there is no date for this post, because I am writing it right now, today, with the intention of immediate publishing. there is no found photo from pinterest because I want to share with you this beautiful moment I had with the blooming camellia and the frigid january night.

that’s right, I am back in the front seat of my own vulnerability. no more archived writing to share, I am fully caught up. it seems that in my efforts to protect people from knowing feelings that may be temporary, I have lost touch with the greatest tool I’ve ever had to process those ephemeral emotions - sharing. I don’t know that this has been a net-negative experience, but it is so interesting to watch the choices I’ve made ripple out into different impacts on my life and well-being. all of this preamble to say— I am a bit uncomfortable in my vulnerability right now, this muscle has atrophied somewhat over time.

I have spent this year testing my practices. I run out of a supplement and wait to see if I notice a difference. I slowly release the death grip I’ve had on my routines and see what happens. I’ve talked about the difficulties of it some, and when I do people ask why I continue. I haven’t had a singular good reason, but a handful of decent ones:

I live with a partner now and I want to be more flexible and responsive to what comes up in our day-to-day. I am also building intentional community with my neighbors and similarly want to be available to meet the moment as it arises. over the past several years I have been repeatedly faced with the grief of having to choose my routines over spontaneous opportunities, and have felt victim to my own self-care. a story developed that I could either care for myself and keep up my relationships or lose myself to time completely and eventually lose my relationships because I’d be such an emotional wreck.

but mostly it has been a gut feeling, something telling me that it is time to build tolerance to change, that circumstances will only become more unpredictable,that I have spent enough time in my chrysalis, and that it is time to unfurl my sticky wings and test my wobbly legs out in the world.

in this testing, I began questioning my thresholds. sure, I have been doing my chores on one day of the week for years and that has worked great for me. some weeks I wouldn’t have the spoons to do all of them and I’d suffer mentally the rest of the week, constant compulsive reminders to catch up flashing through my head.

but several months ago I began asking myself when these things actually need to be done, and how to know. I let my house go un-vaccuumed for a month at least, and practiced knowing the difference between discomfort, urgency, and necessity. my wellness waned in the absence of these grounding routines, and I let it. I do not want my wellness to be dependent on the absence of dust/spiderweb/hair tumbleweeds from my floor.

this unwellness did impact me, my work, and my relationships. I picked fights with sam, grew resentments like a bountiful garden. but I also practiced coming back, surrendering my ammo.

it doesn’t feel good, this anomie, this moor-less-ness. but there are some roots growing into the chaotic substrate that has developed, the compost made up of mistakes and apologies, righteous anger actually expressed, helplessness, unwellness, beautiful glorious contaminated human aliveness.

sometimes I think this is what it means to actually heal.

not to be perfect or have it all together but to be imperfect and flailing and still somehow okay and able to love myself. some days it feels like drowning but more days it feels like progress. it has felt like a practice in adaptation, in pivoting.

this week, my pivoting has turned to pirouetting as a winter storm has come to shit in my cereal.

you see, I might’ve already said this (I know I did) but I turn forty in two weeks. in the midst of my depression, I have had to start planning a celebration for this momentous marker I never thought I would make it to. I dragged my heels for a long time, but finally, less than a month ago, I decided to double down and book a cabin for my friends and I to stay in for three nights this weekend. these trips are a balm to my overstimulated mind, I don’t take adderall, I lay around and color and read and watch movies and smoke A Lot of weed. I cuddle with my friends constantly, we laugh until we cry and make fun of each other and are all so in love. behetrin offered to spearhead the food planning so I didn’t have to think about it at all. what an angel, what a mercy, what a gift.

except that two days ago we learned a winter storm might come ruin everything. and, of course, these were the two days I had shoved my entire week into so that I could take the next four off. I was working, going to court, working my other job, doing laundry, getting the house ready for a friend to stay in while we were gone. now sprinkle in a little bit of having to read cancellation policies and Major Disruptive Events policies and having to talk to the person who owns the cabin and the company the use to rent it out. having to consider shorter trips or different days or or or or or or or or. I hate making choices.

all of this is truly a nightmare scenario for me, but I did it. I let myself cry at work when I finally realized we probably weren’t going to be able to go. I listened to suggestions from friends, noticed strange anger coming up, and recognized I wasn’t ready to consider alternatives yet. I felt the pressure of 9 people wanting to know what we were going to do and I let it be there until I was ready to meet it. each time I felt an external tug, I turned inward and asked what I needed to meet it, and then turned back outward and communicated it.

I am still really sad we won’t spend the next four days getting sick of each other. tonight, we are going to spend the night at jade’s all together for just one night. tomorrow we’ll go antiquing and get to celebrate chris’s birthday. in two weeks we will do something for mine, and at some point we will have our cabin trip. parts of me are still spinning with all of the change but most of me is like… pretty solid.

I am really quite proud that I have been willing to risk the structures that have grounded me in hopes of learning to ground in less stable circumstances. I am not all the way there, I don’t know if all the way there exists. but I am so here. and I love it here.

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1/9/25 (that’s today)

what follows might worry you.

my last post prompted both z and e to reach out to me. lovely ghost visits. I had forgotten what happens when I am Vulnerable on The Internet.

I have the urge to preface it by telling you I feel good today, and did yesterday too. I have the urge to play down the raw emotions I felt last week while writing. I have a stronger urge to not ease your mind so much. I have a stronger urge to let us all build tolerance to each other’s un-well-ness.

these are unwell days.

I have the strongest urge to interject my past writing with commentary, which I fear may confuse the reader. I will separate it visually as best I can.

(like this).

if you feel lost, take comfort in knowing I have succeeded in relaying my personal experience accurately.

9/3/25

we are in california again.

(I dreamt of california last night)

fortuitous timing allowed a friend’s pet-sitting need to align perfectly with our anniversary.

one year, finally.

except that I ate something I am allergic to the first night and the next day came down with what may-or-may-not be covid. I spent four days on the couch, missed our trip to san diego to see one of their moms, and have spent the two days I have started to feel better working.

last night we put breaking up on the table.

this is not the anniversary trip I was expecting.

this morning I listened to a podcast called “when to break up.” it was not helpful. (heart palpitation)

this morning they woke up with a migraine. I have been avoiding them. their illness so often softens me toward them when we’re feeling estranged or distanced. it does not feel like a softness I can afford.

(I have often lately been cursed(?) by this hardening)

I do not know how to inhabit this no man’s land between together and apart.

I have spent the day craving this page but now that I am here I want only to go to them.

…

fifteen minutes later I am here to say that that also did not feel good. I suppose good is a bit much to ask for here, with my nose clogged and throat sticking to itself.

I texted the group chat last night to tell them. muscle memory compelling me to support. usually a message like that is accompanied by panic, hysteria, some deep grief. last night it was calm, measured. I said

(I gave up writing there)

1/2/25

lately I have wondered again if a relationship was actually what I wanted or if I just wanted to convince someone who didn’t like me to like me.

lately I have thought back to who I was before this relationship with a wash of idealization. it has been long enough to miss that specific flavor of suffering, I suppose, while this specific flavor of suffering grows stale on my tongue.

a lot has changed since last I wrote. these days my mind is fuzzy, thoughts take effort to string together into narrative, and by the time I have gotten to the end of one I have forgotten where I started. I am experiencing depression, the kind that feels like a hundred year flood. I thought I was past thinking I was past depression. I thought I’d accepted its inevitable return and yet… here I am surprised again.

I am really struggling to write, to be quite honest. I want to tell you about how sam and I didn’t break up over that california trip, about how we realized we’d have a lot more time when we got back and that it was worth seeing if that actually did help. and it did. I want to tell you that I got a part time job after that trip, and how much that helped. I want to tell you that I moved into a separate bedroom when I started feeling depressed again, and how much that helped. I want to tell you that I am still depressed. I want to tell you that these days I am compulsively and consistently questioning every single one of my life choices. writing that, I wonder if I should raise my dose of prozac. I don’t want to. I want to tell you how lost I feel, how confused and frustrated and helpless. and that the same time like… fine. like I look around and nothing is on fire and things are okay and I look at my thoughts and I’m just like… why? how? I feel like I somehow got much worse at being mentally ill over the past year. I blame my relationship with sam. I don’t know how much to believe that. I remind myself that when I am blaming I am often avoiding grief and the acceptance of some circumstance I have deemed unacceptable.

I deem most circumstances unacceptable these days.

most circular thought patterns end with a cartoon version of me swan-diving off a building. I wrote that line on patreon a couple weeks ago and in this moment I feel like a fraud plagiarizing myself. did y’all know plagiarizing has an -iar- right there? I certainly didn’t.

I want to tell you that I have been smoking cigarettes again but never whole ones. just butts and shares. so much so that I have been waking up with a sore throat. I wanted to quit today. I have done well at not having any but I think I might after this. it was all I could think about yesterday, even when I was smoking I was thinking about smoking, wanting more. I’ve been chasing highs, too. I’ve been running. I told all this to sam tonight and they said “thats what it looks like from the outside” and I felt crushed.

we have been fighting. again? our whole relationship has been fighting. all relationships are fighting.

do not believe everything I feel when I am depressed. my mentally ill mind is a kaleidoscope of distortions.

we fell apart a little last week. it came to a head. it got better for three days. one little thing happened and humpty dumpty fell off the wall again. maybe I can’t write because I am pressuring myself too much toward coherence and beauty. maybe I don’t want to be coherent or beautiful. maybe I want to be honest and ugly, depressed and ungenerous. if it is at least honest I think I am on the right track.

anyway I think part of the reason I have historically loved emotionally unavailable people is this excruciating perfectionism. I think the more intimate a relationship is, the more I scrutinize it, the higher standard I hold it to, the more I want to escape. right now I am struggling to survive

(wow there was a different end to that sentence but my brain said naw, thats all of it right there.)

and anyway. its a lot of work to think everything is terrible all the time and just ignore those thoughts and go about your business. the longer I have those thoughts the more I believe them. then when something bad actually does happen I just collapse into this mess on the ground (emotionally not literally) and want to give up (swan-dive).

I think what helps me feel more well, less lost, is that I have had a habit of keeping my narrative. like I have had the capacity to be living life and watching it and building this story about what is true and holding that truth and reinforcing it. and I guess I am doing that now too except this story is doo-doo. I wonder what feels so risky about accepting and loving this life, right now? the thought of it turns my stomach.

what happened?

anyway ayeee I have a headache now and I am nauseous and I am going to smoke a cigarette and I worry I am killing myself and we are all going to die and I have a first date tomorrow wow letting myself be a mess feels fucked up.

peer support openings next week

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written the same day as part 1, part 2 is being posted four months later:

7/6/25

you left. like I did a couple weeks ago. phone on the counter, no note.

when I did it, you panicked. I came back and you listened as I let it all out. today it was your turn, and I told myself I’d start looking for you when it was time to go to bed.

this morning I said “I love you” and you said “I love you more” and I said “I am not going to do that” and “its not a competition” and you said “it is now.”

tonight I published a piece that wasn’t this one, a placeholder, because these words are too hot and fresh to share. I learned that from E. I felt regulated again, bordering on compassionate. I finished the dinner I’d made, now cold, worried what the rice would do to my guts and did it anyway. I watched tv for eleven minutes before I thought to check our shared google doc.

sure enough: your missive.

lately we have been taking clumsy turns holding the relationship for each other. we take wounding turns, yes, and we also take turns holding the faith. tonight, you bore our torch. you apologized, acknowledged, wove poetry into our drudgery. magic is often our medicine. I hadn’t finished before you came back. I said softly “hey” as you walked by my door, and you doubled back. I asked when you’d written it and you said “just now.” I said I hadn’t even finished yet and you sat with me while I did. I said “lets go lay down and not talk” and I made you be the little spoon as my tears silently threatened your neck.

our bodies quickly made sweat with the contact as I thought about how much we have to unlearn, how much we have to go against what feels normal and natural.

I thought about getting the love you want and how this is the purpose of love. not that ooey gooey chemistry synchronicity butterflies shit, no, that is just the siren that calls you to crash your ego against the rocks of Love.

I thought of bell-hooks-quoting-that-guy saying love is supporting the highest spiritual good of the other. Love is what calls you to do the hardest work you’ll ever do, the work that you most need to do for yourself, for another. Love is what can motivate us toward openness when we are closed, toward bravery when we are scared, toward patience when we are agitated.

what we get wrong is that we think love will do the work for us. that if there is love, opposite action will magically happen but my babies… it won’t. we gotta do that shit manually and depending on our previous models and experiences it may feel akin to driving on the wrong side of the road with your feet instead of hands while you lay back in the seat looking at a series of mirrors that gives you a rough estimate of the road ahead. Love is what makes us say “I will try.” and then actually do it.

I laid there creating salty skin pools with you and thought of what my new piano teacher said about learning music. she said, roughly:

“people have trouble learning music because they think its over there, that its far away, somewhere outside of yourself, something you don’t understand, and that is just not true. it is not far away, it is right here.”

what I heard was that I already know it, I just have to trust myself to find it.

when she said it, I thought of all the batshit crazy things I am doing like just up and fixing the leaking shower or trying to buy my house and how the only reason I can do them is because I believe I can, because I think they are something I am capable of. I realized I’d never felt that way with music, and in this moment I realize that for the past 12 years I haven’t felt that about relationships— platonic or romantic.

I thought of all the giant things we are having to unlearn, the backwards math we are constantly doing, the pig latin translations unceasing in our minds and I heard the words of my teacher echo in my head:

“focus on not being frustrated by learning it.”

real time update:

I am fucking struggling. deep depression days. deep depression daze. I feel like I am losing myself and I wonder if the medicine might be found here, where it has often been. so I am low key committing to writing and publishing more often. once a week I do admin for my peer support business and write a little something on patreon when I publish my availability, so I think I will try to also write something here on those days. we will see. I must hold my commitments loosely lest they strangle me with demand avoidance. anyway so I will also link to those here when I publish.

peer support openings next week

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7/6/25

romantic realism, here I am officially.

I have broken my chat gpt cherry, my ecological purity now marred by questions like “what to do when I am being emotionally monitored” and “how to know if you are gaslighting someone” and “is my partner emotionally monitoring me because I am abusive” and “what to do when we are both activated”.

ya know, just some light questions for funsies.

I type this from our office (we live together now), which, during off-hours, doubles as a second living room and retreat. I just came back from the bathroom where I’d had to peel my doubled-over contact from the inside of my left eyelid after crying and rubbing my eyes too hard. this, after finally going to sam and saying “I know I have been withdrawn today. I am overwhelmed and I don’t want to cause unnecessary hurt.” this, after reading all of chat gpt’s compassionate responses. this, while hearing them throw up in the other room.

romantic realism, here we truly are. these are the parts no one talks about. I have to assume they happen to everyone.

don’t they?

this is what they mean in their anniversary posts when they say “we’ve been through hell together” and “you drive me crazy sometimes but I love you all the same, right?

this is intimacy. right?

I have a story that the deeper the intimacy goes, the more of this comes out. I have yet to have a contradictory experience but god bless, I would welcome it.

the status of our union, if I may: we are a pair of walking open wounds, tiptoeing around the other and watching waiting watching for any sign of dis-ease so that our anxieties may be confirmed. we have ruptured and repaired the best we know how, the best I have ever in my life experienced, so many times in the past few months that some days it feels like it is the most consistent form of connection we have.

I don’t blame us, we are ten-months-tomorrow old and facing a litany of external stressors. school, moving, finding new people to live in the neighboring houses in our compound, trying to buy property. surgery, car accident, overnight ER visit. controlling dads, asshole landlords, mean teachers. perimenopause, migraines, rage. we even opened up our relationship and honestly that has been a breeze comparatively.

I have been dreaming of my bad ex, the one I’ve called abusive. I can see echoes of that relationship here— the way she and I became so afraid of each other, so reactive. I had no emotional regulation skills back then, no internal compass, no self-trust (I have only a little more now, ten years later). it does not surprise me it was as damaging to me as it was, and I doubt she escaped unscathed. I know that to her, I am the crazy ex. I was, I am.

this is where it feels so complicated to speak of others as abusive.

I remember months ago when I realized I was DARVO-ing sam. when I recognized that every time they came to me with critical feedback I would turn it back on them somehow to escape blame. it was devastating emotionally to recognize, and it helped me mend a recent rupture with a friend where I had done the same thing. I hear sam doing it to me these days, and I get so lost in the sauce of ~thinking they are deflecting what I’ve pointed out and them thinking I am deflecting what they’ve pointed out~ that I want to be like the turtle we found today and just hole up in my shell. I don’t know what to do here.

