...but the wood is tired and the wood is old And we'll make it fine if the weather holds But if the weather holds we'll have missed the point. That's where I need to go......
Here’s what you need to know about Zac.
The journey I wouldn’t have taken led me to where I actually needed to go.
If you have to date someone, make sure it’s the kind who reads a blog entry about them trading off holding their dog’s leash and when you get to their house, say, “we should get a picture of you going up the hill because you’re holding Oliver’s leash.” My heart melted on the spot and I will never recover. He’s listening, perhaps a little too well. I’m not used to it, and small kindnesses enter an echo chamber as well. It’s not because I’m distorting them. It’s that the small things *are* the large things. He’s not threatened that I’m a writer and we’ve actually sat down to discuss those boundaries before anything pops up. So you’re free to know that yes, I’m dating a man ten years younger than me because I had no idea how old Zac was when I asked him out and being a cougar is an added bonus. In every lesbian’s life, there is a point at which they stop chasing cougars because they realize they are them. I will let your mind wander as to when I decided that was a real thing.
It was just too wholesome, and the whole weekend was allowing each other room to be us, without diminishing either. Most of our weekend was spent outside. There was this hike, but he also has an Olympic-sized neighborhood pool that looks a lot like the one where I took a picture of Human Oliver. We had access to grills and a griddle, and we took sausages both days. One had a central American vibe, like jack cheese and peppers. The other one was loaded baked potato, and I have never had anything like it. The texture was incredible. I cannot see myself as being so interested in sausage that I actually bought the stuff to make it, but there wouldn’t be another sausage I did make that didn’t have mashed potatoes in the recipe somewhere.
I had my new favorite drink this weekend, a non-alcoholic beer called “Chelada Nada” by Athletic. The black pepper and lime go as hard as alcohol, so you’re not missing the bite. Chelada is basically Bloody Mary Mix and beer, so if you didn’t “grow up” on it, kind of an acquired taste. Very, very popular in northern Mexico/southern Texas.
That was the other funny part. I ate a HUGE meal before I got on the train because last time my downfall was being handed alcohol on an empty stomach. Then, I had several beers and the NA Chelada beat the pants off all of them. It appeals to my little cook heart, because how in the fuck did Athletic do it? Seriously? I am ACTUALLY looking forward to your letters on this one as opposed to using a line Craig Ferguson said on The Late Late Show almost every night during its entire run.
We also spent time on the back deck just talking, sometimes sitting in the hot tub, sometimes sitting at the table with all our vices sat between us.
Life happened while we were doing something else.
Life taught me how to stop with all that lesbian shit, and I don’t mean that nearly as horribly as it sounds. Not everything has to have a conversation or processing about something. Part of it is that our relationship is not heavy. Part of it is that women are generally much more into talking about feelings. With Zac, I’m not all up in my head unless we’re doing our own thing.
It’s funny that we’ve had the same trauma dump you start in the beginning of every relationship because we’re getting to know each other……………… we’re just not handling it the way two women would do. When I am listening to Zac, I am not hearing a monologue of “how does this affect me?” My opinion of myself is not going up and down when he talks. I am not holding back information because I’m not sure of his reaction, or going to the other extreme and saying too much. We both have moments of expounding, and both allow for it.
I don’t want to marry Zac, but he let me know that marrying a man is possible. It’s not that I wasn’t bisexual, it’s just been the wrong situation. It has also been a journey. I’m not the same person I was when I was 25. Bisexuality does not always refer to having two partners, although some people construe it to be that. No, it’s that when you look over your entire life, you are probably bisexual. There is no such thing as an ex-gay. There are only bisexuals with people they trusted. Bisexuality is not my Sam Axe/Chuck Finley. It’s why I will never date another straight man, even if they were a person of color. It’s not the same.
Even if my husband and I were completely monogamous and had heterosexual privilege, the memories of bullying remain. We have the same reflexes. I still look around to see who’s watching before I kiss him. WHY WOULD I DO THAT?
Realizing that little tidbit was a fucking treat. It’s a trauma reflex. Zac understands that when he’s really affectionate in public, it is pushing the needle too far at times. I want to be moved in the right direction, but at my own pace. That’s because he’s had to look around to see who was watching to protect his physical safety as well. A straight man would not empathize to the level a queer one could, possibly treating me as if I were stupid or frigid.
The novelty of me dating a man as an idea has not gone away. It truly makes me laugh because I’m not their type and I don’t even know them. The reverse is also true. They’re not my type right up until they are. It just took a long time to find bisexuality as an identity because thoughts of men were so passing. They didn’t register because they didn’t have to, and I’ve missed a lot of messages in the middle of the mess.
I grew to accept more, and when I did, Zac rose to meet me………
If the weather had held, I would not be here in this moment. I am taking a moment to say a silent prayer to the storm.
What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?
I’ve actually put enough into Skyrim to enjoy it. I’m not the gamer in my family, my brother-in-law is. I started with Fallout 3 on a whim, and Skyrim is made by the same company. The gameplay is fun, but what makes it so enormous it’s hard to take in is the story and the score.
Oh my God. The score. I could listen to the Skyrim soundtrack for 12 hours straight, and other people agree with me because there are 12 hour Youtube videos that play it for background noise.
Skyrim also takes place in the equivalent of Scandinavia, and it’s fascinating learning how the gamers portray characters living in that amount of snow. Even the architecture changes as you go, and you can spend thousands of dollars on graphics cards and mods to make Skyrim look like you’re literally walking through it. Just photorealistic. The great part is that even the vanilla game is gorgeous. You just have to tweak it to run on Windows 10/11. That’s actually the hardest part…. being able to sort through all the memory managers to find one that works.
My character is a wood elf, because they’re archers and it boosts my natural ability there. She has gray hair in a short asymetrical haircut, purple makeup accents, and purple war paint. I wear Orcish armor not because it’s the best you can get. It’s the sharpest I can dress.
I set it on stupid easy level because the story and puzzles are the best part. Killing things gets repetitive and doesn’t move anything forward. I have also added a ton of mods that extend the storyline and let you collect cool things so that the game is less about fighting overall. In fact, I use an alternate start so I can go to Windhelm first and book it to Solstheim. That way, I can get the first Black Book, and the power that allows your companion to stand in your wake and not get hurt. This has been the theme of my life, finding that particular enchantment. I also enjoy wielding Bloodskaal Blade because of the energy that pulses through it. Then, I go on the quest to get the warhammer with the chaos damage enchantment…. mostly because it’s fun to destroy it and enchant a bow. Arrows are so much cooler when they also shock, burn, or freeze the victim.
Those three things set me up for the rest of the game. You’ll be ridiculously overpowered and one shot kills are really fun, particularly at long range. As ESO would say, “get wrecked, sir.” I also make a point to collect everything in the game at one point or another because there’s a spectacular mod called Legacy of the Dragonborn where you become an employee of a museum dedicated to yourself. It’s ridiculous and also makes sense in the context of the story. So, the game is more balanced that way because I’m not willing to be the bad guy without significant reward. Checking items off that list is crack.
My favorite storyline starts out with becoming a thief, because I had to set beehives on fire and get out before anyone noticed. It’s fun being able to test your smarts at deception without your life depending on it. I am not Jack Ryan, but I will never admit it.
In the vanilla game, my favorite player home is a toss-up. I have bought all of them except Hjerim. Windhelm sucks as a place to live because the people are coded as particularly hostile even though you’ve just saved their lives. So, obviously I work for the government.
Ironic because I think that’s actually the house I’d love the most. The best thing about the vanilla houses is that everything works. There’s not going to be a glitch where if it says a relic can be put there, it will hang upside down or something.
The mods make it where you can store everything you collect, so I also like my safehouse in the museum.
That’s because in addition to tools like a forge and a workbench, I have archaeology tools there as well. If I want to display something in my home, I can make a fake. That way, I still have all my stuff and the museum fills up simultaneously.
I love that Skyrim feels so pristine and beautiful even though my computer was top of the line in 2014-15. I didn’t have to spend more than $60 for a graphics card that would play the hell out of it. I am sure that if I’d beefed up the graphics card more, I could play more recent games. But I haven’t played Skyrim enough to see all of it and I finish one story before moving on. I don’t really have time to game, so I don’t until I’m truly out of things to do.
Explaining my level of gaming is important because I don’t want people to assume that if they’re in a relationship with me, that means they need to know gaming is a huge part of my life. I play Skyrim when there’s nothing good on TV. It’ll keep.
Being able to Shout is a tremendous power, and something we don’t do nearly enough in our daily lives. We just have to manage how worthy the target is of that shout. If you don’t address something, it shows where your priorities lie. We’re responsible for telling you we’d like something to be higher priority, because if we’ve never expressed a need we’ve become part of the problem (that was Bryn’s idea). Whether you care about the outcome should mean less, because you’re not responsible for what someone else does, says, or understands.
In Skyrim, this shows up in aggression towards other characters. You absolutely get to decide how much shit you’re going to take from people and damn the consequences. What you have to decide is who is worthy when they state their own boundaries in return, and notice when they aren’t being set.
In short, if you kill undead soldiers long enough, you realize that everything and everyone is a spectrum. You have perspective on what matters. You will accept consequences from your partners, family, and friends. That’s because you can’t be vulnerable to the whole world. Protecting your energy enough so that you can fly under your own power is key. Getting too spread out is enormously frustrating. I am an empath fixer/pleaser, which makes me even more likely to shoot someone in the face to deal with my wallflower nature. I do the same things that other people do when I play violent video games and listen to rap. It’s just to blow off some steam. I can let them be angry enough for both of us. I can also let my character be braver and more dedicated than I am and let my character rise to meet theirs.
The more I write about myself, when I get some distance from a situation I actually love my character here, and I’m not saying that because I think of myself as fiction. It’s that to you, my audience, I am fictional because you live in India and I don’t. You’re falling in love with a story, not a person.
It is not lost on me that a huge part of falling for my beautiful girl was reading my own blog entries when I wanted to spend time with her while she was away. I didn’t just fall for the person she was, I fell for the person I made her in my mind and poured onto the page.
It is not unlike what I would do in a video game. I create a character, and then I read good or bad depending on the decisions I’ve made in my past.
My beautiful girl is not Supergrover, they’re the words I would use to describe her, and the actions I would have taken to make a future that had room for both of us. I am writing down everything I didn’t get that I wanted, not to guilt, goad, and provoke but to be able to come back later and read the story of what happened….. like all moms and sisters read baby books.
Trying to find the child in everyone is the only way to improve relationships. We all need to be sensitive to the fact that we are still the people we were in first grade, covered up by an enormous amount of scar tissue. If you take the time to reclaim your inner child and work from that place of vulnerability, your reactions will go back to what they once were…. when the troubles of the world seemed so small because you didn’t have to adult so hard.
Skyrim is a way to find out what that inner child really wants, and can choose all of it. It’s a do over for your life if you follow the story that way. You can choose to be a villain, but you also have to live with it. Living with those consequences isn’t the flex you think it is.
Yesterday’s entry broke me.
I sobbed all the way through writing it, and made myself cry several times on the train while I was reading it. Such a beautiful goodbye and “peace be with you” that even if nothing more happens, something did.
If I’d been at home, I would have played Skyrim to stop the tears. As it so happens, it was date night with Zac. We had the best conversation I’ve ever had about my blog tied only with my conversation with Bryn. I’d already been crying over my writing earlier, and Zac isn’t a fan yet. He’s said that he needs to be a die hard because it’s important to me, and yet it’s not. I am perfectly happy for him to be a fan, but I also love having someone who is oblivious because they haven’t already read what I wrote today so my conversation is fucking boring and they don’t know how to tell me. That’s my own interpretation, but it is not untrue because I can read microexpressions so easily.
He said something interesting, because he summed up everything I believe. He said, “if you come after me, I know you’ll only go after the parts of our relationship that are bad. You’re not going to come for me professionally because you know what I do.” I have not let myself get close enough to Zac to have bad parts of our relationship, therefore it was a very theoretical conversation. It’s not that I don’t trust him. It’s that I don’t trust me. I don’t trust me not to become lost in him, and to a certain degree giving up my drive to do and be more. It’s not that I would fall so in love I was blind. It’s that my personality is dedicated to helping someone understand themselves, and I would be so busy doing that because it affects my life directly that my audience might dwindle. As a person writing a book I hope to *sell,* that is a very bad thing.
