this entry is public for now. that might change.

lately I have been trying to reconcile two apparently contradictory desires. on the one hand, ever since Jake and I broke up, I have been loving being single and crushing on boys and flirting and feeling attractive. on the other hand, ever since Jake and I broke up, the thought of being physically intimate with another person is so terrifying as to be repulsive. that door has been slammed shut, locked, and had a "do not disturb" sign hung on it, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

someone asked me why. at first I said I don't know. but then a torrent of reasons flooded out. too many relationships rushed into and regretted later. too many times feeling like my sex drive is inadequate. too many times feeling like I'm inadequate because I don't want what someone else wants me to want. because a guy feels like something's wrong if he can't "satisfy" me the way he's seen it happen in the movies. too much of my desire being defined by other people. too much feeling like a sex object, a body instead of a person. too many times wondering if a guy is hanging out with me because he actually likes me as a person or if he is just hoping he'll get in my pants. too many times worrying about my own self-worth as a result.

I am sick of it. I am sick of all of it. I am sick of every guy who ever made me feel like I was reduced to a pair of breasts or a neck or an ass or whatever body part it was that day. every guy who manipulated me into being with him because that was what he felt like doing that night and to hell with my desires. I am sick of not knowing where my desire ends and the other person's begins. I am sick of telling myself I want something because it'll make some guy happy, or keep him interested in me, or whatever.

(this is why I prefer being single, why I don't like relationships. because I start changing, in ways so small I can't even see them at first, to please the other person. and then I wake up one day and realize I don't feel like me anymore. and then I have to get out.)

I page back through my mind. the coworker I enjoyed flirting with until he told me exactly what was on his mind. the guy I considered a friend in high school who told me he liked being taller than me on days I wore dresses because then he could look down the front. the high school boyfriend who broke up with me because I wouldn't go far enough. all of them and more, and the first time I ever felt that way, when I was twelve or thirteen. when it all started.

there was this guy, let's call him Bob. Bob was my age and lived next door to my grandmother, so we'd hang out whenever I came to visit. we had been friends as kids, but this particular summer we were older and the hormones were happening and all that. so we were hanging out in his room, flirting and playing video games, and suddenly he started groping my breasts. now, I was raised on Disney movies and fairy tales. I was fascinated by sex, but it was still this mysterious adult world that I wasn't allowed entrance to yet. in my thirteen-year-old view of the world, the sequence went flirting, romance, kissing, and then later, possibly years later, sex. Bob was skipping several steps. something was wrong.

I was confused and hurt and I didn't know why. something broke inside me and I started wearing black lipstick and a scarf over my hair. I wanted to get as far from pretty as possible. later, I felt like a crybaby--after all, it wasn't like I had been raped or anything, and I had been flirting with him, so maybe I was just naive and that was how things were supposed to go.

but looking back on it now, I'm kinder to my younger self. it seems like the start of something that I'm still struggling with. I like feeling attractive. I like flirting. I like boys. I like crushes. but I don't like feeling like a body instead of a person. and guys never seem to realize when they're crossing that line, so it took me a long time to figure out where it was. that it existed at all. I thought something was wrong with me, but maybe there's something wrong with everybody else, or just something broken in the world.

(that's why articles like this one resonate with me. and quotes like this. and why I find this profoundly disturbing.)

I don't think it's a coincidence that my uniform in college was a men's button-down shirt over a tie-dyed slip over jeans. I wanted to have the option of being pretty and feminine, which was the slip, but over that I had armor. it was up to me which part was dominant at any given time--the flirty girl Sophie or the androgynous don't-fuck-with-me Sophie. mother Eve or plain Jane. I split myself in two.

(bras, shaving, shoes, clothes, sexy underwear, makeup. I give in to the patriarchy in small steps, convincing myself every time that it's what I want, and before I know it I don't know who I am anymore. but there's nowhere else to go.)

I get sick of constantly performing femininity. I get sick of evaluating myself based on how I look in a dress, rather than my dreams, my talents, my accomplishments. that's why on my OkCupid profile, my answer to the question "the first thing(s) people usually notice about me" is "my scintillating wit and dazzling intellect." because I am more than pretty, more than a body, and if you aren't interested in the rest of me, you can go fuck yourself.

so I'm going to keep flirting and keep crushing on boys, and I'm not going to have a physical relationship until I am absolutely ready, and I'm going to do my best not to apologize for either of those things. exactly where my boundaries are is something I'm still defining, but it's something nobody else can define for me.

everybody has worlds inside them, like Neil Gaiman says. unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. and to reduce all of that, an entire person, to the way they look, or what they can do for your genitals, or how they can fulfill your fantasies, is one of the most careless things I can think of.