I know there are people these days who look up to me emotionally, which is a wild and weird feeling. people who think of me as emotionally mature. I don’t imagine they think of me as perfect or that I’ve got it all figured out, at least I hope not. I used to post reminders that the things I write are often the things I need to hear most myself. it is not advice from a place of expertise or wisdom, it is me placing breadcrumbs as I feel my way in the dark through an emotional minefield.

my activated state is an altered state: I become paranoid, critical, both defensive and offensive. what I say and ask for may not be forever true. if my words or actions were viewed from the outside as conscious or intentional, they would likely be categorized as abusive. but

again, I have not yet met someone for whom this isn’t true. how are we to be in relationship with each other when our survival instincts take over in an instant and do the exact opposite of what the situation needs?

in this moment, I am thinking of somatic teachers. I am thinking of how, in the beginning, I was so intent on moving slowly. of how, in the beginning, it was all compassion and grace and idealization and I had to make myself slow down because I knew these days would come and I wanted to be less intertwined for them so that I could maybe call it more easily or maybe self-regulate better.

and

I remember each time I had to pause the instinct to stay outside of the relationship, where it was safe. I remember each time I chose the messy experiment because it was in front of me and I knew there was only one way to learn. I remember each time one or the other of us apologized, and I mean like really truly bottom-of-our-hearts apologized and how revolutionary that felt. I remember that I am doing this for me, for the relationship, and also for every future relationship I’ll have - even or especially the ones that have nothing to do with romance.

I remember that, in the beginning, I felt so free to be myself, all of my selves. I remember sam saying “I will never weaponize your contradictions.” I remember that they are the first person I’ve ever felt comfortable singing loudly in front of. I remember them as solid, reassuring, warm, calm. I wonder if there were selves that they weren’t sharing and I recognize in me that there are selves that only come out in certain situations. we are here with our most wounded selves now, begging for love and safety, each waiting for the other to offer it first.

I don’t know where we will go from here. I don’t know if I will update this. I am on the front lines of love and most days I am so busy living it that I can’t also reflect on it. I am not in learning and sharing yet, no, I am white-knuckled experiencing only these days.

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2/1/25

my lessons are learned in pendulous swings. the spectrum my pendulum is exploring these days lies between independence and codependence, with glorious glimpses of interdependence there in the middle.

it has been three months since my top surgery revision, and I have gotten sick each month since, like clockwork. my recovery has played out to the tune of tubthumping (I get knocked down, I get up again). last week, sam got in a very bad car accident and lost the 1993 ford 150 that raised them. in the days since, we have been faced with learning what to do when neither of us are okay.

I have been hard on myself. I am frustrated at my slow healing, at the setbacks, at my still limited capacity. sam has supported me so much, which has been both a godsend and a challenge in itself - I am learning to receive care. I feel guilty much of the time, like I am taking advantage, like I am getting away with something. a thought that has helped me through it is knowing that some day I will get the chance to return the favor, that I will get to show the same level of care I have received.

that day has come now, sooner than anticipated. I wasn’t ready for it, and I have been very upset with myself for that.

on our walk thursday morning after a rough night, they said that I had encouraged them so often to let themself not be okay, to let me be there for them, and that when they had… I wasn’t okay.

it was true, and devastating. not only to the self that had received so much care, but to the self that believed I was a good, supportive, caring partner. it was an ego blow. conversations that followed featured me crying, freezing, having to go outside and panic alone. throughout those moments, there was a voice in my head calling me manipulative, irresponsible, not accountable. I could not shoulder the weight of my own expectations and judgments. I did not know how to do it right, and I wanted to give up.

I brought it up today in therapy. I said I don’t know what to do, that I am scared. she said maybe I need to be with that not knowing, maybe I need to let myself be scared in those moments. I pushed back, saying that would mean I’d be making it about me, I would be making them comfort me when I was supposed to be doing the comforting. she said “maybe you need that”, with no judgment, and I remembered something I learned from the george floyd rebellion.

in 2020, and 2021, and every year since, I have asked myself to face my ingrained racism over and over and over. I heard the call for accountability, the call to learn resilience in the face of guilt and fragility and I took it seriously. I watched myself squirm, grieve, get defensive, withdraw, lash out.

I learned that because of the way I am perceived, because of my whiteness, I have mostly been granted assumed goodness by the world around me. I learned that because of this privilege, my tolerance for critical feedback was incredibly low, my tolerance for being seen as “bad”, “wrong”, “harmful”, or “violent” was nonexistent. I learned that in order to be with the racism inside of me, in order to show up and be accountable to the people around me, I needed to build those tolerances.

I also learned to center myself. amidst the calls to decenter whiteness, for white people to decenter themselves, I learned that if I don’t center myself to myself in these interactions that I will, without fail, make it All About Me.

growing up, I learned to fawn as a way to survive my father’s abuse. my nervous system became very skilled at ignoring my needs and catering only to the needs of the other as long as I needed to get out of danger. it worked well, and I thank those parts for helping me survive.

as an adult, my needs are not so easily silenced. they do not shrink or disappear, they transfer. if I am in a situation where I am fawning too long, those needs will find a way to get met. like the other night, when sam came home from therapy to talk about Us and I didn’t have the capacity to have that conversation but I didn’t allow myself to acknowledge that… the night ended with the hurt person (sam) comforting the person they were asking for accountability (me).

when I cannot attend to my emotions as they are happening, I cannot be in right relationship with others. attending doesn’t mean fixing or stopping, it means recognizing and acknowledging. it means making space and sometimes asking for accommodation. it is brave, and difficult, to stay with myself when I am faced with my own wrongdoings. it is also essential.

I think now of the guilt sam has felt lately when I have offered them critical feedback, how frustrating it is when they feel bad about what they’ve done and it negatively impacts our time together. how it makes me not want to bring things up, and I recognize we both need help hearing ourselves in those moments.

we both need support from ourselves and each other when things are hard.

how beautiful.

independence: meeting my needs by myself for myself ?

interdependence: meeting our needs, together ?

codependence: meeting yr needs for you hoping you can then meet my needs for me ?

1/15/25

we get used to each others’ silences.

it happens slowly, in glimpses.

you might think this is a beginning of the end sort of tone, but its not. it is the beginning of the beginning, or maybe the beginning of the middle.

I got one tonight. I finished working in the bedroom-turned-office. I stayed behind, did some digital busywork, caught up on instagram (they get jagged when I am on it too long around them, today I discovered I could meet my needs behind a closed door without triggering their displeasure), and kind of savored the luxury of these stolen moments because they meant that I didn’t feel the urgency to report to them assoonasIwasdone.

I walked out and made a parental comment about ruining eyesight by reading in the dark (we all become stereotypes at one point or another), to which they said “its not that dark” and I laid my right cheek on the small of their back and curled up for just a moment. I changed into softer clothes and asked if they were done with the front door for the night so I could lay the woolen packing material along the crack to keep the cold out. we exchanged words about the fire they’d made and I asked about dinner. mostly though, I walked around in silent contentment as they read on the bed. the absence of anxiety was palpable in my chest.

in the beginning of our silences, we echolocated each other with reaching and reassurance. I would ask “are you mad” and they would smile, laugh, and say “no sweetie.” (they only call me sweetie when I am being silly about something, but they refuse to admit it.) they would ask, “are you feeling anxious?” and I would say “no I am simply existing.” I would ask “did that upset you?”, they would ask “whats on your mind?”

it started when we were in california together, I think. the first time we spent days on end in the same house, the first time we were together for our moments alone. my mind played shadows on the walls of that cave, but I just kept voicing them out loud, asking like an incessant child, and they did the same. by the end, I wondered why neither of us were annoyed by this constant checking, this reassurance seeking. but it was so… light. we believed each other when we answered. we let it go.

we came back to atlanta and they have spent every night but one in my house. we are learning each other’s currents, we are getting used to each others’ silences.

today I am thinking about the energetics of preparation vs prevention. I was listening to a podcast on prepping vs homesteading, while pulling out japanese chaff flower, a newer invasive plant spreading quickly through georgia.

I was struck by the social stigma around “preppers” and sat with it awhile. it’s so interesting to me the way that story functions to keep us in a cycle of consumption. people laugh at preppers constantly learning skills and putting away resources just in case, and when I imagine the alternative they’re quietly promoting, I find that it is… what? assuming the best? assuming you’ll be taken care of by some outside entity?

I kept looking at it and realized the faith that holds up this system of thought kind of rests on the idea of prevention. I think we give a lot of power to certain people and task them with preventing bad things from happening to us. this is the social norm, so any variance is mocked and alienated.

I got really heated about it, thinking of all the ways focusing on prevention over preparation has lead to so much violence, wars, policing. I thought to myself “preparation over prevention, always.” I wanted to paint it on the walls of my house, a reminder that I needn’t be so concerned with never fighting with sam and that I could instead refocus on how I want to fight with them. this is a classic jack sermon building in my mind.

and then. I wrote down things I associate with prevention, things I associate with preparation, and I found there are evils to both of course. I started writing this, and noticed that while listening to and thinking about engaging more with preparation, my body was doing the physical act of prevention (pulling weeds).

I was reminded again that every time I construct a binary and pit two ends against each other, I can reframe that binary into a spectrum and use my imperfect discernment to find the good enough tool for the job somewhere along the line. I can witness these social movements as pendulum swings, I can honor the value of recognizing when maybe we’re pretty far on one side and due for a balancing.

this isn’t my most poetic work, I don’t have that kind of juice in me right now. but it is an invitation to examine how these ideas feel in your body. how much does prevention preoccupy you? how much energy to you put towards keeping bad things from happening, or being afraid of bad things happening? how does that feel in your body? what does preparing for those things instead look like? what does accepting that bad things will happen and focusing on how to care for yourself and the people around you feel in your body? what does it feel like to accept that most things are outside of your control and focus instead on what you can do?

(this is a piece I published in 2022. today I called my landlord to talk to him about co-buying these three properties I live on so that me and my freaky loves can lock down this affordable housing and save the farmland chris and isia have been tending for almost 20 years now. I feel like a very brave baby, and I am thinking of this piece a lot. I have recently paywalled older posts, so I will be re-publishing old pieces every now and then that feel resonant so folks can read them for free again for awhile.)

i.

I have a weird relationship to hope.

I am feeling it now, in like big-bubbling-up ways. I feel seven dwarves in my chest trying to contain it as if it’s a spring overflowing. or maybe its mickey mouse in a wizard hat trying to scoop up infinitely pouring sentient buckets of mop water.

this morning I listened to a podcast on hope. well, I started to. a woman said “hope, mmm that word just washes over you. mmm, thats a good one.” every word out of her mouth pushed me farther away from what she was saying, and by the end of the sentence I said out loud, nose wrinkled, to no one: “IS IT? IS IT A GOOD ONE ???” I turned the podcast off and started writing.

in 2016 I was working on a series of work. art work. fiber art work. little art baskets that hung on the wall. I was deep in my emotional work, and textiles were the only way I knew to navigate the muddy waters. I made this series of baskets as a way to create physical space for attributes that felt foreign to me, things that I wanted to call in, or create safe containers for. the most special one to me was called “hope is a small but heavy passenger.” it hangs in my hallway, now. it was the smallest, tightest basket I made. woven with leather bookbinding scraps and string someone stole for me on a first date that was pink, stained with green ink from a burst pen. it was behind a bar, but we got it. anyway it is this tight, tiny home. it looks like a basket carrying a basket, perched precariously on a pink dowel. that time in my life was the first time I had felt hope for myself, hope for my future, and it terrified me.

there is a precarity to hope that I don’t think people often talk about. those of us who have experienced longer periods of hopelessness than hopefulness, whether due to interpersonal trauma, grief or systemic oppression, know that the feeling of hopefulness can incite panic in the body: an instant clenching of the internal heart-fist that closes around the hope and fights off any perceived threat to it. or, conversely, a soon-after spiral into self-destructive behaviors that ensure the hope leaves. both of these actions, actually, seem to ensure the loss of hope. which, in a way, is experienced as a relief. loss of hope is accompanied by grief but at least it is familiar.

as the nervous system is my current lens for viewing literally everything, I wonder if hope is activating to me. I see the ways that hope induces black-or-white thinking in me, the ways nuance falls away as I both narrow the scope of what I’m hoping for to a slim window of potential outcomes labeled “good” that could positively reinforce my hopefulness (I was right!) and simultaneously broaden the scope of outcomes which would induce feelings of failure, bad, or wrong. outcomes that will tell me I was silly to have hoped, that will blame my disappointment on myself so that I feel some sense of control over it.

stepping my imaginary body onto the threshold of hope feels groundless, untethered. letting myself move slowly, incrementally is essential. I saw a meme recently saying that we talk about baby steps as if they’re this small, delicate unit of measurement when in reality (the reality of the baby taking them) they are these huge, earth-shattering, death-defying leaps into the unknown.

I’ve been speaking a lot with folks this week about unlearning. how we have so much shared understanding that learning is a slow, iterative process. we are still impatient with it, yes, but the reminders that we’re learning hit home and soothe. unlearning is baby steps. unlearning is death-defying leaps into the unknown. unlearning takes time, yes, does it take longer? both learning and unlearning are iterative processes: learning is a series of exposures and unlearning is a series of noticings. as we work to unlearn harmful internalized structures, we realize that the most readily available options we have with which to replace them are more harmful structures. unlearning necessitates sitting in uncertainty. unlearning means leaving the paths laid out for us and forming our own desire paths by walking. by baby steps. by death-defying leaps into the unknown. in the past, periods of “what the fuck am I doing” have meant wrong or bad, and now “what the fuck am I doing” is an indicator of wellness. it means you have left the path of certainty, you have left the path laid out before you and you are now forging your own. hurtling your baby body into unknown spaces with heroic amounts of trust and faith and wild abandon.

there is an anarcho-nihilist mantra I come back to often: no future. I don’t have the patience for theory, mostly, so I will certainly butcher the intentions surrounding this, but as it was explained to me it means that we can’t depend on the future, we can’t wait for reform. we can’t wait until things are “good enough.” that we must act, every day, in ways that resist and undermine the structures that oppress us. there is no someday revolution that will come along and free us. we are the someday revolution, today. every day. how will you choose to manifest that? what desires or destruction will you enact if you stop waiting for the right time? if you stop waiting for the future?

ii.

so if hope is a small but heavy passenger, I think that faith must be the basket that holds it.

and guess what?

I also have a weird relationship to faith. so so so so so many of us do. I am not even going to delve into the realms of ~organized religion~ because that is not what I am talking about here. weird relationship summary: family in a christian cult before I was born- church to me was listening to tapes of a homophobic man talking about jesus, while sitting alone in the basement. then came peer-pressured assimilation into the high school version of a christian cult (FCA) which lasted a couple months. then came militant atheism, then agnosticism, and now this funny opening I have to words like god and prayer that I play with and laugh as I unlearn (death-defying baby leap) all the dogma and find myself settling into an earth that is moving and holding me.

in preparation for the summit that happened last weekend, I had the honor of hearing stories from a Muscogee leader and reverend as we all sat around a fire. he talked about the ways that the earth is always moving us around to the right* places at the right* times. that idea was the final piece of the god puzzle for me. of the faith puzzle. that god is the earth. that we are the earth. and that idea is bigger than this essay could ever honor entirely, but it is all to say that, to me, this faith offers a physical groundedness that hope lacks. this faith holds hope like a hand gently holds a baby bird. there is a releasing of control, a trusting. as our pendulums swing back and forth eternally, faith lowers our anchor point. faith squats close to the ground to steady us. faith blurs the lines that hope has used to delineate success from failure and says “its All Right*. its alright.” the earth moves us together and apart like tectonic plates. do you think that the formation of mountains feels like the end of the world to the soil that is disturbed by it?

iii.

so if hope is what’s contained, and faith is the container, I think desire must be the energy that moves the hurtling baby body that carries that small but heavy hope passenger.

I wouldn’t say that I have a weird relationship with desire necessarily, but it is vulnerable. today in one of my sessions, a client named the anxiety between desire and disappointment, and my heart cheered. disappointment is quite challenging for me, although I think I associate it more closely with hope. I learned bodily to associate hope with disappointment. I feel hope as an openness in my chest, and I feel disappointment as a tight, closing, burning in my chest. like when the sand lion cavern thingy (cave of wonders, thanks google) in aladdin collapses in on itself and everyone has to run to escape. to me, hope and disappointment go hand in hand, one inevitably leading to the other. to avoid one, you must avoid the other. call in mickey and his hat, call in the seven dwarfs.

but desire, on the other hand…

desire is a body already in motion. desire emanates from a corporeal knowing that precedes thought and consciousness. desire is connected to our gut instinct that is connected to the roots that come out of our feet and permeate the ground into the rhizomatic network of life. desire isn't just the sexy stuff (but it certainly is that, desire is the energy that moves hand to leg, desire is the heat that emanates from hand through denim to thigh.) no, desire is also just… doing. desire can be mundane. like lately I have eschewed written lists and instead write my to-dos as options that are scattered across a page. I set my intentions, and then throw them to the wind, I let my hurtling baby body drive from one desire task to the other, and it is joyful. I look at obligation, turn it into an option, and wait for it to ripen into a desire.

