My therapist asked me today why I am so much stronger than other people.  Why I have been able to do things that other people can’t.  She said she thinks of it as integrity, but it’s more than that.

I told her that I did a lot more things before I was 18 than most people do in a lifetime.  And I did them in weird bursts with new people.  Then I, inevitably, was chased away because people didn’t like me.  I was too different.  Too weird.  Too… something.  Then I had months or years to sit around and think about what I did and what other people did and look at patterns.  I was always a reader, so I knew that other people didn’t have lives that looked like mine.

I don’t think that most people who are abused as intensely as I was have the same kind of boom and bust cycles.  I think that most people stay in one place with one pattern and they live it over and over again.  I’ve had so many patterns I can’t name them all.  Yeah, yeah, I’ve always been hyper-sexual.  But it’s different now.  I no longer fall into bed with people who obviously dislike me and are just interested in getting off.  I have higher standards than that.  My patterns have changed a lot over time.

I don’t think most people are given the time and space to do that.  To reinvent themselves over and over for more than twenty years.  I had a lot of opportunities to try things out and decide they didn’t work for me.  I would never see these people again, what did it matter?

I’m stronger because the only person I have ever had to look at for a long time is me.  And I can’t live with myself if I behave any other way.  Why in the fuck should I worry about making anyone else feel good about themselves and their shitty behavior?  If it makes me feel bad, I’m the only one I have to worry about.  You are your problem.  That is a mixed thing.  But it means that yes, I have a lot of integrity.  I am up front about everything I do, everything I am.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  If it drives other people off… well… that’s just business as usual for my life.  It’s not scary.  I know what that means.  I will always be able to find new people.

It means that when I look at Shanna and Calli I have to think really hard about what relationship I want to have with them.  I’m pre-scripting my permitted behavior over the next twenty years.  If I don’t write the script now I will ad lib.  I’m not a person who can be trusted to ad lib.  They are the first people ever in my life where I feel responsible for the effect of my behavior on them.  Everyone else is on their own.

This is really intense.