Tag: disconnected

The Things I’ve Learned

On January 26, 2013

I’ve taken a break from the internet in the last few months, specifically this break has been from the online persona I have been developing on this blog since 2007. I experienced a mental breakdown of sorts, a deep depression that was catalyzed by the death of my father but had begun long before he passed. I had to step back from life and to go inside of myself. I no longer had the strength to keep moving forward so I stagnated for a while. It was necessary.

Life has been on an upswing for the last few months. All the things happened at once: I was beginning to feel like myself again, Stian and I were getting closer, and I began a few new relationships. Since then school has been figured out, I have a lot of ideas for the future and plans in that regard, and all my relationships are developing positively. More and more lately, however, I’ve been realizing just how much writing on here has meant to me, and I want to get back into it.

I have other ways of expressing and processing my thoughts and emotions now than I did when I began this blog. It is easier for me to talk openly and honestly about those things that are close to my heart. While that was a big part of my development of this blog it was not the only purpose of it. In my time away I’ve realized just how important writing is to me. I’ve had to do a lot of it in school, but that is less flow-of-consciousness writing and more actually-having-to-plan-things-out-and-be-organized writing. While I enjoy both types, there has been a distinct lack of the former in my life as of late. For a while I was so internal, so closed off, that I was unable to write, I was barely able to breathe. Now, though, I feel the desire to share pouring out of me.

Dance has become an integral part of my life experience in the last few months as well. For a long time I forgot how necessary it was to move my body in that way. I did a lot of dance when I was younger and I have wanted to take a class for years, but just never got around to it. I began taking a couple swing dance classes in November and began another three weeks ago. I hope to continue as best I can in the upcoming months, but travel plans will get in the way somewhat. I have aspirations of taking bellydance and burlesque classes as well, and who knows what else. It has become as important as sex to me, as important as breathing. I need to remember to dance, preferably every day.

What else has changed and shifted in the last few months since I have been away? I’ve been on a femme swing as well. My gender presentation has embraced femmeininity to the nth degree. I’ll certainly be discussing this in an upcoming post. Onyx and I have moved from being non-monogamous and theoretically poly to having other partners, and there have been shifts between us and our relationship as well both because of this change and because of the natural progression of our relationship to each other. Again, there will be a separate post. Or probably many separate posts.

There’s so much more needing to pour out of me, but this is where I begin again. This isn’t complete (is it ever?), but it is a (re)start.

Self-Consciousness

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On April 30, 2010

In Introspection

I used to think I was an exhibitionist. I still do think that to a point, but lately I’ve been so reserved and worried about the way others perceive me I can hardly call myself an exhibitionist. I’m more self-conscious now than I have ever been before in my life. I’m less outrageous, trying to blend more, and just generally unsure of myself. Recently I had two separate conversations on different topics that lead to this point, I’m letting my ego get in the way, my anxiety take over.

Even though it seems like this is the opposite of the ego’s job, it’s still part of the same mold. The same part of you builds yourself up that will knock yourself down. The ego is responsible for the worry and anxiety and stopping you from being you just as it can be responsible for the arrogance and puffed-out chest of confidence. Either extreme isn’t desired, but, as with all things in life, I seek to find a balance, a happy equilibrium within myself.

This might sound crazy coming from someone who blogs about her life, who routinely informs others about her sex, thoughts, and feelings, but especially lately I seem to have a difficult time believing that other people are actually interested in hearing what I have to say. I’m not talking about on here, but in person, when I meet new people or interact with known ones. This was especially true the first few weeks after I got back to Seattle.

When I was in Juneau I was much more comfortable. My motto for Juneau is basically “it’s Juneau, nobody cares,” and I would say it whenever there was a question of etiquette, appropriate dress for an event, or pretty much anything. This isn’t really true, though. Juneau is a small town and there is tons of gossip. Despite thinking it was super liberal when I grew up (and it is compared to the rest of Alaska) there are still lots of non-liberal ideas and people who live there, and it isn’t comfortable to express everything there.

I do think that, for the most part, people in Juneau don’t give a shit about you unless they know you, however, and that’s where my motto came from. I never really got invested in Juneau people. Growing up there I did tons of activism in the high school, I was in many theatre productions, people knew who I was but very few people actually knew me, and I liked it that way. Going back was very similar, only I knew even less people. I knew people could recognize me, and people did quite often, but if they had any preconceived notions of me it didn’t matter, or maybe it mattered less.

Some of this goes back to what I was talking about in Relational Assumptions. I’m worried about what people here will assume about me, I haven’t been able to adopt the same nonchalant attitude because I actually want to be invested here, I want to gain friends and not be a loner like I have been previously. I want to be more outgoing and social, but I need to stop caring so much about what other people think, because I want people to like me for me and not for anything else.