I have to treat my hope like I treat my writing. when I start a piece, it fills me with hope. the joy of expressing myself leads to the hope of feeling seen, heard, having my words resonate with others. each time I feel the movement within me I feel an immediate clutching for it that says you have to finish this now or you never will. and I gently push back. I write when I can, and I leave it when I cannot. I come back to it if I want to. faith is what allows me to walk away, lets me give myself space for ripeness. desire is what leads me back to the page over and over.

I sit here in a life that is bigger than I ever would have let myself hope for. a life that is richer and softer and slower and more surprising than I thought I was capable of. I am faced with hopes of a magnitude I have never dared allow in my body before this. desire has led me here. listening has led me here. noticing has lead me here. looking at what I am already doing, looking at the desire path my body is already following has lead me here. each desirous baby hurtle builds a new faith basket room in my home for hope. hope for the rematriation of a forest with a history that tears me to shreds. hope for secure attachment. hope for the dismantling of oppressive structures. hope for the destruction of oppressive institutions. hope for liberation. hope for the collective liberation that comes from the consensual and consistent following of desire.

hope is precarious though, again, still. hope is a flame that requires tending. the tarot card I pulled yesterday said “the little flame that you look at with hope, fear, and wonder is a simple reflection of yourself. you are already the flame that you want to be.” hope is a flame to be tended but it is also a flame that can be used for sacred destruction.

(p.s. I have no idea where the disney references came from but I needed them.)

(p.p.s. I refuse to hold hope and nihilism in opposition to each other, and you cannot make me)

“with every rebellious footstep we take, we are entering an unknowable void. there are no reliable maps of the terrain that our struggles will occupy.” - blessed is the flame

“we are nihilists regardless of whether we call ourselves by the name, because we have no road out of this. we have only the starlit wilderness… the first act of navigation is to set foot in the wilderness. only then can we put our hands against the bare earth, feeling for the dim warmth of those fires still smoldering beneath.” hic nihil hic salta! (a critique of bartlebyism)

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10/30/24

I drove home from jade’s tonight, we’d watched tv all day. I kept thinking it was thursday because these are thursday’s gestures. the drive brought to mind my timekeeping as I went into review mode over the past seven months and these pieces I’ve written. I’ve decided the full title will be “romantic nihilism: a love story.” what else would it be?

today is actually wednesday, though I do not fault myself for being wrong in thinking it was thursday. driving on a half dose of muscle relaxer five days after liposuction is no joke.

I am home now, cold sweating and happy. I learned yesterday that the surgical combination of breast augmentation + tummy tuck is called a “mommy makeover.” that is not what I had, nor why I had it, but in some ways the procedures are next-door-neighbors. I had a fat graft from my belly to my boobies, a BBW for my chest. a corrective surgery after my non-flat top surgery didn’t quite pan out how it was supposed to (more flat than non-) (I knew I was in guinea pig territory, tbh.)

a week ago today I learned that I had been accepted to a year-long collaborative mentorship program with the person who has held my “favorite writer” title since I read her memoir in 2016, lidia yuknavitch. I had applied as soon as I read about it, all electricity and hope. I used words that I’d heard in the mouths of those I admire, those I aspire, like I was wearing my older sister’s clothes and hoping no one would notice. they were my words, but also not. they were borrowed, foster words. words like “symbiogenesis” that I had to google, that when I hear them in my head are still sounded out phonetically like sim-bye-oh-jen-a-sis, slow and awkward, like someone would repeat back a word they’d never heard at a spelling bee (automatic loss if you forget that step.)

when I got the news that I’d been waitlisted I was both surprised and unsurprised. unsurprised that I hadn’t gotten it and surprised that I’d been waitlisted. I wrote it off. seventy people had applied, sixteen had been chosen, and I (among how many others? this question has haunted me in my inability to commit) was waitlisted.

so when I saw the email that I was now being invited, that my golden ticket had been called, I panicked. I was two days ahead of a surgery I’d been preparing for since july? a surgery that had already been canceled once due to a hurricane. a surgery that would end up costing me twice the time off that it should have. god bless a dry run though, still.

I’d been trying a new thing after I applied for the mentorship: not telling anyone. which means I hadn’t told anyone for about a month, and then I told my mom, and then I told sam. (this is as close to not telling anyone as I am capable of)

so I saw the acceptance email, panicked, ran outside where sam was installing a new side door for me, and told them the news. then I came back inside and picked the program to shreds in my mind.

I decided it was everything I didn’t want: too expensive, what even is creative writing, I want memoir, I don’t like prompts, etc etc. I shared this with sam and they said “maybe you’d be better off starting your own thing” and I sighed and said “but thats what I’ve always done and I am tired.”

I saw a client and then wrote an outline for a writing group I will never start that was centered on writers I know and love who practice self-exposure and memoir. and then I googled “creative writing” and learned that it can apply to memoir. then I re-read the class description and the about section for the school and lidia’s bio and the co-leader, janice lee’s bio and the bios of everyone involved in the writing school and each word lit up different parts of my brightlight. different parts that have been lit so much over the past several years that they are starting to lose saturation. it felt like a no-brainer, of course I should say yes.

I texted the group chat the scenario as a hypothetical and they all congratulated me and said I should say yes and offered to help pay for it. I did a full spiral on the floor in my hallway with sam and landed on I should do it because I am practicing getting what I want.

sam (in all their wisdom) suggested I ask how long I have to decide. I did. the school was understanding and gave me until the first. I have two days and I have not yet been able to commit.

I met with my financial planner and she gave her blessing to put the program on a credit card. she encouraged me by saying I just need to make 3200 a month (approximately twice what I make now) to clear the income gap that will occur when/if I start making enough to lose access to food stamps, etc.

unfortunately, that is the last thing I want my goal to be. she said “just 300 dollars a month” to pay for the class. I said “how does someone make an extra 300 dollars a month” and she said “work more, raise rates, spend less… although that doesn’t really apply to you” (I spend next to nothing). I said mmhmm and got off the call.

10/31/24

so I was driving home tonight, half on muscle relaxers feeling like I’d been stabbed in the gut, cold sweating and smiling thinking it finally was thursday this time.

I thought of E, as thursdays were their time marker. we are in contact again, somewhat. it is casual, fine, devoid of romance or delusion. we can have an actual human-to-human (or ghost-to-ghost) relationship now, or not, but I won’t be mommy and they won’t be prince charming. I felt proud about that.

I thought of z, and these past months and this antihero’s journey I’ve been on. I thought about how much I have chosen to learn from these relationships, and how z’s visit really was a goddamn wake up call if I’ve ever gotten one. z was a prince charming of sorts, not in that he came and swept me away from my mundane reality, no. he came and went and left a desire-shaped hole that I have been mapping and studying and painting and adorning with language and researching and… learning to love.

in 2014 I was obsessed with an artist named mia nolting. she had a piece that said something like “how to get what you want” and followed that with “know what it is that you want.” and I loved it because it IS that simple and it is also that excruciatingly difficult.

my answer to lidia yuknavitch’s class is due november first. seven months to the day from when z and I went to the quarry and the eclipse hit my descendant (the roots of my emotional tree) and mercury went retrograde and I thought I was fine until I realized I was living entirely in fantasy. which means, I think, that today is seven months to the day since z came to town and we stayed up until 5 am talking and I thought I had met the love of my life.

in those seven months I have had a bootcamp in discerning what it is that I want. I have been learning both not to settle for anything that isn’t that, and, not to ask for things I may not truly want (because jesus saying no to lidia yuknavitch is going to be hard as fuck.)

but it is no that I am going to say.

I don’t fully know why, but I know that what I want isn’t going to come through zoom meetings and it won’t need to be put on a credit card. it isn’t going to be something I have to take days to decide if I even want.

if I wanted to, I would. turns out maybe I didn’t want the mentorship, I just wanted to apply for it. I wanted the external validation, I wanted the invitation, I wanted the chance. I wanted permission. and what I got was a blank check to myself for a year-long commitment and $3500. so now, when I say no, I know what I am willing to give for what I want. I know what I have to offer in exchange. I have this incredible, mind-blowing opportunity to hold it up against. what it is truly lacking for me is immersion. that is my non-negotiable.

I got home in my cold sweat and had to wait fifteen minutes for the internet to come back so I could write this. I wasn’t sure the words would stay in my mind. I haven’t had adderall for a week, I’m doped up on pain, painkillers, and muscle relaxers. the internet finally restored and thankfully the words were less fugitive than I’d imagined. apparently the gorilla grip my ruminating mind is capable of isn’t always necessary.

I sat down and started and then went to get a beverage from the fridge.

I reached to the bottom of the fridge, where most fridges have produce drawers mine has only a dirty, gaping void. that is where I keep my fizzy drinks. I reached to get a tangerine la croix that I bought last week in my pre-surgery preparations, but my hand instead hit a plain, kroger brand fizzy water that sam bought me yesterday because I’d run out.

I pushed the plain cans to the side to get my tangerine la croix and my head said “I love them” as I laughed about how they always put things in my fridge and I always move them somewhere else and how its a thing we have now and I imagine someday it will be the subject of a fight and be used as an example of how particular and inflexible I can be and I am blissful in my foresight. every day these pretend sams do terrible things in my head and every day I return to real-life sam and allow myself to be surprised.

2/27/25 - updates

I am writing, in real time, for the first time in a real long time.

it has been a hard four months since I wrote these entries. I got sick every month after my surgery for three months. I threw out my back, went back to LA for 3 weeks, and got a slight concussion. each time I got ready to get back up again, I got knocked down. in january I realized I hadn’t really given myself enough time or space to recover from this surgery, and I re-committed myself to rest. february has marked the first month I haven’t gotten sick since my surgery, and I am working very hard to find my footing again.

the beginning of my courtship with sam was colored deeply by all these lessons I had learned in this exploration of romantic nihilism. I was enthusiastic in my experimentation with guidelines and boundaries, and I let them fall when it felt right. I did and do feel proud of that.

the timing of my relaxed limitations coincided with my surgery. I both wanted to see how much closeness I could take and was logistically quite reliant on their care to get through my life. in short: I both didn’t want and couldn’t have a lot of the routines and boundaries that have kept me afloat as a mentally ill motherfucker in this funhouse timeline.

at the end of january, sam was in a bad car accident, and as they recovered from that I realized how not okay I was when they were not okay. the past month has been difficult here, neither of us have access to the things that ground us, neither have access to our full wells of curiosity, compassion, and nuance. I have sometimes been impulsive, emotionally erratic. they have sometimes been distant, uncommunicative.

I started writing a series called “romantic realism” as a follow up to romantic nihilism. I wanted to write and talk about all the shit I am having to face now that I am actually in relationship and not just chasing it. I haven’t had the energy to update it much, and find that I am mostly just in the front seat of this roller coaster, holding on for dear life and doing my best.

sam is moving in next door this weekend. I am excited for our frida-and-diego living situation, although I worry I am cursing us every time I call it that. I miss writing and sharing and hope to do it more in real time, now that I’ve published the last of my backlog.

5/9/25

I did not publish when I thought I would, and more months still have passed. I do not write like I did last year, and I often miss the manic frenzy, the words echoing unrelenting in my head until I get them out onto the page. my head is much quieter now than it was then. perhaps it is that higher dose of prozac after all, perhaps it is time or age or seasonality. I think often it is superstition, I am protective of the relational seedling I have been tending now for eight months. I am protective of my white-knuckled learning self.

sam and I have found a rhythm between our houses, I quite like living apart together. as I suspected I would. little aquarius. things have been hard still, sometimes, and other times they are full of ease. practicing loving is… absolutely wild. it is messy and imperfect and clumsy and uncomfortable and precarious and juicy and alive.

and I have started perimenopause I think? I know you think I am too young, it is genetic. what used to be one to two weeks of emotionally dysphoric PMDD is now a strange unpredictable mashup where I truly have no idea how I will feel each day and just have to be with it.

it isn’t just that I haven’t been writing. in fact, I feel a strong resistance to it. a bridal being tugged, a bull digging in heels. (do bulls wear bridals?)

so I will listen to that. this feels incredibly unceremonious, late, imperfect. which is why I will do it. if I have learned anything in this lifetime, it is that the wrong time is the perfect time.

10/2/24

listen, I have officially not been writing much. that is okay. writing is seasonal for me, it waxes and wanes.

what feels more true is that I have been a little scared to write. a little embarrassed to put words to page because I know if I come here I have to tell you that on saturday we went to augusta to help with hurricane relief and multiple times when we introduced ourselves the person repeated back “jack and sam” while smiling and nodding in approval, like it felt good to say.

it felt good to hear.

or I’d have to tell you that in their truck on the way home from augusta, I sang louder than I have sang in front of anyone, ever. and that while I was doing it, I was laid in the crook of their arm, sitting bitch on the bench seat with their dress and all our bags and snacks and bottles of water sitting passenger.

honestly there is too much that I don’t want to tell you. it is too fresh, too tender, too new, too sacred.

what I do want to tell you is that this morning I got an email inviting me to a shared google doc with them for us to send notes to each other asynchronously.

what I do want to tell you is this: today, like many days lately, I am listening to the playlist they made me. I am listening to the playlist they made me that they keep adding songs to. I am making my little salad for dinner and some song lyrics have popped into my head:

“you ease my troubles, that’s what you do”

and because I think everything is god, I searched those lyrics.

the song?

have I told you lately that I love you.

(don’t take it literally)

(do)

(don’t).

I thought about how compatible we feel and wondered for the thousandth time what their venus and mars placements are. I have also been avoiding pulling their chart because it will either confirm my suspicions that we are blessed by the heavens or it will put a little crack in my attempt at getting to know them as a whole person rather than an idea.

I want to know the future so badly, and I also don't.

but I do know the future.

I know that this will end someday, and I know that no matter how long it lasts, I will likely be devastated. I am resigned to my fate, and I aspire to bathe in every last drop of this while I can.

(I think it is very funny that I am too embarrassed to write about what it feels like to fall in love but that I will describe to you in detail every facet of my mental illnesses and sufferings. is joy so shameful???)

10/7/24

hello again, it is me, avoidant jack. I have come to dissect my triggers, to lay them out, in the hopes of understanding my responses.

avoidance is by far my least favorite way of relating, and, I believe that my intolerance of it is what has led me, over and over, into the arms of the unavailable and disinterested.

thats right: in order to avoid being avoidant, I seek out avoidants and try to change them so that I do not have to.

I think.

actually, I wonder if I am still too in the constriction to write about it. I cannot write my way out of this, I just have to be with it. I wonder what I would want an avoidant partner to do, and I see that I have already done it. I would want them to communicate, ask for space with compassion and reassurance, to own their shit and what has them feeling stretched thin and tend to it. I have done that, and now I can go and just be with this.

when I watched kaos a couple weeks ago I was thinking about how I read or heard somewhere once that our internal thoughts used to be experienced externally. like people heard disembodied voices much more often because their internal thought processes came to them aurally. or something. and that was why they created gods: to make the experience of internal forces acting from the outside make sense.

as I watched this show about greek gods and thought of our internal monologues, I decided the modern-day equivalent of greek gods is Parts Work.

in parts work, we find the different tones, textures, and flavors of thoughts that seem outside of ourselves, against our values, or sabotaging in some way, and we name them. we give them character: motivations, fears, desires. in this way, we can bring them into relationship with ourselves and our other parts.

doesn’t that sound just like greek mythologies? or, to take it further than parts work, what if our modern-day gods are all the pathologies named in the DSM? what if to suffer is to worship, to follow? what is faith but suffering?

I love the endless human desire to reinvent the wheel. inefficiency is poetry.

I think of this now because I was wondering how to relate to my avoidance. could I name it? could I reason with it? could I invite it for tea, thank it for being here?

(I watch my self soothe as I move away from pushing at the trigger and toward a special interest. I watch the trigger slowly unfold as I remove the pressure and follow pleasure.)

do you see, here, how I wanted something so badly and therefore couldn’t do it? do you see, here, how when I gave myself permission to move away, and did, I eventually found my way back?

this is the gorgeous avoidant waltz, I am the smoke that will always bend with the gaze, I am the thing that is changed when it is perceived directly. I am the only way out is through. I am a town. I am displaced.

when sam and I went to augusta, we were setting up a community kitchen in the parking lot of the local electrical workers union to feed people. a man came up and asked how he could help and I’d pointed him over to where sam was getting the donated smoker going. a little while later, the rest of our crew showed up. someone asked this man what he goes by (a loose way we ask names when names so often change) and he said “I am displaced.” the asker stuttered somewhat and the man said he’d lost his home in the storm, that he’d been displaced by helene and had nowhere to go. we all sat with that grief for a long moment before the asker said “and what is your name?” he replied “stan” and then cooked food with us for the rest of the day before disappearing at dusk.

