bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: I worry that I’ll never find someone.

I'm a trans boy and I worry sometimes that I'll never find a partner who wants someone like me. I don't know why I am sharing this with you other than you feel like a safe space.

I will always be safe space. My home is a haven of peace, tranquility, safety and trust and this blog is my virtual home so those rules apply here as well. Don’t apologize for using your voice and reaching out. You’d only need to be sorry for not doing so because it would deny me the chance to take this moment with you and use it to impart a bit of my hard earned wisdom with you and those who read my blog.

It can be easy to ‘tune out’ messages that call out things like identity amid the static of our increasingly factionalized world, but my work is entirely in defiance of such things. It is always about being human. I may address those definition points that people use to help understand themselves, but I want them to also understand that beneath that lies the real person and that is who my response is written to. 

It can feel like ‘never’ may be the most likely expectation when you think about finding love because ‘yet’ is still in play. You have yet to find what you’re looking for and so ‘never’ becomes an acceptable way to excuse the cowardice of surrendering the implicit hope that yet entails. If that sounds cruel, it should because it is meant to wake you up because I truly wish you to see what I am about to show you.

At night, the sun will never come up for the same reason that you’ll never find a partner: it hasn’t happened yet. Every time I hear a someone say “I’ll never be..” or “I’ll never find…” it frustrates me because those words become prophesy. You begin to believe them, accept them and even feel like that’s ‘right or proper’ somehow but I have something to say on that idea as well.

There is no such thing as ‘right’ or ‘just’ in the mechanics of the universe. We invent those terms, we give them rules and identify what is and isn’t them, but they are nowhere to be found in the natural world. They are the sole province of opinion and superstition. They are bitter pills dispensed by ideologies that punish instead of elevate those who walk this earth and are the ‘excuse’ given to people enacting vengeance or acting on their base violent natures.

Concepts of mercy, justice, honor, glory, all of them, are figments of culturally accepted imagination. The universe doesn’t even recognize them as anything more than fairy tales and so they are. They are a construct we created to serve a moral compass that has become twisted into weapons instead of teaching tools. The good are rewarded and the evil punished. Strange how that doesn’t work out.

If we wish there to be more in this world than chemicals and forces, principles and laws, then it is up to us to create them, to reinforce them and re-envision them as time goes on. We must believe them real and we must act on them to make them so but they do not exist independently of our own desire for a world that somehow makes sense. It doesn’t always, the world can often seem like a madhouse run by the patients, but that doesn’t stop us from trying perhaps too hard to give it some kind of order. It’s how we explain things to ourselves so we feel better about bad things in our lives. The fact of the matter is that it’s just not at all how reality functions but that won’t stop us from trying to make it that way.

The heart is an impatient thing and a terrible paradoxical thinker when left unchecked. It understands eternity but has the patience of smoke on the breeze. It wants everything now, to drown in laughter and joy this very moment and every moment forever. The heart is the child that lives within us all, but reality requires us be more than childish. We have to be resolute, determined and most of all hopeful, to make it through the times between tick ‘I’m alone’ and tock ‘I’m not’.

That’s the secret however. When you find love, everything past becomes prologue to the ‘ever after’ feeling of this new story and all pain is simply prelude to the joy that follows. The waiting becomes a footnote, a rehearsal, and you barely remember that feeling of absence or being alone. You may wait a lifetime, but even if it were to show up in the last minutes of your life, not a single moment would have been wasted. You just have to make it there and you’ll understand what I mean.

That’s why you have to put ‘yet’ in the place where ‘never’ sits in your thoughts. Never is a silly word, as are all generalities, because they are in essence lies told to reinforce a desired (or dreaded) feeling. “I’ll never find a partner’ is no more accurate than “Man will never fly”. The mad fools who stuck wood to steel and shoved it down a hill didn’t give up believing in their dream and did not stop working toward it only to wind up doing the impossible: they flew.

Your heart must be the same way. You may never have flown before, but after this moment the only thing you can say that IS true is that you haven’t flown yet.

Yet is temporary, irritating and can be daunting at times, but it is not permanent. Don’t let the wrong word change the story in your head because that lets it change the one in your heart. All that believing in “never” does is keep your eyes pointed to the ground, your expression crestfallen and hopeless, and makes you withdraw from the light because ‘what’s the point, you’ll be alone anyway”. Never is a lie and it’s time to replace that lie with the truth.

That can be a hard trick though because the lie is comfortable. The lie means no risk because you don’t believe you’d be ‘rewarded’ or ‘succeed’ so it eliminates the chance of pain for nothing. That is why I called it cowardice, because it sacrifices hope in exchange for nothing and somehow tries to make it right or just to do so. It makes me ask a terrible question in return when faced with that kind of ‘prophesy’ in play:

Think of how long you’ve felt alone. How long you’ve felt wrong or undeserving. Be honest with yourself about it. How long have you hated yourself so much that you think yourself unlovable? Think about how that made you feel and what it made you do. Did you meet the gaze of everyone you met, shake every offered hand, share every laugh that happened around you, or did you close your eyes and walk past the person smiling at you or trying to start conversations. Why bother right? It’s not like they wanted something more from you.