I like being a multifaceted individual, but sometimes it’s exhausting because I’m too worried about other people to express myself fully. A friend, in one of the conversations I mentioned above, mentioned she had learned to instate a complete honesty policy in order to encourage compatible friendships and discourage ones that could turn sour down the road. I think I do this too… to an extent, anyway. I will answer questions honestly but don’t always offer up information unasked, but I want to change this.

I’m trying to shed the trappings of my ego, acknowledge them and move past them, to stop being so self-conscious. Care less what people I don’t know think about me and more about feeling comfortable within myself and expressing myself however that happens. I want to start volunteering information about myself, start realizing that people care what I have to say and actually have an interest in hearing it. Part of the beginning of this change in me came in dying my hair from the reddish brown it has been the last few months back to a bright purple, the rest of it will come soon.

Familiar Footsteps

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On December 22, 2009

In Introspection

For a long time I was very similar to my sister, I followed in her footprints if you will. This wasn’t an intentional decision on my part to become more like her it just kind of happened that way. We have similar interests, and have for as long as I can remember. We have both been blogging for a long time and our current blog incarnations and online personae developed independently of each other but are also somewhat similar.

I have never consciously emulated her, but I think I do to a degree. Onyx has said he thinks this is because I see her as someone who has her life together, who has taken control, and that’s what I want to do. Maybe that’s true, or maybe I just want to emulate her in the way a younger sister looks up to her elder, or maybe it is something else entirely. I’m really not sure.

Now it seems like every major decision I make is one she has made in one way or another, and maybe these are things everyone has to go through, but it seems more specific than that. Even leaving my relationships and coming to Juneau for a while is something she did, though I didn’t know that until I was doing it and she mentioned she did the same thing.

To a point I don’t want to emulate her, I don’t want to find my life patterning similarly to how hers did ten years ago. While I don’t consciously make choices based on what she did I find myself over and over making similar choices. Is this simply because we are so similar, a fact which becomes more and more apparent to me, or is there something else at work here?

In the last few months to a year I have been thinking heavily about what it is I am wanting to do with my life, and the more I wonder the less I have any idea. I have all these ideas and interests and desires but haven’t had any direction or ability to figure out my path from point A (where I am) to point Z (where I want to be). The recent shaking up of my life and comfort has really made me think about everything anew, and I feel more on track now than I have before, which is really amazing.

For the longest time I could focus on school, it was all I knew, really, and my side focus was finding love because that was something I hadn’t really experienced. I found Onyx, I finished school, I found Marla, now those relationships are gone or changing and I’m back in my hometown, which is weird in and of itself. I love having time to think about me, and I’m glad I’m taking the time away from relationships to figure things out about past and future relationships to be sure not to make the same mistake.

Since I’ve been here the clouds of distraction are clearing and things are finally moving forward. I spoke with a piercer I’ve been coming to for around eight years about becoming her apprentice and she agreed! I’m overjoyed, though the apprenticeship will not begin immediately it will happen. This is an important step toward the rest of my life, I think. I have tentative future plans after the apprenticeship is over, though it will probably be a year or more. I am getting a grip on life and enjoying it.

I will be up in Juneau, Alaska for a while, though hopefully I’ll be able to go down south every once in a while as well, but I will be writing from Alaska until you hear otherwise. Staying in Juneau is not something my sister chose, and I’m wondering if this time focusing on myself outside of a relationship and the reawakening I am experiencing will jolt me out of the familiar patterns I was falling into.

Disconnected

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On August 20, 2009

In Introspection

I’ve been feeling disconnected with the world lately, both offline and on. A lot of this started when the triad formed, but also it has been going on increasingly since I stopped working and this long over-a-year that I haven’t been able to get a job.

I was so hopeful for a job I interviewed for last Friday. I have yet to hear back and that is sinking me down into sadness. Couple that with both my partners being distant and on-edge and I don’t know what to do with myself most of the time.

I’m writing this from the park, a wonderful place for some introspection and thought. The world around me feels more and more like a mystery every day, and I continually feel unable to grasp it, like the tangible reality I built over the last however many years is slipping away from me and I’m not sure how to get it back. How can I connect with a world that doesn’t seem to want me or work for me? I’m trying to figure this out. The only answer I have come to is to build a new world around me, so I’m trying to do just that.

I’m having a difficult time with it, though. Looking back I have reconstructed my reality multiple times. Every time I move or any of those fundimental aspects of my life change: location, company, desires, work. They all seem to be minor changes compared to now, but maybe every change seems minor in heindsight.

But, this is about disconnection, which is also about change, and loss, and pain. I aspire to such great things but don’t know how to get my footing in the now in order to achieve them. I live by trial and error these days, awash in uncertainty and trying to find pleasure in every day no matter how disconnected I feel.

I need grounding, something to prove to me that what I’m doing is right, is working, but I think I can only find that in myself.