i feel the cultural obsession of knowing whether or not you happen to be fucking a person in your life is as tedious and unnecessary as the cultural obsession with knowing a person's gender.
what does it matter? people can fuck their friends or not, same as any other activity.
needing to clarify if someone is A Girlfriend or A Boyfriend or Theyfriend or Fuck Buddy of FWB or whatever is like needing to have special words and designations for friends-you-cook-for or friends-with-whom-you-can-talk-about-nine-inch-nails-without-explaining-yourself.
i love my friends, or else they wouldn't be friends. i'm closer to some than others. a few specifically request that i use certain relative terms to describe them, which i oblige same as i would with a person's pronouns (ergo why i have several "partners" amongst my friends).
like, i'm not a woman; i'm just azurelore. i'm some kind of a girl, if we want to get descriptive, but i am just me; the person i have built for myself out of whatever truth i can dig up. the person i must be, for me to exist in earnest and to see a point to embracing the life i was handed.
the people i love, the friends closest and fondest and most intimate to me, with whom i best get along, are i suppose what someone else might call bffs. each is special to me for different reasons that tie into their own individuality and the energy when it syncs up with mine.
no specific person can fill a gap or a role or a purpose in my life, and no-one can ever be everything to anyone. but the potential in my lifeβthe breadth and detail of perspective and experience and opportunity for unseen joys and delightsβwould be lesser without any connection.
some of those connections, it makes sense for us both to share our and explore the other's bodies or close life events or emotional experiences. sometimes there's what some would describe as a romantic yet essentially chaste dynamic. sometimes we just like to fuck like nerds.
some friends i like to hold and cuddle; some i like to go places with; some are good for listening to each other's feelings; some i like to rant with about film and media; some i like to explore kink with; most i want to snooze with, many i want to see beside me when i wake up.
if you want to ask me about my relationship with any one of them, the best response is to tell you their name.
- what am i? i'm azurelore gwendolyn korrigan.
- what are we? we're [chosen name of friend] and azure.
- what do we do together? friend stuff, obviously.
- what's "friend stuff"? depends.
people aren't things to categorize. people are individuals, and important for who they are. the same goes for any connection between people, which (as steven universe observes) is its own entity with its own personality and boundaries and potential, different from any component.
i won't gender my relationships unless they ask me to do soβunless wearing a category helps them to feel whole and secure. otherwise, i feel like anyone who asks what a relationship is is asking the wrong questions, and is looking at the world through a deeply unfortunate lens.