Borderline Successful: Letting People Love Me

Content warning and context: this post discusses sex, nudity, body image after major body changes, BPD disclosure, fear around intimacy, and old patterns of confusing being wanted, hunted, or hurt with being loved.

The Mask

It’s exhausting, watching someone fall in love with your public-facing self: the lilt in my voice; confidence wafting through the air like my lavender oil; right on the edge of sassy and rude. That person is me, yes, but it’s still a filter. Tea without the leaves. In private, I like to think I’m less calculated, less defensive. I like to think I soften my edges with at least some people. New acquaintances don’t say they thought I was mean at first anymore, but sometimes they still stare at me and blink. And, without fail, right next to them is someone beaming at me, like I’m the exotic bird in the circle, and I’ve always been an odd bird.

When I was small, I had this vivid daydream about a little bird in New York who went around collecting things for a dinner party. The bird was obviously me, right? And someday, some girl with stretched ears will tell me that’s my inner child longing for freedom and independence, and I’ll nod and go, hmmm, hmmmmm.

At some point, I was a finch: small and underestimated. Other times, an owl: wise but aloof. Most often, a crow: too clever for my own good. For a while, I was a flamingo, naturally ostentatious unsure how to tone down my baseline but tougher than anyone thinks. I think I’m coming back to that part of me. I have a flamingo stick-and-poke tattoo on my leg. My roommate did it, and it hurt like a bitch. It says “stay pretty”, and the flamingo has a halo. My point is birds are free, yes, but birds are beautiful, and therefore coveted: hunted, caged, sold. I was a bird that hid away for a while. Not in a cage exactly, but in a corner of the mountains where I tucked myself away, got really weird, and took a panic job at Lululemon.

When someone falls in love with what the room sees of me, it’s flattering, but not necessarily intimate. Do you fall in love with a TV host? Are they speaking to you, or are they keeping up with the conversation? Then why are you so taken by me just because the room has turned to hear me speak? Because they do, a lot. I can wrangle a room. You love me because others love me. My value is my shine, and my shine can only be appraised by others. When other people approve of me, you swoon a little.

Your pride is in catching me.

That is not the same as love.

Close-up

Being naked in front of people is still a hard pill to swallow, but I’ve learned to push past it. As soon as it’s confirmed that sex is about to happen, I undress right there, standing in the middle of the room like a child announcing where and when they threw up. I don’t need you to peel off my tights like it’s a movie. I’m faster at unclasping my bra than you are, and by the time you solve my shapewear, the sun is rising.

Dropping trou’ abruptly is easier because quick, decisive motions keep you from lingering on my stomach, arms, hips, or thighs. It all hangs off my frame, sagging more than the rest of me. Meat slipping off the bone.

Alfred Hitchcock had an artistic signature: three quick close-ups that narrowed in on a single frame. He said it mimicked how a viewer’s eyes take something in, first the whole picture, then the details, then the finer details. When you look at my body, I hope you see the frame: the silhouette when I’m dressed; my curves in strategic athleisure; even my tattoos, doing their job as a distraction. A trick of the eye. I hope you don’t zoom in on the details, or the finer details still.

All my boisterous confidence drains away when my apron tummy slips out of my yoga pants. Seeing my own arm wave back at me could bring a real tear to my eye. It’s not that I don’t love my body. It’s that my body feels like it was made to fit someone else, and I’m stuck wearing their clothes. I’m in an old uniform, and everyone is being kind enough to pretend not to notice.

Okay. That’s established.

I’m uncomfortable. Now what?

Savor me first

Recently, I’ve met someone I’m afraid I’ll learn to like being around. That’s an elaborate way of saying I’m scared I’ll fall in love. That’s an equally elaborate way of saying I’m infatuated, which I am. They have steady hands, and they touch me with a certainty I doubt they realize they carry. They manage to kiss me right as I laugh, which makes me laugh harder. They hold eye contact with a friend while holding my leg under the table. They kiss my squishy thighs and call me beautiful. It’s almost too much for me to bear.

But what if, and I know it sounds ridiculous, I let someone not simply devour me, but savor me first? What if tearing into my flesh was never what I wanted, but the only way I knew to keep the wolf close? Why I’ve always looked for the wolf is beyond me, someone who has been bunny-coded since at least nineteen. But the wolf was always in the wings, and I was tender-hearted, convinced I needed discipline. Convinced an animal more dominant than I was could keep me from hurting myself by hurting me first. Rabbits are actually rather good at accidentally hurting themselves. “Accidentally.”

I flinch when the wolf enters the room now. When they ask for my number, I say I’m married or that I don’t speak English. When the wolf corners me, I do not bare my neck. I scratch and scream. They retreat and call me a psycho, but that’s better than the alternative. Better than the scars. The challenge now is that I don’t know who to look for in the room. I’m used to being prey for a predator, so what happens when prey meets a regular, well-adjusted… person?

Two hands. Two feet. Two eyes.

Too good. Too sweet. Too kind.

I deserve that.

Right?

Deserving

The first time we had sex, I did the thing. I fully undressed before they came back from the bathroom. We kissed immediately. I don’t know what they saw, whether it was the full frame, the details, or the finer details still. Maybe I shouldn’t know. Perhaps my body just looks the way it looks, and that’s that. It’s possible they even like it. I know I feel soft. There’s a memory-foam quality to parts of me. Maybe I feel “interesting”, as someone put it not long ago. I’ve overthought it, I know.

I’ve already told them too much about myself, enough that they could actually get to know me, heaven forbid. I’ve caught them up on a few seasons of my life in regular conversation. I wish I didn’t have so much lore, but it’s nice to say it once and leave it in the air. Well, I can do that with some things. When I was drunk, I told them I have BPD, then forgot I told them. Later, when I brought it up sober, as an important disclosure I wanted to make, they said, “Oh, I know that.” When I looked mortified, they kissed me. They seem to like kissing me.

They are still new to me, and these early signs are almost too tender to believe, but I’m doing my best to not swoon at what others see as the bare minimum. So I remind myself I haven’t seen them angry yet. I haven’t seen them cry. I don’t know how they are at the airport, or whether they like tomato juice on flights. I like them. I’m in like. And when I’m in like, it’s easy to be soft back, to sink into my own comfy skin and melt.

I’m not sure what this post is about: my loose skin, my past attraction to people who hurt me, or maybe the potential for a fling with someone soft. Maybe the point is internalizing that letting someone love me isn’t a dramatic final act where I burst out of a cage and fly into the sun. Maybe it’s smaller and stranger than that. It could be a bird realizing an open hand isn’t always a trap. It could be a bunny learning that not every animal with teeth is a wolf. It could be my body, in the middle of the room, being looked at as a fact, not an issue. It could be my public self stepping aside long enough for my private self to be kissed on the cheek and survive.

So, what if I let somebody savor me? Even yet, adore me? What if I accepted the kiss, the hand on my knee, the softness I keep mistaking for danger? Would I die? I think it’s unlikely. Do I risk that slim margin? Who’s to say?

But if I’ve stopped chasing the wolf, maybe now I’m also just a person. Someone hoping to curl up and be pet. To be called bunny with a sigh. To be longed for without being hunted. To be seen without performing. To be held without becoming small. I might deserve that.

No, actually.

I do.

Atila Martin

Blog: atilacore.pckt.blog

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