How come you never go there

To err is to be human. I’m pretty sure this extends to vulnerability, as well. We convince ourselves we know better. We tell ourselves we have a handle on a situation, that we’re mentally prepared despite knowing we’re weak. We expose ourselves to consequence, and pain. When I put it that way, I can’t help but wonder how we can be so stupid. But when I put it in context; when I ask myself why we do it, then I know.

We do it because we want things. It’s always about desire, even if what we desire is in more abstract terms. Desire is what motivates us. Always. A desire to take care of those we love. A want to better ourselves. A need for self-preservation, and sometimes self-destruction. It’s all the same when you attribute our drive to those desires. Simply put, we strive and exist in the moment, just to get what we want. And we leave ourselves unguarded, reaching and straining, working for that thing. That thing we don’t have yet.

But it’s not even about why we’re vulnerable. It’s about why we continue to leave ourselves vulnerable, for whatever undetermined amount of time, simply in the name of achieving a goal or fulfilling some possibly stupid, probably never-ending desire. A desire that experience has taught isn‘t realistically in the cards. A desire that has resulted in relentless punishment, left countless war wounds. We go back for more, time and again, and it renders us about as useful as a lemming. Following blindly toward our goal, we never really believe, no matter how much we attempt to perma-slap it into our psyche, that we can live without it.

Why. The. Fuck. Do. We. Do. This.

I assume it’s pretty clear I’m speaking of myself. And my desire is abstract. It isn’t a tangible thing, a person, or even a goal. It’s something I’ve always seen come easily to others, as if they aren’t even trying. So I search myself up and down, in and out, trying to figure out what I’m missing, and how I can fix it. It isn’t hard to fool me into thinking I’m one of them. That I have what they have, and I just haven’t been able to show it yet. They make it easy for me. They momentarily convince me that I do, in fact, have it. But I’ve been betrayed by the physical side of life - forever doomed to be seen as a conquest, with my inside apparently never living up to my outside.

So then they take it all away. They remind me that I‘m not a part of the club. That if I’m so goddamned concerned with preserving my dignity, I must not have it after all. Taking it slow? What is this language you speak? Pssshhh. Slow is for kids. Now kindly drop your panties.

And there you have it. I desire to be seen as a person, rather than a sexual object. I’ve spent a lifetime being a sexual object. Can’t I be seen as a person? I mean, I would even take a post as a sexual person, if only I could stop being an object. I do not exist as a plaything for those who see me as such, but somehow I can’t seem to break that mold. Why can’t an adult human being want to talk to another adult human being, to simply enjoy their company, content with the knowledge that sex is a possibility in the future? My body isn’t something to be coaxed out of its shell, literally, for some asshole’s momentary shits and giggles. Why does it always have to be about the right now?

I’ll tell you why - for the same reason I’m beating myself up. Because we want things. Like I said. It’s all relative.