Rehashing- a year old letter

Why am I single?

Because I am. I mean, several things can contribute to why I am single in Japan. I'm not yet comfortable of going out alone here. My self-confidence in public is entwined with making sure my company is happy and entertained. Without friends to go out with, I turn into a shy wallflower. And I study Japanese as often as I do to try to ease the tension I feel when I do have to interact with someone and I cannot get around the language barrier. As you know, I have an on-going love affair with words. I flirt with words, I have intercourse with discourse, and I protect my heart with the barbs of bards. So if I cannot express myself, I feel like nothing, like a child. It's therefore been easier to stay at home, prepare lessons, study even harder, and wait until the planets align when my friends do actually get together and we do go out exploring. I assure you I am making my situation sound far more hopeless than it is.

The first time I fell in love, it took our mutual breakup to realize I was letting go of something wonderful, solely out of pride. When we were together, I took her for granted, putting my studies ahead of her far too often. The worst thing is that I could not find the words, in any of the languages we spoke together, to tell her how I felt. I think I was afraid of scaring her off with love, so instead I let her go with apathy. I can see the stupidity in hindsight, but at the time I was so concerned with making a name for myself in the university theatre that I not only neglected her, but my own identity. And I repented for that by not dating for a while (and I made a personal vow to not eat McDonald's which is a strange story in itself, but five years later I've kept the commitment).

The year after I spent trying to find perspective. I worked on my feelings as well as my sexual identity. When I was little, I found it difficult to make male friends. Obviously, this led to accusations that are too grand for a fourth grader in the early nineties to fully understand. When gay was written in large letters in my yearbook, I didn't quite know why, but I knew that it was something to be ashamed about. And my little brother learned early that the one way he could upset me was using the word faggot. I was assigned a sexual identity before I had a chance to review it. And I honestly locked away the notion that there could be any truth to it. I had several crushes on girls, and I remember looking across classrooms at girls who looked back and it never amounted to anything major. But, at a boarding school at the age of 16, I got a chance to explore "the dark side" as I liked to joke. I managed to escape with my virginity intact, but I still felt guilty for the minor transgressions I committed. I would wake up in the middle of the night and pray that I could learn to control this deviance.

My sophomore year, I met her and there could not have been a better way to begin my ascent into adulthood. She laughed when she met the object of my transgression at an awkward dinner and we agreed that she was an upgrade. Because she was my first, I had to wrestle with what love meant, but that fight ended months too late with both of us losing. By then, I had moved to England and told myself I would start confronting past demons. And in my year abroad, away from judgment and repression, I went to my first gay club. I started getting comfortable with the idea that my future may be shared with a woman or man. In an ironic twist of events, I spent the majority of the year lusting after a lesbian friend. I learned about the beauty of marijuana, threesomes, and bathroom blow jobs. I also learned that none of those things solely define who I am as a person, but they make stories like these even livelier.

After that year, I came home, started to see people, started to open up again, and there were a few bad moments with some really shitty people (pardon the expression) and some really good ones with people I will never forget. I can also see the times when my fears stood in the way. My fear of letting go of the mythical love that I finally found and placed so high above everyone else. I know now that love will never die, but it is a myth stuck in time and we are two different people. Maybe one day we might find that these two different people are just as compatible, but for the most part I have moved on from who those people used to be.

I am blessed with incredibly young parents. Through a lot of the mistakes they made while raising me, especially during their divorce and how they would sometimes put me in the middle, I learned a lot about relationships at a young age. Most importantly, I learned that my parents are people too who want and need and have the same desires I do. From my mom, who I credit with being the most humble, the wisest person in my life, I learned that relationships only work when two stable, honest people get together. You have to know yourself and be happy in your own skin before trying to add someone else to the equation. A relationship is not a crutch, nor will it save anyone from insecurity.

I've been convinced by past flings that my emotional maturity is more evolved than expected of many of my fellow twentysomethings, and sometimes that scares people off. I get frustrated when I meet people who don't understand that the best thing you can do for a relationship is to be true to yourself as well as to the other person. If someone tells me that all they want is sex, if I am feeling the same way I will offer just that and not have the illusion of anything more. If someone admits to seeking a relationship, the same process takes place. But being able to communicate is extremely important to me as a person, an artist, and a lover. It is also something I struggle with. Hiding behind words not only stops me from getting hurt, but stops me from leaping headfirst into love.

Which leads me back to the question that gave birth to this rant: Why am I single? Because I am confident enough to not be afraid of being single and not confident enough to overlook my insecurity with needing the perfect words and taking a chance. But I can honestly say that I am happy to be in my own skin and it will be a wonderful bonus, not a necessity, to have someone touch that skin and love the person inside.