What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

The hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make are the ones I didn’t get. Because do you really get a choice not to feel confused down to your very soul when your wife cannot function? You’d think I was talking about Dana, but no. I could not function and she could not handle it. Then, she started to self-destruct and I was too sick to stop anything. I have been writing a book on my illness, to a large degree, because when you have access to my thought process, you see all my processing disorders and mental illness through stream-of-consciousness memories.

It’s not just a deconstruction of my marriage, though, because I talk about all my relationships here to one degree or another.

This morning, the thing that made me smile was my first boyfriend, Ryan, finding out that I’m still attracted to men and asking me what I’m doing this weekend. It was hilarious, and I teased him about being slow on the uptake because I’d been posting about Zac for a year (this was just a funny meme). What I didn’t say and should have was, “actually I’m free.” There’s a reason it’s really important that Ryan laughed and joked with me about it, because breaking up with Ryan isn’t a decision I got, either.

Lesbians older than me convinced me that bisexuality was a lie. Kids are stupid, ergo I thought women were magic. There was no such thing as people who loved both, because if you fell in love with a woman, you couldn’t go back (like they had some sort of secret poison? Idfk. I can’t do the math.). I do not believe that anyone meant me harm. I think their attitudes toward Ryan were based in their own prejudice and internalized homophobia. It’s not like I’ve never been burned by a bi girl, but what I knew even then is that the men weren’t the problem.

Marrying Kathleen was a mistake because it was an anxious/avoidant attachment and when she was avoidant, she acted out. No normal person in a relationship that gets frustrated is going to cheat for months and destroy you while you’re out of town. She can justify it all she wants, but it’s not going to reconcile. In turn, I do not blame Dana for all my feelings for Supergrover. Just because I felt things for someone else while married to her doesn’t mean that I was horrible about it.

It was contentious because those feelings existed at all, not because I was trying to push Dana away. It just did. It was a ball I didn’t realize I was setting in motion until many, many years after the fact. This is because I went back and started exploring the root cause of the pain. Dana and I only looked stable from the outside when we got to Houston. We were actually broken beyond repair and needed a therapist. We didn’t go. Therefore, things fell apart quickly.

Feelings for Supergrover didn’t come out of a vacuum, they were the siren call of something darker- a life without having to fight through a marriage at all. Yes, Supergrover gave me a task that would limit other people from getting into our bubble, and then thought I thought there was something unappealing about that. I did not trade one situation for a worse one, and I got tired of Supergrover insisting that I had. As I’ve said before, I didn’t do anything because she told me to do anything. I did it because it needed doing.

I didn’t leave Dana for good because she was a bad wife, or that our problems weren’t reconcilable (until she hit me). It was because there are three forms of communication in Texas….. telephone, television, tell Dana. If Supergrover has any reticence about this, she shouldn’t, because basically I felt like I had a deep, irreconcilable issue that resolved the moment my glasses smashed into my face.

Dana’s voice echoes in my head constantly regarding a particular event, the one where I knew it was over in retrospect. I won’t say more, but it was huge and ended in a voice mail to Supergrover telling her that I knew she’d had something big come up at work and I was crying that I’d been a distraction to it.

But, the phrase that runs through my head is haunting and it replays every single night, and the one thing that would unlock all the context and hits the hard out. I’m betting that Supergrover does not want to know what this phrase is, because then she’ll have to face the reality of knowing what I do. It was never going to work, the three of us. Ever.

That’s because it was a moment in which her boss was wrecked, too, and we were having a day of it. I was a panicked mess over our shit, and it was just not a good day for me to go into meltdown (as if it ever is) because she was in meltdown as well over her shit. We seem to have a lot of those days, but for all that, she’s still my beautiful girl. Doesn’t mean she didn’t alienate Dana from me, yet nothing is her fault, either. I hope I have made it abundantly clear that neither of these things is the answer- that it was a spectrum of answers and I had to choose between staying married or “the very best bad idea we’ve got, sir.”

