Scraping
It has been painfully obvious that I experience shame around my sexuality. Not in the sense of the gender I’m attracted to, but rather around gaining the attention of anyone in a romantic way. Or maybe that’s not quite right; I tend to see any attention directed my way not as romantic but as lustful. But before I get ahead of myself, here’s some backstory.
Growing up, I didn’t get much attention from boys. It seemed like everyone else could like someone and have them like them back, while I was still crushing on people in silence, hoping it would fade on its own (I’ve gotten really good at talking myself out of liking people as a result). But when my dreams of being seen by boys did slowly start to come true, it was nothing like I imagined.
I remember freshman year of college when a friend at the time found out that I’d kissed a boy she liked back when we were in high school. She called me horrible names and said, “Your morals are fucked up if you don’t know what you’ve done.” I won’t even try to explain the details of the situation; I’ve made peace with that incident and my choices. What I haven’t been able to let go of is the subconscious fear of judgment from other women when I did get attention. Adding to that summer of deep shame and humiliation, there was another incident where a guy I had a crush on, to whom I had confided the entire fiasco with my ex-friend, kissed me and then confessed he hadn’t broken up with his girlfriend. The next day he called me and blamed me for making the first move, saying I’d seduced him into the mess.
So in 2019, at the age of 20, I had two traumatic incidents that have shaped how I view male attention and the female gaze to this day.
With all of this in mind, I’ve realized there’s been a pattern of thinking: a war within myself. Being attracted to the opposite sex while being terrified of the judgmental gaze from women is something I only recently realized has been suffocating me. As a result, I’ve been trying to play my romantic affairs with men as “casual” even though I secretly desired a deep, soul-binding connection. Even though I would say out loud that I wanted a partner, I’ve unconsciously been attracting people who only saw me as someone “casual” because that’s what I was projecting into the world.
I think I’ve been going after people I knew would hurt me (i.e., emotionally unavailable, toxic, immature). It felt easier not to fall in love with these assholes and have my heart ripped in two when they walked away, because I was already prepared for the end.
But as I sit in this time-out, on a lonely island cut off from the external world I’ve been rebuilding since coming back to New York, I think it is time to look at this wound again. This isn’t the first time I’ve had revelations about my subconscious patterns, but like a deep wound, just because I slathered ointment on it and put a bandage over it once didn’t mean it would heal immediately. I watch it get smaller and smaller, then randomly open and ooze pus again, repeating for the past six years. This time, it feels like there might be an infection in that smaller sore, digging deep into my flesh, something that needs to be scraped out.