Rec | I/YOU (HER) - ADRIAN PIPER (1974)

🪧

I/You (Her) - ADrian piper (1974)

“It is only because of the defects in my personality that I can finally say this to you. I am protected and strengthened by my inadequacy. I am secure, smugly secure, for my personal flaws will constitute a more than adequate defense against whatever your response might be to what I have to say to you.” “For my imperfection maintains an unbridgeable chasm between us; it protects us both from each other, but most importantly, me from you. The defect I have in mind is that I cannot love you, will never be able to love you. Where there might have been feeling, there is only impersonal interest.” “You hurt me, and betrayed my trust, and for that I will never forgive you. In fact, I would like nothing better than that you see yourself as I do, with the contempt that I do. Because of you, there is a coldness in me, a suspiciousness towards you in all your guises, all your appearances, because of you I withhold my feelings, for I could never trust you to not tread all over them.” “I want you to realize what you’ve done, and be really ashamed. Ashamed of your conceit, your selfishness, your meanness, your insensitivity. Understand the extent of your carelessness, and hate yourself for it. Regret, even more than I do, the real friend you might have had.” “I might reason with you, share with you, even extend an offer of help or support; I might indulge with pleasure in lovemaking fantasies about you. But you will never elicit an emotional commitment from me. Take care that you ask of me no more than that we laugh together; for you will be disappointed, if you do.” “After you, I found solace in friendships with men; after that, I healed myself in solitude. Whatever regrets I feel about this are small to me now, and readily transformed into anger and resentment towards you. As you well know, our enmity is ultimately your doing and your choice.” “Now I have learned to thrive on it; I must, in order to protect myself, and thus I alienate you in turn. Our femininity itself can never again be a point of contact between us. I perceive that now, you are no more capable of trusting me than I am of trusting you, and I cry for our mutual impoverishment: that, at least, we can share.” “But insist again that this is your doing, your fault, your choice - not mine. I insist that from the fact of my appearance you jumped to the wrong conclusion, as you always do. You instinctively perceive me as the enemy, and nothing I say or do is sufficient to change that. You punish me for how I look, when that is both irrelevant and out of my control.” “You automatically assume that I neither need nor want you friendship, nor want your friendship, nor would be willing to work for it, even though you have no reason to think this, no reason to assume anything at all. For if you had only given me the chance, I would have shown you where my loyalties lay.” “But you took me off guard once, and it was very painful. I will never give you the opportunity to do that again. My defenses have solidified; there’s nothing I can do. It sickens me to realize that I have grown incapable of overcoming the distance between us. I hate you for doing this to me, and myself for allowing it to happen.”

@juliaprice

Nov 22, 2024

see likes

Comments (0)

Make an account to reply.

No comments yet

Related Recs

⭐

insecurity, we all have it. some of us are just dating it

i didn't think they were when we first met. i mean, why would i? they were suave, confident, hot. filled to the brim with sticky hubris and emotion. but everyone has a vice, and the best of people keep theirs well hidden. so i find myself here, the place where all good characters begin-- in love. i definitely wasn't expecting it, but that's another story entirely. i think insecurity is a cautious devil. like the fairy stories i was raised on, it's cunning, a trickster. it masquerades as many things- pride, confidence, and anger being the most prevalent flavors. my lover is none of these things, save maybe a bravado that only comes from finally having the courage to live truly as oneself after years of running. this bravado is enticing, but not necesarily a symptom. perhaps the greater fault is that i am entirely consumed by their personhood. i, like a crocodile on a winters day, bask in the sunlight of their soul. if my limbs were iron i would carve wheels from pure stone and a wagon of aged wood and use it to drag myself to their feet. yet, love is farsighted, and time has revealed the true deliciousness of their personhood rests on the facet that they too, are human. so, we make our bed in the meadows and we fight our battles in the night. i speak more than i listen, they keep feelings like secrets. they shrivel and burrow to avoid, whereas i become louder to confront. our love is indeed an unlikely story. but i like it, and i want to make it. so, i find myself getting quieter, conceeding more. i let them win and ask them to decide. they do, and we fight sometimes. they would rather be disappointed than rejected. god, don't we all. i speak in riddles and they in fact. maybe we are too different but we don't let it deter us, for we are far more the same than we could ever realize. still, when i speak plainly they assume puzzles, when i gently correct they quiver, when i say too much they internalize, communication rought by years of passive agressive parents and partners before me. i, who have known none of this, continue my ramblings, wanting only to share more of myself with my lover. i say the wrong thing. there is no wrong. i say things. they hurt. i don't often mean it the way they take it. their interpretation is a faulty compass that rarely points to true north. sometimes the sheer polarity of their interpretation shocks me. i say i'm tired, they ask if i want them to leave. my direct mind cannot wrap around their curved one. if i wanted them to leave i would have asked. and i would never want such a thing. i say i am scared to become dull. they apologize for ruining me. i ask them what they want, they cannot give an anwer. insecurity is not a trait, it is a tyrant. i see them beneath the ruling scepter but i cannot budge them out from under it. so i try to be gentle. i speak softly. i conceed. i give them exactly what they ask for. i have been trained on what to avoid. i wonder if this training is making me trickier, or more like the partners and parents that made them this way in the first place. i am no saint, i wish i could learn to shut my desperate eager mouth, a chore i have resisted and fought since childhood with the will and stubborness that remains unchanged. still i ache. the constant intent on misunderstanding me ages my soul. i feel the ache begging them from within my loving eyes. "see me as i am, lover," it cries, "please hear me as i am."

