Can you believe that I’m coming up to my 26th birthday and I still don’t understand when, how, or why you should get tested for STDs?
Right now I’m in the midst of what personally feels like a war inside my body. Heart is clenched, chest is tight, my teeth are grinding from the pressure exuding from my jaw muscles. I suppose I should clarify and explain that this is no war but only an argument between myself and someone I care for.
Every fight feels like it is the end of the world and I’m finally beginning to realize why that is. If there’s a fight, there’s an ending. I don’t usually stick around for the resolve. I don’t get to feel the happy, joyful feelings of being able to come back together feeling closer, stronger, more seen and understood.
It just feels like danger. Like an ending. And usually I want to be the catalyst in the ending. I can hurt you faster than you can me!
A safety measure that is ultimately failing me. I don’t get close and I don’t feel close. I miss out the purpose of our existence, connection.
I’m really afraid to feel my anger. And it’s typically because by the time I’ve come to allow myself to feel all the anger I’ve been storing in my body, it has turned into a palpable rage. Ready to be pumped out of my body with the full force of the work of my heart.
So anyways… what does any of this have to do with our institutions and how they work? I think our institutions do a wonderful job of creating a siphon.
si·phon
/ˈsīfən/
a tube used to convey liquid upwards from a reservoir and then down to a lower level of its own accord. Once the liquid has been forced into the tube, typically by suction or immersion, flow continues unaided.”
— definition from an Oxford dictionary
So, while these structures are not a tube, and they aren’t moving liquid upwards from a reservoir and then down to a lower level of its own accord, I do feel like there is a forcing that happens and a flow that continues mostly unaided.
Let me further explain… As it is, most systems that exist and are in place are meant to teach a specific outcome. There is a hierarchy that is created, an ideal vision of what our society is meant to be and how you should behave and an unspoken reason as to why that is. So, what is this specific outcome that is meant to be taught? You might be able to guess it, if you’ve lived life through some (or even more) of the perspectives that I have.
Let’s start with elementary school, let’s learn about people. Who do we see? What are the examples? Who are the good people? Who are the bad people?
What is mostly projected back to you? What do the family structures look like? What do these people look like? What ideal day is pushed onto most young girls, what will be the best day of their lives? What is important to them? (if you didn’t guess ‘work ethic’, you may not be picking up any of what I’m laying down) …
The point here being that– we live in a patriarchal, ableist, racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, polyphobic world.
The lens that has been primarily projected onto society is a one-partner relationship, between a man and a woman, who are both abled-bodied, who value their nation state, are lighter in complexion and follow more “traditional” values. They go to work and discuss how grateful they are to being doing things they hate, that bring them little to no purpose or value, day in and day out, in order to aid in their survival. They try to work hard to avoid injury and sickness for fear of what that may mean for them.
People hide their identities for fear of being outcast or harmed. People are outcasted. People are harmed.
These systems, these projections, these structures– are harming us all. There is no right way. There is no one size fits all. There is no right answer or way to exist in this world.
There are people who have it much harder in this world because of the identities that they belong to and are constantly being exposed to a world that would wish to eradicate them. They can’t be spoken of or shown to children for fear of indoctrination– but tell me … if just speaking or showing is indoctrination … how is it that what you’re speaking of, what you are showing– isn’t the exact same thing.
Where is the space for the others to exist?
Coming back to the present moment … We’re in a fight because polyamorous relationships have long been cast into the shadows.
I’ve personally been through a lot of shit, that I’m still working to process, that has truly affected my ability to trust almost anyone in the world. The issue coming out to play right now stems from that fact that I still don’t understand sex education.
My partner is polyamorous. This has been extremely challenging for someone like me, who crave control, who is historically possessive, and who has trust issues. I’ve made many flawed moves and have created a teetering relationship– one that feels uncertain, unstable, unsure of itself. One that lacks the ability to have open communication for fear of anger, non-responsiveness, or silently hostile reactions.
The situation is as follows.
They have had 5 partners in the time that we have been together. I have gone back and forth on, I want to be involved, I want to know, and feeling a visceral reaction that makes me want to throw up because “Oh my god, why are you telling me this? I don’t want to know any of this!”
So as you can see, I’m a very straight-forward and direct person (if you can’t catch the sarcasm– these words are for you) . The last time we had spoken, I had only known of their involvement with their longest partnership and a distant one unlikely to bloom.
Flash forward to being on their couch with their roommate while they’re out working and being told that they had someone that week and slept with them, after having slept with myself the evening before. My initial thoughts on that are lost to me, as I likely disassociated and couldn’t really contemplate what was being said to me at the time. The following day my partner had a previously scheduled appointment to be tested and the thought keeps occurring to me “How do I know that I’m safe if they haven’t been tested in between sleeping with that person and I?”
I didn’t feel safe and I wanted to communicate that going forward I wanted to feel safe. There would have been 1,000 better ways to approach this situation yet how I handled it follows.
“You should get tested after sleeping with [redacted] before sleeping with me.”
This statement flew out of my mouth and no other thoughts were considered. I’ve communicated that I want to feel safe going forward and this is how it should be done. Or so I though …
At the time I did not take into consideration how my words affected my partner, I honestly couldn’t even tell that they were extremely upset with me either. I thought everything was cool, calm, collected. We had a good discussion and we made it through what I thought was going to be so difficult. We’re at the local gas station picking up breakfast before heading to work, where we will see [redacted].
We arrive. My partner and [redacted] leave the hall we’re all standing in. I begin to get to work. The first hour has flown by. I’ve been moving at an efficient pace, enjoying some tunes when I find that I need to relieve my bladder. Butt to porcelain, phone from pocket into hands “We need to talk.”
We need to talk … We need to talk … Something is wrong here. We did talk … What’s going on …? We stand in the same hallway, pulling off stems, trimming along the way. I’m making sideway glances hoping to catch your face. Now I’m starting to see the tension in your body. You’re avoiding me. You look agitated.
I want this to be taken care of, just as I did my bladder. I’m looking for a way to relieve the pressure I’m feeling.
“Hey, do you want to talk?” Foolish me, thinking it would be such an easy conversation we could continue to stand in the hall and work. I began to realize even more how serious this was when my partner says, “Let’s take our lunch then.”
I had offended them. I had offended our friend, [redacted]. It took multiple conversations and several instances of processing for me to come to the conclusion that I’ve arrived at now.
I had thought that the communication and understanding was clear– it wasn’t.
I need to trust my partner. I need to trust who they involve themselves with because I trust their judgement. I need to understand how STD testing works and what is recommended when it comes to testing too.
I assumed so much– that condoms weren’t used, that my partner didn’t care about what may happen to me if who they were sleeping with had passed something along. So, coming back to the original thought– if our institutions accepted and acknowledged that there are many acceptable ways of being in the world, then there wouldn’t be so much darkness. Communication would be open and clear. We wouldn’t use such vague language that doesn’t pick up on the unintended implications of what we’ve said. We would walk towards the things we don’t know more easily and shed some light until everything became illuminated. We would understand how others move through the world and understand that when we accept them fully and how they move, that we can truly accept ourselves and move through the world in our own way too.
Now’s the time that I’ve completed my processing. It’s also time to accept the foot I’ve put in my mouth and work on pulling it out.
Discovering Happiness 