Honest. Creative. Intelligent. Responsible. Sensitive. Adventurous. Idealistic. Philosophical. Courageous. Ambitious.
Day 1 Prompt: What are ten words you would use to describe yourself? (from 365 Days of Submission)
It was hard to narrow down ten words to describe myself, because I started with something like this: I'm a married, polyamorous, spiritually eclectic and socially Catholic, neurodivergent, bi, cis-femme (she/her). I design websites for a living and fantasy worlds (through D&D and writing) for fun. I also use parentheticals way too much (because every thought comes with a bonus thought), and I'm a strong proponent of the oxford comma (despite a decade in journalism using AP style).
That's my bio that I settled on recently when corresponding with someone via email. I could describe myself so many different ways for all the different roles that I have taken on in my life. I'm a wife. I'm an s-type, the flavor of which I am not certain yet. I'm a friend, a partner, a bootblack, a GM, I'm a TTRPG player. So the question "Who are you?" (which is the first prompt of the Polyamory Uncensored journal) feels too general. That's why I've chosen this prompt from the 365 Days of Submission journal, because rather than trying to encompass all of those identities, I have narrowed the prompt down to (essentially), "What are the traits and values that define how I move in those identities?"
So I've landed on the 10 words above and will break down what each of these adjectives mean for me personally.
Real talk, the first and most important thing I will be is honest. I feel gross when I lie about things, so about a decade ago I stopped doing it (in part, because MzRhythm made it clear that she does not tolerate dishonesty). I put in a lot of work not to withhold information from people who I care about or to whom it is relevant. But this does bite me in the ass sometimes.
What does too honest look like? Well, if I hate your shirt because it's orange (ew), and you ask me "What do you think of my new top?" I do not have the self-regulation to make my face do the right (read: socially acceptable) things in reaction to that color. So I might reply "It's a good cut for you" and try to avoid saying anything about the color, but my nose might do the little wrinkle up thing that happens when I interact with the color orange. However, threading the needle on socially acceptable vs. kindly honest is exhausting sometimes. So every now and then, I'm just going to say, "I really hate that color."
All that said, I think honesty is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship with ANYONE, but especially when polyamory and/or power exchange are involved. If you can't be honest with the person you are in relationship with, what is the point? When I find myself wanting to withhold things from my partners (that something they did hurt my feelings, or that I want to do something new and scary, or that I'm feeling some kind of way), I know that it's time to talk to them even more because (1) it's not healthy for me to be holding things in and (2) we can't come to a resolution about what is going on if we don't talk to one another.
I was once in a partnership with someone who said "I'm only going to tell you about things with other people if they affect you directly." And frankly, that made me so insecure and uncomfortable, I would never do it again. I don't want to find out after the fact that a partner has been going on dates with other people but didn’t tell me because it didn't infringe on our time together. Honesty and upfront-disclosure is a huge requirement of polyamory for me, because that is how I navigate the world of ENM. It is not ethical (for me) for my partners to withhold the who's who of their dating life because it hurts me when they do. So in turn, I am up front and proactive about it on my end.
Note: To some, this level of disclosure does not feel ethical, for various reasons. For me and my partners, this is what ethical looks like and it is an agreed-upon standard of care.
If "honest" is my core ethic, "creative" and "brilliant" (up next) are my core identity words. My world when I was younger revolved around my smarts. I was the gifted kid who strove for all As all the time and burned out hard along the way. Meanwhile, my ideal situation would have my head planted firmly in the clouds. I love to create things from fantastical worlds, to art of all mediums, to both fiction and nonfiction endeavors ... the list could go on forever. Here I am today at 1:46 p.m. on a Friday writing rather than working (at my decidedly CREATIVE job) because my fixation on creating something today is too strong to resist. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would spend the rest of my life making things. I wouldn't stop working, I would just stop doing busy work (like the content clean-up task I am avoiding).
An early sign that I am suffering in my wellness is that I have stopped creating things. When there is no time to create, I grow despondent and withdrawn until I hit a breaking point and have a full meltdown. I need art like I need air, food, and water. My soul thrives on making things. In part because I can hold it up at the end of the day and say "Look! I made this!"
