Enter The Labyrinth

This essay was originally published on my Patreon on October 1, 2023.

Content Warning: This essay is about reflecting on what situations lead to us causing harm via fuck boy maneuvers. It talks about experiencing childhood abuse, sexual assault from romantic partners, and being in shitty relationships.

There’s a certain stage after things end, be said things a relationship, a job, a living situation, a questionable stint with a dubious hobby, where we find ourselves looking back over our actions like we’re surveying the wreckage of a failed creative project at three am, a warm mug clutched between our hands like a ward against doubts about the wisdom of our task.

In the best of circumstances this self reflection is hopefully a gradual process we get to ease through, taking our time to wander our way towards each revelation.

I haven’t had the best of circumstances this year. My revelations have been dropping on me Looney Tunes style, with a range of weights and velocities, from “pigeon shitting directly into my hair” to “window air conditioner whose bolts have finally given into rust careening down from nine stories up.”

The realization that I have acted like a fuck boy the last few years hit with all the gravity of an underwatered flower pot tipping off some old lady’s balcony (probably from roughly the third floor, enough for a wallop, but I’m walking my ass home from this one with a migraine).

Now, I want to repeat: A fuck boy’s deeds does not a fuck boy make.

When we name the things we’re not proud of, I think it matters whether we frame that as a permanent state of being, or a thing we can switch out of, because a lot of times, it can be tempting to treat ourselves as in a fixed state of garbageosity, because well, then you don’t have to worry about changing, do you?

What am I considering fuck boy behaviors here? Shit like:

• Offering emotional intimacy, but inconsistently, when I’m with you, I’m so here, but if I’m busy I do not exist

• Pledging deep care for someone, but keeping a relationship in a kind of perpetual “stasis” Of course you’re a priority to me!...behind these other things

• I want you to be vulnerable with me, I want to be someone you can pour your heart out to–I have a free slot the next tuesday after the full moon for that, sound good?

• I want you to be part of my life in a long term kind of way! But I can’t really give you a clear picture of how

Now, before anyone starts clamoring about the very important Nuance and Gray Space here, let’s do some yes, ands:

Yes, we are allowed to have lives outside our relationships to others, even when that means we may not be able to show up immediately or every time they need us

—and we should still be acting in ways that build trust that we will show up for those people whenever and however we are able.

Yes, sometimes we don’t have the energy or time to build a relationship as deeply or as quickly as we may want

—and there are things we can do in our actions to demonstrate whatever commitment to that relationship looks like.

Yes, priority is a nebulous term and is honestly difficult to measure when it comes to juggling all the different relationships and responsibilities our lives have

—and someone should still feel secure with us that we mean it when we say we want to be intentional in paying attention, spending time with, and supporting them.

Yes, we can be deeply vulnerable with people who we don’t see very often

—and, that ability to be vulnerable was still likely built slowly, over time, in little moments of putting cards on the table together and having them respected and acknowledged.

Yes, we shouldn’t force relationships into particular shapes and don’t have to be clear cut about the direction we want to take with someone in order to be “committed” to them

—and the “future” shouldn’t be a mist you’re both squinting into, or a vague, greeting card style “I’d love if we did X, and Y, and maybe we could try P” without any of that ever becoming plans.

I didn’t have any of the ands going for me, this time around.

I’m not showing my own ass on the internet so people close to me can defend my honor against myself, or fish me out of a shame spiral about how I am a terrible horrid little thing and deserve my heartaches—because I’m not terrible and I don’t deserve my heartaches any more than any other average fallible human scuttling across this earth.

But, I was by my own definition, acting terribly. How did this happen?

Well, I was being run ragged in several places, and failing to notice that my discomfort wasn’t “stretching out of my comfort zone” levels, it was “disregarding your own limits and boundaries with flagrant gusto” levels.

I think, when a relationship turns to rotten eggs there are a lot of common pitfalls we can take post mortem:

• It was doomed from the start, we are Too Different™, woe, here we pass like starcrossed ships in the night

• Holy fucking hell, why did I give so much to that person? That was a fucking bullet dodged

• Oh, gaze not upon my wretched form, I’m a scoundrel and have squandered every chance at True Companionship that has tumbled into my lap

Now, I’m not saying these are the only pitfalls, or that they are never the case. I’m saying we often will pick one of these categories, decide it is The Entire Truth all by itself, wash our hands of the whole thing and carry on to the next adventure without unpacking things further.

