When I was younger, I loved the fourth of July. It meant gathering with all my friends on the banks of the Willamette, sometimes cuddling to keep warm during the fireworks. It’s always hit or miss in Portland with Independence Day, because sometimes it’s perfectly pleasant and sometimes I should dress like it’s December. Plus, that was at the end of the day. The beginning and middle were always shuttling between my house and Diane’s, because she was my intro to the rest of my friends, including @one4paws (Bryn B on Medium).

I haven’t written much about Bryn because everything between us is fine. What is writing if there is no conflict to struggle with out loud? I have a feeling that people think I’m a negative person, when the reality is that (in the words of poet Mary Karr) “happiness writes white.” I cannot think of many happy things that would make an impact such as I do when I start with a conflict and work it out…. the problem coming when people read as fast as I write. I write as fast as I write, but I savor my words after they are written. It does not take one entry to tell me how I feel about a thing. It takes a week or more.

Today, I am going to try and make happiness write with dark blue ink, because both Bryn and I felt the storm in the big yellow house coming. I don’t think that Bryn was prepared for me to turn out to be a blogger, but she’s stood by me in a spectacular fashion because she’s the one person in my life who can verify that I don’t make anything up. We were both there. And in fact, we’ve talked about her having a column called “The Receipts,” where she takes my old entries and just writes down what she was feeling during certain times in my life. She is my oldest friend and my partner in life.

Here’s how I explained it to my sister:

Bryn is not my girlfriend, but treat her like she has the same authority as Dana.

My sister got it immediately. If I’m in trouble, she’s the one you call. I cannot do that with anyone else in my life because Aaron and I are too new. But it is through her that my journey went from being a rabid fan of American Independence Day to that of the Finns. I got so tired of emotional abuse that I went to Google and looked up what happened on the birthday of my emotional abuser and tried to find something I could celebrate instead. The blue and white flag started calling to me, and it has not stopped.

I want to move there because as I’ve learned more about Finland, I’ve learned more about how they handle getting people set up for life better than the US when it comes to both education and autism. Failing moving there, I want a trip. I want Bryn and I to have the best cold-weather gear available so that we can stay all day in Senate Square if we want, because I know that crying would take at least an hour. To long for something so long and to finally receive it is its own kind of magic. And in fact, I am crying right now because I can see the picture so clearly.

It’s why one of the Doubles offered to take me on a date to an ice hotel, I’m guessing.

Heytch, I am guessing that you did not know you were chosen to go on a date with me, but the fantasy was amazing as long as it lasted…. which was about three minutes. It never would have worked, because you thought I’d be taller. 😉 But in that three minutes, I escaped. We had a wonderful time because I have learned to be a gentleman. It was your choice to go home knowing as little or as much about me as you wanted, because I did not assume that you were asking for anything but dinner. I mean, if I invited a friend to go on vacation (and I have), I’m assuming we have separate rooms. Whether your fantasy said separate rooms is not mine to know, but since it has been 12 years since I ran into a door because you were so cute, I think it’s safe to assume that we are not going to see each other any time soon.

As much as I wish it were true.

That was the hardest part about being in the hospital.

What I wanted with Heytch then is what I want with Michael now- neutral turf and excellent coffee. He’s got a girlfriend and littles, and I have no designs on him. He has no designs on me. But we both agree that a little adventure isn’t a bad thing. He told me that he could not go with me, but hoped that the other friends I invited would accept.

Learning to be a gentleman was also learning to roll with the punches when the story changed to Heytch being happily married with a kid, but I could come and live with her and her family, just being a member of the crew. It was my choice which story to believe, because “I am always the best.” Living with Heytch and her family seemed like the best thing ever, because it was, in a sense, coming home. It was repenting of everything I’d done and left undone, because I am unapologetically Episcopalian.

With both stories having an equal chance of being true, I showed up at the place where she worked. I left wanting to die because neither story was true. I went what’s called “walkabout,” where the adrenaline of being trapped out in the cold made me emotionally regulate myself. As a result, whenever I am feeling upended about something, I move. I punch the air like it’s done something offensive. I run. I kick. I fight for life.