One of the reasons I post so much is that it’s the best way I know to heal myself. I cannot speak for others, I can only let them read my experiences and decide if they want what I have. I’m offering peace for people who’ve been through a lot. I’m showing you how to get there because as I get happier, my writing does. Light begets light.
My only job in life was protecting Paarthurnax, and I found out that sometimes I’m Alduin. However, I would not have learned to accept the angel and the demon I am as one being without them.
What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?
I am a soprano, but I like being an alto or a tenor. Diva is not my personality, although I was an accessory. Thatโs kind of my jam. Iโm not the star, Iโm the ghost writer. The reason I say that I am a soprano is that I donโt pick parts in choir, and the conductor never picks me for anything other than high As if they can help it. If there is a hell, my sentence will be the soprano part to Handelโs Messiah. Just hold it til you turn purple.
I actually donโt struggle that much with high notes, because I had a voice teacher that unlocked them for me. In fact, check out THIS SHIT. He increased my range from a high A to a high E flat. I am not a diva, but I do have tiny, tiny moments of it. The worst time Iโve ever been butt hurt by another soprano (aforementioned opera singer, so you know it damn near killed me) was when she said, โI think sheโs an alto.โ Thatโs because I knew she was trying to get me moved away from her because people were starting to talk.
Speaking of having an affair under everyoneโs noses, we were. It was just asexual. It was confusing wondering whether weโd ever sleep together, but like I have said before, I didnโt need to be romantic with her to struggle with what real love is. I didnโt have lust. I was like every woman in America. If you need me platonically, if weโre interested in you weโll give you everything.
Hereโs where that stops.
I have never in my lifetime been this strong in the beginning of a relationship because it sets the tone for the rest of it. If I donโt state my boundaries, heโll step all over them. He told me he wanted to marry me. Weโve been talking for a week and a half at most.
Now, heโs butt hurt because the story heโs been telling himself is that it was love at first sight for both of us. How interested could I possibly be? Zac and Bryn are all I need. I donโt have time for much more than that if you are not here in front of my face. As I told him, โthat doesnโt mean pack up and move. It means that the Internet doesnโt get all of my time.โ
Shut it. Snitches get stitches.
Thatโs all Iโve got for today. I just wanted to say for the record that boss ass bitches cure you of almost everything. Mine did.
I need music to flow like water around me. I love the word โsoundscape.โ I love how composers and writers make love to each other, birthing individual creativity that feeds the other.
Probably one of the reasons the partners Iโve had havenโt been creative (except Dana). I thought it was a good thing that we were so different, because we were feeding each other. Now, I realize that nearly every relationship Iโve ever had with a woman became based over time on division of labor. Theyโll do all the thinking if Iโll do all the feeling.
I was comfortable with my beautiful girlโs availability because it was no different than any relationship Iโd ever been in with a woman except the relationship I was currently in. That does not mean I choose wrong, or that Iโm a bad person for not getting rid of the Internet relationship. Thereโs several reasons I couldnโt do that, and even when I realized it was necessary, it was too late.
I canโt remember which entry I was reading where it became clear, but I know for sure that I am trauma bonded to this woman and perhaps it just didnโt present for her in the same way. Thatโs fine, and I donโt expect anyone to have my experience. I was just reading over what Iโd written when it hit meโฆ.. โthatโs a trauma bond.โ You need her so bad it physically hurts? Thatโs a symptom.
If she doesnโt have an itch on her skin when she thinks about disconnecting from me, then of course we are not the same. I wish Iโd thought about that years ago. I should state for the record that I am not saying she caused trauma. Itโs the opposite. She came into my life while I was experiencing acute trauma, and sat next to me while I took my own medication. No one who sat with me at that time isnโt bonded to me in that way, itโs just not as extremely loud and incredibly close.
I think the itch on my skin is thinking that I am too incomplete within myself to do life without her, but thatโs my trauma talking, not my personality. Even she would be surprised to see how vulnerable I really am, because I donโt write from that place often. It never left my mind that sheโs older and wiser, so be on your A game. Seeing her as younger comes from getting to know her inner voice. I care for that child as much as I care for that adult.
I betrayed everything I believed in because my disease started managing me. I donโt think I came back to myself until I moved to DC and had been here long enough to feel stable. I had to get away from Dana, and I had to get away from Houston. Our relationship looked so much different without those two things, and I was grateful. This is because I moved to Houston with Dana because she wanted to teach, but then when we got there, she didnโt do anything until she had to.
So I was managing my career and all kinds of PTSD triggers everywhere I went. It was unsustainable, especially the day when I learned that my new therapistโs office was a couple streets over fromโฆ. That house.
Getting out of Houston so that I could be myself again might also have been the answer to saving my relationship with Dana, but I donโt think anything could have done that. We got into a pattern where sheโd check out on her phone, Iโd decide she wasnโt interested in interacting, and e-mail my Supergrover. It wasnโt a big series of fights, just more that when we each looked up, the other was busy, so we assumed we could just keep on doing what we were doing. We woke up months later and didnโt have much of a connection anymore. The reason that a straight girl did not and could not have had any culpability in this is that if Dana and I had made more time to be emotionally available to each other, we would have been okay. We just stopped communicating.
Just because Dana was jealous didnโt mean anything my beautiful girl did to contribute had purpose. Dana chose to get angry at the wrong woman.
Actually, she forgot to get mad at two women. She should have destroyed me, and also herselfโฆ. Because I am betting that she does not think of herself as checking out and not caring, and how that might affect my relationship with her.
Because if I tried to engage her and it took more than a few minutes to get her to engage, I gave up. Maybe it was too fast, but I donโt have patience for saying โjust five more minutesโ when it comes to a video game and I am offering to take off your clothes.
Gay or straight, Supergrover whooped Danaโs ass, and hereโs how she did it. Dana didnโt start acting like I had serious value until Supergrover noticed I was brilliant.
So, everyone can think Iโm the bad guy until Iโm dead. I donโt care. But the relationship started to fail before I shot it out of its misery.
In a perfect world, I would have seen another woman looking at my brilliance and thought, โoh, thatโs sweet.โ Itโs not a perfect world, and sheโs hot as shitโฆ. Therefore I lost mine.
I was the one that tumbled out of reality, because at that time in my life, reality bit (if youโre my age, you wore out that disc. Itโs probably scratched to shit yet still in your parentsโ basement somewhere).
I just wish that Iโd used music to help me more than I did. I wish I could have drowned out both women so that I could hear me more clearly. Perhaps my need would have been filled by something healthier, cleaner.
Music definitely would have helped me move on for good, but even that was confusing because I did have a relationship with my beautiful girl. Tenuous, but there. It was a note that grew up to be a symphony, because I love dissonance in the right chords.
Too much had happened for either one of us to feel the same way about each other without work, and we decided for whatever reason that this was a conflict that could be solved by writing. In retrospect, it made things more complicated because neither one of us can read when it comes to the subject matter. How would our conversations be different had she ever put her arm around me? How would kissing each otherโs cheeks and hugging tight have mixed up the equation? I go back and forth.
Itโs not something I think about a lot, because itโs pointless except in determining that I donโt know as much as I thought I did. Itโs just not possible for each of us to feel as much fear in person, because thereโs more to grab onto in terms of context.
Because of what has happened, I am wary of online dating, because I know what a shit show it has become. Iโm getting a taste of my own medicine in terms of not being able to deal with othersโ emotions, because a guy who randomly reached out to me now thinks we are in a much heavier relationship than I do. I just tell him everything sheโs told me and surprise, it works. So obviously I know that we were not on the same page and she was trying to fix it as well. Our approaches were just so different that they prevented us from seeing what the other was doing or even understanding it.
But itโs not the same situation. I did just meet this guy out of nowhere, and he started acting enamored after a couple of conversations that had legit nothing to them. Nothing was said that could have created a trauma bond, because I donโt talk to anyone about that unless Iโm writing on my web site. I feel like people get enough of my problems if theyโre fans, so I wonโt talk about my issues unless people askโฆ.. or with Zac, Iโll just ramble around until he finds a point. ๐
I am finding out that being bisexual has nothing to do with sex at all, ever. I have learned that I have dated few men not because Iโm not wired that way, but because men legitimately have no clue about what women go through societally and are so damn condescending about it that some dude will say two things wrong and Iโm like โblock.โ
To be fair, I havenโt specifically started seeking out men or women. I just connect with people. However, I notice how Iโm being treated and overall, men treat me like Iโm little and cute. Boy, I will fuck you up. Respect me as such.
Itโs because men arenโt looking at me like Iโm half a husband, and it is their downfall. I will never be โthe little woman.โ I donโt understand most social constructs and step all over them, so expecting that I already understand everything about male/female relationships is a mistake on both our parts.
When a trauma bond snaps, it feels like quitting caffeine cold turkey and then having to deal with the headaches. So, thatโs a lot of fun as I negotiate being a new person. Itโs why I feel like Iโm not good at dating. I go out and Iโm not focusing on them, but about how long itโs been since I had at least a goddamn Diet Coke. My body doesnโt feel right, and the one friend thatโs always been there for me has taken a back seatโฆ. When music could have handled the detox on its own. Music and I have been together since I was born.
My mother was a classically trained pianist with a degree in piano performance and pedagogy. My father played both classical and jazz trumpet, getting 26 full rides for college. Curtis, Juilliard, Oberlin, you name it.
I am what happens with โthe Mozart effect,โ but Iโm not sure whether thatโs a ringing endorsement.
Music has a way of focusing me that other things donโt, and Iโm going to have to make a Supergrover playlist as well, because the music I needed to get rid of romantic feelings isnโt the music I need to feel calm. Iโll start with the color green. She reminds me of new life, new growth, new everything and the music should reflect it. Iโll have to go through my music apps, but it should start with something like โSheep May Safely Grazeโ yet not exactly that because Iโd be whistling it 24/7.
I just need things that are mathematically complicated in a major key.
Actually, that would be a good tagline for her, if there was one. Never have I met anyone with such a range of emotions that centered on light, often shining it into my darkness while I cleaned up. It was easier because I could see.
I listen to classical music a lot while Iโm doing other things, because it relaxes my ADHD mind to have at least one plug filled. One less way for another stream of thought to interrupt.
Thatโs how I think meeting in person would have helped. Talking would have avoided all the traps of going down the wrong road too far before having to figure out an exit strategy, which as you can see is going really well. Obviously Iโm not bothered by the situation because I never write about it. Eyeroll.
The writing prompt today reminded me just how much I cannot separate the music of my life from life itself. I am put together with blood and bones and skin, and yet that doesnโt mean musicโs contribution isnโt there. Music is the invisible fourth wall providing structureโฆ. So thick you donโt even have to have a stud finder. Just decorate it up, itโll hold. Like concrete, music drips like water into all your softest places and hardens. Music that moves you will call you to you forever, and not everyone is attuned to your beat.
To turn that back on me, my rhythm changed and I didnโt realize how different it had become. I was a basic 4/4, with a new composer who only knew how to write time signatures by subbing in random numbers. Today, itโs a waltz. Tomorrow, itโs a march. Tuesday is experimental jazz odyssey.
I am living my life with the map on the table, knowing thereโs no way to fit it back into the package.
Which ultimately leads me to my favorite song in life, and a story about my ex wife. I thought it was hilarious that the Indigo Girls were on tour, and Kathleen was late to the concertโฆโฆ.for the โGET OUT THE MAPโ tourโฆโฆ.. ๐ ๐ ๐
The thing that stays with me from the first time I heard it until now is โIโm going to love you good and strong while our love is good and young.โ The hope for that love is eternal, knowing a piece of it is in me. I can stop the itch on my skin, I can go back to my life, I can move on. But thereโs never going to be a moment in my life that is bigger than โyou think Iโm smart? You? Really? Are you sure?โ
One off the reasons that my beautiful girl destroyed me is that we affected each other with our secrets to an absolutely enormous degree, so over time sheโd forgotten how deep our rabbit hole went. We went deep enough that in order for me to move on, we needed to start managing practical consequences and she told me she wasnโt interested. What didnโt mean anything to her might have ruined me for anyone else in terms of priority, and she didnโt think of that, I guarantee it. Iโd met โThe Oneโ in a very roundabout way, because it wasnโt an affair I had to manage. It was off the wall feelings on both sides. She had to protect what I knew and vice versa. It was mutually assured destruction because she asked me to forget an impossible amount of shit.