I was supposed to have surgery last friday. nine days ago. ten days? I had spent the month preparing, and that preparation in some ways added to my anxieties about sam. in the months leading up to my top surgery in 2022, I had made a point not to date, not to involve myself with people and things that might trigger me. I wanted my body to be at rest when it was cut open, I wanted to be not bracing.

this time I felt pressure to do the same, but I didn’t want to stop spending time with someone so lovely. so instead I did it stressed and took it as slowly as I could. the pre-surgery bubble made me really listen to my body and advocate for myself in ways I don’t think I’d have felt able to without it (as I have a tendency to ride my body hard) and sam met me with grace every step of the way.

that preparation also involved going off supplements, meds, discontinuing substances, and staying home more. for a month I was preparing my body home and my house home for a period of rest and recovery. I ordered compression garments for after, made tinctures and oils and sprays for after.

I am in the after now but it is not after.

it is now before, again.

my surgery got rescheduled for a month from now.

so I am now, again, in the month-before-surgery bubble.

I do not like time-loop movies. I do not like rewatching movies. I do not want to see the same thing again and again. and yet, I feel as though I am in one. each day that goes by that I am not bed-ridden reminds me that I still have that to prepare for. my mind boggles in my head when I hold these truths together as if it is a brain floating in a specimen jar that is being shaken by a careless toddler. I hate this. I am this. I am not this.

right now I am holding:

• avoidant jack

• should be in recovery jack

• jack who is trying to return to business as usual

• preparing for upcoming surgery jack

• jack who cannot seem to reconcile all of these selves

maybe…

maybe jessie can hold them.

big sigh, grief.

we are all universes unto ourselves.

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9/16/24 

dear reader, 

I will now welcome you, as I did sam (argo), to the foyer of my pendulous heart. I feel the desire to timestamp these entries so as to mark the absurd swiftness with which the bob can swing. 

bob, I just learned, is the name for the dangly bit of the pendulum.

my bob is bobbing. bobbing back and forth. it is 6:09 pm and I wrote that last entry around 9pm last night. I have carried a weighted, clenching fist in my chest for most of today.

I went to physical therapy and the hot PT laughed at me because by the time he finished telling me how many sets to do of an exercise, I’d already forgotten how many reps to do: we went round and round. my activated brain is but a sieve. no, a siphon. 

this morning as I was nearing the end of my obligatory morning screen time, I saw an email come through. a quick glance said dot mov and a name that I didn’t recognize next to my name. that was the moment my chest cavity seized and it has yet to let go. 

I had spent the past thirty minutes unblocking my most contentious ex on all platforms, along with a few other little ghosts that no longer needed such a firm barrier.

I’ve been shaming my anxious avoidance all day and then I remember again that I did this and remember again: oh, it isn’t sam I am afraid of. it is that I just let down the barriers that have provided me with psychological safety for the past eight years. it feels almost exactly like it did when I called my dad for the first time in six years.

email was the last place that ex could reach me. they don’t tell you this but you can’t actually block anyone on gmail, it just redirects to your spam folder. some people don’t even know their spam folder exists, I check mine weekly. its like people who put up security cameras to prevent burglaries but instead become obsessed with checking the feed every time the camera is activated. what it doesn’t provide is security, what it does provide is a convenient little hamster wheel for anxiety. 

so when I saw the email come through, moments after I had finished deconstructing all my barriers, I panicked. 

in the next moment, though, I realized what it was and joyfully opened the email. the length of text felt like an old cartoon stretching out its arms saying “I love you thiiiiiiiiis much” (in a good way). I gleefully skimmed it, wanting just a peek at its’ contents but wanting to save the full immersion for later, for my full-bellied attention. I was squealing inside when they texted me that they’d sent it, and I responded with an ebullient voice memo capturing my enthusiasm. 

I don’t know when or how or why that joy became dread but it did.

I have spent the day in panic and avoidance. memories of my first nights with the contentious ex have come to mind: the night we finally kissed (I had broken up with a very nice person for them that same day) and I said “I can’t do this” and they got upset with me and stormed out. I followed them in my car, picked them up, and spent the next year (? I cannot remember how long we suffered together) trying to convince them I was, in fact, ready and willing to be with them. I was not, but something about the dynamic of getting in trouble for needing time or space or slowness made me continuously feel the need to prove them wrong, to somehow make up for being terrible (not ready). 

it was my saturn return. 

“I lost everything to that relationship”

“no shred of the self that lived before that remains to this day”

these are the stories I tell myself. I can still hear them say my name, they called me j.giles. I realize my instagram is named after their pet name for me. I wonder if I had a different one before we dated or if it was always that, if maybe that nickname didn’t originate with them (it didn’t). it did however, seem to end with them. I wonder about changing my handle and can’t imagine any other one, I think it is the only one I have ever had. 

I think about welcoming the name jessie back into my life and how complicated and beautiful that feels. I think of all the magic of my past selves I am summoning into my now. I wonder how much of changing my name was wanting to further hide myself from their perception, from the perception of anyone we knew together, or from the perceptions of anyone who has ever disliked or judged me. I wonder what it would feel like to step back into that name, flaws and all, associations and all, magic and all. 

I had a another, similar panic with sam already this week. I will no longer refer to them as argo. I do not want to give them a pseudonym. I do not want to project my ideas or fears onto them. I just want them to be sam, whoever the fuck that is, a person I am getting to know. 

our timeline so far: we stayed up very late saturday night, then talked continuously until wednesday and saw each other again that evening. thursday I was floating and friday was my first panic. 

thursday night, at movie night, I told my friends about sam. dre said “they could legally drink one year ago” and I felt shamed. connor, the last younger lover I had (13 years younger), who is now integrated into our friend group and feels most like a little brother (yes, that is weird to say but doesn’t feel weird to live), knows sam. all of a sudden, this mysterious person has context. movie night featured a true crime docuseries about a girl that was sexually abused and murdered by her adopted father.

I went home scared, and dreamt of my own dad: we were in a boat, he had both paddles and wouldn’t let me paddle. there was a second boat inside the boat and I kept trying to take it out so I could have my own boat. I found a broken paddle and a spatula and was determined to make my way with what I had and when I turned back he had put my boat back inside his. I kept trying to enact my agency, to differentiate, to individuate, to experience the dignity of risk and it just kept being taken from me. the water was shallow, not even thigh deep. I could have walked, I could have left maybe, but in my mind, his boat was the only option. 

I awoke the next morning to a text from sam, a beautiful song and a sweet good morning. I get overwhelmed by good morning and good night texts, and I should probably tell them, but I haven’t yet. I just… panicked. I talked it out with kiley, got a timely costar notification that said something about not waiting until I was in the middle of a crisis to have the conversation, and figured out what I needed to say. I said: 

“can we slow down some?

welcome to the foyer of my pendulous heart, the messiest room in my emotional body. the systole and diastole of my attachment systems, my sisyphean disorganization. will you dance with me? can I ask for freedom to be close and follow it with an ask for freedom to be distant? I need both in fair amounts, and my wholebodyfreezes when the shift occurs and I have to find a way to communicate it but I am practicing practicing because strangers cannot know what I need until I tell them.”

their response was soft, warm, gentle. a hug, a perfect hug. they asked what kind of distance I needed specifically and I asked for no texting until we could see each other again. I spent the next several hours with a fist in my chest.

I went swimming. I let myself experience engulfment, overwhelm in the water. I realized I can only rest in the water when I surrender. (this is me realizing that the anxiety I have might more accurately be named fighting). my body felt tired this time, so instead of swimming I danced in the water. I spun and flipped and twirled and screamed underwater and then moaned underwater because my feelings weren’t screamfeelings they were groanfeelings. 

I got out of the water eventually, sat on the edge of the quarry and listened to the song they sent. it was otherworldly. I went home and worked some and fiddled around and let myself be with myself by myself and it felt so good that I wanted to share it with them but I waited because I knew I needed to miss them. and then I did. 

dre called me today and I told her about the panic. in the checkout line at aldi, she asked me to sit with the fear a little and see what was there. fear of engulfment, fear of enmeshment. yes, and…? fear of not liking them. I told the story of rene (long pause deep breath after writing that name) and the “I can’t do this” and the feeling in trouble and how I wish anyone could have told me then what a loving response to a no is because I didn’t know, I’d never known. all I’d known was no followed by pain. no followed by doing it anyway. no followed by punishment. no followed by having to apologize for my no. 

dre heard me and said it sounds like I am afraid of losing them. that I am afraid if I say no I will lose them. she was right. I don’t trust anyone to be there on the other side of my no, and I have exactly zero tolerance for fucking around and finding out. fist: chest.

this conversation bolstered me enough to finish my laundry and read sam’s lengthy email: to sit down and interface with the actuality of sam, not just the ghosts dancing over graves in my heart. I sat down and read this email, this robust, deep, earnest email.

it is an email that says things that I have said and felt, that they don’t know that I’ve said and felt. an email that whispers of hope and possibility: the siren songs of my fantasy attachment. and of course, of course there is this little itching scratching in the back of my mind that is saying but this one though, maybe it actually could be this one though and I feel tired. 

I will share this with you, because there is no use in keeping these things to myself: I want so badly to send them this piece in response to their email. I want them to know these things without having to risk the vulnerability of telling them directly.

how do I say to someone that when they say they experience beauty in their life and its immediately followed by loneliness that there wasn’t someone there to share it with… how do I say that I experience that too? that I have never heard anyone else name it like that? that maybe we could be that for each other?

how do I also say that I have had that thought about every crush I have had for the last four years? that that feeling of beauty turning into loneliness is the thing that has haunted me most about having such a beautiful life? how do I say I think we could do that together but I worry that we shouldn’t simply because it seems important to learn to appreciate beauty in solitude? that I worry we shouldn’t because we might simply disappear into one another?

how can I tell you, reader, that this twenty-two year old shared a womb with a twin who was never born, but that they’ve been told has since incarnated and that when I heard that story I thought, me?

it is one thing to fear the depths of my romantic delusion in the face of an unwilling recipient. it is quite another to face the possibility of a hades to my persephone*, of someone who might actually match my freak. fucking scorpios.

I want them to read my writing. I want to talk to them all night about words like “deserve” and “interesting.” I want to listen to their heart racing every time my head is on their chest. they asked me to play my guitar for them and I sang, willingly, like it was the easiest thing in the world. my voice cracked and I felt fine. I want to know and be known by them and GODDAMN does it hurt. 

*in the original writing of this, I turned first to hades and persephone because we had just watched the color of pomegranates. then I googled it and realized it wasn’t the dynamic duo I meant to reference. I wanted the one where someone follows a girl into the underworld: eurydice and orpheus. so I changed it to that. then I watched KAOS on netflix and did NOT like the dynamic between those two. it scared me, like I’d cursed us. I changed it back to hades and persephone today, 10/7, because I like one aspect of their television relationshop, but I really don’t think any of these fit right. maybe it is narcissus, maybe it is persephone and the narcissus flower. maybe it is none of the above. I am again wanting to know the future.

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9/12/24

I have decided to call them argo. our first spark of commonality was when they noticed a copy of the argonauts in my house. they’d zeroed in on the book. the one I leave visible, in its own place, for that very reason: a lighthouse for those in the know.

they’d just finished bluets, a book that has been on my list to read for twelve years now (since they were 10.) I suggested a temporary trade and read my favorite passage from the argonauts to them. it is about gender and ends with the words “you’re just a hole, letting me fill you up,” and “husband.”

I told them I don’t usually lend books I want to get back, but that I want this one back. a bold move for a first meet. (note the reluctance fear of calling it a date.) they handed me bluets, and said the underlinings came from the person who lent it to them.

(I think now of the richard brautigan that hayes let me borrow that was filled with notes from the ex that would come to loom over our relationship.)

there is so much to foresee, but, again, I am not here to be the warden of my heart, of my actions. I am here to attend to the whims of its song. I am here to answer the calls of the wind and allow myself to be swept and tumbled. I am here not to prevent myself from hurt but to stay beside myself through every pulse and throb of it.

~

in the argonauts, maggie nelson frequently uses the word “argo.” when I first read it, I didn’t understand what she was trying to say with it, each iteration seemed different. I messaged my friend bekah and we discussed, and I know I came to some conclusion but our text thread is gone. all I can remember is that, at the time, it felt like an allegory for transness, as it references the ship of theseus.

the word floated to mind as a possible pseudonym for this new crush and I found myself wondering again “but what does it mean?” I searched the photo album on my phone to read the passages I knew I’d taken pictures of, as my copy of the book was now off somewhere in argo’s ringed hands. I tried to know if the name would fit. I wanted to know the future. 

I know that the word argo to me is significant, and that its’ meaning is fugitive. I know it feels special and important, and I am mostly okay with leaving it mysterious, letting it shapeshift as it needs to. and that, that feels right.

~ 

last night, I asked argo the hard questions. five days ago we spent our first night talking in person until 4:30 am, and then three days sending texts and voice memos back and forth. my heart became frenzied, my sleep shallow, my dreams full of sex. it was time to ask the questions, already, as I’d promised myself I would.

on the fourth morning of waking up to messages, I told them I was having such a nice time and that I am enthusiastic, excitable. I told them I need to be having these conversations in person, so that I am not getting attached to an imaginary person. they agreed and we planned to meet that night. I felt a shared sense of urgency, eagerness.

they brought me flowers, we sat on the couch and talked. it was good to see their human form again, to remind myself they are not god. we drank wine and sat on my side patio in the rain. they asked me to play guitar for them and I did, somehow un-self-consciously. I sang, even, and then passed the guitar across the wet table. they sang one song I can’t remember, and then it ain’t me babe (my stomach quivered) and then cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other (I giggled.)

we came inside, sat on the couch, and I said:

me: “I have to ask… what are your intentions with my daughter?” (it was exactly how I’d imagined asking and I was proud to have not chickened out)

they smiled.

them: “well, this feels nice. and… I’m open to more, but I like to move slowly”

me: “what kind of more?”

them: “I am a big physical touch person, so cuddling is really nice… and… (mumbled) we could kiss.”

me: “what was that?”

them: “we could kiss, I’m open to that.”

me: “okay. is that something you think you might want?”

them: “not might” (direct eye contact)

me: (blushing smiling squirming) “okay”

them: “is that something you want?”

me: “yes” (the briefest eye contact, excruciating) “but I also want to go slow. I have… reservations”

they nod, pause

them: “so what would you like to do for our last ten minutes together?”

me: (shy, mischievous smile) “draw out the tension”

they laugh and mirror my mischief.

we are now in cahoots.

we spent the next ten minutes slowly closing the distance on the couch, beginning to establish touch. we compared hand sizes (classic) and I have literally no idea what else because at this point I was floating. they noticed the time, acknowledged my bedtime, and got up to leave. I walked them out. we shared a very warm, very long hug. very long hug. very long hug. 

~

it was a saturday that we first hung out talking until four-thirty am, first on the golf course behind my house and then on my bed listening to the tapes.

I wanted to see them. we had messaged sparsely over two weeks but I was curious and in the mood to stay up all night talking to a stranger. they were working that night and said they wouldn’t be off until 11 but could hang after. I laughed, only a twenty-two year old would want to hang out after they get off work at 11pm. I said I’d think about it and immediately got on all the apps trying to find someone, anyone else.

sixteen years is a very large age gap.

I matched with someone in athens, and we set a hiking date for monday. I saw that my search for someone more age-appropriate would be fruitless and asked myself if I could maybe just let myself have the thing I wanted instead of trying to substitute something “right”, so I stayed up to wait.

they brought me food from their work. they smelled amazing. they were present, engaged, curious, delighted. we were delighted. they were really with me. 

today, the person from athens texted to see if we were still on for monday. we had exchanged a handful of texts throughout the week, 100% of which were him sending me things about himself and me saying “cool.” I thought about the date, thought maybe it would be good to go anyway, to practice biodiversity in my love life.

then I thought about our conversations so far, especially in comparison to the engagement I’ve been getting from argo, and I said no. I know it isn’t great to compare, but even without argo to compare to this person isn’t meeting my minimum standards for like… basic curiosity. and my objectifying sex quota has been filled. it felt good. I have… standards. like actual standards that I am actually enacting. okay, jack. go off.

9/15/24 

right now I am eating a salad that argo made and brought me. on my table sits a vintage photography magazine, one of their most treasured objects, that they are letting me borrow while they are out of town for a week.

next to the magazine is their copy of joan didion’s slouching toward bethlehem that they brought in after seeing (and covertly rejecting) the copy of charles bukowski’s slouching toward nirvana that has sat, unread, on my shelf for many years now. I bought it secondhand at some point, it was either bait for that kind of man or maybe I wanted to understand him or see what the fuss was all about or maybe I wanted to be him. argo handed me joan didion, and without words said “stay you.”

I don’t know when to tell you that this person is 16 years my junior. that they are twenty-two, objectively young. I may already have, I refuse to check because it says something if I am saying this for the first time and it says about the same thing (but more strongly) if I am not but can’t remember if I am.

