Tag: mine

My living situation now is awesome!

Like it’s great and the house is beautiful and the people are wonderful and here’s fresh baked bread every other day.

But sometimes it gets even more extra special, because we do Airbnb which means we get to meet all sorts of people from all over the world and have awesome conversations and network and talk into the night learning from each other. Once I move out next year I am likely never going to have the same experience again.

And anyways today we have some pretty freaking amazing guests from the US: one a lawyer turned realtor who’s fighting the injustice in housing for low income families by finding loopholes in the system, and the other is a rock musician turned historian so now I have a historian friend like me who works at a university and is interested in my research and published work!

Gay generational differences

I feel like I’m in a weird middle ground between gay generations and there are differences, specifically surrounding the issue of being out, that make it difficult to relate to or even spend time with gays from other generations.

For example, I have a friend in her 70s who came out to herself during her 40s or 50s, but who despite having long term gay relationships since, has never, and never hopes to, come out to her family.

I have friends in their 30s and 40s who are out to their families and happily married to the loves of their lives.

I have friends in their teens who have (thankfully) never had to worry about their coming out, they’ve just been gay and known as such and had chance to live their identities and their truths for as long as they can remember.

I can’t abide the idea of living my life closeted in the same way my older friend has.

I can barely spend an hour with my married gay friends sometimes because of how insanely envious I am of their happiness and how goddamn lonely I am.

I am equally envious of my younger gay friends who I am just so damn happy for and wish with every part of my being that younger me could have lived her truth so easily like they do.

It’s just like, where do I fit in?

I’m not meaning to bash on older and younger LGBTs, it’s just being a lonely lesbian who’s never had a relationship and is in her early 20s feels so isolating. I want to be out to my family, to my grandparents even, but their age and religious beliefs means that is going to be super difficult and painful for me before it becomes something I can enjoy being free in. And I won’t have a partner to support and comfort me during it, nor to ‘prove my gayness’ to those who doubt.

I get other people’s situations are different and I really do not intend to dismiss the struggles of older and younger LGBTs who haven’t fit the same generalised idea that my friends demonstrate. I just want to put my words of loneliness and isolation specifically perceived as due to generational difference into the void on the internet and hopefully share in solidarity and comfort with others in our community.

To the previous tenants of 267 Hubert Road

I know probably none of you will ever see this. Lana, Shamira, Luke: I’m sorry.

I just watched the most recent episode of the good place and the inkling I had already grew into a fully formed understanding. I’m Eleanor. Or worse. In terrible ways. In ways like I didn’t even realise there was need for a ‘fork off Caitlin’ sign. In ways like you guys were the first group I chose to have form part of my self identity. Our group was so important to me and I privileged what I thought were actions that would keep us all together and happy and in harmony over things that I deep down thought were needed. I didn’t want to cause pain by mentioning anything though I very much did want to discuss what would happen moving forward – I wrote a very long letter that included suggestions for how to put in place boundaries, and hearing how you said I violated you Lana I am sorry I did not give you the letter at the time- , and in doing so it turns out I inadvertently did cause pain.

I am sorry I brought my mess and traumas that I wasn’t even aware I had. I hope I didn’t cause permanent damage. I am sorry that I have this need to explain myself and get my voice heard but I don’t really know where to begin because three years of friendship is a lot. I want you to know that I tried everything I could think of, apart from talking about it to anyone even slightly involved bc of fear. I don’t say this to bring more pain, but to add clarity. Hopefully. I saw my therapist, I tried squashing and killing feelings and hopes attached to them. I tried pretending everything was normal, as if nothing had ever happened, because I thought that was the thing that would cause least discomfort. I had no idea that you guys could see me (literally until I spoke to Penny right at the end of third year did she decide to tell me probably all my housemates would be aware of it) and I am upset and sometimes angry that no one confronted me. I was isolated in a shame of secrecy, fear, and judgement, and I did not take any of it lightly nor do I want you to think I dismissed your feelings, Lana. I didn’t. I never genuinely believed you had feelings in return for me, I had small hopes and I needed them at the time and when I said some distant future I was speaking out of line. And speaking to shamira and trying to be vague and not sure how shamira would respond to my admission so wanted to put it in a positive light. You were never meant to see that. I never wanted to disgust you. I didn’t want to be a fuckboy. Friendship with you was a privilege I didn’t need and didn’t want to imply any kind of expectation for you to return the feelings, I just knew I couldn’t kill mine because I’d tried so damn hard for months and months and months and it was killing me so I ended up deciding to embrace the existence of the feelings because at least then I didn’t hate myself. You didn’t lead me on, I didn’t want to fuck you up. I was so lost and inexperienced in handling anything like this and so alone and I messed up. I did. I messed up really terribly but at the time it was the only way I could find. I was stuck trying to fight my internalised homophobia which was telling me that I should be ashamed of having feelings for a woman, with my very real need to squash and kill those feelings not out of shame but out of necessity because they might cause such a split as this and because they weren’t returned. And killing feelings is extremely difficult when the person those feelings are for is around and is presumably themselves. Knowing that you were hiding as much as I was and clearly were better at it hurts so much, maybe you weren’t ever genuinely you around me because you were hiding so much? In which case the person I loved never existed.