I thought it was better to love each other through it, she thought it was better to tell me that I thought she was a bad person. That was never an issue, ever. At issue was โif youโre going to tell me something like this, love me the way I love you. I wonโt accept less.โ It wasnโt that I was goading and provoking. I had a genuine issue in talking about an issue because she had a genuine talent in avoidance.
I shouldnโt have settled, and I didnโt. But weโre still managing each otherโs secrets and lies without our refuge in the cloud. It would never be worth that kind of devotion without that kind of love. I do have to forget, and not because I wanted to. Because she thought I couldnโt handle it. I could, as long as she could take it as easily as she could dish.
Thatโs what ruined our relationship. If I said something negative, sheโd rip me a new one. If I said something positive, Iโd never hear from her. My emotions frightened her, always, and they should have. She helped make them that intense without recognizing me, ever, so whether she appreciated my willingness to be hers or not, it was a stone cold fact.
If I say I would have done anything for her, I mean it. I got brownie points for an e-mail about busting my ass at her house after a storm, because we live close enough that it wouldnโt be a weird offer at all. It would have been a weird offer from Houston or Portland, but the move was a coincidence because I didnโt want to just pick up and start over in a new city, and I lived here 20 years ago from the time I made the decision to move back. If Minneapolis had been my hometown, I would have moved there. The first is that because our relationship was virtual, we could be anywhere. The second is that planes exist. I would have eaten it up if sheโd come to Portland or Houston. I would have shown her on a platonic date in either city, and I only say that because thatโs what it would look like now. In the beginning, we could have been a threesome if Dana hadnโt decided to be jealous. Polyamory is a thing, not that Iโm necessarily that in practice, but if I hadnโt been so wrapped up in new relationship energy, I think she would have easily forgiven me and I would have gotten over it and the negative aspects of our relationship would have smoothed over in time.
New relationship energy ate my lunch because it was so different for me and so normal for her. Getting into a relationship with her hits different and because sheโs already her, sheโs not so aware of it.
I took a risk in getting close to The War Daniel, and it paid off in spades. Yes, I went through so much, but I am hugely capable of dealing with things so it never felt like a burden. I know I came across as harsh, but thatโs because I wasnโt holding him while we talked. I hope he understands, even if we never reconcile, how much he changed my life for the better just by having the courage to ask me to marry himโฆ because it showed that he was dreaming of a better life down the road as well. I want nothing more out of him than that; I want him to find his best life, even if Iโm not involved. I want him to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs or a war journalism professor or a lazy bum on a beach in a country where you can live on $20 and a coupon for frozen yogurt.
I just want him to live like he means it, because thatโs what I want for myself. To free myself of the bonds that make me think the world is better off without me. The War Daniel and I have both gotten close, and itโs an institutional memory of what we hate most about ourselves, because it matches up so closely. I spoke the other day about my conversations being tough on anyone who doesnโt live on my โIsland of Misfit Toys,โ and Daniel knew enough right off the bat he bought a house.
Can you see what that means to me? Out of all the people in the world that could have picked me, he did. He knew every single thing he needed to know and nothing frightened him, because if Iโd been through it, so had heโฆ. Just from vastly different perspective. In fact, the only thing that gave me pause before I said yes was wondering why a Doc of that magnitude was even interested in me. Who even am I next to all that?
I empathized with his problems to the point of not being able to move at all. My mirror neurons were constantly overloaded, and it was because we were having the same experience. I was awed with him because I felt worthless, and vice versa. Neither one of us believed we truly deserved each other, and it showed quickly. However, I wonโt ever believe that heโs not the perfect match for me, because we have just enough in common and just enough difference to change lives just by being us. We change each other all the time.
Cora is part of my story now, and in some sense, we are raising a child together. This is because my mother love kicked in the moment she realized she wanted thatโฆ a queer mom to help her translate her feelings so that her parents could hear her better. To teach them queer history so that they knew what our triggers were so that at least when they hit them, theyโd know enough to apologize. I needed us to be one big happy family, three parents and a child, because I canโt think of a child that needs it more than Cora.
I cannot underestimate how much danger I feel she is in, both with Texas laws and attitudes toward trans women in particular, and to get even more granular, if white trans women have it bad, the darker your skin gets, the worse the crime statistics. Everything in that regard is par for the course.
When she told me how bad it was down there, my first reaction was โI want you to move in with me. Can we make that happen? I donโt even know if I can make that happen, but we can work on it together.โ
She told me that sheโd be open to it, and that sheโs wanted it since I said it. Whether The War Daniel is an active participant or an NPC is of no consequence. They can walk away from me, but I will never in my lifetime walk away from her. That is my daughter out there, and I dare you to prove itโs not true. The only evidence you donโt have is DNA. Good luck. God bless.
So now I need to start researching the best place for us. If it was a cheap city, ideally it would have enough room for both her parents to visit, together or separately. Itโs not that I have my hopes up, itโs just that if you commit to a kid, their whole famn damily comes with them. It doesnโt matter how they react to me, because I can only control what Iโm putting out. So, The War Daniel is free to tell me he made a mistake and free to move on all in one breath, because I canโt care about him anymore. I need to care about her.
I have entirely pure motives because I canโt afford to be wrong on this one. I cannot live with a world in which I do not do everything I can to convince Daniel to get her the fuck out of NE Texas. I left because I got tired of fighting the system. I needed to live with other grown-ups.
So do I regret opening my heart so quickly to Daniel? Absolutelyfuckingnot. I got the best relationship of my life out of it. I just canโt be the only one getting up in the middle of the night when the baby is telling us she needs help. My best hope is that he does choose me again, for all sorts of reasons, a lot of them practical. I had to let go of wanting a man I couldnโt have because all of this is bigger than me. But that doesnโt mean I am counting on it. That would be insane. I want to be wanted, and a campaign for anything else is beneath me.
I think the biggest reason Iโm loud on the Internet where it comes to Daniel is that he knows itโs here. He can look it up. He can see that he is wanted, loved, and cherished even when he irritates the shit out of me. He struggles with feelings of inadequacy, too, so more than anything I want him to know that I love him despite his flaws and failures because he loved me in that same extraordinary way. There were also so many callbacks to our childhood that we could pass on to Cora, and itโs not as fun doing it without it being a tennis match.
I took a big swing, and Iโll hit home plate one way or another. I can support Cora from a distance or she can live with me, but thereโs not a person alive who, if they had a chance to get a trans kid out of Texas, wouldnโt.
Hereโs the link to the audio. You might have to download it into your own media player or the Mega app. SoundCloud wants me to pay because I โupload a lot,โ and I get it. I just didnโt know the space limit was so incredibly low. Iโm searching around for options, and most of them rely on using my desktop, of which I am not a fanโฆ mostly because Iโm not really using SoudCloud to increase the popularity of my blog. The audio is just a convenience.
High school is divided up for me in two segments. The first is that I spent my freshman and sophomore years at High School for Performing and Visual Arts as a trumpet player. The second is that my junior and senior years, I didnโt. I went to a regular American high school. I was still in the music program, though. My junior year I was in varsity choir and varsity band at the same time, the first in the history of the school to do so. I learned how to be in a marching band. My symphonic band was better than the one at โPVA (no judgment, itโs just true).
Then, my counselor suggested that I drop one of my music classes because if I took Microcomputer Applications, I could get what was called an โAdvanced Diploma.โ The band was gearing up to go on all these trips my family couldnโt afford, and it was an easy out to drop band because I knew I couldnโt sell enough fertilizer to pay my own way. Yes. Really. They asked us to sell shit to people.
I dropped choir because I didnโt like the new director coming in, because I knew other people that had her and it wasnโt my bag. I was not a โshow choirโ person. I do not think that if you can sing, you should automatically be capable of dance as well. I liked great repertory, and pop music wasnโt it (for me). If that sounds persnickety for a teenager, remember that I was a classically trained singer from being in an adult church choir since I was 13.
I didnโt care about Britney Spears. I loved Bach and it showed.
For the record, I care about Britney as a listener. Sheโs great. I just wouldnโt sing her stuff unless I was doing it as a joke, because I couldnโt pull it off where people would take it seriously. Itโs a totally different type of training.
I think Iโve said before that Beyoncรฉ left HSPVA because she didnโt want to be classically trained, and that I continue to be devastated that it did not work out for her. But same vibe, weโre just opposite. She didnโt want to learn everything Iโd been taught about being able to blend into a choir, breath control specific to that kind of music, etc. Itโs a lot. By the same token, I didnโt want to learn the proper breath control to sing whatever it is the Star Spangled Banner is now in professional football. Whitney Houston doing it in four was the high point. ::looks pointedly at other pop stars:: No one will ever be her, and I knew that Iโd only be a cheap imitation. I donโt want that for me, or anyone else. Do what you do and make it count.
Since my dad had left the church, I also got a job in hopes of getting my own spending money. I was 16, so no one thought anything of screwing me over to save themselves, like making me pay things back when I was short on the register when theyโd been stealing from the drawer. Iโm bad at math, so of course it was all my fault when the drawer was missing $50 at the end of the night. Of course it should come out of my paycheck. Itโs what a teenager owes a national corporation, right?
I would never sue them over lost wages, but I would get a kick out of it if they sent me a product and swag box if someone is reading who thinks such a thing could happen at the company. I once proposed to Zyrtec on Twitter and told them they were paying. Then, they later kidded me about forgetting our anniversary and I said, โhow do you think I feel? You didnโt get me anything.โ The proposal rocked, thoughโฆ.. that I had 99 problems but a itch ainโt one.
I worked for SuperCuts, and in this instance I am not talking about the company. I am talking about the sleight of hand with my own team, not every employee who ever worked there. I mean, I was great at my job in retrospect. They had me, so youโre definitely safe in giving them as much money as you want. I still look back on my time as magical because things that are commonplace today were introduced while I was an employee, most notably, American Crew (for which I am gratefulโฆ white people pomade). I think the Paul Mitchell Tea Tree line came out then, too, a total game changer. It was also amazing learning the jargon of how to tell people I want my hair cut so that thereโs less room for a mistake.
It doesnโt always work, but it helps.
By the time I graduated from high school, I had set myself up for life in terms of my opinions on everything that is still true about me today. The only thing thatโs changed is that I call myself out as I am, bisexual, instead of telling the world Iโm a lesbian while not thinking that way, because that label wasnโt something I gave myself. I just have to be louder about being bisexual in a heterosexual relationship than I would if I was actively partnered with a woman, because you can see it with every kiss.
The one thing I didnโt see coming that I didnโt know I needed was dating a bisexual man. That way, we still have all the same cultural references, though Iโm older and have more insurance. He doesnโt care whether I look high femme or butch because in one outing, weโd look depressingly heterosexual and in another, itโs a whole bear/twink mood without all the lights, drum & bass, and Ecstasy.
To stop joking, weโve both been bullied for being queer. That trauma for him is a different playing field, because mine is rooted in embarrassment. Iโm either gross and wrong or a plaything given to men, because why wouldnโt women being with women be nothing but a male fantasy? Why would women have agency in this society? Straight women donโt even have it.
Men harass me by seeing me with my then-wife (Kat, in this example) and asking us to kiss in front of them, or come home with us, or any number of things that hurt way more than they would have if it was original. Those examples arenโt all Kat, when it was 2000, or even Meag, when it was 1996. Itโs all picking at the same scar every day of my life, because I heard about it before I experienced it. Being an empath made me experience that trauma before it was direct. I felt it on my skin when it happened to my friends.