I don’t know when to tell you that tonight I sent them pictures of my long, strawberry-blonde hair before it was dyed brown and chopped off. that I did it because this morning they said “we have the same hair” after feeling the texture of mine and seeing my five-head. I already knew this. I sent them these pictures because I needed the burden of knowledge to be finally shared.

“we look like siblings” they said.

and then “let them talk.”

I don’t know when to tell you that the first time we hung out, my takeaway was that it felt like hanging out with myself. or that when I spend time with them or look at them it feels like I am learning to love me through them. like spending time with someone so similar reminded me how great I am?? I don’t know how or when or if I should tell you this because I feel like it raises some psychological flags or something but I can tell you that it feels incomparably pure in my heart. 

last night we had a sleepover and they slept on the couch at my request. today, on the second day of our third date (date? date.) we kissed for the first time. 

there are so many stories to tell that I haven’t been writing. I think about it and my brain says no. I am not sure what to do about it, I just have to trust that it knows what its’ doing because I know the alternate is forcing myself and that only ever leads to me quitting things. 

I will say two more things: one is that it seems that pluto and this angel have conspired to remind me of when I was twenty-two and I am very fucking here for it. the second is that I feel young with them, and not because they are young but because they actually feel older than me. 

we are book clubbing a jungian book on love and it talks about how everything in the beginning of relationship is projection. I feel like that’s something I’ve been exploring here but I think I thought it was my fault or like… something I was doing wrong. but its literally just what happens, exactly every single time.

I have been following the anti-attachment protocols I made to keep myself from unnecessarily falling in love with ray and I am questioning them. here is a person who seems interested, available, curious, engaging, who has shown me over and over that they’re here but like in the chillest, most patient way. they are giving me things and I am withholding reciprocity because of my rules.

so the beginning is always projection, okay. that’s just true. does that mean I have to abstain from the honeymoon period entirely?

I’m starting to think maybe not. 

bonus content:

I feel like it is classic substack behavior to have a list of recommendations at the end of each post. I’m not necessarily interested in doing that all the time, but I do want to shout out this essay by joan didion that I am in the middle of reading that feels extremely relevant:

joan didion - on self respect

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9/10/24

I haven’t been writing. I have been living and I haven’t been writing.

this means, in a lot of ways, that my harm reduction approach to dating or love or sex or being a human is… working?

it means that I have not felt the spirit take over my mind and fill me with words that must be committed to digital paper. it means I have been… stable.

(reminder to self to not create a narrative that these things are mutually exclusive)

so today, I am writing anyway. what does desire feel like in the absence of compulsion? it is quieter, there is much more choice about the matter. 

in two days, I will have had a this lover for one month. this lover, a self-described hobbit, whose favorite word is turd, who has cancer and frogs and those weird bobble-head dolls that are so popular. funk-o-pops.

we watch forged in fire and fuck. we do not share meals or a bed. sometimes, I go down on him while he is in a zoom meeting. I’m gonna have to ask him if I can share that, as the words “hobbit” and “turd” have already identified him to folks in the know and I am not trying to get anyone in trouble.

this also means I’ll have to tell him about this substack, but it doesn’t matter because I know he won’t read it (neutral). he doesn’t care (neutral). he doesn’t ask questions, other than the occasional “how’s your day going?” what is sad is that, in the beginning, this was enough for me to think there might be some hope of something more.

a couple days ago I was talking about ray with a femme friend. I said we were just sleeping together, that it wasn’t a relationship. she immediately eye-rolled into the obligatory rant about men who refuse to acknowledge the relationships they are already in. I knew the rant well, and nodded along.

we kept talking, but then I thought back to it and paused her. I said “actually I want to clarify.” I told her that ray and I aren’t not in a relationship because he doesn’t want it, we aren’t in a relationship because I now have standards for what a relationship is to me and he isn’t meeting any of them.

I felt the weight of a thousand angry feminists lift off my shoulders. all of them were me. 

what is nice is that he is there. what is nice is that twice now I have given him feedback and both times he was apologetic, responsive, and got his shit together. the second time, he thanked me for communicating sweetly, and I thanked him for being so receptive. what is nice is that he is cute, genuinely kind, has terrible taste in home decor, and is wholly uninterested in me as a person. what is nice is that I can let that be. I can watch myself sometimes, wanting the thing from him that he can’t give, and I just wait it out like waiting for gas to pass. it is a simple, predictable, physiological response to particular stimuli and that is all.

when ray and I first met up, I was talking to one of my long distance matches on feeld. he asked why I was interested in long distance and I said I had noticed my pattern of being attracted to people that weren’t available for what I want. I said that it seemed to facilitate my attraction, that I am playing around with the idea of embracing that tendency and following it: microdosing companionship, isolating and exercising the individual muscles of love. then he asked me what it was that I wanted from my partners that they weren’t available for, and I was at a loss. 

I took out a sheet of paper. on one side, I wrote down all the things that I was interested in and desirous of. ray was my guiding fantasy, it was incredibly easy to harvest that richness and consider which of those wants had been yet unmet. I have made this list a thousand times, it lost its’ manifestation powers long ago. 

(october jack: lol or did it?)

on the back, however, I made a timeline for myself. I could tell that ray was in this for some long amount of time and I said okay, how do I game this out and slow down my speedy little heart? 

I recently learned that boundaries are not magical rules you pull out of thin air, they are felt sensations in the body. so there I sat, imagining scenarios and feeling how my heart responded to each. I decided that the first month will be the “wait and see period.”

I wrote down qualities I will look for on a first date with anyone: chemistry, curiosity, interests. I wrote down what things I will focus on in the first two weeks: pace of communication, enthusiasm, anxiety levels, practicing non-attachment. I wrote down the things that I will let myself explore at the one-month mark and no sooner: relationship smorgasbord, desires for the relationship, limits of the relationship, potential issues of the relationship.

and then I looked at all the impulses I’d had in the past week to win his affection or feel like I’m having the Girlfriend Experience and I set rules against them: no gifts, no playlists, no sleepovers, no shared meals, no cumming inside me, and he is not allowed at my house. I thought about things that felt like they’d happened too quickly in past dynamics and added: no co-processing, no co-regulating, and no impulsive decisions or conversations (wait 1-3 days).

this list seems to have successfully carried me through crush psychosis, limerance, or whatever the hell you wanna call the soft delusional state that envelops me while I am getting to know a stranger. I remember the first time we had sex and I didn’t kind of sort of secretly want him to be my boyfriend. I came home and felt sad. I had grief for the fantasy that had died, gratitude to my boundaries for letting the fantasy die, and… boredom. it was great to remember both that I can have ongoing casual sex, and that its… not super fun for me. also doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop cause a win is a win, my friend. 

I am practicing having, instead of immediately finding all of the flaws and bailing. maybe this lemonade isn’t exactly what I wanted but it is still quenching some thirst and I am thankful for that. 

----

with all that said… I am however currently battling the crush psychosis demons (I am really not sure how I feel about that language) with someone else. the soft delusion (that feels better) that calls them to mind anytime someone mentions a partner, the sweet and sour anxiety in my belly that is butterflies and IBD when I think of them.

as I sit here, dreamily trying to choose a pseudonym for them, as I continue to ignore the slew of messages from them that I have been saving as a reward for when I have finished my work, I realize I’m not yet ready to talk about it.

maybe this is part of it, too. holding the potentials closer to my chest. my writing is a magic wand of romance and waving it over our one meeting feels far too risky.

I will say I have no idea what is on the table, and I also don’t really know what I want because there is a… factor. of course there is. there is something with some weight that I have to consider, that will in some ways guide how this thing unfolds. there is a need to be more careful, more full of care. to move slowly, cautiously, to wait and see and wait and see. I think I am up to it though, I have been training.

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~ if you are interested in learning about my peer support practice, or are in need of free or low-cost resources in atlanta, click here.

8/16/24

last night I was having a sitz bath for my hemorrhoids, anal fissures, and chronic itchy butt while sexting, watching tv on my computer, and playing my little puzzle game. 

meanwhile the world goes on

this morning I am burying a chicken while sexting and participating in discourse around a particular local DIY venue and how safe it is for trans people. 

meanwhile the world goes on

before my asshole pampering I was at movie night. we watched a documentary about dogs, how they have proliferated through the ages and become the most diverse species: not through survival of the fittest, but through survival of the friendliest. the documentary followed four dogs through service dog training school. 

the entire time I watched, I lamented that our human children do not get this kind of individualized attention or support as they learn to function in this world. at one point some dog expert said “there are no bad dogs. each dog is responding 100% appropriately to its’ circumstances and surroundings.” I spent the rest of the movie wondering what it is that prevents us from extending that compassion to each other as humans.

meanwhile the world goes on 

I wrote all of this while pooping. I will now go back to burying our second-to-last chicken*. 

(* the chickens that were never meant to be mine, the chickens that I have now permanently associated with dusk. each night as the sky begins to darken I start my mental countdown to putting-the-chickens-up. and then, each night, I walk in the dark without my headlamp and let my eyes adjust, strain, create mirages in the void. I say hello to the mice I stopped killing, and goodnight to the ladies who long only to be free from their boredom.)

I had to take a break from digging a hole because I am not very practiced in hole-digging and it hasn’t rained in weeks. I poured water over the hole to soften it up and left it to soak. I will leave the sext from ray unread. my hands are shaking, I am drinking a protein shake. I had planned to swim laps at my secret spot this morning. I will not be doing that. 

I will bury the unnamed chicken in a scrap of cloth that isia used to dye her fabrics. I will place a flower from their yard and the rose that just started blooming in my garden atop her grave. I have never buried a being like this before, I don’t think. but I also have a very bad memory, so it is hard to say. does it matter if I have if it feels like the first time?

meanwhile the world goes on. 

today I learned that dry dirt is harder to dig than wet. today I learned you can set boundaries while sexting and not miss a beat. anna tsing writes about “contaminated diversity.” my foods are touching. there is no purity here, only the exponential, unceasing chaos of time and existence.

9/4/24

I have so much to say, but not the juice with which to say it. about this experiment I’ve been doing around attachment and sex and how I learned again that sex without passion is simply pretty boring, unless it is with a stranger, but how long can someone really stay a stranger?

I have had pain in my hands for a couple months now, or so I thought. I realized recently it started with fatigue in my hands over a year ago and has only gotten worse. I had forgotten. I was afraid of arthritis. my doctor is strangely amenable to my theories and requests for tests. it is unfamiliar, I feel suspicious but still I accept it. I just got my most recent test results back, it turns out I drink too much water. (I think.)

I also had this realization last year and forgot. 

today I started tracking how much I drink. by 3pm I’d had my daily allotment. as usual, I had to work to keep myself from peeing every hour. I was able to make it stretch to 90 minutes. it finally makes sense why my urethra feels sore sometimes: there is far too much passing through me. I am spending my electrolytes before my body has a chance to keep them. my mom texted me saying that sore hands are a symptom of hyponatremia, low sodium in the blood. I come from a long line of google doctors.

anyway so of course I’ve been feeling self-conscious as I am tracking my fluid intake which means I have also been seeing what it feels like to drink less. just now I was making dinner and finished my can of seltzer water. I immediately wanted to drink something else and told myself to wait until I made my special night time drink (tart cherry juice, agave nectar, soda water, you’re welcome) in twenty minutes. I told myself to wait and I felt the inside of my mouth pout. 

before I could even be conscious of what I was thinking, I labeled the feeling: lonely. I paused on my way to grabbing a measuring cup and stood astonished at what I’d just noticed: my mouth is lonely. I drink because my mouth is lonely. bored. of course it is. 

I’ve been thinking about my oral fixation a lot lately, actually. the search for the strongest mint I have been on, my obsession with stimulating my oral senses, how much I have grown to love giving sloppy head, how much I love kissing. 

I love the thing that europeans say about americans, that we kiss like we’re hungry. 

I kiss like I am starving. 

I kiss like you’re the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

I kiss like I am insatiable.

I am. 

~

my mouth gets bored, gets lonely.

I sucked my thumb until I was nine years old. 

sometimes I think maybe it was my first stim. my parents tried to get me to quit twice. the first time I told them I would quit sucking my thumb if they would quit smoking. they quit, I didn’t.

I started getting breasts when I was nine. no, that’s not right. I became aware of the sensations of my shirt against my nipples when I was nine. maybe I had a little something developing- I’ve always been sensitive to changes in my body, proactive about my health. my friend’s mom took us bra shopping and I brought one home. my parents were aghast that she would have done something so inappropriate, but I got the heat for it. 

they told me that if I wanted to start wearing a bra I had to stop sucking my thumb.

and like, objectively speaking, that’s fucking reasonable man. 

and, it was the first time I learned that having a female body meant I’d have to give up things I loved. 

~

I got a massage a few months after I had top surgery. my body felt foreign to me, I was almost afraid of it. I needed integration. when she got to my chest, I started sobbing. we let it come. she moved my arm at an angle across my chest, and I felt a tightness there: suffocating.

I told her about it afterward and she told me the arm movements she was doing are somehow tied to thumbsucking, that it somatically refers to childhood. the disparate connection between my oral fixation and my breasts had been on my mind then, too. I was astounded. 

~

I wonder if I have been drinking too much since I was nine years old. (probably not)

~

two weeks ago I looked into getting a tongue ring but decided against it bc of how much it can damage your teeth. I just want something to play with. last week I chipped my tooth using my teeth to pull a needle through leather. somehow I am okay with chipping my teeth for sewing but not for oral entertainment.

I have a tendency to overuse my body, like something I don’t have to worry about lasting because I can just go get a new one at the store. disposable. I think it is because I wanted to die for so long, because I never imagined having to continue with this same damn body for so long. I am having to come to terms with that in so many ways now.

I remember when I was seven years old I rode my bike through a pothole and ended up on crutches. I almost broke my kneecap and had a gnarly scar. my dad used to say I’d have to get the scar removed someday so that I could be a model. I was a human shell to him, a “daughter” rather than a person. 

I think about how my dad used to get so mad about me putting stickers on things, he called it trashy. he was raised dirt poor and took immense pride in his belongings and keeping them looking new. I was raised in the suburbs and took immense pride in standing out from the crowd of normies. our values were constantly at odds with each other, and my rebellion against his continue strong to this day. this, too, is reflected in how I treat my body.

I do not want to die a soft, perfect specimen of bourgeois humanity. I want to be windblown and sun-aged. I want my overbite, my chipped teeth, my scarred legs, I want the patina of a body that has been worn with use. I want lovers to become cartographers of the life experiences etched on my body, on my deathbed I want friends and family alike to have the ability to read the story of my life right there on my skin. a wrinkled tome, a manifesto, an odyssey.

I don’t necessarily wish I’d kept sucking my thumb as long as I wanted to. I can’t imagine the stigma I would have faced, or the dental bills. and now, as I come to terms with my surgically altered body, I don’t necessarily wish I’d kept the old bags around just to have something to hold at night but boy does my chest feel hollow in ways it never had before. this hollowness also sometimes feels more accurate. 

~

I have a follow up appointment with my doctor on monday. I can’t wait to tell him that I either have water diabetes (very rare) or my mouth has been lonely since I was nine years old.

~ if this piece resonated with you, please consider sending me a small tip here, or becoming a paid subscriber. I am committed to keeping my digital writing free, and your support helps me do that.

~ if you are interested in learning about my peer support practice, or are in need of free or low-cost resources in atlanta, click here.

8/14/24

I have been cranky this morning. I am bleeding again, and I have broken my association of period sex with z. my flow is again my own to navigate with clumsy others.  

I haven’t written in a couple weeks, I have just been living. 

I have been dating. 

I went to california, and came back. 

I rearranged my living room, reupholstered my couch, and tended my garden. 

I finished desert solitaire and started the monkey wrench gang. I finished the electricity of every living thing. 

I put my tv back under the couch.

on this day last week, I had a date planned with someone named zach. freshly out of a long term relationship, he was just looking for casual hookups. we set the date and didn’t text in between. it felt gloriously free. 

the day before our date, I matched with jared. he was flirty, came in hot, and had me all flustered leading up to the date with zach. I got dressed to meet zach with all the erotic energy I had built up talking to jared. I texted zach when I got to the bar, sat down and read my book. five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. when I checked my phone, the message I’d sent was green-- undelivered. I checked hinge and sure enough: he’d unmatched me. 

baby’s first stand-up. 

the bartender approached with a sly smile, he knew exactly what was happening, and I told him I was just leaving. he introduced himself and told me to come back some time. his gentle attention was a balm to my grazed ego, but I was truly thrilled zach had bailed because now I could go back to my frenzied texting with jared. (that sentence reminds me so much of my middle-school journals)

I asked jared if he’d like to move up our timeline to right now. he was down. we met at a different bar and talked for a few hours. there was no chemistry, but we had decent conversation. I kept asking myself if I could do it anyway, take him home with me just to meet the physical need, but I watched my body language- the way I leaned my body away from his, the slight recoil I felt at his touch on my knee, and I knew it was a no.

the bar closed and we walked to the parking lot. we hugged and I giggled, using all my willpower to keep one foot in reality while the rest of me fawned. he asked why I laughed, and I said “its just always so awkward.” “whats awkward?” he said, “not knowing if I’m going to kiss you?” I died a little inside, and then worked up enough courage to say “no, its knowing that I don’t want you to.”

his turn to fawn fully: he held up both hands and said “oh I am the safest person you could reject” with so much enthusiasm that I burst out laughing. I felt that sentence in my bones. I can’t quite put words to it, but the instinct to immediately reassure and endear myself to a person who is actively rejecting me is so deeply familiar. 

