Do you believe in fate/destiny?

What does deep and abiding joy feel like to you? I want you to feel mine, because yesterday a broken heart was sewn.

I sent Supergrover a message because I literally couldn’t think of anyone else because I was going through a thing she’d also gone through. I needed strength to go through this thing with another friend, and I’m sorry I can’t be specific. It’s just complicated and not my story to tell or own, which is why I’m not writing about it. Just my reaction to it.

For whatever reason, I broke her open like a coconut, and not only did she help me with my problems, she opened up about our relationship and told me what was really going on………….. which broke me open like a coconut.

She was exactly the velvet hammer I needed when I needed her the most. She’s the biggest badass I’ve ever known, and the most pragmatic. And then she gave me the sweet side of her, the one that’s open and vulnerable and has the same little girl reactions that I do. She was running because she was hurt. I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know she was hurt.

Because I never knew how much I meant to her. I only knew how much she meant to me. Our relationship will hopefully be strong and comfortable in 20 years, just as she said hopefully we’d be 10 years ago.

I am falling over with laughter…….

We’re halfway therrrrrrrrreeeee. WWWWWoooooooaaaah! Livin’ on a prayer………..

Even though she was fucking furious, she was honest to a fault, and as I told her, all I’ve ever really wanted from anyone- the truth, why and how.

She said that she predicted that my response would be angry, and my response was “this is the healthiest e-mail I’ve gotten from you in 10 years. You couldn’t make my day any better, because this morning was a shitshow and now I’m grinning like an idiot.” The reason I was so goddamn happy is that she opened up to me. She told me her side of the story, and hopefully she’ll realize she’s been as wrong as I have and we’ll move on from it.

I was so overwhelmed I shut down completely, because it’s not every day that you get everything you want handed to you on a silver platter….. and I’m bad at transitions. The reason I was in shutdown mode is that it was too much joy to take in all at once, and this is the first time in 10 years that I’ve felt this safe and secure with her. I hope that I can assure her of my feeling of safety and security so that she receives it as well.

Because we both knew it was our fate. Months ago, she said “no matter what happens, we’ll always have a past, present, and future.” We got to a place where it wasn’t good for either of us, but yesterday instead of attacking she joined me in cleaning up our toxic mess. It was glorious. Her letter made me cry so hard I couldn’t move, because I was so moved. It was the longest, most beautiful, most insightful thing she’s written in a very long time.

Even in her anger at me, the way she phrased it was so well-crafted that it made me feel like I can’t keep up with her. Sometimes I stare at her in wonder (her e-mail or her pic, occasionally), thinking “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Is there anything in the world I’m better at than you?” I know it’s true, and that’s what makes me crave her e-mails. Talking to her feels exactly like I felt the first day of 8th grade band…….. which I got into in 7th grade. When you meet better musicians than you, you tend to stick with them because they up your game.

Supergrover is the brain that ups my game instead of the low brass under me……. and yet, she’s my tuba, and I don’t mean that as a joke. Vocally, she’s the basso profundo of my life. Not the top of the chord, the note on which everything else is built.

I hope she at least knows that, both because of the love and work we share. Being able to say “we share” is the most amazing phrase I’ve ever been able to write on this blog. It’s a more important occasion in my life than the time Margaret Cho and Martina Navratilova retweeted me (they liked the marriage article, btw). Supergrover doesn’t say “I love you” in words. She does it by despite everything, still showing up. It may even be begrudgingly at times, but she’s fucking THERE.

She heard the distress in my voice, and she came right to me, just like I knew she would. What I did not expect is for her to explain her radio silence, essentially writing me a blog entry back.

It’s not that hard to imagine why I’d want to marry that, is it? Someone that opened up to me the way I open up here? Getting all the feelings back into our relationship is what turned the tide, because I told her that “my way is to work through things, and your way is to avoid or lightly move past things. The reason we’re joined at the spine is because our trauma is similar, but we have different reactions to it. We’ll deal with it the rest of our lives, and I’ll do it happily because I accepted her warts and all 15 minutes into our relationship. Or it seemed that way, anyway. That she could have however much of me she wanted, because I trusted her more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. She called me on some bullshit lies I was telling myself back in the day, that I was blaming myself for something that wasn’t my fault and I needed to stop seeing it that way.

It was all transference. I fell in love with my therapist because I’m queer and Will Hunting isn’t. The reason I trust her with my very life is that I’ve never had Robin Williams as a doctor.

And that’s the real story.