Heytch was a setup, but Lindsay, Bryn, and Michael were there to catch. That’s because I didn’t figure out until later that it wasn’t actually Heytch. Both were fever dreams designed to awaken any libido left in me at all, because I had died inside. Whomever the wizard of Oz pulling my strings turned out to be, they knew they were not awakening romance, but any hope left in life itself. I didn’t try to kill myself, I was killing myself slowly by taking all of my love and care and throwing it into the internet where I thought someone was catching. They were, but they did not express it.

How are you supposed to know that you are loved, wanted, and needed if no one tells you? And it’s not that no one did. It’s that I began to crave approval from Aada, because I was tired of not living up to my potential and tired of seemingly pissing her off all the time, like saying she would never understand me until she had to pick out a casket for her mother. I did not say that directly to her, I wrote it in my blog. Then she turned around and yelled at me for saying “I hope your mother dies.” Aada is from a Finnish name generator. I’m going to bet that my dreams for the last 12 years have been greeting her mother in her first language, and now I can. I also know how to apologize, because I’ve been a mess in at least three of her kids’ hair for four times that many years. So, anteeksi, Aino.

I have never wished ill on anyone in Aada’s family, nor wished ill on her. It’s a relationship, and if you don’t feel deeply enough to say that some days you hate someone, then it’s probably not reality. I said that she would never understand me until then because a large chunk of my personality died when my mother was no longer there to support it. She will not understand that phase of her life until it is here. To castigate me for saying so is fine. She was reading me from her own understanding, and her own understanding is a different frame of reference.

She has never really taken in two things I’ve said. The first is that my divorce and my mother dying happened in the right order. The second is that the reason they were in order is that I was irrationally jealous of Dana and Aada for years after that, because they’re both older than me and they still had their mothers. I was a walking wound, and I would have taken it out on Dana. But according to me, she doesn’t have much of a mother, anyway. I hope that has changed, and if me moving to DC made them closer, then I feel better about the state of affairs. But at the time, her mother told me that she was not equipped to handle a child like Dana, and she should find someone else.

“A child like Dana” was code for “queer.”

I didn’t react that day, I went into meltdown and kicked both her parents out of my house the next day. I told Aada that I was proud of myself for being a man and protecting my wife. But my wife doesn’t know that’s why I melted down. That’s why I burned out. Her mother rejected her like my mother rejected me. I knew where that road led, which was Dana saying to me that my mother never looked her in the eye. Not once in the entire time we were married.

At the same time, the emotional connection with Aada blossomed because I let it. I should have shut that shit down, but she was a cute straight girl with a boyfriend who wouldn’t give me the time of day. Of course it couldn’t go anywhere. We just made each other feel good, right? Well, yes and no. It could have been that if we’d started and ended there, but we did the standard female to female (I’m nonbinary) trauma dump so what should have been a light and flirty relationship designed to make both our marriages better became hacking each other, isolating each other, and in my case, craving attention and approval because I didn’t really have a mother and I was the oldest sibling.

Light flirts turned into great conversations about books… it was the same progression I’ve found with everyone. The connection looks different when New Relationship Energy (NRE) wears off. But, of course, I also had a lot to apologize for because I was not the perfect angel. I’m sure I said enough to offend her for her whole life. I was your basic incel at times, having had my nose swatted with newspaper because I wasn’t watching what I was saying. Not everyone deserves to hear everything, and I should have kept our relationship as clean and healthy as she wanted. Because that’s what stopped her sharing information with me.

She never wanted me to move to DC.

She never wanted me to go to the spy museum.

She could have made her case, but she didn’t. She just worked around me, scaring the hell out of me when she thought it was appropriate. She told me what her consequences would be if I talked, putting something on me that was not deserved. Then, when I explained how her consequences affected me, she did not take me seriously.