It has me trawling through all my memories and thinking the worst of things and for example when you said in that last message that you told me things that you didn’t want to keep from me, I’m confused what that was about? Did you even mean it when you were comforting me through the suicidal night? Was I forcing my mess on you then? There’s an endless list of questions, did we even have good times? I thought you were oblivious. And then I thought around November last year that you started something romancey. Because you asked me about my ideas of romance and well I misinterpreted a lot of things and that’s not entirely your fault nor entirely mine. It’s messy. This isn’t clear cut which makes trying to understand anything so damn confusing! And it shows a lot of how fucked up my ideas of what love is have been from the ways I’ve internalised what love is from the idea that god = love. I.e the omnipotent, the insecure and jealous and performative god, I thought that was how to express love. And forgiveness, I’d been told the only people who’d forgive me would be Christians, and then Lana did right before the end of first year, and then I went back to church life and realised I now distrusted and would not be forgiven by any of the Christians there because of my gayness. So I was left with an ‘only Christians’ rule that was then added to with ‘and lana’ and then the ‘only Christians’ was removed. It’s a real fuck up. I thought the way you were towards me and the way we were together and spending lots of time together and being really honest and trusting about issues while hiding the pain of inner turmoils of emotions was what loving and being loved felt like. I’m sorry I wasn’t more aware and so more considerate of the possible emotional and physical affection boundaries. I was wrong and that’s such a raw vulnerable thing to process. That the very concept of what being loved and cared for is like is so different to what I understood it as. I want to throw up.

However you feel as a result of all this is totally valid and I acknowledge that and am sorry for that. I didn’t want you to hurt. The feelings, and keeping them from the wider knowledge of the house, was my problem and I was dealing with it best as I could. It’s so humiliating and exposing and upsetting to know that I wasn’t successful in keeping it quiet and in being safe and comfortable to be around. And that my paranoia was in fact right, and that I considered it heresy to believe any of you would let me carry on if you knew how I was or saw what I was going through. Heresy. It hurts me so much knowing that all the hurt I had from trying not to make you uncomfortable still wasn’t enough. I accept my responsibility and I accept that I was and still am an unhealthy trash bag in a lot of ways. I hope some of the friendship was real though. I keep thinking about it and all my memories are in this weird cognitive dissonance. I am so confused over if I should think you all were mocking me for at least two years and were never real with me and none of the comfort I received nor the fun times we had and none of my statements of how close and important the group’s friendship was to me, were real. I am doubting everything. Was I just this burden for you all to try and get on with because we’d already agreed to live together? Was I just used for my meerkat movies tickets and my listening ears? Was I really just an ego-boost to you? I don’t know if I should hate you guys for betraying me or if I’m the villain or if I’m oversimplifying everything. I think probably we were all flawed individuals trying to navigate lots of new and difficult situations and dynamics and we all made mistakes along the way and maybe none of us succeeded in our aims, be they to not lead me on, to not make Lana uncomfortable, to idk what else. But we all tried, that’s important I think. It’s a shame that it didn’t work out for a continuing friendship, but we tried to keep it while we were living together. I’m grateful for that.