A challenge that I encounter with creativity, however, is that if I lack inspiration or time or what have you, it really does affect the rest of my wellness. That's something that I keep in mind when designing my daily routine, right up there with "get active for 30 minutes per day" is "get creative for 30 minutes (or more) per day." When I have struggled with depression and can't find words or art or creativity within myself, it has turned into a feedback loop of compounding despair. Which feels decidedly unfair!
But when I can create something new ... that's where my dreams come alive and I feel like I make the world a better place to be.
So I talked about the whole gifted kid burnout thing above, so it's clear how my intelligence has been misused. But my intelligence paired with my creativity is actually a huge boon. I think outside the box and get things done in ways that make people either go "Oh that's cool!" OR "WTF dude, we've never done things that way!" There is no middle ground.
On the positive side, I am a really fast learner. Very much a see one, do one, teach one, kind of person. Show me something once, I can recreate it badly. Show it to me twice, I can usually pull it off correctly. Show it to me a third time and I can turn to the person next to me and help them do it too.
And, yes, I know it's really arrogant of me to say "I often feel like the smartest person in the room" and that's actually a thing that I have been working on reconciling for years. But also, I'm not the only person who says that I am brilliant, so I'm going to just accept that it sounds the way it sounds. I have to remember that just because someone does things differently than I would doesn't mean they are doing it wrong (a problem I run into in the reverse obviously) but also just because a group has always done something a certain way doesn't mean that it's outdated, it may be (and likely is) rooted in best practices that I haven't learned yet. I also had to learn the difference between "unintelligent" and "uneducated."
A big challenge that I have here is I get bored easily when learning new things. It doesn't take me as long to learn the basics, as I mentioned above ... just enough to be dangerous ... and then I want to be off to the races making something new rather than learning the rest of the how to for the thing. I have to force myself (or be forced, sometimes) to slow down and keep learning. I've encountered this as a student, as a kinkster, as a partner, as a developer, as a GM, etc.
For example: I've been running D&D since 2017 and only just in the past year have I been learning how to be really good at combat. I don't enjoy it, so I just railroaded my players around it rather than learning how to do it. Some of that I can compensate for (I've decided to run The Wild Beyond the Witchlight this fall because it is a low combat adventure), but sometimes I have to grit my teeth and read every word of the instructions before assembly rather than figuring it out as I go.
I have rewritten this section twice, for the record. I got two paragraphs in and wrote: Wait ... am I actually responsible? The caveat to this one is that I have ADHD, which impairs some of my skills in this area. However, I remain proud of this descriptor. I know that I sometimes have a desire for perfection that simply isn't real.
For much of my life I have been treated older than I was. There's lots of trauma associated with that, as you might imagine. However, that has led to me knowing how to figure out what needs doing in many cases, even with little guidance. I'm sure that lends itself to the "I'll figure it out, you don't need to tell me how" attitude that I mentioned as a pitfall above. But I am kick-ass at figuring out what needs to get done and making a list. I'm terrible at task initiation and prioritization, though, so I always have to get help with that. (That's the ADHD part.)
In my identity as MzRhythm's scribe, I maintain the household calendar, medical notes, to do lists, etc. But I always need her help to figure out how to get it all done. At times, that part can feel like a moral failing. I've struggled with my desire for the identity of "slave" for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is I don't feel capable enough. I have this impression that a slave should be able to maintain her Mistress's (insert your pronouns and labels as you will) household and complete these tasks without assistance or excessive direction. However, "perfection is the worst form of self-abuse," she would say (and often does). And one of the house rules is "Be kind to yourself."
This is a descriptor that I'm NOT fond of, but in the interest of honesty, I have to include it here. It's a bit of a conundrum though ... I am a person who struggles to form attachments. I hate most people when I first meet them and my emotional and social IQs are things I'm working on all the time. But once I have formed an attachment with someone I am often loyal to my own detriment. I am very vulnerable to emotional distress and easily overwhelmed by emotions.
