Who am I?

"What is love? Baby...don't hurt me."

The music faded as the popular song by Haddaway came to an end, and I let out a sigh.

Sometimes when I reflected on those words the way it made me feel was alarming.

Every single person I had ever known to say the words, "I love you," to me had hurt me.

And I mean that fully.

From my parents, to aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, and friends.

It didn't matter - they were all guilty.

The one thing they all had in common was that they'd inevitably let me down, lied to me, and buried the hilt of their swords deep into my chest. Sometimes, they even took them out only to turn around and plunge them into my back.

You know what they say, the ones to betray you first tend to be your own family. I suppose that was because that was your first introduction to the world, and the reality was... not everyone born was immediately loved.

When I was only nine months of age, my father chose to call child protective services on my grandmother because he had agreed to take my mother on a date, and she offered to babysit for them. In the time they went to dinner and a movie, my grandmother chose to beat me black and blue all over my legs. When my parents came back from their date thinking they had left me in the care of someone who cared about me - my father was furious upon seeing the black and blue mottling into purple bruises that had already riddled my legs.

When asked why she had done this she said it was because I was a brat baby who cried entirely too much. My mother protested, and she did not want my father to call child protective services but he was so angry he took me and told her to go get in the car, and upon returning home he called the police anyway. I do not know what happened after that, but I know that my father never wanted me alone with her and it wasn't long after this incident that she chose to move several states away from our home on the West Coast. Somewhere off in the Bible Belt where she would be justified when beating infants under one year of age for simply crying too much. My father said later when he recounted the incident, and often, that he wished he could have beaten her up and down her legs like she had done to me. It was things like this that led to my parents eventual divorce, but my mother tried to often blame it on my father's drinking. My father did drink, but there were so many things I heard I should never have heard and it played a major role in my coming to terms with who I was, and who I wanted to be.

I was a child who paid a great deal of attention, and that lent to me hearing things that made me question who my father was, or whether the people in my mom's family would lie to me. I learned in time, that both sides of my family were complicated and dysfunctional and that too left me realizing how often I'd been left to fend for myself, and figure it out, or completely ignored because of some larger calamity. From the getgo by very need to cry was something that a person meant to protect me found annoying, and in turn punished me for. So, when I began to detect my sexual orientation wasn't like others it was not something that I knew how to deal with or cope. I had always been left to figure things out and become both hyper vigilant and introverted. I didn't like dealing with many people. I didn't want to open up to them, and I really didn't want to be judged by them most of all.

This was the problem too, I had been judged so often that when I first began to get crushes I thought I was rather like my peers. I loved me a good looking boy band serenade just like any other teenage girl, and yet as time went on I realized I also found girls to be attractive but I never acted on those interests as I was more concerned with avoiding any wave-making. When you grow up already feeling you will be beaten by people just for existing it's kind of hard not to choose to blend into the background and silence yourself so you don't burden anyone else.

When I was 24 years olf though, I met someone who was a transman and he was one of the smartest, and most charming men I'd ever met in my life. It was at this time I learned that my root interest was more leaning to sapiophilehood and demisexuality. The feelings that began to swell in me considering this refined and sophisticated Gent were the kind that made me get butterflies and go weak in the knees, but it seemed my feelings were not reciprocated and I later realized that the real thing that got me going was the idea of intelligence!

While coming to this realization, I accepted that I was not quite polyamorous, but I was certainly a member of the LGBTQIA community. I was queer, and for the first time in my life I feel like a spark of hope had arrived. However, being sapiodemisexual as I later learned it was called also came with an array of dilemmas. Mainly, in that living in the times we lived in most people were rather ignorant with no desire to educate themselves. This made finding connections damn near impossible, and led me to recognizing that I was perfectly capable of being in a romantic partnership.

I could not be attracted without the person having intellect and with the acceptance of me I felt freer than ever despite not being in a relationship. So much so, that there was no feeling of lack to be had but only appreciation for the authenticity of myself.