love: being in love

When I first got sober, I was terrified of love. The last love I had had fucked up over, was abusive, and every fling after that wasn't that serious. I dated a few, but the relationship never went anywhere. I fucked a lot. I was really good at portraying the "sex positive" side of myself, while feeling really insecure and off. I proclaimed myself as anti-marriage since I can remember, even refusing to wear a ring on my "ring finger." With my pregnancy, it was never pushed which was good. I would have refused it, anyway.

Now I'm changing and it's rather terrifying. When I first got sober, I also entered a relationship with someone I am still with. This was new for me. It took me a long time to call him my "boyfriend" as I felt this need to use gender-neutral, more feminist terms (or something). I used "partner" or "person I'm in a relationship", etc. I finally started using "boyfriend" and it was rather refreshing. I felt more genuine.

Anyway, back to being terrified. I put up a face on being against monogamy. For some reason, I felt as though my politics pointed to that or to be a better feminist or queer, I had to be against monogamy. I wanted to prove how radical I was by saying that.

I had to put a lot of that aside when I started developing feelings for my boyfriend. I knew him as a friend, but I knew I also liked him more than a friend, somewhere inside me. To be able to start a relationship with him, I had to shut off a lot of the shit that was in my brain. Because I felt happy with him and I cared about him.

Lately I've been really angry at how I've been changing toward these types of things. I'm not anti-marriage, anymore. I'm not against monogamy. I like getting flowers and gifts. I said I didn't like those things before, although I do think I did like that stuff, I just had to portray something. Now I find myself being a hopeless romantic, listening to love mixes on 8tracks, making my own "fall in love" mixes, and doing cutesy things.

Where did this come from? Is it from sobriety and I let some of my walls down? Is it my age? Is it socialization? Did I conform without knowing it? Is it sensitization? Is it just exhaustion?

I'm not sure, but all that other shit was utterly exhausting. I need/ed to figure out a way to understand where my happiness comes from and whatever this is: is fucking okay. It's okay if I like to get flowers even though some feminist or queer theorist said it was sexist to do so. It's okay if I think marriage is a cute thing people want to do. It's okay to celebrate one's love for another.

Regardless, I'm changing and I need to deal with it. I'm still the person I've always been, just changing. It's okay if my opinions change and if I change. I'm still a feminist and still bisexual. I'm still a Leftist. I'm still a human being.