I’m sorry. I am so sorry and it feels like it’s all my fault that I have lost all of you and I don’t know if I should reassess and reflect and discover that none of you were ever truly my friends, or if I should mourn the necessary split. I know whatever goes from here there’s a distance and separation needed, hence all the blocking. I’m not trying to argue that. It does feel like there’s a very clear loser in this scenario and it’s me. Because I don’t have any of you as friends anymore. That’s heartbreaking. Really. Far more than the romance not being returned, which I really don’t have the heart to go into now. Theres just a lot of grief particularly because it seems to have all boiled down to either destroy the feelings or destroy the friendship. And I failed in the former so I caused the latter. And it’s only me. It’s only me that got cut off from the group.

I am so sorry and I still can’t find all the words and I still can’t understand what was going on friendliness wise and whether you all were just putting up with living with me while I was sharing some of my vulnerability, and it all hurts. But I’m with a therapist again, I do trust lots of other people and I have been most of summer tbh, but I didn’t tell you all that and well maybe none of you want to know anyway. I am sorry this is addressed to two possible versions of you all and I can’t make up my mind which I want to believe. I have my lovely Tuesday group friends and I have Ally and Harry and Puja and Ellen and a few others too. And I trust my mum and dad and brother finally. Had a really good honest chat with them and I even made amends properly with my granny. I am going to become an Honorary Research Associate for the history department at uni and do more research projects with my time until next academic year and my MA can start. I have a good life ahead of me and I value the part that you all had in it and I accept that is in the past and I will grow and learn and work through the traumas and become a better healthier person and there are going to be some really great people who will enjoy that version of me. I am sorry I couldn’t be that version of me for you guys. I honestly hope you all have fantastic lives and I know you will. You have my absolute best wishes, regardless of whether the friendship was ever genuine on your sides, it was real for me and I did genuinely care about all of you. You truly did make the university experience spectacular. If all the memories you have with me in them are actually shitty for you, I’m sorry and I wish you success in erasing my existence from your minds. I won’t know if you’ve ever read this and probably that’s best, but I’m sending my care and best wishes into the void and hoping they float to you all.

Caitlin.

Pass the happy! 🌻🌈 When you receive this list 5 things that make you happy and send this to 10 of the last people in your notifications!💖

Nice – thank you!!

1) talking with people I care about and trust 💖 I’ve had a lot of forced socialising throughout my life from my Christian upbringing and there’s been an increase of this forced socialising/putting on an act of being a certain type of person in the house I am living in for this year, because we’re playing hosts to different guests each week and it’s an all the time awareness thing which is exhausting, so it’s lovely to have breaks from that to interact with people I actually want to talk with and who don’t come with any pressures or expectations beyond me being myself. It’s such a comfort to have people to retreat to!

2) the fresh flowers I currently have in my F.R.I.E.N.D.S Central Perk travel mug that is acting as a vase – they brighten up my desk so beautifully.

3) recognising how much I have grown and improved in my self awareness and security and esteem and a whole host of understandings about myself and others that I’ve realised in the last three months alone

4) for example, that uncertainty doesn’t scare me nor put me in a panic in ways that it used to. Case in point, I’m waiting to hear back if I have been invited to interview for a museum researcher job that would be highly beneficial for me in both experience and pay, and would literally decide what I’m doing for my entire academic year, and I’m absolutely chill about it. That’s amazing to me, knowing what I used to be like. But I’m legit not stressed at all. If I get an interview great, if I don’t, I will find something else to do and I know my supervisor and my funder from previous research projects would like me to do something more for them so I will do those and benefit from those instead. It’s easy.

5) I feel like these have all been focused inwards so for an outwards thing it makes me really happy hearing/reading people talk about things they are passionate about. I enjoy seeing passion in other people, whether it’s positive energy or negative energy, passion is something I could get high on. If it’s about TV shows or the state of politics or a specific author or an event, or if it’s someone talking to a large audience or if it’s someone speaking only to me, I adore people letting themselves show passion. Showing that things affect them to the point that they have to express that they care otherwise they’d explode, or it excites them so much that it’s the only thing on their mind, is just absolutely wonderful.

Bonus: it’s a very special three year anniversary today and that made me happy ✨

Predatory lesbian is such a prominent thing and i fucking hate it for so many reasons, but especially for the way it has influenced my behaviour all the goddamn time to the point that i always censor myself, keep bottled up and am so used to restraining myself that when i actually have a girl who wants to flirt with me i am clueless. Becauee it breaks all these rules. So like, fuck the idea of a predatory lesbian.