In this particular situation, if I decide I was the fuck boy here, then I fall into the third category. Now, in light of my disappointing behavior, I could decide to sprawl myself across the floor in a maudlin heap as a demonstration of how garbage I am and stay there as the full stop. I behaved badly, hurt someone I cared for, and lost out on a relationship that mattered to me. I am forever defined by this instance of bad behavior, fixed and unchangeable. Abloo hoo hooey.

Or, I could gather myself up in a prickly defense and categorize all the ways my beloved also behaved poorly, that perhaps we were a pair of rakes stringing one another along, but actually I am the more wounded party here! Then I can throw myself across the nearest sofa and boo hoo hooey about the unfair treatment of my delicate spirit (bringing us to option two).

Or, I can absolve us both of any wrongdoing. It was simply our contrasting natures. The sky and sea collided and a tempest was all we had to show for our tangling, a lot of spray and foam and destruction of water vessels and ocean front properties. Dead embarrassing for the both of us really. Best we move on (now we reach option 1).

Or, I can muddy up the entire thing by saying everything is a little bit true and a little bit not, recognize that even if All Things End and we were destined to part, and even if they were sighting me down the barrel of a revolver—it does not matter because I’m still responsible for the fact that I drew my own gun and the more important question is—

Why was I taking aim at someone I claimed to love?

See, none of us are above becoming fuck boys. We all have the right circumstances that will bring out the shitshow in us. We can live in fear of that shitshow, deciding we are always the devil in the making and hold ourselves on a tight leash. We can give into that shitshow, decide it’s our true nature and the rest of the world must grow stronger thicker skin to Deal with Us. Or, we can do something else.

We could be curious.

I’ve been rummaging around in the unkept alleys, the overgrown thickets, the moldering backrooms of my brain seeking out the worst versions of myself for answers.

What allows you to take the wheel?

Where did you come from?

Why do I ever listen to you?

What in hell possesses you to make the choices you do?

The answer a younger version of me braces for is this: Because we are your true self, you’re actually a bit of a bastard and a cunt, and you have to police yourself even harder if you want to stop us.

This answer isn’t surprising, or true. Harmful behavior is rarely born out of pure malice or selfishness, and punishment and shame do not magically summon forth well adjusted, compassionate, or productive behavior.

I toss that answer in the trash, hook my arm around my younger self and drag them along as we keep looking.

Here is what we find:

If you want to be the sort of person who can regulate their own emotions, show up for others without overstepping, handle your mistakes with compassion and a focus towards reconciling, and overall be a consistent positive presence in other’s lives—

You have to respect your own fucking boundaries first.

Wild, I know.

See, the roots I can find for my recent spate of fuckboy behavior is this:

• I was in a (separate) relationship where my boundaries were not being respected, and had been in that relationship so long I no longer noticed that erosion.

• Not being able to uphold boundaries for myself in that partnership unmoored me. My emotional stability, my mental health, my capacity for any other things in my life were directly influenced in a very big way by how that person felt about me at any given time.

• That person’s good opinion and treatment of me depended heavily on how much I gave them and how much my actions and values matched how they felt I should be.

In short, I was a mythical frog in boiling water, chilling, unaware of the steam around me. But not being aware of the steam does not mean I was not feeling said steam and acting out because of it.

Now, we could stop here and call it a done deal, but I started digging a little further, asking myself:

What made me stay in that relationship if it made me feel so badly?

And the answers bubble up, among them:

We believed our assault broke us, and those jagged edges were the real reason that relationship struggled.

And then I ask myself why I believe my assault broke me in a way to make hardships my fault, a mistake that I have to fix? and get:

Because we learned very young that our body belongs to the people that love us, and if we fail to make them happy with that body, then we need to give more of ourselves until they can love us gently. And if they never do, that’s our fault.

And then… I admittedly stopped there for the moment because there’s only so many yards of tangled yarn I could unspool before I start to drown in it. Let’s slow down and figure out how to unsnarl these knots before we go digging for any others.

We cannot take back our most caustic moments, our clumsiest fumbles, the times our tongue was a viper in the cave of our mouth or wet clay on the riverbed of our throat, but we can take hold of them and unspool them to inspect with the clarity of time.

We can take responsibility for our actions by seeking out the triggers that send our jaws snapping around someone else’s leg. We can take the time and energy to unpack those triggers, where they are rooted in our past and the stories they tell us about ourselves and our role in other people’s lives.

