relationships, labels, expectations, etc.

The State of Tensions

As humans, we often exist in states of tension with one another, always tied to each other through invisible strings, tugging, pulling, causing, and affecting in ways that can be quite inconceivable at times. You never know what kind of a chain reaction a simple, well-intentioned, or absent-minded action, or the lack thereof, can set off, which is a lot of pressure to live up to at any point in life. It was due to this implicit pressure that I fell out with a friend recently, an occurrence that is just as dramatic as it is rare. I made her feel like I was not a reliable friend, that I was not giving her the same amount of space in my life that she was giving me, and of course, a stone of guilt found a home in my stomach, for a while. I admit that it was my fault, at least to a certain degree, that that friendship ended. At the same time, I could not help a sense of relief that settled into my head, only retrospectively realizing the amount of energy I put into that particular relationship, the times I did show up in the way I usually do for people, and how it went unrecognized and, therefore, unappreciated (maybe this is the case, or maybe I’m making it up in my head to feel better about the situation.) I cherished that friendship for as long as I had it, and now I’ve let it go for good. However, it got me thinking: The state of being and one’s ontology are heavily influenced by the people one surrounds oneself with, the people they surround themselves with, and so on. The sheer number of identities and personalities one can develop through association feels astounding to me; how one presents oneself to different groups in various settings and how they are perceived. This is part of why, as I grow older, I am beginning to understand why people tend to keep their circles small, and why sometimes less becomes more. Simultaneously, my belief in the idea of community and the care with which one needs to tend to it is influenced by this idea of “people are all we have.” I’m unsure of my definition of community, but should there be one in the first place? I have felt a sense of community with a lot of queer folks but I have also felt it with some of my cis-het friends too: understanding and empathy are not limited by identity, so why should community? Defining something inadvertently creates and sets an ideal for the definee, which feels rather limiting. It’s like one of my professors said about queerness, “To define is to limit,” and, as controversial as it has been to say this, I am starting to believe that all human relationships are queer in their respective ways and rights, and labelling and defining them seems more and more futile to me with every new person I meet.

There is a contradiction here somewhere. I understand how one might find comfort in labels, creating ontic categories which help them create routinized relationships, not just with the world but also with themselves. I do it too: I seek the security of a label regarding my identity and relationships. At the same time, I wonder whether the practice (and praxis) of labels is at all productive beyond a sense of so-called security, because it feels somewhat limiting. A label puts you in a box; however, the idea of queerness, as I mentioned, acknowledges that definitions are limiting, and words have definitions that, by their existence, create exclusive classifications, but this is where my discipline and my queerness have helped me see that there is a lot more to words than what they appear to be. The beautiful thing about them is that their meanings are malleable in incomprehensible ways, since every individual has a unique way to make meaning. Within that malleability is a scope for complicating something that is seen as rigid, and within the process of complicating—and perhaps even bastardising—a rigidity, lies a form of queerness. For a long time, the idea of labels embodied a form of inflexibility and structure for me; however, every passing year from 2017 to 2022, I grew in many ways and figured out things about myself that my fifteen-year-old brain never could have comprehended. Now, those things have become so essential to what makes me who I am. I changed my labels, my adjectives, so many times over the last few years before I realized me, and everyone around me is so fucking dynamic all the time, but it is queer people who make me think about just how beautiful and and ever-changing one’s identity and body can be. There is so much beauty to be found in the lack of a label but so much can be gained through a label as long as there is an awareness and an acknowledgement that the act of defining a label, rather than the label itself, is a futile one in the long run and the bigger picture. Words are arbitrary symbols, and that’s all they should be.

I’d say that existing in states of tension is categorically not a fun experience because what comprises this tension is expectations, almost like you, as the reader, may have expected me to write about actions and their consequences, but I digressed to talk about language and labels instead.

I’m unsure if this stream-of-consciousness narrative writing style is working for me, structurally speaking.

Structure is fake, it's fine.

Having expectations from others and trying to live up to others’ expectations of yourself is a slippery slope, and unfortunately, we are perpetually tiptoeing and teetering on it. Tension, as far as the eye can see. One or even two slips might be forgiven, but there are only so many times you can let yourself slip before you fall off the cliff and lose the privilege of having certain people in your life. I was talking to a friend, whom I adore quite a bit, the other day about human relationships, and he gently insisted that humans are creatures of expectation. I inferred that the sooner we accept it, the better. The attempt to rid oneself of expectations seems futile. Although I cannot quite reconcile having to face disappointments in life by being a “creature of expectation,” it feels like the exercise of becoming an expectation-less being is almost a spiritual pursuit. However, even if I somehow manage to get over the need to expect things from people and kill off my ego, whatever that might look like, the burden of what I am expected to do will always weigh me down, and even if I act in everyone’s best interests to the best of my abilities, it is always my inaction whose consequences will somehow be, and have been worse.

Getting to know yourself through others, along with the weight of expectations, has been quite an inconvenience, at least so far. My school had this peculiar but, in retrospect, lovely tradition of inviting students' parents to class on their birthdays. We used to go around the room saying nice things about the birthday person. My fourteenth birthday was similar. My parents were summoned, and I have the most vivid memory of my father telling my peers that I was the most dependable friend one could ask for (which was a surprise to me!) He said it with such conviction and honesty that I still try my best to live up to that, I must. Though the times when I falter do make me want to die a little. My friends have historically told me that I hold myself to unrealistic standards, and that may be true, but the voice in my head chants If you can't rely on yourself, nobody can. I want to be perfect for everybody. I wanna be everything to my partner(s). I wanna be the best student ever. I hate everything, I hate that I can't be everything, because unless I'm everything, I'm not enough. Not feeling like a reliable person makes me feel… shit, especially since I have been meditating about what community means to me over the last couple of years. “People are all we have,” I say to myself every time I don’t have the energy to show up for somebody, but I know they need it. Sometimes I slip up, which then leads to a spiral of whether I deserve community in the first place. “Inconvenience is the cost you pay for community,” I remind myself, and there are worse costs to pay for more unpleasant things out there. And the thing is, I enjoy being someone who gives out love because that is, I believe, not something I can ever run out of. My therapist contradicts this to a certain degree and says not to empty my cup unless I also have a means to refill it, because I may not run out of love, but I did run out of energy to show it earlier this year. I'm realizing how the others in your life inconveniencing themselves for you is how that cup can be refilled. But it's not just the inherent fact that someone is inconveniencing themselves for you, it's also that you realise you're worth that inconvenience, and if someone thinks you are, the notion of it being an inconvenience in the first place becomes nonexistent.