For men, itโs horrible that they want to be female, their tormentorsโ perception and not realityโฆ.. but seriouslyโฆ. As if being female was the worst thing that could happen to a personโฆโฆ helloโฆ. All connected. Except men donโt stop with horrible comments with other men. It often leads to outright violence and death. I only say this because it happens to men more frequently, but violence against lesbians exists.
Itโs a shared understanding, a shared library of images that create empathy. To me, it is especially important because the one thing I really hated about dating Matthew had nothing to do with him at all. It was gaining heterosexual privilege for the first time and rebelling against it hardcore. I remember one instance weโd gone to meet some of his friends, and someone did that thing where they looked around before they told a gay joke, and I wasnโt the picture of volatility you see here.
I said nothing, and just felt all of it. I know now that I should have ripped the dude a new one, but I didnโt want to upset the apple cart when I was meeting my boyโs friends the very first time. I was also like, 24, maybe 25. I was older than Matt, but still a child in my eyes now. I didnโt know what to do, and I was scared.
So now I can look at that and say Iโm in a better place because Zac has probably been there. Heโs just as out and proud as me. On Wednesday, I noticed right off that his nails were painted teal and he was wearing flowy pants. Heโs the head of the queer group at his intelligence agency. I donโt know how he sees himself, but I see him as George Smiley if he had grown up like us. (Smiley is the protagonist in John Le Carreโs most famous series about MI-6.) I showed up in a black t-shirt, jeans, and tie-dyed pattern Crocs. I later put on a navy hoodie and my CIA baseball cap- some of you will remember that was a gift from Zac because he has the badge that allows you into Langley, but not the capability to escort visitors. I wear it almost every day like Iโm pitching the afternoon game. Now do you see how weโve inverted the binary? From the outside, Iโm the butch and heโs the femmeโฆ. And no one would ever guess that we were into each other unless we werenโt holding hands or being cute to the point of nausea (our MO most of the time).
Editorโs Note: I learned that it was important on the train Thursday, when a young girl at the Franconia Springfield Metro said, โI want to be CIA, too.โ I told her that I wasnโt CIA, I just had cool friends, and to call me when she got there. ๐
โGrown up like usโ is emotional shorthand for Zac and I having to deal with the perils of being queer from a very, very young age. Zac entered the military under โDonโt Ask, Donโt Tell.โ At the same time, Iโm not dating a gay man and heโs not dating a lesbian just for kicks. Weโre not playing at anything, just being the most authentic versions of ourselves.
I have always been that in some capacity, but I have graduated. You donโt learn that you are brave and unique until someone tells you. In the moment, youโre just doing what you have to do to survive.
In high school, I learned that I would HAVE TO be unique.
My freshman year, I told one person I was gay and by the end of the day, everyone knew. In retrospect, it was the best decision I ever made, because any bullying that came my way was tiresome. They couldnโt blackmail me anymore, and they couldnโt get away with anything more original because they werenโt that clever.
Because I was moving out of the gay neighborhood in Houston to a suburb where everyone knew each other, I went back in the closetโฆ. To save my fatherโs job according to my mother. My father didnโt care. He knew me. Weโd met. But guess which message I heard?
Being in the closet for a school year was amazing and gave me the worst panic attack of my life. Both of those things were true. I would not have wanted to miss the chance of being in marching band, would not have traded my conductors (Mr. Matysiak and Mrs. Bueller [really]) for anything in the world. I would never have wanted to miss learning that I was not only a singer, I was damn good at it. I stood on the shoulders of giants, and my mother accompanied me through it all, literally.
She played the piano for my solos no matter what she was doing, and in seventh and eighth grade, she played for all my friends, too. This was not a small feat, as most piano accompaniments for solos are orchestra reductions. So, my mom hurt me a lot, and she also came through in equal measure. Not only was the piano our lighthouse when we were ships passing in the night, she left it to me in her will. She didnโt give me a setting. She gave me the main character.
In terms of hurting me, all of the panic Iโd been feeling that year came to a head when my senior best friend asked me to come with him to his prom. He was literally on the way to pick me up, my hair and makeup done to perfection, when I melted down physically. It caused a monster reaction, a rash, shortness of breath, everything- so the doc came over and gave me a shot of Depomedrol and off we went.
That was the first time that I learned everything can be fixed before school, youโre going. It only backfired once. I had the flu, and Tamiflu was YEARS ahead in the making. If it had, I would have been going to school without spreading it. To be perfectly fair, Iโd woken up feeling a little miserable and bloomed at school. It wasnโt a big deal right up until it was.
Actually, that leads to a really funny story. One of our parishioners while I was at HSPVA was a Republican judge, so I went to their convention in like, โ92, before they were complete nut jobs. While I was there, I bought a button down that was made of real American flag material, and the colors were very dark. It looked sharpโฆ. Or so I thought. I was really sick on my birthday, and nothing would have stopped me from going to school that day in my new threads. I get there and first period was bandโฆ. And if Jack Lucas had been there, he would have been SO PROUD OF HIS STUDENTS.
Editorโs Note: I also went to St. Martinโs Episcopal as a teen, where I was unimpressed with President George H.W. Bushโฆ.. and thrilled to meet a former Director of CIA (of course). Therefore, it always thrills me that Jonna Mendez managed to fool him, because of course now I know we have mutual friendsโฆ. And I am laughing so hard that I canโt even breathe right now.
Those motherfuckers broke out in four part harmony, because they were musicians. They could sing their parts blind. Then, they get to โfree,โ and Dan Kovaly hits the fucking *cymbals.* I was just as self-deprecating then as I am now, so I thought it was absolutely hilarious while still mortifying. Later, my mom and dad brought me my favorite food, cherry chicken from Ruggles. We got to eat lunch together in the commons, and it was sad that there wasnโt a Happening that day.
Happenings at HSPVA are code for what would now be called a flash mob, probably. You never knew when they were coming, and it was always unique no matter which art area was on showcase. Itโs one of the core memories that made me who I am.
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.
In my world, a connection to someone thatโs romantic is a red string. A connection to someone thatโs platonic, but every bit as intense as a romance is yellow. Right now, those people are Zac and Bryn. I made the decision to have Bryn as my emotional support because weโve been tight since I was 19 (off and on until I was 23 and moved to PDX). That means weโve been friends since Jesus gave me his beeper number. Being that close to someone and having that kind of emotional shorthand takes time to build, and for me, is too heavy to put on any relationship I canโt define.
Itโs a whole different vibe, to feel like I have a ride or die who, if she could, would drop everything and run right over. Weโre planning a visit where she comes here eventually, because last time it was my turn. ๐ It will be great to show her my version of DC, where the wings and mumbo sauce live.
I was kidding her about renting a hotel room for the express purpose of watching trash TV and eating cereal out of the box, which in my opinion, is a good time. My sister and I have done it, so I speak from experienceโฆ. Although I donโt think we had cereal. When she comes here, we tend to stuff ourselves at Zaytinya to the point we canโt move.
Hereโs the important thing thatโs come out of having Bryn as my top priority. Conversations like this, where Iโve said that being with Zac has stopped the tape in my head where I have to figure out everything from soup to nuts in five minutes:
Cheers to that. So much of my healing is learning to listen to myself and my body and frankly increase my selfishness to allow my selflessness to have actual meaning and not just be a trauma response. And it is amazing how much loving myself more allows others to feel I am loving them, when that wasn’t my goal at all lol but shhh dontell
I told her that I felt the same way, but that she put it better than I would have. I donโt want to increase my selfishness to an obscene amount. Itโs that previously I wasnโt taking care of myself or setting boundaries at all.
With the ones who wouldnโt or couldnโt set them with me, I let them go because I was tired of living in gray area. Iโd been running full steam ahead towards relationships that werenโt definitive in terms of who does what. Elizabeth Gilbert has said, and Iโm phrasing, that she doesnโt believe thereโs any story of self actualization that doesnโt begin with getting tired of your own bullshit. Thatโs where I am. Looking back over the wreckage Iโve done to myself by letting things remain so unclear.
I have a feeling that started when I was young. Keeping every option open all the time because I never knew when she was going to put me back in the sunshine. Thatโs all my own crap now. Iโm an adult. I can decide if someone is worth waiting for or whether itโs costing me too much in self-esteem.
Hereโs the thing that melted my heart with Zac this morning, our string turning burnt orange (because who doesnโt like burnt orange, hook โem amen?). Heโs a fan. He knows how much my faith means to me, and heโs an Atheist. He proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that things that are important to me are important to him, something that friends should share. He gave me a button that says โGod is in the details.โ I told him that I loved it because theologian Pete Rollins says that a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.
I know that there have been horrible things done in the name of God. I deeply apologize for all of it, because I am not here to defend any of it. Iโm here to tell you what Iโm reading, written long before the Crusades, for example. Jesus is my perfect example of more power with than over.
Thereโs also a reason that my favorite friendship through reading and watching YouTube is Christopher Hitchens and Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, and had to retype because I wrote Rowan Atkinson first. I coexist because of the same spectrum through which I see gender and sexual orientation. Specificity is in tiny degrees, and there are millions of permutations.
One of my favorite classes in College was Logic I. I was terrible at it, but fascinated by the subject. Using symbols to reflect arguments made sense to me, up and to a point. Then, my brain just scrambled.
The argument was God, for half the semester. Then, it was not God for the rest. I spent that class all up in my feelings, which is probably why I nearly flunked. I was thinking so hard about the emotional complications that I didnโt have room for stuff that was math adjacent.
It boggles my brain to hear people arguing about religion, just the easiest way to blow my hair back with excitement. I have a limit, though. I do not like atheists who proclaim their lack of religion as my moral failing, like if I didnโt believe in God I would be a better person, but Iโm not.
Let me say for the record that it doesnโt matter whether thereโs a God or not. I donโt pray hoping for answers. I pray and the process of laying out my thoughts gives me the answer. God is the voice I call my inner monologue, because thatโs where Iโm open to receiving spirituality. People do that in different ways, and it is not about โone is better than the other.โ Itโs about being able to access that part of yourself at all. Christianity is my way of doing it because itโs how I was made, my default setting. Plus, itโs a universal library of images which lets more people understand me than wouldโve had I used something specific to the US.
When I access that part of me, I can talk to myself for hours in pro and con arguments, because I want to know and be prepared for anything and everything that could happen, amen.
I am the president of Overthinkers Anonymous, except thereโs only me and a VP, so thereโs only one chapter and itโs really only usโฆโฆโฆโฆโฆ and weโre not friendly, Bob.
As I was telling Bryn, I can be more present in the moment with Zac because I donโt have any real heuristics on dating them. Patterns donโt emerge for me the way they would with a woman because I have no idea what in the hell Iโm doing and for once, Iโm okay with it.
For once, I can sit in cognitive dissonance and not be threatened by it. I know that no matter what, I am safe to say what I mean and mean what I say. This is because Bryn and Zac are both the kind of people that are hugely capable of knowing their opinions on how they feel. Thoughts and feelings working in concert. I am giving my energies to them in different ways. Iโm a handful, and theyโre capable.
Itโs just that Bryn has a quarter century more blackmail material than Zac, and not for nothing, she doesnโt use it. I would be ripe for the pickings, Iโm telling you. Not only that, sheโs seen a lifetime of the real me, even when I didnโt know she was looking. Her teenage perspective to my twenties is so amazing, because she remembers things that I donโt and it makes our institutional memory stronger. She reminds me of everything good and everything bad about Portland, and I let her. Thatโs because sheโs the person I can just say, โI feel horrible right now.โ I never require her to agree with me about anything, but I know that sheโll hear it. I also am surprised by how many of our memories line up, to a degree in which itโs a bit frightening. Thatโs what I mean about my love for my friends being gigantic. That shared history means every bit as much to me as finding a partner.
The difference to me between my relationship with Bryn and in relationships Iโve had with women previously (save Dana, she was also driven by emotion), she doesnโt ever shut down. Not ever. She will say things like I canโt talk about it right now, but thatโs so different than weโll never talk about it ever. There is also no gray area in our relationship. It is for life. We will never leave each other. We commit to hashing it out. Every bit as important as my biological sister and my eventual partnership.
If you canโt be honest with someone you met when you were 19, you canโt be honest with anyone.
