the obligatory introduction

Why do I seem to leave these things til midnight? Is it not just the Witching Hour, but the Writing Hour, and I just haven't been told??

Anyways, I thought I should do the standard intro type entry, even though I only plant to give this journal address to a few close friends, and I'm not really someont who's into joining online communities and the like. Maybe it's just a strong sense of social propriety that's making me want to do this, who knows?

So, I'm nearly twenty four, which was my favourite number when I was a kid. I think I had a funny superstition about it, too. I thought that because it was my favourite number, for whatever arbitary reason, it must somehow have been important. I remember spending a lot of time wondering if I'd die at 24, or whether something major would happen in my life then. It'll be interesting to find out, but to be honest, I don't know that I could handle any more major life stuff just yet. I'm still getting over losing my hearing and getting the cochlea implant.

If I think about it, I had a premonition that something big was going to happen to me that year. I turned 21 and I felt like there was something huge looming, only I wasn't sure what. Some of the time I just shook it off as a superstition caused perhaps by all the hype around that age birthday, but mostly I was waiting with excitement and trepidation for ... something. I sure as hell got it, too.

My sister turned 30 today. This strikes me as weird, not just because she's the fourth person I know (and consider to be a peer) to have reached that milestone, but because she still acts so much like a teenager it isn't funny. Well, it isn't quite so much her behaviour as her mentality - she's not an adult in the sense of considering other people, and knowing what she believes in and standing up for it. She's just kind of lost, I guess. Maybe a lot of 'adults' are, but it's just not how I envisioned adulthood.

I wonder if she's freaked out that she's now no longer a twentysomething. I know Jofish did when his birthday came around late last year, and Helen was saying that she freaked when she hit 29.

Cam and I were talking about it tonight, and he was saying that there's not so much of a difference between birthdays in your late 20's as there are in your early 20's. This was said in the context of "I might start forgetting your birthdays in a couple of years, dear; this is my excuse." ... heh. But I do think the argument generally has some merit, from a social standpoint, at least. People do tend to see the early 20's as being full of promise and ambition; the time to be getting your life underway. Your late 20's must be when you slog it out for whatever it is you've decided you want, I guess.

What happens if you get lost? I guess we're just not supposed to.

Hmm. This entry didn't turn out at all the way I expected. Oh well.

Thoughts on being poly

I joined the lj polyamory community today, and the post below had just been added. It raised some interesting thoughts, and my response is below the original post.

I would just post the link to this, but I'd like to keep a copy here, so here it is.

jadedunoir (jadedunoir) wrote in polyamory,
@ 2004-03-23 00:38:00
Current mood: curious

How many poly people with disabilities are part of this community?
I have been feeling like I am one of the very few poly people who is living with a disability until I read the posts today. I have a herniated disk in my low back that causes extreme pain. The doctor also suspects that there is nerve damage. We do not know yet if this can healed or by how much. There has been numerous times I've had poly-related posts regarding dealing with how becoming disable or living with a disabiity has changed the way I can persue my poly lifestyle, but I had felt that there was probably not many poly people here who could relate. So I would love to know how many poly people out there are living with a disability? What type of disability do you have? How does it effect your relationships with your partners and your partners' partners? Do you find it difficult to date because of your disability, whether it be because you find that others seem reluctant to date you, because of personal feelings you have, or because of the limitations your disability places on you? I look forward to hearing from others out there.


Talk about good timing...
crypticgirl
2004-03-23 00:51 (link)
I just joined this community, and I was wondering if there were any other poly people with disabilities floating around!

I'm deafblind, which for me means partial sight and partial hearing, variable dependent on what adaptive stuff I'm using. As far as being poly goes, it hasn't been that much of an issue thus far. I'm fairly new to poly, and right now I'm taking it as it comes, rather than actively seeking things out. Both of my current partners have known me (and each other) for years, and have the disability thing pretty well sorted - it's second nature for them to accommodate my needs, and generally seen as nothing more than a part of who I am. The one other poly relationship I've had was long distance, and my SO was disabled too, so it really wasn't an issue there!

Thinking hypothetically about other partners - either mine or those of my SOs - does raise some squicky disability related issues. Dating, like socialising generally, is pretty tough for me to do in the same ways as other people, but I don't think I'd want another LDR either; at least not right now. I think I'd have to rely heavily on mutual contacts, which does tend to narrow the field.

I think when you add a disability to the mix of any kind of relationship, you have to be able to form trusting bonds with people fairly quickly; more so than normal. You need to be able to trust that their motives aren't about 'doing good works for the disabled' and essentially looking after you because they think they ought to, but you also need to be able to trust that someone is reliable in more physical ways - like getting you safely across a street, or clueing you in on a conversation you've missed. For me, being poly means that I get to form those particuarly unique bonds of trust with more than one person (when I'm lucky), and that makes me feel inherently stronger somehow.

In a pratical sense, it means that when the three of us are together, they can be quite flexible about who supports me with what - it's not just down to one person all the time, and I guess that alleviates both their potential sense of deep responsibility for me, and my guilt that they have said sense of deep responsibility. :c) It also means that any new partner would potentially get support and advice from people who know all too well the ramifications of my disability. I think any partners either of my SOs had would take some 'training', like anybody else, but I'd like to believe neither of them would tolerate me receiving extended periods of overly patronising or inconsiderate treatment, and I'd certainly talk to them about it if that ever happened.

I guess the last thing I want to say is that I suspect being disabled has made it a lot easier to acknowledge that I'm both bisexual and poly. It's just another thing to add to the list, really. :c)