Editor’s Note:

There is an “Argo” quote for every occasion.

In the end, I had to ask myself what I was going to give up for this relationship, and as it turns out, a whole lot. But I didn’t do it because she needed me, or I had this wild fantasy that everything was going to work out in the end. By the time I moved to Washington, we were officially done and I was freaked out at the possibility of moving with that insecure connection because I realized it was going to be hell on earth to convince someone I didn’t do something because of her. She took it so personally that she couldn’t see my point anymore, except it was the same point I’d been making for several years before I got sick. The timing of everything was just off, and I can’t help that- even more now that nine years have passed.

When I got sick, Dana’s parents didn’t move from the area, so I thought that our paths would stop being parallel, but wouldn’t go off in completely different directions. Dana could visit, not live with me, etc. But again, I quickly learned that’s not how being hit works. The longer the shock wore off, the more depressed and anxious I got.

I know for certain that to the outside world it looked like I was waiting for a woman in a situation that would never happen. This is not true. I was terrified. I could make her priority one in my head because nothing would happen. I was safe. She was the only woman in my life that I could love with wild abandon that I knew for sure wouldn’t hurt me. I just had to hang in until her anger was resolved.

In some ways, winter melted into spring, and the thaw warmed both of us. But we’ve never gone back to The Moment, either. She was never the definite article, because she has two in my mind. For every time she was The Moment, there were three times where she was The Doctor.

If you don’t know what The Moment is, I won’t make you either go back and look it up or research Doctor Who online. The Moment is a weapon that is capable of destroying entire universes, entire species, and that’s the point. He’s trying to save the universe from collapse, but in order to do it, he has to kill his own people in addition to the Dalek invasion.

Editor’s Note:

I had to look up the exact number, and Doctor Who is so popular that all I did was type “how many Gallifreyans died in The Time War?” It popped up immediately.

Eight to 10 billion Time Lords died that day, leaving The Doctor completely alone except his mirror image, The Master. There are two interesting concepts here. The first is that Supergrover is my mirror image, because we are both Timeless Children, steeped in that DNA. The second is that I have decided the “The Timeless Child” is all abused children because of what Tecteun did to The Doctor. She adopted him and ran experiments on The Doctor, which The Doctor couldn’t have recognized to due regeneration. She was a mad scientist with a willing participant because The Doctor didn’t know any better. The Doctor was regenerated all the time like a rat in a lab, ending with William Hartnell….. who unsurprisingly stole a TARDIS. I think it’s institutional memory, to be honest. Even if The Doctor didn’t recognize what was done, The Doctor still felt all the pain of an insecure environment, just like all Timeless Children do. I hope we find out as we go along why she stopped with William Hartnell. Why The Doctor ended up as his particular persona….. which as I remember, is not altogether pleasant and for good reason, as it turns out. However, with Supergrover, we are The Holy and the Moly, and we change it around often. Neither of us is coded as The Master, neither of us are pure enough to be The Doctor. But, The Doctor is not pure enough to be The Doctor, and he knows it…… felt it deeply as he wrestled with The Moment that day. Let’s not forget that thought the genocide was later rectified, he still made the choice to blow up his people. As a result, The Doctor, like all Timeless Children, is also The Master when The Doctor feels weak….. “a good man goes to war.” Luckily, “prisoner zero has escaped.”

Editor’s Note:

I switch between him, she, they, and The Doctor because it isn’t clear in canon whether The Doctor goes by “they” now or is always the definite article. The Meep cleared that up when The Meep said that The Meep always identifies as the definite article, and The Doctor says, “ya, I do that.” The reason it’s confusing is the actor who played the role when the story took place. The Doctor might be the definite article, but Matt Smith and Jodie Whitaker aren’t. Therefore, I try to remember to use the definite article or “they,” but I get lost quickly.)

To that end, I had to wrestle with The Moment. She had to walk with me through all of my decisions whether they were the worst or the best.

It’s what makes my worst decision also the best, depending on where you stand.

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