I used to do this thing to keep myself from getting hurt in relationships: Within the first few months, I would figure out what issues in the relationship would hurt me to the point of breaking the relationship and then rather than trying to fix it, I'd just end the relationship. In the last five years or so, though, that pendulum has swung in the other direction. I convince myself early on that the relationship is forever and then turn a blind eye to (or worse, start justifying) the harmful behavior that is occurring in the relationship as it progresses. Again, failing to fix the things that are wrong with the relationship until they ultimately become the torpedo that takes the whole relationship down in flames.
This is where that radical-but-kind honesty comes back into play. I have to be honest with myself and the people around me about how their behavior is affecting me. I have to let people in, but I also have to learn to vigorously uphold my own boundaries with myself.
The first step to this has been figuring out what boundaries I need to set for myself and then honestly and openly discussing my needs with my partners. It's been a really daunting task to identify my needs. And then to state them out loud! Ugh. Painful. But I'm doing it. One conversation at a time. I'm not always getting it right, but I'm trying really hard to be responsible for my own emotions and needs.
I think a lot of this comes back to the thing I mentioned in the section above: When people always expect you to act older than you are, you don't learn the coping mechanisms and communication methods that are appropriate for your age. Instead, you're constantly faking it (or I was) until you can't fake it anymore and fall apart. Then comes shame for reacting "like a child" and you push those feelings down more so it doesn't happen again. But it does. Over and over and over again. One of the things I am working on in therapy is feeling through some of those key moments throughout my life and validating my own feelings about how those situations went down. This is helping me learn to regulate my emotions in ways that I should have learned half a lifetime ago, but also teaching me how to be a parent who supports her children through their distress, rather than yelling at them for their expression of it (which I am still guilty of at times). Because let me tell you, that does not work.
Meanwhile, learning to build in space in my life for emotional regulation and coping mechanisms is so so important to making my world be less distressing. For the last two days, about 2 p.m. I start getting very upset and distressed. So today, I arranged to work elsewhere this afternoon. And it didn't solve the fact that 2 p.m. irritation and anxiety struck right on schedule, but it did give me space to deal with those things without triggers bombarding and exacerbating them.
I'm going to say it again, I get bored. Easily. And the ADHD doesn't help.
I live for dynamic environments with short deadlines and high stakes. That's why I worked as a newspaper designer for a decade. Because every day I'd show up to blank pages, and I'd have 7 hours to make something magical happen. It was a rush, a creative frenzy, and I loved every minute of it. I thrived in that environment until that job was outsourced in 2017.
I can be incredibly impulsive when I'm in the midst of a creative endeavor (see this 4k word essay about 10 words). It's led to everything from wild midnight beach trips (some of which resulted in traffic tickets, oops) and spontaneous kitchen dance parties (with fewer consequences). And let's be honest, those moments have been nothing short of fantastic.
But sometimes, that means that the responsible things don't the attention they deserve. Those to-do lists I mentioned above? They can sometimes take a back seat when adventure beckons. Safety factors? They've been known to get disregarded when the thrill of the moment takes over (hence the speeding tickets). Committing to a routine? Well, that's always been a bit of a struggle. And don't even get me started on the number of software solutions I've tried — and promptly discarded — for managing the household. It's like I'm on a perpetual quest for the ultimate system, but it always feels just out of reach. I don't think the software is really the problem. The call is coming from inside the house.
This is another area where I feel incredibly fulfilled when I'm in the midst of an adventure, but returning home to floors that need to be swept and a sink that's backing up because I forgot to call around about the broken garbage disposal can be brutal. Being adventurous, while exhilarating and filled with impulsive moments of joy, can sometimes be a wild ride where responsibilities and routines find themselves in the backseat. I'm still figuring out where that equilibrium needs to live.
I have so many thoughts about how to make the world a better place, but sometimes it feels incredibly disheartening and impossible to achieve. I believe that it is usually done one person, one conversation at a time ... but the world is so so big. I just think that the world would be a better place if every human was treated with full rights and dignities of the most privileged persons.
I've been called a Social Justice Warrior (only once to my face, though ... I feel like that number is too low and I should be trying harder). But sometimes I sound like Dr. Horrible: "The world is a mess and I just need to rule it!"
