Hadestown helps me grieve
#ThingsYouCantUnsay #asexual #BreakUp
I saw Hadestown on broadway almost two years ago, with my wife. We arrived at our seats in the theater quite drunk - we’d done shots at the bar in a delicious Mexican restaurant.
As we walked to the theater, I told her I am asexual. I hastened to reassure her I was still attracted to *her*, specifically.
It’s why I drank, that night and others. To quiet the truth about my asexuality, welling up inside me.
That night, Hadestown seemed to me to be a trans allegory. As I listen to its songs now, I hear an achingly sad tale of someone who dearly wanted to be the center of someone else’s world, care, and affection. To my ear, it speaks of the pain of asking someone else to provide you with validation. Of asking someone else to be your sunshine.
I lied, that night. Yes, to her, but that was secondary to the li
... show moreHadestown helps me grieve
#ThingsYouCantUnsay #asexual #BreakUp
I saw Hadestown on broadway almost two years ago, with my wife. We arrived at our seats in the theater quite drunk - we’d done shots at the bar in a delicious Mexican restaurant.
As we walked to the theater, I told her I am asexual. I hastened to reassure her I was still attracted to *her*, specifically.
It’s why I drank, that night and others. To quiet the truth about my asexuality, welling up inside me.
That night, Hadestown seemed to me to be a trans allegory. As I listen to its songs now, I hear an achingly sad tale of someone who dearly wanted to be the center of someone else’s world, care, and affection. To my ear, it speaks of the pain of asking someone else to provide you with validation. Of asking someone else to be your sunshine.
I lied, that night. Yes, to her, but that was secondary to the lie I told myself. I tried to be her sunshine, but that’s not who I am.
I don’t feel sexual attraction. That wasn’t the whole of our relationship, far from it. But the wounds from telling myself I was allosexual were deeper and older than our relationship, and it had shaped how I approached her and how I thought about myself. It reinforced my insecure attachment style, it undermined my ability to feel self worth.
I broke up with her the next winter, on my journey to heal myself and love myself. I hope someday I’ll be able to embrace being grateful for that relationship, to smile because it happened. Sometimes, I can see the way each of us are finding ways to be our own sunshine, to grow in that self-regard, and I think that I will likely be better able to appreciate the relationship we had when my garden is full of flowers I planted myself.
Sometimes, though, I’m reminded of what a crushing tragedy Hadestown is. I couldn’t be her sunshine, not forever. And it hurts like hell to remember how much I cared for her, and how much it felt like dying unfulfilled to realized I couldn’t care for her in that way, anymore.
I don’t think I owe her an apology for not knowing I couldn’t be who I tried to be for her. I do grieve it, though. I grieve that I couldn’t be something so important to her, despite trying so hard, for so long. And I’m bitter about how bad at it I was, too. I grieve that she didn’t have someone who was better at being her sunshine.