Given how the universe actually works, in all that time do you have any idea how many times you walked right past happiness, how many times you shrugged off the compliments love was trying to pay you, and worse how many times you buried your eyes in the ground and narrowly avoided realizing you are beautiful?

THIS is the price of never. It makes itself come true but not because the world doesn’t have it in store for you but because YOU never. You never meet those gazes, share those laughs, smile and say thank you to a compliment. You never take the chance that the hand reaching for you wants to see if you are real because to them you couldn’t possibly be, having walked into view after exiting their dreams. You choose this when you believe in never and after long enough you become the Never.

It’s time to start becoming yet.

You, and all who feel like you; that there’s no place or hope for you, need to abandon never and learn to accept yet. It’s hard because it means risk, it means that dreadful waiting, but yet has hope of becoming the past while never can’t ever be. There are things you can do to change never into yet, but you have to accept those risks in order to make them happen.

When you think, stop yourself the moment you say to yourself ‘this can never happen’ and replace it with ‘this hasn’t happened yet’. Instead of “I’ll never find my partner” say “I haven’t found him yet”. Try it and you’ll see the difference and if you can’t then you keep doing that until you start to.

So simple a thing can be a profound change in you well beyond even just your way of thinking.It can lead you to meet that gaze, share that smile, shake that hand or even (dare I say it) accept the compliment someone might seek to give you.

It doesn’t mean you leap into every pair of arms that happens by, but it means you don’t keep your eyes cast to the ground so that you never see that they are there to begin with. It means instead of hanging your head that you might see a little sunlight instead of the shadow around your feet. It means so much more than this: it means that love has a chance to replace yet.

Promise me.

Promise me that when you begin to hear yourself say never that you will stop right there and forcefully remind yourself that the correct word is yet. You’ve been using the wrong word your whole life and now it’s time to learn to use the right one. It’s like calling a television a bathmat. It’s just the wrong word you’ve learned to say out of habit and it’s time to break that habit. You have to take this step to take the next one and the one after that and so on because life is a journey and not a series of destinations.

Restore your hope, disregard that fallacy of never, and take the first steps towards something better even than yet:

Always.

My best, as always, goes with you.

-Bearogenes.

[bearogenes]

Understanding re-frames a problem and demystifying one helps begin the process of solving it. 

Loneliness is not a ‘feeling’. It is something you feel like hunger, pain, heat, cold. It is hardwired into you. Take away the stigma of ‘feelings’ from this thing you feel. It’s biological, it evolved with purpose, and remains a critical warning system. That more than 50% of the world endures chronic pain in this fashion is a desperate scream we need to listen to.

Hear these words and start the process of managing this chronic pain.

[bearogenes]

Life is a lesson in the absurd, taught through solipsism and somnambulation.

Bearogenes of Syncope 

[bearogenes]

Bearogenes on Freedom.

Hi sir, how can I stop worrying about knowing I'll never find someone because I think it wont happen and I'm not doing anything to make it happen? I'm venting, you don't have to answer, srry.

I’m well aware that I never have to answer in the common use of the word but I may find something that needs talking about either to the person who wrote or to the audience at large who may not know they need to hear what I’m about to say. You, for instance. I can’t know if you’ll ever see your real answer, but I’m attempting to get away from ‘ask’ replies because I can’t share them again. Tumblr has always thought that asks were ‘one and done’ never to be seen again where I use questions and answers as teaching moments and those seldom ‘go away’.

That’s me, struggling with the inevitability of all this being reduced to dust at the whim of another. Part of me wants to embrace that and draw my sand paintings that will return to nothingness and part of me is really cranky about that idea. It’s this odd paradox because I’ve already changed my feelings about this place and my work here. You can’t expect things to last forever when they are placed in someone else’s hands.

Long ago I learned that lesson in a very hard way. I gave much more than my love to someone, I gave them my trust and faith and those were not the hands to which such were meant to be entrusted even as an offering of affection. I learned a great deal about myself through the healing process I put myself through in the wake of that relationship but most important of which was the realization that the truth was that ‘I’ was never in his care.

I came out of that wondering who I was, what I was ‘worth’ and if I would ever ‘love’ again. The abuse was strong enough to make me forget myself and anything that meant before it. He had, in essence, taken white out and blotted out the very idea of me and replaced it with a collage of words and labels and things he needed me to be so that he could retain control. After a time, those things piled on your skin become your skin and hurt just as badly to scrape away which was my initial instinct.

