Consummated Randomness

The curse of Labels

How necessary are labels in our culture and life today? I've spent a good five years trying to cope with just one label in my life and at the same time I spent a good portion of my time trying to find a way to live label-free. I've found it to be impossible. As much as I hate to admit that social constructs rule our lives, it appears that in the form of labels, they truly do. We simply can not live our lives without labeling people, events, places, beliefs, ways of life, etc. I live my life observing others and looking for the symbolic interaction that occurs at every moment. I recognize labels and implications of society right away. I even try to stand against them and refuse to live my life guided by predetermined societel constructs. It seems my attempts are futile. Right now I find myself with inner conflict over the lack of a label on a relationship with someone. At times I am fine with the situation of not having a label per se put on my interactions with said person. But at other times I grieve the fact that there is an absence of the label "boyfriend" or "couple." Why is this? Well part of it is because there is a certain security found in labels...even if those are sometimes false securities. For instance, if my grievings were to force this person into labeling themself as my boyfriend or us as a couple, but their view about our situation was the same, there would be false security for me. In this situation the label is a double-edged sword. On my side, I want the label because I want the security that the label implies. It does not bother me that I might not get to see him but once a week, if he were my boyfriend, I would know that he can only see me once a week because that's all he can afford, not because that's all he wants to. But as it stands now, if I only see him once a week, I spend the rest of the week torturing myself into believing that he doesn't care to see me, nor is he thinking about me. This is my dilemna, maybe it's just me, perhaps I overanalyze everything and perhaps I'm just insecure when it comes to emotions that are left unstated. Sure, a label wouldn't mean that the emotions behind it are stated, but at least at that point they are implied. Then there is the conflict of having the time for a "boyfriend." As if it requires a certain amount of time per week to have a "boyfriend." This is all relative and depends on who your boyfriend is...at this point in my life I want to be with you (period) and if that means I only get one night a week with you, I would rather it be one night a week in the context of a labeled relationship, then leaving me in label limbo with one night a week.

posted by RPF @ 7:00 PM