At times I realize the role I play when I interact with other people, and how it is most often, a choreographed unconscious reaction selected from a wide array, selected particularly for each occasion and mood. How nice to be aware and pour our attention fully on what is happening, instead. To be aware of this autonomous reactive system that we have, and despite it, choose our actions based on what we feel at that moment rather than on what has been prescribed or programmed.
Top on my mind are my reactions upon encountering women. When I see a woman, a multitude of feelings and thoughts and actions rush through in a crowded conversation between myself and myself and all the parts within.
Eyes see her, curious at the moving person there.
What is her body shape like? Oh, perhaps she'll notice me looking at her as I do. Somehow that feels uncomfortable. Why is that? She has a body and I have eyes. What feelings are the background for this discomfort?
Eye aversion. Fear of showing interest or curiosity. Smiles during conversation. Attention paid beyond what I want to pay. Paying special attention to her reaction to what I said. Feeling of failure when awkwardness ensues. Of not fulfilling a role well.
There is a pervasive expectation that I take the role of the hunter, and they take the roles of gazelles, the prey that prance around, careful to stay away from the voracious eaters. I feel these roles arise when I interact with women, and I feel weary of them. They do not reflect my current desires.
They reflect the cultural ecology of attraction, and parts of my life have shaped them into how they feel inside me. They do not align to my current desires though. They remain, congealed since years, that have cemented canned reactions, responses, expected roles for myself, for them. Roles of the hunter for me, the cautious prey for her. The shy ineffective hunter, the judgmental prey. The paired couples who have achieved their goal of coupleship, and are for that fact better than me. These appear and overlay one upon another haphazardly, forming layers upon layers that hide the ones beneath and my core beneath, like old layers of stickers, faded and slimy with time, placed there for matters that once felt of paramount importance, that I have fully forgotten.
That role for me as the villain, the person who surely looks only for gain from approaching her, who surely only approaches women to achieve physical intimacy, that role which I sometimes still believe. The expectation of achieving a connection, the shame when it fails to happen. The roles they take, who automatically assume my approaches towards them is based on selfish sexual quest. These heavy, old, silent roles I have carried for only little less than I have carried this body, and I tire of it. It chains me. It feeds fears, obsolete and irrelevant, hidden in the darkness of social etiquette and assumptions.
Tis not the only one. Tis a heavy one.
sex
money
fatness
Our chains lie where our fears lie.