A lot of fucked up behaviors often stem from past and present grinding against each other, creating stress in ways we are not fully aware of nor able to acknowledge. Passive aggression, avoidance, anxiety, controlling behavior, manipulation, angry outbursts—often are steam escaping from the pressure cooker our bodymind has become to tolerate an intolerable situation.

Sympathetic. Understandable. But not excusable.

Here is another truth I am holding for consideration:

We can be aware of the ways hurting ourselves hurts other people and not want that to happen, but until we are ready to stop the pain, we will not be able to break the pattern.

I learned love was carving away at myself for the benefit of others. I learned love was necessary to be valued. I learned love couldn’t come from inside myself.

My life and I split in two until I found myself astride my days as they galloped out of control beneath me. How do I get back into my skin? How do I become the horse on the wind running towards whatever is next for me rather than the rider being dragged by a frightened animal?

I look at the edges where I’ve come apart.

I wrap my fingers around a faultline in the logic I forgot I ran on:

If I’m meant to give someone everything I’ve got when I love them, how will I have anything left for me? How can everyone always get everything all of the time? Is it a timeshare situation? My best friend gets everything twice a month when we go out to eat. My roommate gets everything on Thursdays and Wednesday afternoons. This lover gets Friday mornings and the second Saturday of every month, because Friday afternoons are for these friends across town. This one gets Mondays and Sunday afternoons. My family gets Tuesdays after 4 pm and Wednesday mornings.

Or, as I have found myself doing, you pour your attention most ardently towards whoever complains the loudest of needing it, a penance for the sin of not giving every crevice of your heart. And then when the less loud voices manage to holler high enough for you to hear, you swing your cup around to deluge them all at once, as if dumping them off the high dive can mitigate all the days you promised to go to the pool with them and the closest y’all got to water was running through the sprinklers if that.

This is a great way to get yourself trapped in crisis mode, btw, as you respond to every bid for your attention as if it were an emergency needing triage instead of, you know, a social invitation. It makes you fantastic if anyone’s in an actual crisis, looking for a favor, for a hand, for emotional support, but a disaster at knowing your limits or spending quality time that isn’t about problem solving.

I believed for a long time that giving everything of myself was love. That it was worth it. That eventually I would prove myself enough and things would stabilize in whatever relationship I was pouring into.

I knew this wasn’t working for a long time.

I still couldn’t stop myself from doing it. Like a waking dream where you haven’t swum up to lucidity, I could feel myself sliding into fawn, to freeze, but I couldn’t yank myself out of it. I would hit snooze on the alarm before it could fully rouse me to the problem at hand.

I’m mistaken.

I’m hypervigilant.

There’s nothing wrong now.

All that is in the past.

You haven’t seen this before.

Stop projecting.

Be calm.

Be thoughtful.

Be open.

Sometimes, that funny feeling in your stomach isn't an overreaction. You don’t need to keep testing it out, seeing if it’ll go away if you just try this new thing. You don’t need to sweep it out the door as dust tracked in from a long time ago.

You can sit and acknowledge it, before it becomes the hole that swallows you up.

When was the last time you checked that pit in your stomach? How long has it been since you stopped to ask it how it got there?

—

Yarn spills across my living room floor, rolling over the sofa, half strangling the coffee table, all laden with the sort of unexpected snarls that come when you get halfway down the skein and find the working end of your thread caught somewhere in its guts.

I don’t want to unravel the same knot twice. I don’t want to keep tripping and falling into others in these ways. I don’t want to keep clenching my jaw tight while someone else hurts me with the hope that if I take the pain prettily enough they’ll stop and love me how I want them to.

I pick up the closest knot, turn it this way and that in my palm, tugging loops here and there to see what moves, where they interlock.

The yarn trails back, into the shaded alcove formed by the center of the ball. I feel myself waiting, somewhere in the labyrinth of that darkness. A version of me that’s been crying out for all the attention I keep throwing other places.

Not wanting to hurt other people hasn’t been enough to actually stop.

The yarn trembles in my hand.

I wait, somewhere in the soft dark.

Maybe deciding I deserve the same care as other people will be.

I pull.

Questions:

Look back at a time you regret how you behaved. Instead of focusing on all the ways you were bad, do me a favor and look for the “why’s” behind the ways you were bad. Were the current circumstances reminding you of past ones? What boundaries were there that needed naming? What could have made you feel safer then so you wouldn’t need to act out? What kept you in that situation? What were you afraid of losing if you stepped away from that place to take care of yourself? What made it hard to let go?  What might help you accept the idea that losing those things doesn’t make you smaller as a person? What are other ways you can get those needs met?