December 8th 2020

"December 8th 2020

I'm tired of pretending and acting as though I'm not a sexual being. Of feeling like my being a sexual person in some way undermines or invalidates my demisexuality.

I'm tired of pretending like I'm someone I am not.

I have been working on unmasking (I like that term because a lot of my "personality" and ways of presenting in the past was indeed autistic masking designed not to make me happy, but to make other people presumably like me more.) 

I have been working on being who I want to be, instead of who I think other people might want me to be. I was constantly getting it wrong anyway. I still slip back into thinking how other people might be judging me sometimes, but I'm working on catching myself and redirecting those thoughts to: "How do I want to be/act/dress right now? Regardless of if others are around me or not."

One if the things I have been the most scared of really being myself about is my sexuality. Mostly because it's been drilled into me my entire life; minus the past eight months or so, that not hiding your sexuality is bad, or somehow makes rape or molestation inevitable. 

The truth is, that although I am demisexual, I am still quite sexual. It is one of my greatest sources of reliable energy and power as a witch, and that is something I am proud of. I refuse to be ashamed of it anymore. I actually love my body, and that's amazing, especially when I remember how much I used to hate it.

I used to look in the mirror and think I was ugly, then punish my body for being "imperfect". So now I'm proud of myself for looking in the mirror and loving my reflection. I'm proud of myself for loving my sexuality instead of hating it. For choosing to stop hiding it. This is a part of who I am, and I am now striving to be fully and unabashedly who I am.

This virus going around, this pandemic; it has just made me realize even more how uncertain life is, and since I don't know how long I'll live, I don't want to waste any more of it pretending to be some shitty ideal that I made up because I thought people might like it. 

I am me, Clara Stone, Vespertine Ipomea. Genderqueer, both masculine and feminine.

Both a magpie-esque, slightly sophisticated swamp witch; and an ancient, elegant, vampire lord swordsman.

I am ever-changing, but I am no longer hiding parts of who I am that I don't really want to hide, just because shitty people once told me that I should."