We get into things I wonโt even publish, because only she is allowed access until I can bring it up without feeling the physical effects while Iโm writing. In some ways, all that was ten years ago. Then someone will hit a trigger and I will flash back, and it literally takes my breath away. It doesnโt even have to be a someone. It could be a scent, like a certain mixture of fall air and leaves burning. It could be a perfume.
Itโs intense and I canโt remember the good parts in that moment. I just feel used, because she didnโt set any limits with her words, it was all inference all the time. Therefore, I spent my entire life lost and confused until there was one moment when I was working out at a credit center in the suburbs of Portland, and I get a phone call. Itโs the woman that emotionally abused me. Sheโd recently brutally dumped someone as her โpet person,โ and she told me that I was a woman sheโd like to get to know, but her tone was off. A bit seductive, but not romantic. Just going back into a more secretive bubble that felt illicit. And perhaps that was my perception of what happened given the triggerโs origin, and not the truth. I am telling you what I felt, and I did not take it well.
I thought, โsheโs finally giving you all the attention you wanted and it feels all wrong. Why? What is wrong with you?โ Now, I can tell you exactly what happened. I saw how she treated this person that she called her pet, and I wasnโt having it. For the first time in my life, I recognized a train wreck before it happened. I didnโt want to become an object of scorn to her partner, as if I wasnโt just an annoying dipshit to begin with. And dipshit is a direct quote.
So, when my beautiful girl wouldnโt set boundaries and would waffle between outright, overt, out loud protection and โyouโre trying to provoke me,โ I got tired. I wanted her to look at herself with the same fierce protection she saw my other friends. I wasnโt trying to create feelings of guilt, but change.
There was no change. Dreams of it, but none. I wanted a relationship with her that felt solid, and either I couldnโt feel it or it wasnโt there. I donโt know, and itโs not up to me to know. I feel like I have stated everything I needed a hundred times over, and she continues to shoot in the dark. Itโs also frustrating when someone who used to be glad youโve called them out on the carpet because theyโre famous for walling off and moving past something starts using those walls with youโฆโฆ. And being furious that youโve noticed. I could see that pattern coming from a mile off, and I still put so much energy into rearranging the dinner napkins on the Titanic.
She says that nothing was ever good enough for me, and her barometer was way, way off. Sheโs one of the best things thatโs ever happened to me, bar none. I am a better person for having loved her, and that part of me will never change. Itโs why she is still welcome if she figures out what it is that she actually wants from me.
In the meantime, itโs good that Iโm not spending my time waiting on something that may or may not ever come. Maybe sheโll keep reading, maybe it will be too painful. Who knows? I cannot predict when and if sheโll hear my meaning, but what I wanted to put a stop to was being able to drop in casually as if we had no history and keep it at that. I felt awful when she said that she hated it when I expected her to be the expert on our friendship at some times and that I was talking down to her when I explained the memory to which I was referring. I couldnโt win either way, because either I came off like a lecturer or someone trying to hurt her, and neither of those options were in any way true.
I was doing the work because I wanted to show up. The way I do for Bryn. The way I do for Lindsay.
Zac remains to be seen, but I am enjoying the moment, breathing and staying in one place. Changing my reactions and responses. Healing. Being able to talk through some issues that resolve my others.
Getting tired of myself is the best thing Iโve ever done, much less one positive thing. Itโs all of them. ALL THE THINGS.
Let me start by saying that my first thoughts were fairly unprintable on this topic, but I decided to take it seriously, anyway.
I donโt exercise at all. Not purposefully, anyway. I walk a lot because I donโt have a car and I like it that way. A lot of my writing gets done on Hwy 29 between East-West Hwy and Franklin Ave. I wear Bluetooth headphones and listen to music, left foot on the downbeat. When I think of something good, I stop and record what Iโm thinking.
A typical walk for me is at least a half hour. Thatโs because I keep changing my mind. I walk to the bus stop, and get bored of waiting, so Iโll start walking and tell myself thereโs a bus stop every major street, so why worry? But then I get to the next bus stop and I still donโt want to wait. Iโll go three miles that way, anything to avoid slowing movement. Movement is creativity.
Iโm not talking about dance. Movement creates inertia. If I start out with an idea at the house, Iโll have a book series at the entrance to the Metro, and a short audio clip of what my topic is to get started. When Iโm on the train, I get out my tablet and keyboard.
I would like to be serious about exercising, in a perfect world. Iโd like a trainer and I would work hard with them. For me, itโs not about losing weight. Itโs that I have balance issues and a brain palsy that makes my muscles rebel, against what I have no idea. Strengthening my core is essential to staying upright. I am also of the age that I have been laid out flat on my back from a bad sneeze. Training would stop most of that, too.
Something to think of for the future, that walking wonโt solve everything. My body is complicated, and yet, itโs not. I donโt care about what and when I eat, ever, because my blog wonโt write itself. I know I will walk until I have something. Itโs funny how my weight goes up and down dependent on how much Iโm thinking about that day. If my mind is full, I can predict six miles. Not in a row, but throughout the day.
Thereโs a ton of shops within walking distance of my house, whether itโs going toward downtown Silver Spring and into DC, or toward my neighborhood shopping center, which has the basics. 7-Eleven gets most of my money, because when I forget my water bottle, I stop in for a soda. I like Big Gulps best, because I generally want the ice as bad as I need a shot of caffeine. Or, at least, up until I found Liquid Death sparkling water. If Iโm going the fizzy water route, Iโll also โdo a shot.โ โDoing shotsโ is how I refer to getting pep in the middle of the day in hopes of not seeming so incredibly old. 5 Hour Energy is the top brand, but there are a hundred of them. My favorite is sour apple with a lime seltzer โback.โ
Today is a bit different because Iโm packing my โgoing to Zacโsโ bag. Zac has an appointment on this side of town, so he offered to swing by and pick me up rather than me taking the train. My โgoing to Zacโs bagโ is basically full of electronics. Getting on the train home would be impossible without my phone/smart watch, and of course they donโt have the same chargerโฆ. That would be insane.
Iโm writing about going to Zacโs so that when I read this later, I will remember that Bryn asked for a picture of me with Oliver, Zacโs puppy dog. I am already blessed with โThe Daily Zacโ and โThe Daily Oliverโ photos, so it wouldnโt naturally occur to me to take one myself. ๐
Getting those two pictures are the highlights of my dayโฆ fuel for the road ahead, which is often lonely due to necessity. I canโt just hand off my story ideas to anyone else and say โIโm tired. You do it.โ Itโs not that I wouldnโt. Itโs that I would feel terrible about asking people to work for free on the off chance a book does well. I am not so precious about my idea that I wouldnโt like a research assistant, for example, but I am also not willing to pay them in dreams.
I just have to keep walking so that my ideas flow organically through me and onto the page. Getting a proposal together is difficult, but definitely easier than trying to finish this book on my own (meaning the alternate history). Itโs such a large scope and Iโm such a small person. I continually hope I havenโt bitten off more than I can chew, especially in terms of showing talent.
All I can do is believe in myself, and keep walking, one foot in front of the other.
I am not sure that this entry will be written without tears, because Iโm thinking about so many things that my emotions might leak. I might let the audio sit for a day or two, just to get some emotional distance. It helps the narration if I donโt have to blow my nose. Also, Iโm sorry if the audio is poor. I have five housemates and I donโt have an โon airโ light, nor would they pay attention to it. I am, however, surprised at just how much my Bluetooth mic picks up. The mic is literally in my ear, and it still picks up noise from all over the second floor. It helps me, though, because it keeps me from flooding outโฆ. So that I can record an entry without tearsโฆ. 98% of the time.
I am positive that some people were confused at me crying over the death of Tony Mendez, but let me tell you why. I wrote about it, but itโs been long enough and I havenโt mentioned the connection more than once so itโs time for a rehash.
I wasnโt finished with grieving my mother when Tony died. Grief compounds. Therefore, I knew innately what his widow, Jonna, was going through in terms of having to tough out a public event all armored up while dying inside. My mirror neurons went off like crazy. My grief mixed with hers even though we didnโt talk about it. I took all of that grief home with me and mourned Tony and my mother simultaneously. Therefore, years later, when I think about grief, Tony and my mother both come to mind.
Mourning my mother was so great a loss that I put it deep down inside, hardly ever talked about it unless the other person in the conversation had already lost a parent. This is because the chance was too great that I would open myself up to further injury, because people have no idea what to say and often make it worse.
I will tell you right now that the only thing I actually wanted said was โIโm sorry.โ I loved people that showed up and were willing to sit in the silence until I could emote.
Digging that deep was so incredibly hard that I still hadnโt cried as much as I needed to. Crying about Tony was only partially about Tony. The loss of a new book from him ever again really was devastating. But mostly itโs that the grief I felt regarding him was so much bigger than that. Grieving over him allowed me to process my motherโs death, because it was the entrance to a deep, dark cave, ripe for excavation. I just didnโt have any spelunking equipment.
Meeting Jonna was at least the hat with the light.
She broke me open in just the right way, at just the right time. Her armor was my armor laid out in front of me where I could take it inโฆ where I could see my own actions in the third person omniscient.
So, when I talk about Tony Mendez, I canโt do it without tears.
Going through a breakup with a friend has been devastating, and yet not at all. It just depends on the day. Some days I think โno one is her,โ and some days I just canโt. What has helped is a book called โMy Other Ex,โ stories of women whoโve lost their best friends and why โno one is her.โ One thing they expressed universally is that with other women, you get so close you can speak without words, but there is no recognition of that type of grief.
I am an INFJ. I feel emotions so deeply that theyโre capable of overtaking common sense, and I could write a seven volume book series on my dumbass attacks. Not only do I understand, I grok.
I understand so completely that their grief is my grief. Grief compounds. I cannot talk about that relationship ending without tears. So I compartmentalize, and armor up. No one is trying to see me cry in line at Whole Foods.
Armoring up is necessary only because if I donโt, I will just bleed out emotionally. In the moments where I am not capable of armoring up, it means the grief is too deep. So even though no one was trying to see me cry at a Whole Foods, they must have thought that them being out of the veggie dogs I like was being taken way too seriously.
Although I will say that it was legit a problem. If veggie dogs, vegan cream cheese, and hot sauce didnโt exist, Iโd probably be dead by now. I eat them all the time. Itโs my favorite lunch, because it takes about a minute to make. Yes, I am a very good cook, but I eat prepared foods most of the time. This is because I donโt want to devote the time and energy to prep. If you come over to eat, I will pull out my good knife. Left to my own devices, I run on sandwiches and Crystal Light.
I believe in Crystal Light, because Crystal Light has always believed in me. Also, not going to lie- finding out there are flavors with caffeine in them has made my whole life easier. I cannot talk about Crystal Light Energy without tears. ๐
โSpareโ is a rough read, and I cannot do it without tears, either. Prince Harry and I have so much in common. My platform as preacherโs kid was so much smaller, but I can empathize with his pain. Iโve cried over the loss of Princess Diana, being different than everyone else because he wants to speak his truth, and the list goes on.
And then he went to Afghanistan, and I went from tears to the full-on sob.
I have said over and over that The War Daniel is my primary partner, and that if he changes his mind about marrying me, itโs over for anyone else. The reason that they donโt stand a chance is that we have a trauma bond, which is like a regular bond on steroids.
Heโs the only person ever to make me feel better about the emotional abuse handed down to me over the years. I couldnโt listen to him without tears of relief. He said, โyour trauma is so much worse than mine, because my enemies in Afghanistan were clearly defined. Yours were the ones closest to you, turncoats all.โ If he is willing to walk in my inner landscape, I am willing to walk in his.
In fact, I am hoping to God I didnโt just reject a call from him.
The area code on my phone was his, but the name was โTelemarketer.โ They didnโt leave a message, so I hope that means it really was an auto dial. Someone in rehab feeling rejected is not my MO, especially because I need him to know that I love him, honestly and completely.
The only reason Iโm even saying that itโs up in the air is because Iโm willing to date people casually until January. At that point, itโs a different ball game. I need to know if he still feels the same way after the fog has cleared from his brain. Again, I am trying to think logically through rehab and its aftermath, experience Iโve gotten from being a friend and a coworker.
