I’m a Boy!

I am not transitioning. It’s a line from “The Sword in the Stone.” I feel that I must use that as the first sentence if I’m going to use a title like that, because the excerpt on Facebook will freak people out and they’ll start calling before reading further. How do I know this? April Fool’s jokes. In one, I said that I was transitioning. In the other, I said I was pregnant. Both were fairly believable- my girlfriend at the time of the pregnancy prank said “I watched you have a period for three months and I still fell for it.” Let’s just say my writing can be very descriptive.

The reason that this entry is so titled is that it came to me when I was reading over my past entries to kind of evaluate where I am. In “The Wheat and the Weeds,” I explored the idea that I’d fallen in love with my abuser’s inner child, and the equal relationship ended when that child grew up and I was still a plain old teenager. It reminded me of the scene where Merlin turns both himself and Arthur into squirrels, and the lady squirrels find them incredibly alluring. The lady squirrel is still clinging to Arthur when he turns back into a boy, and she’s devastated, slinking off into the trees.

I was clinging to her inner child when she suddenly turned into an adult. Comparing that to a literal illustration helped me to understand my grief in a new way. In a sense, that is coping with grief in a nutshell… learning to understand the things that need to change so that you can process your loss in a positive way. My abuser has affected my art since we met, which has always been this type medium whether it was letters, e-mails, or starting blogs. It’s been a positive outlook even when there was only an audience of one.

Part of grieving has been learning to turn away from e-mailing her anyway, even when I knew there would be no response. It was never about her. It was always about me. I thought I might never know what would make her understand, what words would strike some sort of chord, so I wouldn’t shut up. I’m sure my level of bandwidth was really intense, but at the same time, there was a lifelong precedence for it.

Losing that urge to connect with her was the creation of a broader audience. My art didn’t have to be kept secret anymore, because I stopped caring about her reaction to my grief, because there wouldn’t be an end to it if I didn’t. It was like my body and soul finally said, “enough” in so small and still a voice that I knew I had to listen to it before I got knocked down again.

So I don’t e-mail anymore. It’s been a very long time- since I started writing for this blog in a disciplined way, so about a year. I think part of the reason that I’m still recording memories is that I’m terrified to lose them. They’re a part of me now, from the worst moment to the best. I never realized how unconditionally I could love someone until I met her, and even more since I’ve started thinking, really thinking about how my actions have influenced her in ways that I’ll never know, and finally don’t need to.

I am a squirrel, and she is a boy. This blog is just what I think when I’m wandering in the trees.