My Fantasies Keep Me Warm At Night

On Dating, Social Rules And Singleness

001 personal essay files

I want to preface this by saying that I don’t like sharing my emotions. I find selling pain porn on the internet strange. I do thinks acts of vulnerability are special but some of the attempts are perfunctory. Some of my drafts I write in tears and the essays that come from it feel beautiful. I still don’t feel compelled to post them. I feel compelled to talk about the social rules of love and questions about why it feels so elusive. I stopped myself because I will never degrade or debase myself for love. Why does it always feel like that? There’s so many questions circulating in my mind. I’ve come to the conclusion and a thoroughly researched one that love requires for you to not be yourself—like everything else it’s a performance. I just want to be free. Free to love too! But it seems like there is some unconscious written rules that I keep breaking by being myself. I use to think I was destined to be alone, but I can’t really accept that fate—it’s sounds so ludicrous. I move through this world with so much intimacy and so much love to give but it seems there is a dam restricting my flow. One thing that really scares me about my relationships and gives me anxiety—is my detachment. I am able to compartmentalize my emotions and relationships in way that has always made afraid people will abandon me. I can love you deeply, commune with my feelings, show up for you consistently and still need a separate identity that doesn’t prioritize our connection. It’s something I long so deeply for people to not only understand but not villainize me for it because as much as I belong to you; I belong to myself. I am not selfish or uncaring. I am loving you at my capacity and sometimes that capacity is expansive and sometimes it’s reclusive. I don’t know, if anyone will ever truly understand me, while I don’t ask for that. I ask for love because understanding me would be an -ology and I just don’t think any human is committed to the extensity.

ol·o·gy

a subject of study; a branch of knowledge

In the current dating landscape, I’ve learned to not have expectations and try to be in the present moment. To love but not to long. Most would recommend therapy. I use to naively believe in Therapy; I was in Therapy for three years. I’ve been on anti-depressants before and known of those remedies know me at my core. To be fair, I am the only one that knows myself so deeply. I am the only one privy to the depths of my soul—that maybe one of the problems but I digress. I knew nobody could love me properly because I change my mind. I live in the difference that Audre Lorde talks about—in a liminal space. I won’t even be the same woman I was yesterday. The woman from last week is a stranger. I think love should be taken slow, but I heard somewhere that’s not how intimacy works. It’s fast, it overtakes you and then it pauses in its tracks. I want to tease and to titillate. To be pushed to the brink of control and release—it’s not complicated it’s one of the best feelings to have exactly what you’ve been hunting down. I have broken the law again and I’m sentenced to singleness. I spent years chasing and trying to make a future out of a one-night stand, trying to make myself worthy. The only lover I will take is a friend [at this time]. I believe friendship is the one thing missing from love. Love seems so villainous, so diabolical. A friend, an acquaintance—those are the ones I tell my deep dark secrets too. I know they’ll never use my pain against me or weaponize our intimacy. Love seems like accepting a hundred bullets to the chest and kissing the barrel, but a friend is like sipping a warm cup of hot chocolate. I listen to people’s stories about their love, and I wonder if I could ever fathom the idea of it. I recently went to a game night at my college, and we played a game where you have to pick a card. If the statement on the card applied to you then you are allowed to keep it. I picked a card that said, “if you have ever been in love, keep this card”. I looked down at the card, nodded by head side to side and said “No, I have not”. When I looked up, one of the girls responded “No? oh it’s okay—you don’t have to feel bad about it”. I promptly said “Oh, I don’t feel bad”. It only annoyed the shit out of me because she was obviously projecting. I have never been in love. What does that even mean? I’ve loved things and people but what is love but attachment. If you asked me what love is, I couldn’t tell you definitively. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I walk outside as the sun shines on my melanated skin, I put on warm lavender oil after a long hot shower, I take a bite of fresh mango salsa, or I get a long hug from someone I haven’t seen in a while—and I am in love. Every time someone says they were in love it involves some kind of sacrifice, pain or debasing. I have never been in love with being mistreated. I’m not making excuses I know love can be beautiful. Can I love you slowly though? Because at this point, I am taking my life day by day. Sometimes hour by hour and minute by minute. I’m sorry if that threatens your compulsivity. I lived in immediacy before, and I did not enjoy it.

I’m sorry if that threatens your compulsivity. I lived in immediacy before, and I did not enjoy it.

When someone tries to get close to me, I instantly recoil. I am afraid. That is my instant reaction, but I never let it linger for too long. I deal with something called hyposensitivity and hypersensitivity. A touch could feel like a thousand shockwaves being sent through my body and other times it feels like absolutely nothing. I look at people with eyes of fantasy and other times they make me sick with their humanity. With maturity, I understand my experience more. I can carry the weight of these contradictions, but can you? I was thinking about how someone can get caught up in only one way of accomplishing their goals. We get tunnel vision, and we begin to apply less effort to the other routes. There is more than one way to make your dreams happen. You can only accept this when you release your expectations from that one route. So, I am not accepting spending my life alone. I can only be who I am. I can only love at my capacity. I can only hope that my capacity is enough. I don’t think therapy can change the fabric of who you are. It cannot change the seams that make you, you. I will say that therapy helped me rewrite negative narratives and taught me skills. The core of my identity has not changed. My asexuality has not changed. I still am able to love people in many ways beyond the heteronormativity of love and compulsive sexuality. I still need for my mind to be fucked. I still need to be wooed and wined. I still need to meet every lover I’ll ever know because I know there will be more.

Victoria Monet’s Alright Music Video

I was reading azeez’s work recently and I remember this line because it stuck with me. He said if someone questioned him about what he considered a typically feminine trait, he would first be reticent to answer. He said if that person would genuinely ask him again, he would genuinely answer and say it would be the ability to fantasize. My mind immediately went—so men don’t fantasize lol. That’s just my first reaction. Of course, women know how to fantasize, we are liminal beings—thresholds that bring ideas into tangibility. My fantasies have been with me for a long time. They cling to me like soiled clothes to skin. I use to think they were a curse. I still sometimes grapple with the fact that they are so vivid and all-consuming. The Cinderella Syndrome is a psychological fantasy of being rescued. It’s something that is pervasive in literature and art. It’s something girls are socialized to idealize, often developing a desire to be patient and ideally feminine waiting for the man of their dreams to come and rescue them from life. I never watched princess movies as a girl. I couldn’t even recite for you the Disney princesses. I don’t feel like I deal with the Cinderella Syndrome. That doesn’t stop fantasies from developing. I grew up as a cheetah girl with a longing for friendship and superstardom. I imagined performing for sold out crowds and starring in music videos. I played house as a girl and waited until my husband came home. See what people have failed to realize is that [ and I’m sure there is some research about it somewhere] young girls cling to fantasies because they are aware of their place in the world. From a young age they begin to internalize their liminality and their gender. If you grew up with brothers then you swallowed that pill all the more. A woman who doesn’t fantasize doesn’t create. A woman who doesn’t fantasize doesn’t travel. A woman who doesn’t fantasize is bound to passivity. In my singleness cell, it’s my fantasies that keep me warm at night. It’s the way I’m able to move through the world with such ease and contemplation. The trees could be my lovers, the squirrel I stare down—again, I’m a wild woman. By being myself, I am breaking the law because you are not supposed to talk to blooming flowers or look up at the sky for too long. Still, I hope love finds me in that state. I’m not giving up on “love”, if it exists. I think sometimes the rules of dating are philanderous to the commitment I have for myself. At this point I almost expect to be ghosted and that’s crazy—but I know it’s never personal.

I know it’s never personal.

—With Love, Deziré 🌹