@kiwibird4

Jan 13, 2025

🫀

no title can express my sorrow

there's no standard treatment for a broken heart. i sigh quietly to myself, thinking i’ll actually find an answer on how to heal a broken heart on google it all began five years ago, when i finally started spending time with him—the boy who seemed to shine a little brighter than the rest. he was the kindest, the prettiest, the one who made my heart feel lighter just by existing. and he wanted to be my friend. how could i not fall? kept the friendship up for a couple of years and my crush for him grew even stronger. sometimes he would come up in my dreams and then i would try to summon fate itself—manifesting, wishing, aching for him to love me back. because, as every girl knows, there is always a phase where we believe the universe listens. and so, i rinsed and repeated, hoping one day, he would look at me the way I looked at him when we messaged or meet up, he felt like my twin flame. a connection so deep, so natural, that i convinced myself he must feel it too. he understood me, and i understood him but i never felt that he liked me as much as i liked him. and then, it ended—not with a dramatic farewell, not with a grand confession, but with silence. I ruined it in my own quiet way: fading out, withdrawing, blocking him, letting the messages go unanswered. I stopped reaching out, and so did he. it was as if we had been a story left unfinished, pages ripped from the book before the final chapter could be written it has been four months since we last spoke. and now, he has a girlfriend. may I add—throughout our years of friendship, he never had one. situationships, yes, but never something real. yet, here she is. not me. the day I found out, it struck me in a way I hadn’t expected. I had let him slip from my thoughts, let weeks pass without missing him—until I saw what I had once longed for, in the hands of someone else. I hadn’t realized I was still holding onto the dream until it shattered before me. now, my mind drifts to what could have been. I picture myself in her place, feel the ghost of a life that was never mine. would he have loved me, if I had held on? if I had tried? was I ever good enough for him? wasn’t I pretty enough for him…? why… her… not… me…? time is meant to heal. i know this. but this wound runs deep. losing someone you once felt connected to in the deepest corners of your soul is a quiet kind of grief, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but lingers in the spaces between thoughts. my heart feels heavy, my soul even heavier but today, i miss him more than usually. i’ve fallen to deep, so now every time i think of him, i will miss him deeply.

@lukrecija

Feb 28, 2025

🧠

A crispy Realization

For someone who claims to identify so closely with solitude, uncovering just how tethered I was to the emotions of people I love was a crispy realization. Of course, that attachment is the basis for any kind of relationship. You cannot claim to “have someone” in your life if you do not feel some kind of emotional connection towards them. The stronger the connection, the stronger the relationship. We all know this. However, there is something to be said about a relationship that is “too good”; a bond so strong due to its shocking lack of tension. In hindsight of various broken and fragmented connections I’ve been apart of, any relationship that exists while remaining entirely unscathed now kind of terrifies me. I believe there can be such a thing as “too much love”, and I think those who have given or received it know when they have done so. It’s a mistake anyone is capable of making. Imagine a relationship so polished, free from any erosion (visible or otherwise); seemingly perfect. This type of connection can only be established through a building of trust and an abundance of time. However, I’ve come to learn that the more impeccable bonds tend to break easy when faced with their first real blow. Birds only crash into the cleanest of glass. *"If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it...*" I don’t want excess. For the food of love, I am no glutton. I eat until I am full and push my plate aside. I used to love like my life depended on it. I put those people whom I adored on the highest of pedestals, framed them in my gallery and admired new details every time we shared a visit. Maybe I just hadn’t been wronged enough to ever think that I could be wounded by those I dote on so heavily. What is it with loving and being loved that makes feeling hurt seem so impossible? Why must love shatter all preconceived expectations of what emotion is? Is love really so massive, so gargantuan that it conquers all other feeling? Yes, and no. At least that’s what I think. This is all just what I think. I don’t want to come across as some great romantic or lovesick puppy or old friend. I’m just trying to figure out the right way to love, like everyone else.