~

the week before, I had my date with dd (the older one who is in actual recovery, the one who made a point to end voice memos with a question). we walked around constitution lakes. it was so unbelievably hot and buggy out that we couldn’t stand still long enough to hold a conversation after we’d walked the path. I invited him back to my house, knowing I trusted myself with my boundaries enough to have him over. I pulled out the closest chair for him while he pulled out a different one, across the dining room table, and sat down. 

it was… fine. also decent conversation. there were moments, flickers of attraction, but mostly none. the next day, he followed up with a message about something he’d said and I felt alienated by the buddhist language I couldn’t understand. I asked for laymen’s terms and got more of the same jargon. I told him I wasn’t feeling it anymore and he agreed he’d felt the disconnect. 

~

the day after being stood up by a date in one dive bar and rejecting another in the parking lot of a different dive bar, I went on my familiar grief-avoidance binge scroll. I realized, finally, that I have been shadowbanned on tinder for months.

(in fact, I think maybe z is the last person I matched with there, which has a certain poetry to it. did I wonder if he reported me for spending two days with him and then writing an entire series about how long it took to get over those two days? maybe, but I know better than to believe those kinds of thoughts.)

I set my feeld search parameters for the maximum distance (250 miles) before I left for california because I realized that a medium-distance fling might actually be a pretty good accommodation for me and my avoidance / attraction to avoidants. I swiped through chattanooga, nashville, south carolina, and into asheville. by the end of the day, I was messaging people who lived hours from me, ghost-swiping through tinder out of habit or compulsion or desperation, getting nothing.

I turned next to reddit. I have long been interested in the idea of sex with strangers, but have never had the gall to try to arrange it. I messaged someone who posted a call for hairy bushes in a local hookup group. I was like… well fuck it. 

I told him I’d never met up with a stranger for sex before and that I might chicken out. we talked a little, exchanged pictures. I asked him about the process and we talked about meeting up the next morning for a vibe check and then in the evening “to have some fun.” it felt like I was talking to my doctor. we decided on a central, public meeting location and discussed STI statuses.

he never responded to my last message about meeting times. 

(present-day jack here to interject: when I published last week, behetrin asked how I’ve been doing. she said she’d read my latest post. I asked what she thought and she said “you sound lonely. I mean I know you are but I could really feel it in this one.” I had such a strange sensation in response that I don’t really know how to describe it. I felt seen, slightly embarrassed and slightly proud. I felt like a 24-hour gas station at 4:50am in the summer, that period of time that is stale air and too-bright fluorescents. I felt like the hot dog that had been sweating on the rack there for too long, too long. but in a beautiful, melancholic, cinematic way. I said “I was. I wrote those a couple months ago now though.” 

maybe I share this here because I am reading my own words back, editing, and wanting to offer you some soft lens through which you can view me. these parts were just as undelightful to live as they are to report and to read. and, they are already in the past. what beautiful remove time grants us every single day.) 

that grief-avoidant thursday (post stand up, post dud dates) I also matched with james. we had a brief exchange and planned to meet on tuesday after the weekend.

on sunday, I matched with ray. we exchanged a couple messages and planned to meet wednesday. 

on monday, ray convinced me to do laundry at his house instead of my own. he went so far as to insist I didn’t have to do a thing in preparation, that I could shower at his house if I needed to.

his face was strangely familiar, and though his insistence should have been a red flag… it didn’t feel like one. I texted dre that I would be going to a stranger’s house to do laundry and she asked if it was a hookup. I said I didn’t know, but I was on my period, and then I screenshot that exchange and sent it to him to find out.

he said he’d hoped for a hookup but was open to just hanging out since I was bleeding. I reminded him he’d already offered his shower as I came to terms with his intentions. his profile had said something about “long-term” and so I’d been preparing my heart to open. I needed now to switch gears: close the heart, open the legs. in short: I was not going to spend a nice day not fucking a nice guy who only wanted sex from me.

and so I brought a giant sack full of dirty clothes to our first meeting. 

I left it in the car at first because something felt improper about showing up to a first date with all my dirty clothes. in the end I stepped inside, shook his hand, and then turned right back around to go get my laundry. 

he fed me watermelon and told me he has cancer. nothing terminal, but life-altering nonetheless. we watched dog the bounty hunter on cable, both of us uncomfortable with it. he told me the “long-term” in his profile referred to ongoing casual sex, nothing more, and that he has been happily single for ten years.

he told me about his grandfather’s land that he bought after his passing, how all he wanted was to end up there with an animal sanctuary making 20k a year. I told him he’d basically described my life now. I thought maybe someday I could convince him to love me, that we could do that together. I just held that thought with the reality that he didn’t want to.

he took a zoom meeting in his bedroom while I read on his couch and texted dre proof of life. he sent me a flirty emoji as his zoom connection conveniently went down. I replied, telling him what I had imagined doing to him during his meeting. he brought his computer back out and set it up at the dining room table. as I knelt on the ground under the table, he gently placed a buffering hand atop my head and I put his dick in my mouth while he finished his zoom meeting.

it was thrilling.

I finished and he kept working. I read silently at the table with him while my laundry took its’ time and we waited out the refractory period. he kept breaking the silence by apologizing for being distracted by work and I kept saying how much I liked being alone together.

in essence:

him: “you’re here for sex, sorry I am ignoring you”

me: “it’s okay, I am pretending we’re married”

we had clumsy and gratifying sex in the shower after that, on the heaviest first day of my period I’ve had since april, since z. exhausted from hiking and swimming all weekend, I almost passed out when it was over. I laid down on his bed and sucked on one of the applesauce pouches I keep on me at all time while he started dinner. we talked a little while longer and then I left. he told me to let him know when I’d gotten home and said he’d still like to hang out on wednesday as originally planned.

when I got home, I told dre it was perfect, not because the connection was exceptionally good but because it was just bad enough that I might not get obsessed. I made myself admit that I saw the possibility but thought it would be okay.

the next day he texted asking how my day had been. I read romantic interest into this. I’d barely slept and been distracted by sex flashbacks all day. we flirted as I got ready for my date with james. 

I met james at a coffee shop. he was hot, with cute fucked up teeth and an aversion to making eye contact. he was a leather daddy and bike mechanic. I asked questions, was fascinated by his experiences. this time, I practiced leaving space for him to ask questions. most of the time he just paused and kept telling whatever story he was telling, gradually fading out of it. we walked around little five points and I just… kept the conversation going. we got back to my car, hugged, and he said “we should do this again soon.” (I never heard from him again.)

I came home to a message from ray saying he needed to cancel wednesday because he forgot he Had a Haircut at 6pm, asking when else I was available. I wondered if he could sense my feelings and was pulling away in response. I wondered if he saw me out with james, got jealous, and realized he had feelings for me and was now panicking about it. I wondered how a 6pm haircut could possibly impact a planned booty call. I said “bummer” and told him I was free friday.

before my date with james I spent hours finishing my attachment calculator. the feeling of “I could make him love me” got me pretty sure that ray might fall into the danger zone, but I wanted to be certain.

I added a few more factors, set it up to automatically calculate a score, and then, to check its’ accuracy, I entered everyone I have slept with (or desperately wanted to) in the past two years and my five most significant relationships, plus an old crush just for good measure.

it was so interesting. some of my most significant relationships scored lower than many of the people I’ve lost interest in lately, and I realized I that when I was younger I had a much less solid idea of who I was interested in. in fact, each successive partner rated higher than the last, which was heartening! I’ve been learning what I like!

yes there is something deeply unsettling about grading humans as data points. z still had the highest score though, he beat hayes by one point. hayes level is real and measurable.

the standard has been set, and it feels like a quiet longing that I am learning to simply live with.

I graded the scores like this: 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<5 =  probably don’t want to fuck

5-10 = ? (no data at this range)

10-15 = FWB safe

15-20 = might want more than sex, might get the ick

20-25 = might want more than sex, might be okay? (insufficient data)

25-30 = might want more than sex, probably won’t be able to handle less

30+ = wifey material

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ray scored a 24, one point less than E and my most recent long-term ex, bobby. this tells me two things: 

1) I was right when I said that I might’ve been able to feel things out with E if he wasn’t who he was (a crush of 20 years) and

2) I need to tread carefully here. 

I sifted through my fears, excitements, fantasies, and discomforts. I saw that I need to ask questions with ray. things like:

• what the distinctions are between consistent, casual sex and dating?

• what happens if or when feelings develop?

• do you really plan to homestead all by your lonesome, handsome?

and if the boundary between sex and dating is firm, if feelings (and homesteading) are off the table, then I need to set some boundaries:

• no friendly texting in between seeing each other

• no cumming inside me

• stop being so fucking nice

thankfully, I didn’t hear back from him for 14 hours, which gave me enough time to decide he was ghosting and grieve it. I have learned that disappointment is an essential element in my ability to be involved with anyone. my early hope springs eternal, despite my best nihilistic efforts, and so far it can only be dashed with a healthy dose of reality. 

(spoiler: I only asked one of those questions and set one of those boundaries and it worked out perfectly.)

I know this may seem like an understatement, or something obvious, but… I don’t know if I can do casual sex. I can see so clearly in my mind what it might look or feel like but that seems to be quite different from the reality.

I’ve had three ongoing casual sexual relationships in my life. one ended when I realized I wasn’t getting orgasms or emotional connection, and because the novelty of ubereats and action movies had worn off. another ended (essentially) when I said “I love you a little, its not a big deal” while on mushrooms (we both panicked, it took months for us to actually end it). and the other… I honestly don’t remember. it was there and then it wasn’t.

I have done it. I have had casual sexual relationships and it feels like it would be a great way to accommodate the fact that I haven’t been able to find and also don’t know if I’m actually ready for the Big Relationship I’ve been saying I want for so long.

sometimes it also feels like settling.

I think right now it is all an experiment, but that I am also exhausted and bleeding and maybe don’t need to attempt things with six different people in one week.

it is mercury retrograde again, as it was in april. a time to review, not start new things. in fact, I believe most of my recent attempts at connection have begun during mercury retrograde and each time I go “goddamnit, not again” as I know it won’t be what I am expecting.(is it ever?) I also know that means they’ve each brought me important lessons to reflect on, that they are my ghosts of christmas past, present, future.

I’m just sort of feeling around blindly in the laboratory rn, knocking shit over in my groping to see what happens when the chemicals mix. maybe there will be a fire, maybe there will be penicillin. 

this morning I took a walk without my glasses. the shapes I saw in the asphalt were unlike any I’d ever seen. it was strange to feel so unable to see clearly and also perfectly confident in my ability to make it home safely.

if you want to build your own attachment calculator based on my template: you're welcome

~ if this piece resonated with you, please consider sending me a small tip here, or becoming a paid subscriber. I am committed to keeping my digital writing free, and your support helps me do that.

~ if you are interested in learning about my peer support practice, or are in need of free or low-cost resources in atlanta, click here.

a shorty. another brief interlude from romantic nihilism, a follow up to the substrate of collapse, just a girlboygirl on their way to individuation.

7/26/24

I am in california now.

I wish I could convey to you with words how unreal that is for me to say, how my mind refuses to accept it. 

it is 12:35 pm here and I have been awake for 10 hours already. I did not take adderall this “morning” (the first morning I had today) in hopes I’d be able to sleep on the plane. 

I did not sleep on the plane.

instead, I spent four and a half hours in the middle seat of the second to last row, sitting through wave after wave of kinetic energy moving through my body. 

I switched between: 

~ listening to a podcast and listening to a podcast while playing a game on my phone

~ reading and reading while playing with a stim toy

~ listening to an audiobook, listening to an audiobook while playing a game on my phone, and listening to an audiobook while playing with a stim toy

~ listening to music while staring out the window over the shoulder of the passenger to my right and listening to music while staring over the shoulder of the passenger to my right while feeling uncomfortable that I was making them uncomfortable by looking in their direction. 

years later the plane landed, twenty minutes early. 

I got off, walked into the airport, felt blissful at the sight of a filthy water fountain, and almost passed out. I sat on a baggage claim conveyer belt in my “personal item only” outfit: pants and an oversized camo shirt under two slips. I ate the rest of my snacks: a protein bar, three fruit leathers, and korean bbq flavored trail mix. I refilled my water bottle twice. 

marcus picked me up, I was perched on a bright orange plastic barricade. he brought me a pbj sandwich and sliced apples, I ate them hurriedly, starving. 

we drove to his house in atwater village, an equestrian zone, and I set my things down in the guest room. he showed me the garden, picking up and orange and squeezing it in half with his hands. they’re so abundant here that they’re a nuisance, he said. the sun felt hot on my back, hotter than the atlanta sun. more crispy. 

I laid down and tried to sleep. I tried covering my eyes, tried calling behetrin just to talk, tried the white noise setting on my phone. scrolled pinterest until I got sleepy and still nothing. I thought: I am going to have a twenty-one hour day. and then I thought: I’ve been here before. 

obviously I haven’t been here geographically, but I have been here emotionally. 

in 2012 I was asked to assist junco sato pollack in a class she was teaching at penland. I’d gone to her kudzu weaving class at calloway gardens, and when I told her I was a student at georgia state, (where she used to be the head of the textiles department) she said “oh good, you will be my assistant at penland.” the older ladies in the class gasped like I’d been invited to the royal ball. they whispered: do you know what penland is? I said no, and they told me I was very lucky. 

in preparation for this class, I had to go study with junco at her house near tallulah gorge. I stayed a couple nights and learned the rituals of harvesting, processing, and weaving kudzu fibers. 

at the time, I was living in roswell with my partner of three years and our dog, sprout. I planned to marry that man, and we’d reached the point in our relationship where I both wondered if he loved me at all anymore and when he was going to propose. I was 26. I’d told him he had to wait till I finished college, though I had just started, and yet I was impatient.

those days with junco were the first and longest I’d ever been away from my boyfriend and our bonzo dog. I remember laying sleepless in bed the first night, so alone and out of my element. I’d call stefan just to talk, I was homesick. a couple months later, I would spend two weeks at penland with junco, come home, and end the relationship. 

what I experienced at penland was a grand, messy, sacred un-sticking. a big super moon stared me in my face and said do you want this life with him or do you want to be an artist? I chose artist. 

I was thinking about stefan the other night. I always said he loved me more than anyone else had or ever would. I sometimes still believe that. what is sad is that the version of me that he loved was barely there. he’d closeted me to his family, I used to have panic attacks getting dressed because I didn’t know how to be the person he loved and also me at the same time. we got drunk every single night. he is the person who taught me how to make myself throw up so I could keep drinking. 

this feeling is the same I had at junco’s house that first time. the breaking of inertia, the homesickness. I am so thankful to have a reference point for it, to know it is not “bad” to feel this way, that this is the somatic feeling of the dry run. bless the dry run.

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7/19/24

today I started a new audiobook by katherine may. I loved what she’d written in wintering— among other things it was directly responsible for my newfound swimming practice.

her new (to me) book is called the electricity of every living thing - a woman’s walk in the wild to find her way home, because of course it is. I thought of heartbreak, how funny it is that I keep encountering these stories of women adventuring in the natural world.

electricity is about her late-in-life autism diagnosis, because yes, of course it is. I thought of a*, who I once bluntly asked “do you know you’re autistic?” to which they had responded, stutteringly, in essence: no but yes but no. I thought of clients who find out they’re autistic or adhd (or both) late in life and the devastating grief they feel, the anger at everyone around them who might’ve noticed but didn’t, or who did notice but didn’t say anything. I thought of texting E and telling him. I thought maybe it would help make things make sense for him. but what else would someone in recovery say?

it is difficult doing the work that I do, dating, being a very observant person, knowing when to disclose my observations and the meaning I make of them. when do I tell a client, a friend, a date, my father?

I think of the day I put together that maybe my father was autistic rather than narcissistic, after I’d learned how often autists are misdiagnosed with NPD. I think of the rushes of grief, empathy, frustration, compassion, and confusion I faced after that. I wonder if, instead of telling E my armchair diagnosis, I should be telling my father.

I have dated and been attracted to a wide range of people, but if I were to have one tried-and-true type, it is likely to be the undiagnosed autistics. I envy their not knowing, their willingness to be (or inability to not be) strange or off-putting, the luxury they’ve had of surviving a world without the heavy masking I’ve had to adopt, all while knowing the suffering that is often comorbid is nothing to envy.

