of affection and other demons
whenever i received kindness and affection i let it wash all over me; how alien it felt, and warm at the same time.
love, kindness, affection. what a privilege for a child to have; showered by their family and society from the day they were born. i'm sure i had some form of those behaviour mentioned above shown to me when i was younger, but i couldn't recall any; not at this particular moment anyway.
as someone who grew up in an abusive household, i gravitated toward those who showered me with affection; and ultimately it became my downfall because those affection are almost always.. impermanent.
of course if you give, you shall receive. the problem is, giving affection to those of the same gender was difficult and usually came with a backlash when you're a masculine-presenting queer woman. would love to compile a greatest hits but number one on top of the chart is i'm falling in love with them (insert eye roll here). i love those who are close to me and accepted me for who i am, and i always want to show and receive affection as much as i can, but the fear of getting my actions misinterpreted refrained me from doing so.
note: showing affection to cis-hetero men is problematic too because they'll get squeamish and think that i shouldn't do it (we're bros!) or they'll think i'm not really a lesbian and i'm turning straight. sigh, i really can't win here
a few years ago, i met a close friend of a friend at a local event and we clicked real fast. of course whenever new friendship happened i'm always feeling super proud of myself, like "yay i'm not that bad after all, people still wanna be friends with me" that sort of thing. so to cut the story short, we were hanging out and i affectionately asked her to hand me over something and she immediately reprimanded me in front of other friends. she said i'm too "manja" (literal translation is affectionate or being cutesy) and i should be spanked/beaten to toughen myself up.
i was dumbfounded. my autistic ass was wrong, again. of course she said it in a jest but that doesn't negate the fact that she wanted to punished me for wanting affection. i thought she's a good friend. i thought wrong. sigh, neurotypicals.
wanting affection when it comes to dating/romantic relationship was a complete disaster for me. definitely at the start of the dating process, affection was abundant but it slowly dissipate over time. in the end, it became one-sided. i'm a very physical person and i love to give/receive affection physically (not necessarily sex), and usually after the "honeymoon" phase is over and routine sets in, asking for a cuddle felt like asking them to do dishes. i had to think twice before asking because apparently being affectionate to me is a chore.
maybe i'm asking too much, i don't know. the last person i dated explicitly told me that she cannot gave me the attention and affection i was looking for. we went from "dating" to "situationship" to "i don't know what we are" to "we're not in a relationship" in a span of a year. but at the same time, she will say that she missed me and she still care a lot for me, driving her knife deeper into my heart. lately i got myself thinking that if i knew both of us are gonna ended up like this, i wouldn't have given myself to her physically; because in the heat of that moment every touch, every stroke, felt like love to me.
but what do i know of love? of affection? my whole entire life i was not an object of anyone's affection. i'm just a lovefool.
my heart is broken over a lot of things that had happened in my life, and i seek healing in various forms; some work and some did not.
there's a lot to learn from all of this but of course my naive autistic ass will seek affection in the wrong places, again, and again.
what do i know of anything at all? i'm just a fool.
“then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude