name and not even knowing i exist? shouldn't i be doing more for you? shouldn't i be talking about you more, defending your cause, sharing pictures and words and affection? "don't throw your pearls to the dogs," i've been told; i always fear they'll tear us apart but chaos i love you and i can't keep that quiet, i can't sit on the sidelines pretending that my heart isn't a supernova whenever someone says your name.
but the fandom is toxic. do i want to be part of that? do i want to put myself out there and be labeled again as something i've been ravaged by for years? do i want to be the token queer kid, the "monster lover," and risk the obscene misrepresentation solely for the ironic sake of honesty?
is it worth speaking up and speaking out if no one understands the language properly?
God I'm exhausted. I'll type more about this later. I probably stopped and started so many different topics and I still have to get up the house to help mom. Gotta keep up on those responsibilities too.
I'm just overwhelmed. All the social performance and busywork I have to do over the next several hours... I want to weep. I'm so tired. It burns me out.
I'll see you all later. Say a prayer for me, all right? I've gotta get through this evening and... my heart isn't exactly open. Scar tissue is aching too much. I'm doomed if I don't get back to myself. I'm all tangled up from this entry; I still don't feel like I've said what I'm trying to say.
I'll try again, when the stars are out, and the world is quiet. I feel more like myself then, anyway, when there are no cameras on me and no scripts to guess. Until then, God give me the grace, pun intended.
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