I don’t love diagnostic paradigms, pathologizing language, or the urge to diagnose self and other with every trend that arises on tiktok. I have also learned a lot about how to care for and accommodate myself by being willing to explore those minefields and take what I need from them. it also helps me to understand others, and to respond to them more compassionately. it helps to come back to this framework, to soften the edges of observations like “willing to receive affection but unable to give it” or “narcissist” or “preoccupied,” but it doesn’t get me anywhere very productive.

I listen to the audiobook during my morning routine, through over-ear headphones because I find the pressure hugging my head comforting. I make the same smoothie I make every morning. I reach into the drawer to use the scissors labeled “worse than paper.” 

when I studied textiles in college, I learned that paper is a death sentence to the sharpness of scissors, so now I have “fabric” scissors, “paper” scissors, and “worse than paper” scissors. I think of my father’s sock drawer. he had innumerable pairs of the same white cotton tube socks, and he’d labeled each pair with roman numerals so that he could always wear them together so they would wear evenly. 

I went bowling yesterday, a game I usually hate because I cannot stop paying attention to the etiquette of what people do once they’ve thrown the ball, and how people respond to the person who has just thrown. it happens over and over and over and each time it is my turn to throw the ball I am six years old again, on stage at the ballet recital, watching the person next to me so that I know what the next steps are. every time it is my turn I feel stage fright, and then some amount of self-criticism for somehow having done it wrong, again. don’t even get me started on karaoke.

this book discusses in-depth how difficult the author has found mothering to be. how much more of her attention her child needs than she has to give. how overwhelming, overstimulating, how uncomfortable she is with the physical closeness her child needs. I think again of my dad in his office, of his moods. our first armchair diagnosis of him was that he must’ve been bipolar. it was the only thing that would explain his outbursts. we said then that he had anger issues, but I think now that he was having meltdowns. I remember I could feel his charge building in the air for days or hours before he stormed. 

it is easy to sympathize with the author’s difficulty mothering, it’s why I’ve never really wanted kids of my own. it is harder to listen to her struggles as the child of someone like that, it is harder to reconcile the gaping distance between needs and capacity between a child and their parent. it is harder still to see myself repeat these dynamics with romantic partners over and over.

today I wondered what it might look like to give up on love. I thought about how much time and energy I spend thinking about relationships: looking for my next one, waiting for it, wanting it. I wonder so much what it feels like to not. I want to ask someone how they do it. I want to ask z how he does it.

I practice imagining myself older and older, romantically alone. I practice grieving and accepting it, but the gnawing hunger remains. the compulsion remains. I will be sitting with this question though. I think ideally, right now, I’d learn to love life with or without romantic love. I’d center my life on something else, prioritize other ways of being and connecting. I’d be open to it if it came but I wouldn’t be constantly searching for it in the faces of strangers. I’d become okay with aging single, and learn to give myself all the love that I have been hoping to offload. 

(jack in september: I shared the above sentiment at movie night and dre said that romantic love is how women are encouraged to fill the void inside, and that men are encouraged to fill it though being alone in the woods. when I was in california I met yet another man who said he’d always dreamed of that very thing and I brought this concept up. I cannot stop thinking about these dynamics, AND how they fluctuate in my body as I take more and less testosterone. so much of this is about love, but sometimes it feels that every single thing I feel is about love is also equally about gender and freedom.)

two days later I re-downloaded feeld, hinge, and tinder.

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I was talking to someone recently about the revelations I’ve had around how my social media practices seem to undermine my IRL social connections. I brought up the glazing over that happens when I reference something I’ve written that a person has already read. the person I was talking to said people should still be able to talk to me about things they’ve already read and I immediately pushed back like but I don’t think they should have to. they said it was clear to them that what I write is just the tip of my experiences, that there is always more of the story to be told. 

I didn’t realize the grief I’d held around this until it had been named. I didn’t realize how much I had normalized this reaction in my mind, to the extent that I came so quickly to its’ defense. I do want to be asked more, drawn out on what I’ve shared, and I’m often not. again, I think this is partly my doing. I think I assume there is nothing more to say, nothing more they would want to hear, and clam up. 

I really love to write because I have time and space to consider. I do my best to find the right words, to line them up in such a way that they build a narrative. in person, I often lose thoughts to the wind, I stutter when I am self conscious, I stumble over words, I say things that aren’t fully true, I rush through stories and feelings to get them over with. I get lost in minutiae because I don’t know what to share and what to leave out. I can feel the subtlety of attention drifting so keenly, and I am so aware of my shortcomings here that I sometimes don’t speak at all.

almost every time I begin a story to a group of people I am already disappointed with both how I relayed it and how they received it. expressing myself one-on-one, improvisationally, with another human being is incredibly uncomfortable and vulnerable for me, and I am often left wanting. I often leave me wanting. 

I used to feel like children when speaking with my friends-- a kinship, like peers. now I feel almost competitive, like there is only so much time and attention and it is going to go to the person with the best funniest story and no one else. I feel in competition with The Moth Storytelling Hour or with tiktok. I feel the algorithmic pressure to capture attention, to hold it, and to prove that what I had to say was worth their time. 

it wasn’t always this way, and I grieve that often, but it is this way now. 

7/24/24

for two days I swiped up a storm on the dating apps. I explored my options in ever-expanding circles, digitally journeying 120 miles away on feeld. two days ago I deleted them again. in that brief window, I re-connected with an old match, and we’ve been talking for a couple days now on signal.

this match older, by a lot. he does not live here, travels often. he makes a point to end his voice memos by asking questions, and said so out loud. I recognized the texture, the I learned this is important to do and so I am practicing it. internally, I laugh at how much I have focused on this and how it now presents itself. I am practicing giving long answers, building tolerance for being in the spotlight of attention. he has said he “likes our connection” and would like to meet. tomorrow I leave for LA. 

this round of power-swiping featured a new addition to my profile: “not super into texting.” there is a line I think of often from the bell jar: “I felt wise and cynical as hell.” in this era I am straddling the line between jaded and cynical, which some people equate with nihilism but I do not. nihilism is a sacred space to me, an emptiness that is rich with possibility. cynicism is not. cynicism is watchful, doubting. I feel world-weary. I feel weary of myself, my old tricks.

today, after a few days of messaging back and forth, I was listening to a voice memo from him and felt my stomach do the ol’ flip flop. this sensation told me the engine of my heart had switched into the “on” position: at attention, ready, and waiting to be cranked. a drop of hope had entered the chat, and hope is fantasy’s favorite fuel.

as I mentioned in the last piece, when E and I had our semi-hostile last date, he somewhat snidely said something about me being in recovery, an allusion to my writing. I felt defensive, and said I wasn’t in any formal recovery program. I’ve long identified with and also distanced myself from SLAA (sex and love addicts anonymous). I felt both of those gestures in the moment he said that.

this new person, dd, is in recovery. formal recovery. and so, after feeling my belly flop, I sent a voice memo and said “this is enough.” I explained why I struggle building intimacy with strangers over text, how easily I slide into addictive territory because it feels so good and I don’t know when to stop. that I am trying to practice mindfulness, and moderation.

I felt silly, exposed, like a crazy girl, and I said it anyway. I said I’d gotten enough information to know that I’d like to meet, and that I didn’t want to continue discussing vulnerable or sexual topics at this rate until we are able to meet, which essentially meant not speaking for a week. 

as I listened, self-consciously, back to my voice memos to see what words had actually come out of my mouth, I was surprised to find that I felt strong, and brave. I sounded calm and self aware. I was and I am. I drove in silence after my voice memos finished playing and one single tear ran down my cheek. it felt like an inner child saying thank you for valuing me. 

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epilogue, 9/6/24: while preparing this piece for publishing, I visited the SLAA site to provide a link. despite my interest, it was my first time. there, I found a link to 40 questions for self-diagnosis. as a buzzfeed quiz baby, ofc I had to know my score. 24/40. what I think is interesting about SLAA that I hadn’t known before is that it is about both compulsively seeking (to a destructive degree) and compulsively avoiding (to a destructive degree) sex and love. 

I believe addiction paradigms can be an incredibly powerful and useful tool. I also believe most tools can be used as weapons, anything that is helpful can be harmful. as with all tools and paradigms, I have a tendency to take what works for me and leave what doesn’t. as an avid follower of and resonator with anna fusco (lordcowboy), I was unsurprised (and grateful) when she started writing about SLAA. the piece was powerful and soothing to read. a feeling, again, that I am not alone in these things. 

I have long been fascinated with the overlaps between OCD and addiction, with how to handle compulsions, with how to stop wanting to stop. I feel quite ready to explicitly say now that the recovery pieces are both about recovering from unrequited affection and about how I am coping with my own addictive tendencies.

looks like E was right too, and maybe this time I was just mad that he pointed it out before I was ready to admit it. maybe E and I have pointed out enough of each other’s wounded realities.

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if you are interested in learning more about me or my peer support practice, you can visit my website.

7/18/24

well, turns out I was right about E’s emotional unavailability. maybe people don’t lie, they just tell you what they want to be true before it actually is.

and

I am glad I was willing to be wrong. 

7/19/24

my time cycles with z were marked by new and full moons, and by my period. my period is here now, and it may be the first one I didn’t immediately associate with him. I have a rule: no period sex as first sex with someone new. it is too vulnerable, I get too self-conscious, and it often provides a much-needed time buffer I feel otherwise incapable of holding.

though I didn’t know it at the time, z’s visit aligned perfectly with my cycle. I was not bleeding on our first night together, it felt awkward and teenaged and I said I wouldn’t cum and he said don’t think too much about it. he said I was a good kisser and I said thank you.

my period came on strong the next day, as if summoned. most months it starts slow, easing its way into my routine. not this one. the floodgates opened: I was woozy, cramping, and I wondered how it would impact our plans for swimming the following day. 

that monday afternoon we swam naked. it was april and the water was still cold. it was invigorating. afterward, we laid on blankets eating snacks and talking about family and past lovers. here entered the previously-referenced, emotionally-motivated erection. we finished our vulnerable discussion and I walked my naked body a few feet away to removed the sea sponge holding my period at bay. squeezing blood onto the pine needles blanketing the forest floor, I shook out the sponge and felt animalistic. I rinsed it with my water bottle, used the sponge to clean myself up, and felt free. every cell of my body delighted in my own lack of inhibition, my willingness to be animal or ugly or human, my trust that this lover was mature enough to barely blink at what was happening. I was right. 

I returned to our picnic blanket and he went down on me. he paused to ask how I like it, what kinds of techniques I enjoy. shocked, I said I just liked being asked. I actually didn’t know my body well enough to answer because, in 38 years, this was the first time anyone had bothered to ask. so I asked for a sampling and reported back. I stared over the water and relaxed, blissful, knowing full well how doomed my heart was. 

after we finished, he walked a few feet away. he took a swig of his water bottle and spit it slowly out of his mouth, using the stream to rinse himself off. I watched in awe and said “I really like you” before I could stop myself. he said something like “these are the things you learn living in the desert.” I noticed the juxtaposition but dismissed it. these are the moments that, in my ruminatory reviews, I am learning to pay more attention to. 

my first menstrual cycle after he left brought fresh grief, I remember writing in my notes app (with a self-aware dramatic flair): the last time I bled was in your mouth. it is strange to associate something that is so deeply personal with someone who is not me.

it wasn’t the first time I’d had period sex, but I think it was the first time my period had ever felt intimately shared, the first time I’d let myself relax into it and not feel as if it were something to be embarrassed of, something keeping us slightly apart. perhaps it was the first time I’d had a sexual partner who was truly unaffected by it. 

my second cycle post-departure felt similar, as if no time had passed. my third was a muted grief, like the dark brown bits that come slowly at the end of a period: the dregs. this cycle (the fourth) is mine again, though the recognition rings a bit hollow. bittersweet. I don’t know if I really wanted it back. 

my time cycles with E have become marked by movie nights on thursdays.

our first thursday was the lucky day I had at the thrift store, when we matched and messaged, when I missed my exit on the way home from movie night as my mind played out fantasies and I loved myself anyway. the second thursday, last thursday, was the day I broke things off and cried listening to REM on the way home. this thursday, yesterday, was the third thursday. I pulled onto the highway after movie night feeling empty and angry. I’d met with E the day before, for the last time. I don’t think either of us knew going into it whether this was meeting-to-talk-about-things or meeting-to-keep-getting-to-know-each-other, but it became clear over time. 

we were sitting on a wooden dock, talking. I’d loosened the reigns of my watchful eyes, let myself be in presence, in conversation, in listening. he spoke at length about his breakup, his job, his financial stresses, and eventually asked how things had been for me. I told him everything I’d been writing and thinking about: my social media practices, spoiling my own stories, wondering about my publishing practices and when it was and wasn’t appropriate to be writing about people. I tried to let myself be long in word, and I think I did okay. 

I apologized for not having considered how my impulsive actions might have affected him, and told him I recognized how brutal it may have been to be abruptly dumped and then have to read about why online. he brushed it off, and I assumed that he was playing it down. I asked how it had felt and realized that I had over-empathized. he wasn’t playing it down, he genuinely didn’t care. he went on to admit that he is, in fact, emotionally unavailable. 

I expressed confusion, told him I thought he’d said I was wrong about that, that he wanted to keep talking. he said “I think maybe I was just mad that you were right” and we laughed. it felt easy, but tense. I could feel us walking a tightrope between empathy and enmity. he was in full shadow at this point, I don’t know any other way to express that--  it is the inward motion of grief, the stage of victimhood, despair, and helplessness that turns us inside out and blinds us to everything outside of our story. I know it well. we continued talking as I processed what he’d said. I remember laying there thinking, wanting to ask: “okay so you’re emotionally unavailable, but are you still going to take me out on the boat?” 

a couple days before I’d gotten a slew of texts from an old acquaintance. she’d stayed up all night reading this series and Wanted To Talk about it. it was the day I’d quit social media and spent writing: sacrificing my truth on the altar of apology. I jumped at the chance to process with another being, the chance for real-life social contact. she asked me about my unrequited affections and told me about hers. we talked all night, and I kept coming back to a line from This is Us: “I don’t know why there would be anything more to say after what I just said.” 

so as I laid on the wooden bench listening to the cicadas and processing E’s verified emotional unavailability, I noticed myself bargaining. this man had just admitted how “fucked up” he is (his words, you know the tone.) how emotionally unavailable, how he’d only written things on his profile that he wanted to be true with no idea of how to actually make them true. he’d just said these things to me, out loud, and I was wondering if he still wanted to take me on the boat.

I thought of the friend I’d talked to, of “I don’t know why there would be anything to say after that” and I kept my mouth shut. I did it for me, and for my friend, and for E. I did it for all of my past selves who had never heard that line. I thought of the tiktok I’d seen of the girl who had put herself in time out because the night before, she had drunk texted “I miss you” to her roster of exes, and to the ones who had responded in kind she had said only: “respect yourself.”

I realized that I had to begin grieving everything I had imagined possible with him, and I had to start now. no more bargaining. I realized that I had already set my standard- I’d broken things off when I believed he wasn’t emotionally available. now that it was confirmed, I couldn’t go back on my intentions. 

he talked more about his exes, and I tried asking when he’d figured this out, if it had been before or after the phone call in which he’d said he wanted to take me on a boat. for some reason this was important to me. like… was he inviting me on the boat as an emotionally unavailable fuckboy (tempting) or did his admission nullify the invitation? was he ending things? had I ended things?

his answer was inscrutable, forgettable, and unsatisfying. from here, things got more tense. he tried to assert that I was more “fucked up” than he was, and I laughed. it felt like a ridiculous argument to make, but then I took the bait and said that maybe I would qualify… if I’d been wrong about him, but I wasn’t. he mentioned something about recovery, a reference to the then-unpublished piece I had sent him. but when he said it, it felt like a dig, a reference to AA. I was thrown off, tried to explain that I was talking about recovering from heartbreak, not addiction, but my words rang hollow even to me. 

we tried to keep talking, each of us in our unique and incomparable fucked-upness, but eventually stopped. it had started raining lightly and a chorus of frogs started up in response. the moment was so earthly, so sensual, and I did not want to share it with him. I leaned my head back and said “I want to go home now.”

neither of us moved for a few moments, but eventually I put my socks and shoes back on. he followed suit. he walked slightly behind me as we started back to the cars in weighted silence, sharing the awareness of our ending, braving the awkward procession. I could feel him holding his breath, I looked over my shoulder at his drawn face and said “don’t beat yourself up too much.” we walked farther and his heart-shaped sunglasses fell and broke on the ground. I laughed the loudest I had in days, and had what felt like an interminable case of the giggles at the poetry of real life. this poor, tortured, beautiful jim jarmusch caricature.

we talked at the cars a little longer. he was in unmasked existential crisis. he shared a cold gallon of water with me while I went into counselor jack mode. I was trying to make it all better so I could leave. it was unhelpful, and I couldn’t stop staring at the pectoral curve under his decrepit gray tank top. eventually I said “I am going to go home now,” and then “I’m glad we met.” then, in closing, I saluted him and said “maybe I’ll see you again someday.” I got in my car and left my high school crush, the little brother of my first major boyfriend’s first major girlfriend, the ex of my ex’s current partner, alone next to his beautiful old truck. 