But even though Iโve dealt with addicts my entire cooking life, that doesnโt mean I can do it without tears. What if he doesnโt come back? What if Iโm waiting for nothing? I only think that in my smallest moments, though, because Iโm not ready for a serious relationship, anyway. Even the relationship that Daniel and I created previously wasnโt serious. He didnโt tell me to break up with Zac, and thinks heโs adorable (because he is). I didnโt tell him I needed him to be faithful, either. He was going to be off doing his own thing. The best I hoped for this year was letters, calls, perhaps a short visit since he can fly here so easily and without money. The only constraint that the military would put on him is timeโฆ. Being flexible about his departure and arrival depending on how many standby seats were available.
The only part that was serious is dreaming of the life I wanted to create with him once he was capable of doing so. It fits my purposes nicely that he doesnโt drink, because I so rarely indulge. Zac likes cocktails, and so do I, especially if itโs something Iโve never tasted before. Therefore, I will always take a drink if Zac is bartending, but I donโt even keep alcohol at my house. I would rather drink Crystal Light. I think we have covered this. ๐
Right now, I am not communicating with Doc. Itโs not because I donโt love him more than life itself. I need him to get well, and I donโt want to be a distraction in any way. I wouldnโt be able to live with myself if he thought I needed help more than him and decided to come to my rescue at the expense of his own. The best thing I could possibly do is let rehab have him, and heโll be done in May.
On the surface, it looks like I am batshit crazy and I realize this. Combat vet and alcoholic. Leslie, are you insane?
Yes, and thatโs the point.
Daniel was HM2 in the Navy. That is the equivalent of a civilian nurse practitioner. Therefore, I feel safe with him because me being bipolar would never be an issue. I trust his judgment. If Doc says he can tell whether Iโm up or down, I will take that check to the bank and cash it.
On the flip side, is it any wonder that I know how to support a Doc? My family is all medicine, all the time.
A really funny conversation between Doc and me ran thusly:
โI think Iโm getting hypomania.โ โAnd what are your qualifications to make this diagnosis?โ โI went to medical school in the backseat of a Lexus.โ
I am good at standing (sitting) behind people and listening closely.
I have been listening to Doc closely, and trying to understand his pain. Most of the time, I cannot do it without tears. If I start down the road of Doc doing this brave thing and how it was his worst day, I will collapse in a heap. Itโs why Iโm wiling to forgive him, and struggling through it. I have to forgive him whether he reappears or not. The forgiveness isnโt for him. Itโs for me. I wonโt be myself until all of this is resolved, even if itโs just getting my own closure.
The only reason I havenโt closed the door is that I canโt think of him going through rehab without tears, either. I know what thatโs like, not from a first-person perspective, but from having a best friend back in the day who went through what Doc is going through now. I remember that I gave her a ring that looked like leaves encircling her finger, in honor of turning over her new leaf.
I wear my skeleton claddagh with pride on my right hand, or I did until the silver wore off and it turned my finger green. Thatโs not Docโs fault. It wasnโt a gift. I bought it as a placeholder and told Doc where to find my favorite jewelry.
I should call around and see if I can find a maker who does plating. Even nickel would protect the metal. The only reason itโs worth plating a ring that cost $3.00 is that itโs so unique. Doc is a death metal fan. Skeleton claddagh is not my style, itโs his. Even after he broke up with me, I still wore it like a #livestrong bracelet. It didnโt mean we were still together, just that I hope to God that sending support would help, even if he never knew about it. I mean, he knows I have it and I have sent him a picture, but it might surprise him to know that the ring turned my finger green a few days ago. I didnโt give up on the ring, it gave up on me.
Perhaps itโs for the best that Iโm not constantly looking down at my right hand, longing for a dream that might never come. I just donโt want to be certain about anything regarding him, because rehab is hard work and your emotions are all over the place. Again, Cora has said that she doesnโt think my faith in her father is misplaced, so Iโm choosing to believe her. Keeping my own strength up is whatโs important, because my faith in her father is important to me being who I am through all of this, too.
What kind of partner would I be if I gave up on him while he needed so much compassion? I know what itโs like to push someone away because youโre traumatized, and his trauma goes to eleven. Our pain isnโt even on the same playing field.
If I had to choose one word that describes me, it’s chaotic. I can’t control my feelings, my attention, or my outward emotions. It’s all on display, all the time. If I’m hurt about something, you’ll see it written all over my face because I wear my heart on my sleeve, always. It gets beaten up that way, but stronger for the long haul because scar tissue is a beautiful thing. It makes what was once weak strong again. All of the sudden, your heart has more tensile strength than it did previously, and you can handle bigger emotions without exploding emotional landmines.
It’s a hard thing to explain to people, handling large emotions. Most people just want me to be less. I encourage them to take a right and surround myself with people who think I’m amazing no matter what. And not in the way that says “praise me.” In the way that says “even when I have to kick your ass, you’re the love of my life.” Believe me when I say that’s a two way street, and I’ll always allow it, especially if you throw in jokes to release the pressure valve of being really, really uncomfortable.
Some people are better at being uncomfortable than others. I am actually pretty good about it, but there are caveats. Make everything clear, especially if you don’t have a timeframe for our next interaction. Ask for what you want, and don’t make me divine it. A guessing game pushes me away faster than anything else, because I don’t have the mental capacity to work in grey area 100% of the time, and shouldn’t have to do it at all when it comes to friends’ needs. My partner as well, I just don’t currently have one. I have ended a lot of romantic relationships due to the same problem. Yes, I can prepare for what you’re going to need later, but only up and to a point. Grow with me, not against me.
I can sit in cognitive dissonance for years on end if people let me know when we’re going to work on resolving it. I walk away when there’s an unwillingness to figure it out…. even when all of the nastiness is familiar and none was ever meant.
Unless someone hits a trigger, and then I will go scorched earth because I have to. It hits several things at once. Making me mad enough to walk away because I couldn’t do it otherwise. Realizing that there are very few people who actually listen to me the first time and don’t second guess what I’m saying, so keep those friends close and the other ones can take a right. In my haste to protect myself, I piss people off. It’s my superpower, apparently. The J part of INFJ is judgment, the opposite of perception. I call ’em like I see ’em. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong. I pay those taxes all day, every day. What I don’t do is let people walk all over me, because they have forever and I’m done.
Being a preacher’s kid was amazing and a rough gig. I don’t want to live in a fishbowl. I don’t want to care what other people think of me. I don’t want to dress appropriately, whatever that means. I don’t want to wear make-up because “it always looks like you don’t feel good.” And for the love of God, I do not have false eyelashes, especially when I was in seventh grade. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, thank God you were there. Jesus has always had my back. We’re basically the same person. If you don’t think I would go after tax collectors with a whip, apparently you have not seen me in mad sprite mode. I have this image in my head of my anger reflex going off and having someone pick me up, put me on a shelf, and walk away.
“Angry sprite mode” will burn the whole world down, and has stopped caring. This is because it means something to me when someone hits a trigger if they’ve been warned over and over where it is. I would never do it to someone I’d just met, but if we’ve known each other since my original hair color, you probably know where all my landmines are. When you intentionally step on one when you’re in combat mode, I will end you. Just not physically. It’s much worse than that. You’ll hear me in your head forever, because my trauma reflex is a very good writer. It remembers what buttons to push so that if you hit mine, turnabout is fair play.
Rarely do I go off anymore, which makes the swings even bigger. It’s not that I mean more harm. It’s that I care so much less. Either you’re important enough to me to fight until we’re through the worst of it, or you’re not. You’re important enough to me to hash it out, or you’re not. If you don’t feel the same way about me, that’s fine. Just don’t expect me to be happy about it. I rarely leave room for grace because so few people are that precious to me. It’s seriously the most Jesus part about me, because he was so human. As I have said before, “we were never meant to be Jesus. Jesus was meant to be us.” And by that I mean that Jesus loved his friends with an intensity that’s unusual (he’s an INFJ. He gets it.), but it didn’t mean that he didn’t kick ass when he thought people deserved it. Jesus’s righteous anger doesn’t make me feel good about mine. It makes me feel more human, the experience Jesus was supposed to have in the first place.
I made a blink decision to cut someone out of my life because I needed them to leave me alone. I needed them to stop hurting me. I have a feeling they would argue that I should have stopped hurting them, and they’re not wrong. I am sorry. Just because I have trauma reflexes, that doesn’t make my words okay. It also doesn’t excuse anyone else for their bad behavior. It only apologizes for my part, because no problem is 100% all me or vice versa.
I also cannot abide people who think that working on issues is always bad. That I am only dredging up the past, not trying to clean the “junk drawer of the soul.” I am not putting out “nastiness.” I am saying “here is the problem. Here’s how I think we can fix it. How do you?” And, of course, when someone has hit a trigger, that reaction is sometimes accurate and sometimes buried under a lot of rage.
Rage is not my favorite emotion ever. It only happens when my trauma reflexes work faster than the others. If you say you’re out, I will HELP YOU PACK. Good luck moving home. In most cases, you’re just another person I don’t trust/respect/like because I don’t feel safe.
This is because like I’ve said before, if you agree to be a friend, you agree to be a lockbox. Once I don’t feel like you’re mine, bye Felicia…. Bye.
I wish I could be more loving, more open, all that. I just can’t until my trauma reflexes calm down, and that will come with time. It’s not that I don’t know there’s a problem. I do. I just can’t do anything about it right this moment because reflexes are ingrained. They will never change all at once. It’s a process.
Impatience will always eat my lunch, but only when I don’t know what’s going on. But do I regret throwing an actual emotional bomb that was meant because of it? No. Because their way of dealing with a problem was to not do anything to change it. Then, when I realize I’m giving too much energy to a problem and you seem uninterested, I don’t want that problem anymore because it takes two to fight and two to fix.
I am not going to fix anything anymore. I’m not going to do other people’s emotional work for them. I have before and haven’t regretted it until now, because what I realized is that I was taking on everyone’s pain and no one was taking on mine, but not in terms of everything everywhere all at once. In terms of defining the problem and the priority.
I don’t expect any of this if you’ve just walked into my life. I expect it from people who have known me long enough to see me.
It’s not any wonder why I’m a blogger. I prefer a world of two. I am one. You are the other. I run to you, my clubhouse. I feel safe here in this sandbox, because I built it. It is the finest construction, and will last eons because it’s digital. You can’t wear it out by rereading, and for better or for worse, it defines me.
I know so many people who love my blog and don’t want to talk to me for love or money, but it’s okay. How I feel? That’s none of their business, and their need to read is none of mine. I know I’m at least interesting enough to have made a highly respected doctor cry on the toilet. This level of fame is overwhelming, and I mean it. Words are powerful, and I can hit things in people both out of idiocy and purpose. Sometimes, I’m trying to elicit a reaction because I want you to feel what I was feeling while I was writing, or remembering.
Other times, my experiences are blending with yours and you’re bleeding out emotionally over something that has nothing to do with me.
For every bit as terrible as my emotional abuse as a child was, that disturbance brought me to a great place now, especially processing those experiences so that I could create new, healthy relationships later.
I have a relationship with a woman that resembles the one I would have had with my mother and my abuser had that love been pure and clean, the “rainbow mom.” Having the role of mother returned to just one person has been magnificent. It’s the first time in my life it’s ever happened. While my mother was alive, we did our best and she died. We lost our future. I have a lot of life left in which a mother’s love would be helpful, and she just shows up like a wolverine when I’m feeling the most vulnerable. It has provided a lens through which I see Cora.
I have a daughter adopted through the rainbow flag that’s giving me the ability to have clean, white, pure mother love flow through me, to give my child the love I should have gotten. And thankfully, I never have to worry about recreating that feeling of ickiness in her, that I was going to be telling her things too big for her age, because we met when she was 24 and I was 45. I didn’t have to work through what it would be like to actually relate to a child under 18 as “daughter.” I didn’t have to worry that I was setting up a bad pattern, that I was loving someone exactly the way they needed to be loved at the moment they needed it.
Mama Wolverine turned me into one, too, and not that I wouldn’t have gotten there on my own. It is that we are of the same mind regarding children, including us. Burn the world down to protect them. My relationship strengthened what was already in me, tempered it and made it shine.
