Bi for Real/ Free Love is Sometimes Actual for a Minute

Okay. I’ve been putting off this post for a few weeks or just taking some time to piece things together in my head or being worried about privacy or all of the above, but this is how I figure things out, so here goes.

(Hi pal. Hi wife. Hi everyone—hope I write this okay.)

For the past eleven years, as honest and out as I’ve tried to be, I’ve half-thought that being bi/poly was a distraction, or a symptom of commitment-phobia, or something I thought up to keep myself from settling in and being loved. So many, many paragraphs and stanzas have been spilled worrying back and forth about it.

Without going into detail, I can no longer half-deny it or deny it at all. Once my boy-liking self found true, adult, HAPPY expression, I felt free. It really, really isn’t something I can let myself go without anymore, at least if I can help it.

At first, I tried to treat the change like it was no big deal. As soon as I knew things were okay with my friend and okay with Amy, I tried to just be brave and push ahead to whatever came next, but what came next was that I had to admit that I had a lot of feelings coming up and swirling around, both good and bad, and to sort of try to navigate through them.

I’ve said elsewhere, part of the reason I’ve stuck with women over the years is that testosterone tends to make me feel kind of graspy. I’ve been walking around for a few weeks feeling 17 and 36 and infinite all at once, feeling alternately Empress Card goddess and teenage needy. Luckily, some kind of sensible riot grrl middle ground prevails when I remember to stay in the present, in what’s really happening, and keep it separate from all the neuroses and dumb flashbacky stuff.

I was afraid that being with a guy would open a floodgate, that kissing him once would mean that I’d always want to be kissing him, and that’s kind of true, but now that I’m typing it, it doesn’t really seem like much of a new development. But yes, floodgate. I’m keeping my head above water, mostly by writing the bejesus out of some poems. The flood is in my life now, and like any other aspect of myself, I would like to learn to love it.

All in all, it isn’t as scary as I expected. It's mostly freeing.

And now that I know for sure that I can be liked back, and that it can be romantic and specific and real, I would please like to not have crushes anymore. As productive as crushes can be, I hate the way that they take real live friends and turn them into imaginary ones. I think I can commit here to letting things happen in real life.