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yesterday I picked up a haul of old, handwritten, bootleg cassette tapes. I brought them home and started listening to one labeled the sex change band on a portable tape player I bought at a thrift store recently. I laid on my bed and wanted company, someone who could also appreciate the tape’s hiss and warble. I thought of E, and thought maybe I resented him enough now to be friends. I let the idea play out in my mind and it felt true, I didn’t feel at risk of developing feelings anymore. I thought maybe we could just have a sad summer friendship. then I thought (self-consciously, almost bitterly): “but what else would someone in recovery say?”

I didn’t reach out. 

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if you are interested in learning more about me or my peer support practice, you can visit my website.

7/15/24 (cont’d cont’d)

I did laundry today. it is monday. I have been doing laundry on sundays for over two years now. my friends know sunday is my chores day, that I am never available on sundays. I do laundry in the house next door, though, and I have new neighbors now. sundays don’t work for them, so I am switching to mondays. 

I am practicing being in relationship with other people, letting our needs be in conversation with each other. 

the next two weeks of my life will be different anyway, leading up to and including my trip to LA. it is good to practice being outside of my comforts.

I had an obligation this afternoon, I’d signed up to be a product tester. I was going to be paid $120 for 3 hours. I’d resigned myself to the selling of my time and personal information. when I arrived at the appointment, however, I was asked to sign an NDA that would have given consent for my biometric audio and video data to be gathered and stored by a Very Large Company that I do not much care for. biometric audio and physical recognition data that could be used to identify me in the future. I opted out and left empty-handed.

I posted a warning in the jobs group chat where I learned about it and someone responded that they hadn’t had a choice, that they needed the money for rent. I thought of the line out the door and how many people are being paid for data that could someday be used to incarcerate them, how many of those people had no choice? I was the only white person I saw. 

I am practicing respecting my bodily autonomy and safety, and it is a privilege. 

I came home and started to put away my laundry. in the clean pile was a skirt that needed mending. I’d cut it too short a couple years ago, then maybe a year after that I had sewn a couple inches of the fabric I’d cut off back onto the bottom of it so I could wear it again. that seam is wearing now, filled with holes. at first I thought I will fix this later and then I thought later when? so I stopped putting away laundry and started sewing the skirt. 

I am practicing following my impulses and trusting that I will come back to where I started.

the more holes I fixed, the more holes I found. I am having to go over the entire seam now. halfway through, I recognized it was the skirt I wore on the date with E. I started thinking about rupture and repair and conflict as a form of intercourse. I thought of this in the context of consent; and in the context of trauma, defined as too much too soon.

I kept sewing. I laughed at the symbolism in my actions and then stopped. my mouth hung open, I took my hands off the sewing machine and my foot off the pedal as I realized I’d also worn this skirt on my last day with z. I had to fact check myself: no, that would be too strange. but I did, I remember saying out loud that my outfit reminded me of my most recent fashion inspiration, the character of kirsten from the tv show station eleven, played by mackenzie davis. in one episode she wore a sporty one-piece bathing suit under a farmy floral skirt, with boots and her signature knife holsters. I remember that I didn’t get much response to this comment, and I remember how I felt in that moment: embarrassed for speaking, disconnected. these feelings of rejection are the only reason I remember that moment at all. 

I wish I was as able to hold memories of joy as I am memories of shame.

there is a thing that the reigning champ of relationship dynamics talks about as a predictor for the success or failure of a relationship: bids for attention. like when you’re talking to someone and they say “oh look, a bird” and you look and share in that moment of awe-- that is a successful bid for attention. humans are cooooooooonstantly bidding for each other’s attention, and I believe how others respond to those bids can have a deep impact on that person’s feeling of connection in community and self-worth. I believe it is one of the things that can make being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world so deeply traumatizing and isolating. 

now that I have this framework, I am unfortunately hyper-aware of it happening constantly around me. how people (including me) ignore bids as a passive form of rejection, as a way to communicate disapproval or dislike. or how people (including me and my loved ones) are sometimes sincerely distracted and don’t notice a bid, and how that can have the same consequence.

I have noticed that I sometimes feel resentment when I am on the receiving end of “too many” bids when I am tired, this is a reason I self isolate to recharge-- it does not feel good to not meet a bid. I feel guilt, cannot exist peaceably alongside the unmet need. I feel this guilt with my cats sometimes, and even more with dogs. this is a more targeted language for what people often describe only as a person being “too much,” it is also what some people mean when they say they are “not enough.” a person who feels like too much might have a lot of unmet bids with the people around them, and a person who feels like not enough might not have the capacity to meet all the bids that are sent their way. 

I wonder about bids and my relationship to attention that I am now examining. I wonder how often I suppress bids I don’t think will land. I have started noticing, too, bids that people are not making to me, birds I am pointing out only to be met with “yes I saw it.” the slight tickle in that moment-- a feeling of something in recognizing that they’d experienced awe and hadn’t felt compelled to share in that moment.

my therapist said it must be difficult dating as such an observant person. it is exhausting, and sometimes it feels impossible. I think this is one of the many reasons I drank so much when I was younger, it allowed me to loosen up and stop looking at everything so closely. my attentiveness also made me an excellent lifeguard, and very good at what I do now. it is also a trauma response, and I long to someday feel safe enough to turn it off. in other words: I have ADD, and have developed OCD because I am rarely allowed to actually be inattentive. I take adderall to fuel the OCD that manages my ADD, because the energy it takes to be so constantly aware is beyond what my body is capable of producing naturally. 

I wonder how much of my frustration and resentment at others’ inattention is because of how much energy I expend trying to sustain my own?

7/16/24

this morning I am wondering when I became so fixated on questions as a sign of interest. I remember the first time it came up for me-- I had spent an entire date with someone and it had felt dreamy in a lot of ways but I felt intimidated or maybe inhibited. they spoke at length about themself and their interests but didn’t ask me about mine. I thought this signaled disinterest, but they kept asking me to hang out and brought me gifts. I was so confused by the incongruence that I broke things off abruptly, it felt odd in my body and I couldn’t make sense of it. I felt like a sleeve, I felt unseen as a person, how could they like me so much when they hadn’t asked anything of me and didn’t know me? I can recall how foreign these questions felt because I had truly never paid attention to how much attention someone was paying to me before this date. 

I remember a conversation with someone who was living with their parents at the time. they kept coming back to how no one in the house asked them questions, how much this bothered them. I felt indignant, I could hear their bitterness and I didn’t understand it. I also felt embarrassed, self conscious. I felt the familiar rush of heat in the body that happens when a neurodivergent person becomes aware of an unspoken rule they’d previously been ignorant of. I don’t know if this exchange happened before that date, but I know the two are core memories for this fixation I now have. 

I remember being younger and saying things like “I like you because I feel good around you.” I imagine someone saying that to me now and I feel critical. is that enough? when did it become not enough? when did it become about me as a person, and is that a bad thing? do I need someone to like measaperson so that I can feel worthwhile? am I looking for explicit interest to boost my self worth? is feeling good to be around enough, at least in the beginning? I think too about someone who is interested in me for sexual reasons, what is-ness of myself do I wish they were seeing? am I showing it to them?

it has been four and a half years of trying to date now, and I think my love-battered heart is exhausted. I haven’t felt sustaining, reciprocal, available interest in so many years. I have experienced sustaining, non-reciprocal interest and sustaining unavailable interest. I have experienced reciprocal interest that faded, and available interest that waned.  I am constantly on the lookout for what will be the thing that does this one in. I am so on that lookout that I worry the lookout itself is beginning to deal the fatal blow.

(7/18/24 - future jack here with some foreshadowing: yesterday in a session I told a client that often when I am asking why I have a need, I am trying to find a way to not have it because I know it can’t be met. I thought of this entry and my heart sank a little.)

7/17/24

today is day three off of social media. I feel the urges to post things, and then consider them. what do I want right now? what am I looking for? often, I have done something silly or cute and I want to tell people, want to feel witnessed. but when I think of the process of posting, waiting, and then checking the likes… is that actually what I am getting? 

there is a dreaded pattern of conversation that has become familiar: I have plans to see a friend, catch up, and I find myself trying to sort through what to catch them up on. what have they already read online? will I just be repeating myself? in these moments, it feels like an alternate version of me has gone before me and spoiled the surprise every time. I have become familiar with the glazing-over that happens, with the somatic withdraw I can feel when I begin telling someone something they’ve already read. it feels like impatience, it feels like “cut to the chase.” I find myself pre-empting stories by asking “have you read my substack?” and I’m faced with two answers, both of which I hate: either they haven’t read it (I really don’t care) and they feel guilty about that (ugh) OR they have read it and so now I have to re-tell them a story they’ve already read or assume they know what I’m talking about and then find out they don’t remember when I go to reference it. my online sharing undermines my in-person connections so much, and I am only just now beginning to examine that. 

often, I am hanging out with a friend and they don’t ask me what’s been going on because we both know they already know even though IRL me hasn’t had the chance to tell them yet or experience their reaction. often, I am hanging out with friends, and we are all on our phones because we all already know what is going on in our lives via text or social media. it can be incredibly depressing and deeply undermines our curiosity with each other. I grieve our in-person connecting, and I fear we are losing that ability.

and so I am thinking about these things in the scope of my writing as well, thinking about spoilers and access and privacy. boundaries and needs, connection and curiosity. I wonder what it communicates to my sense of self to rush my words out to the public before I have a chance to embody them with people in-person. I wonder what it communicates to me about the worth of those words. something about giving away milk for free. 

a* was the first person I’ve dated who didn’t have access to my instagram. it was so FREEING. prior to them, I’d started to notice another bad feeling: the recognition that someone had learned so much about me online, and that I, the person they were learning about, had missed out on that experience. I didn’t get to see the spark of interest, curiosity, resonance, empathy, or humor that may have happened when they read my words. and, because not everyone is chronically oversharing online, we would develop an imbalance of knowing each other that felt equally devastating. 

I am thinking about this now and realizing that the way I share on line is an extension of how I used to share in-person. I see in this moment that I unlearned the shame of sharing myself online, but in that I have forgotten how to share myself in person. muscles atrophy when they are not used. 

when I sent E the substack I wrote about them, they went back and spent hours reading the entire romantic nihilism series. it is looking very likely that I was wrong about E in a lot of ways, had made assumptions out of fear, was indeed bolting. they seem to be available for a lot, attention-wise, and have lately been quite generous with theirs. I am still trying to discern what it is that I want that I am afraid they don’t have, so that I can ask the hard questions, but for me, for now, this is enough to stay in the finding out with him. 

as we were working our way back from my abrupt ending, he sent me a very long voice memo. I had sent him some unpublished work to explain myself further, and after reading it he expressed his unease at having had access to so much of my inner world and how imbalanced that felt. 

he said “I don’t think I want to read anymore” and my body went hotcold, which is a marker of shame for me. with time, I realized what he meant was that he wanted to learn me in person, in real life, in the real world. although it felt like rejection in that first moment, what I realized is that if I am going to step up to the plate with people I am going to start having to use my real life mouth to communicate real life feelings with people in real time and that this person wanted that from me. 

of all the ways I could be desired by a person, this might feel the most erotic.

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the last thing I said to you was don’t leave me here. Tracey Emin, 2000

7/15/24 (cont’d)

this morning I am filled with “oh fuck”

this morning I am looking at it all, big picture. 

this morning I am feeling how tender I am from what happened with z. 

this morning I am seeing how little I really saw of E. 

this morning I feel regret, and shame. 

this morning I am sitting in one of the most uncomfortable spaces I sometimes occupy: the space of allowing another’s truth to influence my own. it is good to write that though, because as I say it I realize I haven’t heard E’s truth. I only know what I am projecting onto him, what I think he might say. I am preemptively rejecting myself for what I have done and excusing him for it. I am following familiar patterns of self abandonment and “trying to not.” I am sacrificing self-worth on the altar of connection. 

when I told E that what I would come to want might be more than he’s available for, what I meant was… this. I wanted to avoid this feeling, and instead I created it. that is often how that works, unfortunately. 

perhaps it isn’t that I attract people who receive affection but don’t give it, maybe it is that I am constantly looking for evidence that I am not receiving. I am looking for evidence of my own hunger. when you look, you will find. it is probably a mixture of both. 

I did the opposite once, I felt I wasn’t receiving affection and so I went looking for it. I created a dictionary of ways she shows me affection and let go of ways that I needed to receive affection. I wound up exhausted, resentful, and emotionally volatile. I regretted it. I feel a bit lost right now. 

I am practicing giving myself that attention, and it is hard. I come back to my breath, the sensations of whatever it is I am doing. I feel deep sadness in my chest right now. 

I am learning, and these lessons feel brutal. with z, I assumed futurity and reciprocity and acted accordingly without making sure we were on the same page-- all in the name of faith or trust, being in the moment. with E, I assumed the opposite and acted accordingly without making sure we were on the same page-- all in the name of self love and preservation. while picking sochan earlier I looked at the timeline, the “DON’T DO IT I SEE YOU DON’T DO IT” message I got on instagram. I wondered if I broke things off so quickly for the likes. I deleted instagram today. the true question is almost  never “why won’t they give it to me?” and so often “why won’t I give it to myself?”

-- 

I had this saying, early on in my practice: “when I don’t center me, I make everything about myself.” and its true. because I wasn’t allowing myself space to show up, I was hyper fixated on how much space someone else was giving me. it was my parents’ responsibility to center me as a child, but it is not the responsibility of any adult other than myself to center me now. I want others to do it for me because it is hard to do it for myself. I have fierce internal systems that inhibit and suppress it. but in displacing and outsourcing that responsibility, maybe I am the narcissist. I am the one counting questions. I am the one withholding myself, ending something abruptly, and then sending a substack with all the things I wouldn’t let myself say. in the end, I made it about me, regardless, and as this person is gently giving me the attention I so passively asked for… it feels terrible. 

my friends, my readers: I know you will tell me I am being too hard on myself, and I am. I see it. I listened to a guided meditation on forgiveness while doing my dishes this morning. it is all learning, blessed lessons. here I present to you: full pendulum swing. there will be a return after this I am sure, it will lose momentum and find nuance. I have learned to have grace with its’ dance. hello pendulum, my old friend.

--

damn, mount everest got hands.

-- 

softening, softening. reminding myself that a week before, the chaser asked if they could penetrate my asshole, then started breadcrumbing me after I “ruined the surprise” of my gender by disclosing that I have an IUD. reminding myself that the week before that, my best friend was ghosted by a long-term, long-distance partner who’d said I love you and then posted in a relationship with someone else on facebook a week later. reminding myself that in that same week, another friend was abruptly left by someone else who’d said I love you, which is the same thing that happened to me with the last person I dated. I have found myself on the slightly misandrist, cynical side of tiktok-- constantly seeing screenshotted text conversations turn from “never” and “always” to “it was always casual to me.” I deleted tiktok just now, it doesn’t feel helpful to have so many outside voices influencing my experiences. I can be gentle with myself because the dating world is fucking traumatic right now. I can be gentle with myself because the whole world is fucking traumatic right now. all I can do is do my best to hold all these complicated truths at once with grace, to listen, and to apologize. 

-- 

what I haven’t said is that E and I kept talking after I broke things off, after I sent the substack. they’ve been kind, reflective, generous and clear that there are some things I’ve misunderstood. I thought this meant the door was still open for us, and I responded from that place. I realize now that it might not be. I realize now that them wanting to talk doesn't mean they want to talk about the future, it could just mean they want to address what has happened and clear some things up. if that is the case, I will understand. in some ways, I may have been wrong. they have shown up very well so far for these discussions. in some ways I may have been right: they may not have capacity for this right now. and in some ways, I may have created the scenario I was most afraid of: me needing more than they have capacity for. 

when I published romantic nihilism (part i), I searched google for images of mount everest. many of the results were graphics showing the known locations of dead bodies on the mountain, explorers who hadn’t made it. prescient. I have the urge to publish this now, get my thoughts and feelings out before I know what will come from our conversation, sacrifice myself on the altar of forgiveness. but I won’t. I am going to let myself be in conversation with another person here. I am going to let my experience be shared, as much as it may hurt.

(present day jack here: it is strange to be posting these so far in the future. I know what happens to this story, I am impatient to get to the conclusion and move on. but I have been thinking a lot about how we only ever share the finished products of our experiences, the retrospectives. I want to share the experience itself, savor the process, like being asked to show my work on a math test. I can tell you right now, in a sentence, how things turned out but that seems much less valuable to me.)

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