I believe all humans have the right to good food, clean water, safe housing, and an average human lifespan that's not locked behind a paywall. And when I say every person, I mean ALL – no exceptions, no exclusions. I have so many quotes for this section and I won't go on for too long. But one of my favorite song lyrics lately is: "I deserve the right to go outside, to be in public and survive," from (One Nation Underdogs, Royal and the Serpent).
So I do what I can. I led a book club for my parish that people are still talking about. We read So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo. We contribute to the Detroit Justice Center bail fund when we can. I'm not a keyboard warrior, but I do message people privately when I think they've posted something that misses the mark (it works better that litigating things in the comments, I have found). But it never feels like enough. There's always another thing. What even is justice? Who gets to decide what justice looks like?
And here's where the idealism comes with its own drawbacks. While this idealistic drive fuels my determination to fight for a fairer world, it can also lead to frustration and despair when reality doesn't match the lofty ideals. And it's even worse when I realize that I have not lived up to my own ideals in treating people with the kind of compassion and fairness that I want to see in the world or that I've learned something new and my past behavior was problematic.
At the end of the day, I think I have to accept that we are all doing the best we can and doing what we think is right for ourselves and our communities. There are opportunities to educate, but not every situation is going to end in a perfect outcome. But hopefully our "better angels" will guide us as a society to a more just world.
This is going to be the shortest section. I find a lot of meaning in my spiritual practice and I have a lot of philosophical musings that I would love to share with anyone who wants to hear them. But I would feel more comfortable sharing these in person so you can see the passion I have when I talk about them.
Sometimes when I think about courage, I think about a mighty warriors charging fearlessly into battle, armed to the teeth and ready to conquer. But, if I'm being entirely honest, I'm not that kind of courageous. My courage has a different shade — it's the quiet, understated kind that opts for discretion over confrontation.
I'm the person who, when faced with uncomfortable situations, chooses to pull someone aside privately and have that difficult conversation. It's the kind of courage that says, "Hey, those comments you've been making about me, they're unwanted and making me uncomfortable." It's about addressing the issue without shaming them or causing them to lose face in front of everyone. It's a softer, yet still undeniably courageous approach to standing up for oneself.
On the flip side, constantly facing my fears can be emotionally taxing, and there are moments when it feels like I'm pushing myself to the limit.
And let's get one thing straight — everything scares me. For me, courage is about having the audacity to push through it, even when my hands are shaking.
The last piece of this puzzle is ambition. And like all the rest, it is a double-edged sword. I'm the kind of person who sets some seemingly unreachable goals and somehow manages to achieve some pretty fantastic things. It's exhilarating when it all comes together and all the hard work becomes worth it. But, here's the catch, I'm no stranger to stumbling and falling flat on my face sometimes (sometimes literally), which is not only embarrassing but disheartening. Those moments of failure can feel like a punch in the gut, and I'm left wondering if I aimed too high or even if I am good enough.
Sometimes, I don't even start because I worry that I'm going to fail. I undermine myself in my language when I talk to others about things I want to do. Self-doubt is a bitch.
And let's not forget about the ever-present specter of burnout. It's sneaky one, often arriving when I least expect it, right in the midst of a really successful period. I've learned the hard way that even when things are going exceptionally well, it's crucial to pace myself and ensure there's room for rest and rejuvenation. The challenge is I don't always know what that looks like in the moment.
But the allure of success is strong in this one and there's always something new conquer, fresh challenges to embrace, and more efficient ways to reach those lofty goals. Innovation has become my ally in this journey; it's my way of keeping my restless attention span focused and productive. And you know what? I'm genuinely proud of some of the cool, creative things I've managed to create along the way.
So this has gone on a lot longer than I thought it would when I set out to answer the journal prompt: What are ten words you would use to describe yourself?
In considering which ten words define who I am, I have found a dynamic puzzle of traits and values that shape my existence. Each of these descriptors, whether in its positivite or its negative aspect, contributes to the complexity of my identity. I commit to embracing the strengths and challenges of these ten words that define me, acknowledging that they are the threads that weave the intricate tapestry that makes me — well — me.
