sigh...

Sometimes the internet just reminds me I'm lonely. That's not really indicative of me being in a bad place, either. I mean, obviously I'm not in a GOOD place, seeing as I'm lonely... but it doesn't mean I'm any lonelier than at any other time. It just means for different reasons.

I mean, if I feel lonely for being trans, there are trans folks out there, right? Of course right. :)

But if I feel lonely for being... see, here's the problem, is that I don't even know the word... a person who is quite happy hir partner is polyamorous, and identifies as THAT, but not as polyamorous hirself... well. That's a different story. Probably, I like to tell myself, only because I don't know the word. Obviously if I just knew what I was looking for, I could type it into Google and come up with something. But I don't.

So... that's life tonight. And that somehow connects to me starting writing this, that and my partner having started herself one and me feeling like perhaps it might be good to keep up with that, seeing as I'll take any communication I can get, at the moment. Thailand is far away.

ἱκνεομαι

(means I come, or, more pertinently to this post, I approach as a supplicant.)

So, I'm writing a paper for Greek (and it's about time, too. Two are due by mid-term break.) The paper is about the word in the title of this post, and related words, and their use in a few lines of Philoctetes. Basically, the point is, you'd think from the whole supplicant concept that the guy's talking about approaching a god. But no, actually he's talking about asking sailors to give him a lift off of this island. He's just in such a terrible situation (his foot has been rotting off for about ten years) that he's begging them as before a god. The word is sometimes used in other places for asking mortals, but mostly not. So it's this extreme abasement, or at least, it seems so to me.

But why I feel this is interesting, really, outside of the fact that I need to turn a paper in soon, is that I know sommebody who does this. And it makes me really sad for him. To be fair, I think he's laid off a bit in the past few weeks, or at least I'm capable of telling myself that he has. It's really strange and scary, to meet someone who has such an unhappy concept of himself that he DOES approach people as before gods, as though he's undeserving of their company, and on such a regular basis. And so seriously. And so... outside of any reasonable framework for doing so. We're all students here... there's no consensual power play going on... and it's so uncomfortable, to be faced by this discrepancy between my view of the situation and his. So I can't do anything but repeat over and over that he needs to love himself, that we'd all be more comfortable that way. But his IMing me as I was writing my paper brought this all into very clear focus, and that's... kind of sad. I don't want anyone I know to remind me of Philoctetes. Poor guy.