Between having and being a Mama Wolverine, I don’t make a lot of time for other people. I like being a diarist, expressing myself the way I talk in my head, and not the voice I’ve curated over decades. I’m changing that now by recording my entries, but that’s because I realized that it was not really a bigger platform, just a convenience, especially for the seeing impaired, but not especially for them, because my friend Bryn said that she wished she could listen to me like a podcast.
It’s important that it’s not an actual podcast, unless Bryn (or another creator, hit me up) wants to do one. It’s important that I am writing my entries all the way out to the end, hearing them the way I’m supposed to hear before I put it out in the world. Because once it’s in my voice, it’s filtered through something. It’s vulnerability on a different scale, because on the one hand, my voice is a mask.
On the other, my voice gives emotions you might not have thought were there to words I didn’t want you to know contain them. Wondering if you can tell when Mama Wolverine and Cora and I haven’t talked in a while, or that Daniel is troubling me and not because we’re interacting, it’s just a hard situation to love a kid so much and to love her dad twice over.
I wonder if you can tell all that from one free .mp3.
My fates are not entwined with father and child unless we want them that way. Cora wants to be my kid whether Daniel is my husband or not, and it is a gift I never knew I needed. I needed someone in my life to love with such a fierce permanence it couldn’t be duplicated and to have it be an age gap where I was definitely “the parent.” I think I’ve learned enough to be trusted as a listener, and to know when I’m above my pay grade. My teenage years don’t feel like one large wound anymore. I get to take what I wished had happened in that relationship, everything that was good and right and helpful, and only pass on that much of it.
Everything else can be forgotten. Everything that made me feel too young, too helpless, too fragile, too shellshocked and brokenโฆ. all of it forgotten in favor of just remembering what it was like to have a person outside my family I could talk to that would act as a sounding board. Period. End of story.
It’s a little bit complicated when Daniel and I are together because I don’t want to tell Cora things that make her feel like anything she and I talked about has the power to end my relationship with him. It doesn’t matter to me that she’s an adult. The power dynamic is the same.
Being there for each other while someone we both love is in rehab is a very good thing, and I have so much love to give that exactly none of it has to do with Daniel. Cora can talk to me about whatever she wants, and it’s all right and good. Everything she says has so much value.
I wish I could do more financially and physically, but it has to be the thought that counts. You want to give things to your kids you didn’t have, right? So of course I want to do whatever it takes to make her feel safe as a 24 year old trans woman, pre-hormones and surgery. That kind of safety is expensive. It would at the very least require getting her into a more liberal part of Texas, when the best thing is to go to a blue state until Texas has better laws for herโฆ. and I’m not holding my breath on that particular topic.
Too many Texans are hung up on having to change, especially the white men who’ve never had to change this much at once and it’s so hard, especially because you’ll be lucky if they give you credit for the fact that sure, their lives are hard, but they’d still rather be them than you.
If I have white hot anger at Daniel left, it’s over this very thingโฆ not understanding that his pain and confusion at his daughter being trans was nothing compared to actually being trans. That his anger and hostility toward me for pointing out his homophobic and transphobic speech patterns is nothing compared to the pain I’ve felt over actually being queer since I was born.
My concern for “how hard all this is” for Daniel is approaching petty level 3000. It is an almost automatic reaction at this point for me to roll my eyes at cis straight white male pain. The fact that I’m even willing to try says more than I’ll ever write down.
Daniel gets to me in particular because he’s so masterful at using his writer personality to say that he doesn’t give a fuck how it feels to be me, I should have kept my mouth shut because he was in painโฆ and to have it make sense, so that I constantly berate myself into thinking that I could have been a better partner by saying a lot lessโฆ and not knowing how to explain that in this case, both things are important. If you can’t love me while I love you, no deal.
He couldn’t, and I’m glad to be rid of that temperature in my life. If I’m going to be with a man, it’s not going to be one that can’t admit when he’s being an entitled dickhead. Felt so beat up by a few days of me saying that things were not okay that he broke up with me permanently. So, here is what I know. Daniel can be mad all he wants that I called him on his shit, AND he’ll never be strong enough in a million years to actually be me.
He wanted to be able to act like a complete asshole with complete immunity from consequences, because he was sick and we weren’t. No, Daniel, love of my life. You do not get a pass because the things you say affect our mental health. In effect, the things you say are making us sicker because you’re hitting the same nerve that a thousand other homophobes have hit before you.
We are allowed to care about that. We should not have to wait until you get out of rehab to say that you have triggered either one of us in this manner.
And at this point, I’m starting to wonder whether this was Daniel’s master plan all along. That he could make up this wife and child fantasy with me and Cora, and then when it became inconvenient, he’d just get rid of itโฆ or the part he could, anyway. For him, I was easily disposable, and I believe that even if it was hard. He couldn’t throw away Cora, couldn’t take out any of his anger on her, couldn’t emote in front of her without feeling fear.
So if my only role was to make Daniel mad enough to be a good father, then my work here is done. I don’t know what I want in terms of a partner, but I do know that Daniel isn’t capable. He’s out of the running, possibly permanently. He has a fight on his hands in terms of getting back to himself, because the man he is to me right now is weak-minded. Instead of being an adult and using his words, he pulled out Fox News language. That I was trying to “reprogram” him. That I was part of the “woke mob.” If that’s how he needs to think of me to get himself well, then by all means, bud. Go for it. I still get to be angry that you aren’t smarter than that.
And here is another reason I’m a blogger. I want to tell people what I think of them, often long after they’ve left my life for good. I don’t broadcast what I think. It’s just here if they’re ever curious.
I absolutely want him to know what I was thinking during this time, and that yes, I really was this angry and irate. You turned from Daniel, the thinker/writer boy into Daniel, former military from NE Texas and every stereotype that entails. Our story was worth more than that, and you made it on the cheap. Turned an arthouse flick into a segment on Fox newsโฆ. because there’s not enough content for a movie.
Never forget Aaron Sorkin’s warning about soundbites. “What are the next ten words?”
What makes you feel safe in a relationship, romantic or otherwise? How did you learn those are the things that make you feel safe?
This is a writing prompt given to me by my friend Bryn, and I’m going to start with what I thought made me feel safe over time, because it’s different over decades.
In the beginning, what made me feel safe was having my needs met, and it didn’t take much because I wasn’t an active kid. I’m not sure I even had a social life until Lindsay was born (this is not actually a joke). Before Lindsay, like now, I was the kind of person who had one friend (Justin). When Lindsay got old enough to have friends over, I was in charge of them most of the time. “In charge.” Yeah, like I wasn’t soaking up human interaction when my battery was full enough that now I’d isolated enough to feel lonely… I wasn’t in charge. I was an introvert, and Lindsay was the extrovert who adopted me. She still plays that role, and we don’t even live in the same city anymore.
It makes me feel safe to give everything to one person. Just everything. I want to tell you my hopes, dreams, fears. I want to show you my inner landscape and walk around in yours. It makes me feel important to know things about people… that they trust me with their secrets because they know I won’t tell them. It makes me feel safe because it is an agreement. I will take on your inner landscape if you will take on mine.
My childhood was idyllic, so this didn’t become a big job until I was an adult. The War Daniel is one of the last people that saw that version of me, before life had hit me in the face. It’s the biggest reason I feel safe in marrying him if he changes his mind. The War Daniel knows leslie, not Leslie D. Lanagan, Trademark. What makes me feel safe in my relationship with him is that I know my inner landscape isn’t too fucked up for him to handle. He’s a nurse practitioner. WTF does he care that I’m bipolar?
Between my knowledge as a patient and his as a Doc, it’s handled. We both have our demons. We both need each other, and he turned on me when I needed him the most. But he should have, and I support him. The only person Doc needs to worry about is Doc. If we’re going to fight this thing out, I need him as healthy as he can possibly be. I need him to return to that feeling he had when he said he’d been in love with me for 36 years. I do not think that I am crazy in the slightest for thinking that this breakup is actually Daniel just saying “I can’t handle a relationship right now.” I am trying to think logically through alcoholism and rehab… walking around in his inner landscape and trying to understand because he made the agreement to walk around in mine. That kind of friendship and love doesn’t go away with a few angry e-mails. We’re in each other’s heads and hearts. Addiction and recovery are not the time to be making life decisions, and if I was short-sighted about anything, it’s that I gave too much credence to what Daniel was saying right before he went into rehab and not the grand possibility that everything he said would change once he actually got there.
It doesn’t make me feel safe in a relationship to think about it ending before it even begins, so I didn’t. What made me feel safe was to look at every possible outcome. I planned for the fact that Daniel would break up with me, and asked myself if I could handle it. I told myself that I could. That the most important thing was keeping his spirits high until their docs had them and I didn’t have to worry about him until he was ready to start doing the real work in our relationship, which was massive. I’m queer. Cora’s trans. Daniel is sincere in his love and support of us, but wasn’t ready for the massive change in his behavior it would require to make us feel safe and wanted.
The reason I was so extraordinarily hard on Daniel is not because I was offended. It was hard watching him be a bad dad out of idiocy and not malice. I could have handled it had it just been between him and me, but the group chat with Cora changed our dynamic because I could see theirs. I have seen everything, and this is why I’m willing to hang on for the ride. I feel like there’s more here to mine, like this isn’t the end of our movie if I’m just patient about it. It’s going to be even harder for Daniel to prove to me that I’m safe with him, but just because it’s hard, it doesn’t mean it would take a long time. We both process emotionally at a very quick rate. We’re writers. What would make me feel safe is to start writing letters again, and then for him to come and visit, so that my other friends can see how closely what I have said matches who he actually is.
Nothing illicit, nothing shameful, nothing to hide from either of us, especially from each other. I used to love the darkness.
This is because my one person changed immediately and inappropriately to an adult when I was almost 13, and for some reason, I got to walk around in her inner landscape as well. This is where things get complicated. In addition to walking around in someone’s inner landscape, feeling safe involved secrecy. I liked keeping secrets. I was more emotionally intelligent than most adults by the time this happened, and the undercurrent was strong. It turned everything dark, because then I began to crave relationships that were under the radar. The ones that felt illicit and maybe a little cooler than I actually was?
Relationships that created their own little worlds apart from reality, and I could go there when life got hard.
It was being able to run to a secret clubhouse, small and intimate. Not as big and intimidating as the whole world, because the universe is the two of us.
I am blessed to have those friends now that the feeling of needing darkness is gone. It was a process to get rid of it, and hell while it wasn’t resolved because of course the relationships I paid attention to weren’t the ones in the room. I came by it honestly. I lived with my mom and dad for years without hearing a word they said without it being filtered through one illicit relationship.
When things got hard with Dana, I stopped thinking about her because sitting alone in my office, writing e-mails into the night gave me more peace than interacting with her. They got hard for a multitude of reasons, but Dana became masterful at the bait and switch, where I’d ask about one issue and it would devolve into “you like your e-mail better than me.” We stopped communicating about anything else, because any conversation that didn’t start there found its way there quickly. Just a self-destruct button, because I didn’t think that who I let walk with me through life should be her choice, and if she didn’t like them, she didn’t have to meet them. Even I hadn’t met them. Remember? E-mail relationship.
When it became clear that the e-mail relationship was grabbing my heart in a bigger way than I expected, all I wanted from Dana was patience. That these feelings would work themselves out, and it wouldn’t even be a thing anymore. How things actually shook out is exactly what I predicted. Those feelings went away, but not on the timeline she needed. I’m sorry about that, but I couldn’t get there any other way except mine.
Do I feel like I threw away my marriage for an e-mail relationship because it was under the radar and Dana was in the room?
Yes, I absolutely do. I also know with eight years’ certainty that it was the best move I could have made.
When I left Dana and moved to DC, again I was alone in my office writing, and it was delicious. What made me feel safe was no relationships at all. Remember that Dana and I ended our relationship with a physical fight, so I was running scared. I didn’t trust anyone, and I was alone by choice. I had people to call if I needed them thanks to having lived in the area before and my cousin living in Virginia, but I didn’t.
