June 1, 2025 - Day 21 of the Flower Moon

Tender Stone

Lately I have been trying to be more social again after about a year-long period in which I spent much, much more time with myself alone than with anyone else. It has been hard to put myself in social situations again due to a lot of relational stress, but this weekend I spent a lot of time at group events, meeting people, and generally having a wonderful time. Today I went to a leatherdyke meetup and got to meet many wonderful people much more similar to me than I usually see in queer spaces. I dreaded going when I woke up this morning, but once I was on my way I felt myself enter a familiar headspace, one that is very connected to my identity as a butch sometimes-stone top. I had a lovely time and met lovely people, and I felt assertive, confident, and full of butch swagger the whole time. However, while I was on my way home, I began asking myself if this is really who I am/want to be anymore.

This thought process feels very connected to my relationship to my girlfriend. Over the past almost year of getting to know them and falling in love with them, I have found myself able to be more vulnerable with them than any partner I have ever had. I have felt softer and more tender parts of myself emerge as green shoots, and they have only recently begun to bloom. I have always wanted to be strong enough to be tender and vulnerable by default, but this want emerges from my struggle with this very thing. I learned how to carry myself in a way that projects confidence and strength because the people I was around, the systems and the environments that surrounded me, were hostile, degrading, and demoralizing. This projection of confidence and strength helps me move through the world with less friction in some ways, and creates friction in other ways. At times it is fun, affirming, and a sort of drag-like performance of cocky butch dyke masculinity. However, to feel like I have to perform this constantly to feel safe is exhausting; to feel like I have to perform this to receive care and attention is a cage.

As I'm trying to engage more in community, especially leather and kink community, I am trying not to fall into previous patterns. Previously, I found myself trapped in a sort of butch stone top role. I could barely let this down around anyone, and I could accept touch from fewer still. Between then and now I have learned that my body was communicating with me, and that I cannot force this guard to come down. I can only seek those who show me again and again that it is safe for me to let it down. As I was on my way home today, I felt melancholic the way I would watching the landscape pass me by through the window of a bus. The butch stone top performance is a defensive shell, and I am much smaller than it makes me appear. I am looking out from inside the shell and wishing I could be closer to the world which is so rich with beauty. It is a beautiful shell, and functional, but I want to be able to meet people for the first time just as Thea. I trust that it will be easier one day, or at least I hope it will be.

P.S. I mentioned my site in conversation a couple times, so on the off-chance that someone from the event is reading this, hello! I almost didn't write this post because of this, but I am trying to choose vulnerability.