Hey SG Land.
This is going to be a really personal post but I hope it will mean something to someone.
I’m back after 8 months, and dropping as many comments as I can to this beautiful community.
But as TLC asked in 1999, what does that mean to me? ‘Unpretty’ was a big radio hit when I was growing up and it had a profound effect on me. At first I loved the melodies, but when I listened to the lyrics it fucking terrified me that I could make a woman feel like that.
I came into my 20s as a hopeless romantic who believed he was going to fall in love with someone who felt the same way and that would be that. I did fall in love, in 2008. Her name was Veronika and it was the best summer of my life. But by the time the leaves were falling, I was in hospital and she was back in Slovakia.
My experience of mental illness has been so unbelievably rough. I had already spent two years on adolescent units before I was an adult. I spent my teens surrounded by girls who were fighting for their very lives against the sheer horror of an eating disorder. Those memories still bring me to tears.
All my life I have seen this world make women feel unpretty. And it has broken my heart.
By the time I hit my 30s I realised after Veronika there wasn’t going to be anyone else. Bipolar disorder has just done too much damage. I have good friends and good family but I’m alone and I’m ok with that.
As a long term single man with a high sex drive, I have struggled to find a way to express my sexuality. I arrived at SG because it was the one and only place I could find on the whole damn internet that wasn’t filled with misogyny and disrespect towards women.
Even here I start to feel I’m reducing infinite human beings to their bodies and it doesn’t sit right with me so I disappear.
When I say you are beautiful, or write any kind of appreciative comment, Im trying to get my mind and words to align with the concept that you are all fully human people and your personalities, hopes, dreams, creativity, generosity, courage, resilience, life story and sexuality have brought you to the same site as me, to share something of yourself. Something that I respond to in a powerful way. Some posts make me feel much rawer feelings but my intent remains the same at all times.
Without this site there is no home for my sexuality and it’s constantly amazing to see what everyone is posting. And there is not a single person on this whole site who is unpretty.
I’m writing as many comments as I can but this one is to everyone. You are so beautiful. It’s who you are. I really wish the English language had a few more words than beautiful. It’s always in danger of being overused. But I hope this post goes some way towards explaining what I mean when I use it.
