to be a robot is to love
You know, I always thought of myself mostly robot, and a little bit human.
That’s funny. I think of you as a colorful, giggling spirit.
And that’s where the contradictions begin. I imagined myself as an undeserving cyborg, thought the world saw it too, but love overwhelms. Melted cold-to-the-touch metal. Thought myself not much of a romantic, till I found myself sketching the flecks of her eyes late at night. So the rose contacts replaced the steel irises, and at the points where I would be wasting away on long words, I instead laid in her lap as she smoothed the wrinkles in my clothes, trying not to mess up my hair. Often, I’ll find that projections of myself are entirely inaccurate to how others seriously perceive me. My girlfriend thinks I act like a cat. Always grooming my bangs, humming (meowing) to whatever song pops into my mind, splaying myself across her body when I’m tired. I get it. And it’s so hard to tell a littler me that no, you’re not much of an extraterrestrial. It’s easy to feel like an alien. Five years of my Tumblr ventposting proves it. And no, no one would ever tell me I act like someone who’s not meant to be here. I feel sad a lot, and I feel like parts of me don’t belong to myself. For a very long time, I’d throw my entire body to whatever the object of my affection was, giving them access to me, to everything… a religious sort of devotion. And then for an even longer time, I locked myself away. Tried to appear threatening, isolated, closed off. I had a girlfriend for a very long time. We never kissed even once. I suppose that’s the fashion of transitional junior-high relationships, but I thought that my lips were just ugly. I felt unappealing, metal, artificial. Like my soul wasn’t really meant for the body I sat in. I cried often about how disgusting I felt. That was a period of self-reflection, when I felt like my soul was destined to be in the stars. I thought very often about my life, and what led up to my strange, twisted, transhumanist perception of my robot body. Then, I emerged into the new year. I didn’t quite decide to freeze the metal off, but I desperately wanted to. I realized I’d wanted to do so for a very long time. At that point, I wrote a lot of things to reconcile myself. I also became deeply, happily in love. I knew I’d been in love when we played basketball one-on-one during gym class and she tackled me to the ground after cheering for my three-pointer. I think that being in gym class with her let me kind of release whatever inhibitions I had about presenting myself as constantly stoic and composed, because it’s pretty hard to remain composed after running two miles. And of course, I dressed a little better for my crush. I tried very hard to impress her with my hair and fashion anytime we were outside gym class. It’s tough to be in love. I almost wrote that I constantly thought about her, but I still constantly think about her. I’m thinking about her right now, which is why I decided to sit down for the first time in two months to write. And my last one was about her too. I hope that my loyal bearblog fans love this update, because I’ve been bored all day and wanted to update my stupid little vent blog. Also, if you read my post from like March, yes, she is a butch lesbian, she is the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life, she watches the same shows as me (hers are a little scarier), she holds me so gently, she knows everything about me, she is going to cosplay with me, and she’s the most perfect girl that I’ve ever been with, and I’m so happy that we are alive at the same time in the grand scope of the universe. She’s also exactly four days older than me.
Originally, I decided to write this essay about virginity. And I’ve been wanting to write an essay about virginity ever since I lost mine, which was when I was eight years old, or a month ago. I would like to think it’s a month ago. I’m also a feminist, which means I can decide that it was a month ago, because rape shouldn’t count. I didn’t know what sex was until I was eleven. I learnt what sex was, and immediately felt inexplicably dirty. I felt unclean, and nothing had touched me. For four-or-so years, I wondered what it was that felt so compelling, but disgusting, about sex. I chalked it down to Christian guilt. I chalked it down to being harassed on the bus in fifth grade. But trauma hides memories, and I was most certainly sexually assaulted when I was eight, because I remember it, and I remember it in vivid detail, yet never assigned the label of sex to it. When it involves another child, it is difficult to assign blame. To think that he was the one that made me feel dirty (someone that I’ll have to continuously see for the rest of my life). When I first had sex with my girlfriend, she didn’t know I’d been sexually assaulted. She treated me gently and kindly anyway. I do think this is the way it should be. My “first” time, which really is just my first time, was so beautiful that I cried. We ate Chipotle after, and then had sex some more. I think I’ll probably cherish that memory forever. When you give, and receive the same, not just physically, but spiritually, it is something so wholeheartedly beautiful. I didn’t think I needed sex to feel fulfilled in a relationship, because I had already felt fulfilled without it. And honestly, I’ve thought enough. I’ve thought enough, and I want to do. I want to do things that the girl that identified more with robot than human would never imagine that I’d be able to do. I want to hold hands with my girlfriend and also make her teach me more Korean so I can talk to my grandparents and we can talk to each other in a secret way. I want to be freed by sex, and brought down to earth with a hug. I want to bake her cookies, and draw her pictures. And buy her gifts, and text her whenever a new thought pops into my head. I know I’m living right now.