My sister works in Washington, luckily, and so she was always close by in terms of the telephone and within a couple months of being physically available to hang. Sometimes I send her concert dates and things like that on the off chance she’ll be here, but I don’t expect her to show. I want to make her feel included… like she has two homes instead of just one. Washington can be a lonely place if you don’t know a local to keep you grounded.
What makes me feel safe in my relationship with my sister is the vulnerability factor. I can tell her anything, and vice versa. But it’s a much bigger deal that she’s vulnerable with me, because she’s powerful and I’m not. I actually think that’s one of the reasons our relationship works so well. We live in such different worlds that there’s no reason or even path to compete with each other. We’re just there to make sure the other one has her head on straight. In fact, I feel safe and vice versa that we’re each telling our stories exactly the way we want to tell them, and just advising the other on craft. There’s no, “I think you should do this.” There’s only “where do you want to go, and how can I help you get there?”
What makes me feel safe in a relationship is being in one with someone like my sister, who understands people on a large scale. She’s a lobbyist for a federally funded queer health care group. Her view is national. She does what she does because of me, because I helped raise her. Of course she’s the cis, white, straight, beautiful blonde woman who uses her platform to advance queer issues in the Texas and federal legislatures. Of course she is.
I am starting to feel like a wizened old grandmother character, because my role in Lindsay’s life is basically that. I don’t know the policy details of her job, but I do know people the way she does. Exactly the way she does. We both picked up our diplomatic skills from being preacher’s kids. We knew who Karen was long before there was a word for her.
It makes me feel safe that the ways in which she knows people are the ways in which I know people, we just use those talents differently. I ran away from a public life in terms of something like lobbying or preaching…. and into a public life where I have enough clinical separation to pretend that this is just a letter to myself in the future and there aren’t really thousands of you reading every day……
It makes me feel safe in our relationship. ๐
Now, what makes me feel safe in a relationship is honesty, even if it’s painful to hear. What makes me feel safe is being vulnerable and the other person having enough courage to hear me, to talk it out instead of walking off. A bubble with a universe of two still makes me the happiest, and I write letters all the time.
I suppose the last thing that makes me feel safe in a relationship is actually hearing the words “please feel heard.”
The last person that said that to me became the most important person in my life, my editor dragon (it amuses me to picture her in dragon form and her glasses still inexplicably fitting).
I have gotten out of the creative groove lately, and I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s that I need to live a little more before I have something to say. Maybe I just need to turn on the faucet and write until I hit something good. I’m sorry for the wandering you are about to endure, but you might be able to take something away from it, at the very least that you’re probably not as mentally, obnoxiously up and down as I have been over the last few months.
I would never tell her this, but Sam broke me. In every way possible, she just ripped out my guts and handed them to me. Again, I don’t have to be mad about that, but it’s still true. She busted my fairy tale in a matter of a few minutes, as if I never meant anything to her. It can’t be true, because she’s going to hear me in her head for years to come. It’s just how I feel, because I don’t need to get together with her to know the things I did to alienate her. I just don’t care. My mother dying has made me stop caring about a whole bunch of stuff. Why someone outright dumped me instead of being willing to be vulnerable is beyond my comprehension and creates apathy. Grief is hard, breaking up is not hard, comparitively speaking.
After that, I just converted to โblinkโ decisions. I wasn’t having any luck being patient and/or sexy enough to warrant a message back, and I have enough friends that are willing to love me through all this that agreeing to marry Daniel was not a whim. It was a dream. He had it in his head that I already thought he had the perfect life. No, I was talking about the perfect life I wanted to create with him and Cora, our little rainbow family.
That rainbow family has been torn apart because I refused to apologize for having fights over equality with him. His point was that he was punching down, and only he had that right. He was going to rehab, and it was way more important than Cora and I feeling safe in what we hoped to be our home. If he gets it into his head that he can get back to learning about us, it’s a dream I still want. Daniel offered me everything on a silver platter, and because I thought the drugs to control his cravings had him sane, I believed him hook, line, and sinker.
That is why I believe that he wants to break up with me now. He’s living the hard, rock-bottom truth that he’s an alcoholic and no more medication to make that pain go away. It’s blatantly obvious that he’s an aloholic in recovery because of his PTSD, and I have complete sympathy for that. Because he’s furious with me, he’s said that he’s already found a new group of friends that accept him for exactly who he is. Apparently, he is also dating someone else in rehab, which I am almost sure was just a lie for two reasons. The first is that I don’t care. We never agreed to be exclusive during this time and people in rehab get horny faster than the nurses can catch them, but all hell will break loose if they find out. You’re not even supposed to have a relationship at all until you’ve been out of recovery for a year.
The second thing is that he is my primary. It’s not that I ever want to leave him. It’s that if he comes back, he’s it for me, even if I’m dating someone else. I tell people that. Sure, I’ll date you, but I have a primary partner and I will drop you like a hot potato. Your choice.
But the thing is, Daniel would never make me choose monogamy over polyamory because he’s scared that he wouldn’t be enough for me. That I’d eventually meet a woman and leave him. It’s what makes me lean toward polyamory because I can see it so clearly that I don’t want to cause him pain. I also know that you can open a relationship in the beginning, but you can’t do it later.
But the bottom line is that I don’t know what I want. I have to feel all that out. I can see never wanting to let him out of my sight. I feel our bond is too strong to spend a minute without him ever again. But that’s right now, not ten years from now. If it could happen to Dana and me, it could happen again. Our relationship was closed, but I fell in love with my best friend, anyway. It ripped us apart and caused no amount of enmity, because my best friend would rather have a root canal than be romantic with me. She never would have gotten any of my blushing teenage feelings if I’d thought there was a chance of an actual affair. It was frightening to contemplate. It would have wrecked us even faster if I’d actually been tempted, or I wouldn’t, because I would have seen the threat coming and headed it off at the pass. Actually, I tried, but that worked about as well as cutting off my own arm. I was her friend, too. Why did I think it wouldn’t injure her if I said I couldn’t be friends anymore with her because it was threatening to my marriage.
In short, the only reason I’d ever consider polyamory is taking the chance at agreeing to monogamy and failing yet again and having another breakup to sort out. I also don’t want to cheat. It depends on what Daniel wants to do, because I know he only wants me. He just knows how many relationships I’ve had with women and how they’re more intense sometimes than they are with men. I don’t want to lose my whole life over it.
So basically, I’d probably agree to an open relationship and then never actually do anything about it, but I will never say never because stranger things have happened to me that turned out to be wonderful, but it was hard to grow in that direction.
I’ve been dating Zach for a few months now, and Daniel thinks he’s cool as hell. Zach will return the favor when Daniel is ready to be a complete Doc instead of a complete dick. There will be interviews, because Daniel already trusts him and I’m not sending him to somone he doesn’t know (they haven’t met in person, but they will should the stars align). Zac just wants to know that Daniel has the mental and physical capability to be a husband.
Zac can, but he’s not the marrying kind. He is already full up, I think. I’m just one of the people who hangs out with him while we talk about life.
I hope that Daniel can get it together, though, because I want that conversation to happen. I want Zac to see that going through rehab and giving Daniel the chance to get well was the right thing to do. Cora says that my faith in her father is not misplaced. I hope she is right, and at the very least, I’m proud of what it means for their relationship.
The thing about Daniel that hurts me the most is that he wanted to get married right out of rehab, not so we could be together any faster, but to make travel easier, as well as getting me a PTSD Doc with trauma experience and better meds. Saying goodbye to that is a major loss, because I’d never had someone offer me such a big world of โfix-itโ than him, and not because I asked. He’s a Doc. He saw I needed it.
Then, later he got angry that I saw him as โhaving this perfect life.โ No, I don’t. I think he’s in the shit. I wanted him to have more to dream of than a dead end job somewhere just to make ends meet. His possibilities are endless, but they are only suggestions. If Daniel wants to move to the beach in a country where we can both live off his retirement, or I could get a job over the Intenet making American money to supplement his retirement, our digital nomad plan has legs.
My basic philosophy on Daniel is that anything he creates now is his choice… from relationships to writing to whatever he wants to do. It’s just that he’s already done his job. He was embedded with Marines in Kandahar during Operation Enduring Freedom. He deserves to do nothing if that’s what he wants. I just think he’s too curious about music, literature, and history to stay bored if he gets that way.
I just want him to know that I do have his best interests at heart. I’m trying to integrate him into a completely queer family, and if you’ve grown up in NE Texas all your life, that is a tall task. He thinks I want to โreprogram him.โ No, I want you to take interest in not treating people as if you’re the center of the universe. He can’t help it. He’s an alcoholic. He’s not capable. But it doesn’t make me sorry that I called him out. It makes me human that I’m willing to take all his shit just to hopefully get the reward of a husband and daughter that might never come.
Well, the kid stays in the picture, but you know what I mean.
I can’t picture a life without Cora anymore because I know where she lives. I feel that she is in great danger. I have just as much trauma regarding Cora walking out her front door every day as I do thinking about how crushed I would have been had Daniel not made it home.
Again, it’s NE Texas and there she is sin. So am I. I could also be shot for being trans because I’m genderqueer. I don’t look like a stereotypical woman, so if someone wasn’t paying attention, they’re not going to care if they shoot us both and I would not know how to cope if she died and I lived.
I want her to move to Baltimore with me, because we’ll get a better deal and it’s not too far from Johns Hopkins or the VA. Because of Texas’ inane laws, Cora cannot get the medication or the surgery she needs and she’s 24 years old. If she wants those things, I think it would be completely doable at Johns Hopkins and if the VA does trans medicine, we could also go to Walter Reed, because that would be free to her.
If there are any veterans out there who know if Walter Reed does trans medicine, that would be helpful. Otherwise, it would be cheaper to fly to Thailand first class and get her care there.
I have never met Cora’s mother, but I would like to be friends with her, too, especially if Daniel is uncomfortable visiting her if she’s living with me. I hope he doesn’t. I’m just as much of his friend as I ever was. I am sure that he’s behind his daughter a hundred percent, and I don’t care how he feels about me in terms of getting back together, because obviously Cora’s treatment is not about him.
I think some part of him thinks he’s responsible for all this, because he doesn’t want her to put away her old pictures because he likes reminiscing. He doesn’t want to burn the old birth certificate as a ceremony. He also thinks he’s alone in all this, that millions of parents haven’t gone through the same thing, having a funeral for the child they lost so they can better accept the child they have.
No one raised Cora to be trans, she just is. She’s been wearing a mask since she was born. For her to break out of it, she needs the support of her entire family in lockstep.
I need them to buy the books. I need them to research on the web. I need her parents to see how they’re contributing to her feelings of unworthiness.
I see this more clearly than Daniel because no one raised me to be queer, either. Learning to be a husband and a wife was a time of trial. I don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to finance, important documents, etc. None of my partners have ever been good at this stuff, either, because they were raised the same as me.
That being said, when I’m with men, I tend to treat them like I’m their husbands because no one has ever done it for them before. Treating their minds and their bodies like they are as beautiful as women, letting them open up with anything and everything they want to talk about, letting them be the little boys they were before life hit them in the face.
Men are more tender when you strip away the bullshit of masculinity as an identity. Even the idea of femininity is bullshit, because when I say that I am all female, it doesn’t register that I, too, am an archetype of a woman and I don’t have to wear makeup or clothes to impress to address that fact. I just don’t care that much and want to be comfortable.
I have genderfluid relationships no matter which gender I’m in a relationship with, because I’ve been with women for so damn long that I don’t approach anything with the manners of a stereotypical wife. Therefore, I have no idea how to treat men, so I treat them like women. It works. I still have some of my butch identity that way, and men are forced into a feminine identity that’s always been there, but dormant since they were children. It makes perfect sense. The dance of intimacy is right because we’re both just people, he no more important than me.
It’s something that I want with Daniel, because I think that kind of love will help him heal from his war wounds. I can be his husband if he’ll let me. He’ll get a kind of love that equalizes us so that the power dynamic is gone. He can be submissive with his emotions and his body if he needs to, and it’s ok. It’s why I’m ok with him being in recovery and why I’m ok with waiting a year to see if the breakup was the right move or not. Part of me will never get over it if it’s real.
Stories That Are All True 