It was her choice not to come to the hospital, when she’s not that far away. It was her choice not to come to Baltimore or DC at all with me in mind. Yet, the longer we didn’t meet on the ground, the more the adrenaline built up so that the trailing energy of “new relationship” lingered for far longer than it should’ve. She told me she was a basic bitch. I just didn’t believe it. I believed that any move I made was dangerous for her, and made all the wrong ones because she wouldn’t communicate her needs effectively. She needed me to pick up what she was saying out of half truths and fragmented sentences…… when the truth is that she’s a wonderful writer. With me, she just chose not to have that skill.

And in fact, in the internet dumbfuckery leading up to my hospitalization, she presented me with an actual good idea, one I wish we could run with. She could be my boss in creating training videos for dumbasses like me who have no situational awareness and need to get up to speed quickly. I was told that I hallucinated all the internet dumbfuckery, but I put together a cover letter for her company, anyway. Michael said it sounded like a fever dream, so I didn’t submit it. But one day, I will apply at her company because she cannot scare me away from it anymore.

I wrote yesterday that I turned down the Doubles because I would have to stop the medical marijuana. That’s because I didn’t have any anti-anxiety medication and no way to get it filled until May 6th. However, working for that company requires being sober, so I decided to white-knuckle it. I set my quit date for Easter because it was 4/20 and easy to remember. Therefore, I don’t smoke pot, but I won’t pee clean for another six weeks or so. I was very proud of myself because I found a vape wrapped in my guest bed sheets that I’d overlooked and made a big deal out of throwing it away.

That’s because it takes a real spy to tell you that someone else is faking it. When they said, “do you want me to train you or not?” was the exact moment I realized I could use my love of intelligence for good- that I did love the world that much, to want to help. But more than that, I want to help the people who love the intelligence community and don’t know how.

What I have found is that you cannot love them in words. They cannot tell you what is going on with them, and you don’t want to know, because then you’re responsible for keeping a secret you’re not trained to keep. You love them in hugs and kisses because then you are saying you care about them. To keep asking about their lives is not showing care- it’s suspicious. Why do you want to know?

They’re a different breed, and intelligence is all the same.

Thus, my version of “The Receipts” is a journey from being all about love and light through Christ, to love and light in the shadows. The problem is that when you bring light into the shadows, they disappear and you stand alone.

It was a long day’s journey into night, and Bryn was there to see the transition. That’s why I want her in Senate Square by my side. We spent too many Independence Days cold on the Willamette not to be cold in Helsinki as well.

I’m watching my money because I know that moving to Europe is not cheap, and there are outside forces beyond my control as I wait to see how much money I actually have. When my stepfather died, the money willed to me by my mother and stepfather was supposed to go into a trust for me to access. The trust was never created, so under Texas law it reverted to the rest of my siblings. My stepsiblings don’t even know me, but they agreed to hand over their portion of the inheritance. However, that has not happened yet and I do not know why. I asked my accountant to deal with it because I don’t know them. I’m just wondering why it’s taking so long. My financial anxiety increases with each minute as the US supposedly gets more dangerous on the news, and actually gets more dangerous with social media.

The news says what it says, and then the people react.

The people’s reaction to the news is always what you have to fear the most.

I know something about that, because the thing I have to fear the most is the moment I hit “Post.” It’s why I write everything in one shot and it all wanders from topic to topic, then I get to the end and my finger is on the button before I lose my nerve. Losing nerve means I think I have lost the right to exist with real feelings. I have lost the right to make the world move when I do. I have lost the right to act, I can only live in reaction.

That’s what PTSD is very good at doing- making you think that you have lost the right to act. You can only walk in the world with your arm over your face. You don’t make many waves, but you trip a lot because you’re blind.

I have been blind with many entries, but I have tripped into good things as well. If I hadn’t written about Aada, I wouldn’t have Michael…. who likes adventure, but can’t come with me.

At least, not today.

But tomorrow? Who knows? I’m hoping he’ll get to meet Bryn.