Avoidant Chronicles: Polyamory for Survival
It has been four weeks since I wrote despite promising to write frequently but in my defense, I have been battling the worst of my exams and now that it is over, I can give myself to writing again...for now.
During the Easter break, rather than resting and reading I spent most of my time watching "New Life Begins". I found myself pondering on one of my unhealthy coping mechanisms. Between mouthfuls of hot-swallows, this thought blossomed into a deep reflection.
✨ Polyamory for survival ✨
Prior to the revelation brought by my hot bowl of ogbono, I defined polyamory for survival as something people did when they were low on resources and improvised by getting into a relationship with someone who happened to own the assets needed. It's a 2 for 1 deal, a win-win if all parties are aware of the odd coincidence of it all.
Meanwhile, I had been partaking in a different kind of polyamory for survival altogether. One that involved digging into one’s self to remove the heart and trim off ever so slightly the machinations for a very special kind of vulnerability.
In my early years, I passively learned that devotion and care could be trampled upon by the very people you offered it to. To protect yourself from this required detachment in order to rise above and consider it something akin to duty. When something is a duty, it's an obligation that requires no reciprocation. That is how my mother had loved but in response I rejected her path and fashioned my own.
For me, love is an emotion that at first feels like an engulfing pain. On days when my body and heart sync up to fully feel this emotion, it tears through me like a blazing fire rendering my bones heavy and my joints nimble. I spend this time bedridden, at the mercy of an illness that promises to take my life if I let it. A harrowing, painful and dreadful ordeal. The desire to distance myself from this immediately takes priority. Moving with urgency to turn off my overactive system and regain control of my mind, I lock my emotions beneath acting hands and busy schedules, letting the tension seep out in manageable doses. Yet even this feels too much.
This was the cycle until I encountered polyamory, the band-aid I slapped on my rotting wound. It was first presented to me by a mouth that swore they could not love me because they were aromantic. For them, the capacity for love was absent. They could not feel what everyone else described as romantic love. I coveted it, the direct opposite of the hell I had repeatedly lived through. Their way of living seemed easier, more stable. They could hold multiple people dear at the same time, giving each a fair amount of priority and honesty. It was a community (another thing I lacked). Despite my flawed understanding of the idea, I threw myself into it, gorging, searching, reading and slaving to carve out a space for my identity within this world. My newfound religion of love. It held foundational ethos I found most agreeable on the topics of possession, desire, companionship and above them all enmeshment.
I never fully aligned with the desire to own a person with great jealousy as was expected of traditional monogamy. To live in perpetual fear of a snatching of my prized possession; my beloved. Also, under no circumstance did I want to be solely responsible for the emotional fulfillment of a lover. The level of consistency and continuity felt and still feels like too big an ask..
I settled quickly into the act of outsourcing certain parts of emotional labor that came with being entangled with others. This became my own version of polyamory for survival. Growing in experience I found that I could not hold multiple people dear at the same time but I could share my beloved with ease. Most people during the transition struggle with jealousy, I wanted more than anything to be aware of the other person and all the ways they were different from me. It absolved me of my own failings.
The presence of someone else became what I now realize was an escape, a way to deal with my waves of avoidance. I felt reassured by the presence of someone else catering to my lover in the places I fell short. In my mind, we were taking shifts and I didn't have to interrogate my absence because it was being filled by someone else. I had found a good crutch.
Polyamory became a tool for stagnation. It served as an excuse. There was no longer a need to introspect and do any real work to be better. Worst still, there was all the more reason to run now, I was replaceable or that was how I preferred to think of it. It's easier, safer to love when your eyes are always trained subconsciously at the exit. It is easier to hide parts of the real you and refuse enmeshment, when you believe you're just playing a part. A role in a play.
In order to survive, I began to ask for less because if I asked for more, more would be expected from me and ever so often I'd inspect my heart and trim out a sliver so I loved them less than I did before in order to maintain the balance. The more I loved, the more I desired and the more I desired, the more vulnerable I felt, and the more vulnerable I felt the more anger and pain I felt which in turn made me withdraw. My own way of dealing with a fear of commitment in its entirety. As much as I longed to be seen and understood, it was upsetting having no facade to hide behind.
Initially I struggled with bringing myself to write about this because it felt too nakeding. Every part of coming to terms with my avoidant patterns has been shameful and raw. Especially because coming to terms with these realizations also meant letting go of a protective coping mechanism. It is unnerving to find out the ways in which my subconscious creates systems to cope and there are a lot of patterns I have unearthed in the past month that I cannot quite come to terms with just yet.
Letting go of polyamory for survival will be difficult but the first step is done and all the rest will come to me in due time by conscious effort of course.
“Avoidant Chronicles” is a segment purely for reflections on my patterns as I try to purge myself of them so stay tuned!
In the meantime, I hope you've been well! I've spent the bulk of the past month binging shows, give or take 8 shows? My favorite watch currently is “We are all trying here” by Park Hae young. It's a dark comedy that follows the story of a film director who has failed to debut after 20 years of being in the industry and a burnt out editor. Park Hae young always does a great job portraying the gnawing emptiness and solitude that comes with depression.
For books, i just finished Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin and I'm presently reading Giovanni’s room by James Baldwin and it is pure magic. Reading at least 2 books a month hasn't been all that difficult.