When I broke free I wanted to rip everything apart, including my identity, because it all seemed to be his and not mine. Nothing would give however, no matter how hard I tore at it: the chains were unbreakable and all I saw was the image of me reduced to a broken husk laying on my bed weeping alone because that was my ‘worth’. In reality, I was free of nothing. Not even free from there being more abuse because, as is their intent, it then comes from your hands and by your own words.

The cage that held me in prison and whip that punished me had both become my own words and what I believed of myself.

I was my jailer, warden of the prison I created with the things he had given me.In looking back, I was far better at it than he could ever be because for him to do so required that I give him fragile, soft things, but for me to do it required nothing at all. I built my crow’s cage out of ideas and words and belief. It had become my reality, born of his desire but perpetuated by my own fears about myself and all he need do to keep me that way was remind me that I was that way at all.

The result of this is an intimate understanding of prisons, of the cages we build to protect ourselves because as they keep us in they also keep ‘them’ out. I recognize the signs of them in others, some who don’t even know they are imprisoned at all even though they are truly slaves to their ‘words’.

You see, there I find you in your cage and so I will teach you how I became free.

You cannot tear your ideas away, cannot peel off the layers of beliefs and deceptions no matter who they originate from. They have been there far too long and like an unchanged bandage have merged with the wound they were initially meant to help heal. Yes, even ‘good things’ can turn foul regardless of their intention if they are not ‘changed out’ by examining them or replacing them with newer (cleaner) ones down the road. So it is with your thoughts about yourself.

Note my lack of concern about partnering or ‘mating’ or relationships here. Unless your aim is bumping two cages together and calling it love then you’re not in a place where you can start the journey toward real love which requires both equality and freedom. Love is, at it’s most basic level, a choice and choice requires freedom but you have yet to find yours. I will not condemn you to cage rattling and swinging in desperation attempting to join hands with another prisoner. I will instead put the key within reach and leave the choice to you.

Even if you do not feel ready to begin, a feeling that may never come on it’s own, now is the time because coming to the point where you wrote a stranger on the internet is a clear sign that change must begin now. That you needed to vent, to express not only the desire but the frustration in being unable to ‘reach’ it and then retracted it is where I heard the echo of a rattled cage. It’s time to be free of that.

The first thing you must do is stop. 

Not as easy as it sounds when the desire to be somewhere, be it within an idea like love or a physical place, is so strong but stop you must. It’s the only way to do what must be done next which is to dissolve the real chains binding you: the ones you have placed, by permission or creation, on yourself. You’ve become a slave to an idea and from that position can never truly possess what you desire.

Breathe deeply, sit quietly if possible and if not then find music that brings a sense of peace or calmness. Think carefully now about the words your cage is built of and write them all out one at a time. You need to do this step physically, on paper not digitally, and each on their own sheet by themselves. I want you to do this while being aware of ‘stray’ thoughts because those are the inner voice trying to express itself once more.

Take note of how the whole process feels. 

Is it pointless? Is writing them all out on their own sheets a waste of resources and time? Does it just seem stupid to do things like this because you know there’s some trick to it, some gimmick? That you don’t really think it’s something you can do even if you ‘figure it out”?

Do this for a few minutes, nothing more than that and don’t stress over ‘getting it’ just yet. Simply do what you’ve been told and then sit with those papers for a little bit without judging them. When you’ve done that: continue the lesson.

No, really, do that first then come back.

Look at the things you’re telling yourself. No matter what they are.This next step  isn’t about writing, it’s not even about the words on the paper: It’s about the paper itself. Instead of thinking about what’s on it, we’ll come to those later, I want you to look at how empty those pages are, how much waste there is surrounding those words: look at the negative space they create in your life that could be filled with something else.

That is what these words do, they create emptiness by pushing away everything else. It doesn’t even matter what the words are. Be it ‘loneliness’, ‘longing’, or any other statement about how you feel about anything. Those words aren’t being said by anyone else here but you. You thought them. You took your hands and created them out in the world so they could be seen and, if found by some chance, seen by someone else too. They can now be given to another but I want you to think about that idea.

Why would you do that?

WHY would you ever even consider giving THOSE words to someone? Who would ever want such a thing? If they were given to you by another, would YOU want them? I don’t think you would and neither would anyone else. They may ‘accept’ them, but for them to be the desired thing you could give them.. no. I don’t believe that would be the case at all. No one wants such even in their own lives let alone from someone else’s life.

Yet this is what you do, by accident or design, when you project those feelings as the idea of who you are. You are reaching out with your prison’s walls instead of your finger tips. This is why things always feel ‘out of reach’, why nothing seems to ‘feel’ right because you aren’t truly able to grasp them yet. The first real step to being able to do so is to see the prison around you and now, I suspect, you have started that process by being able to not only see, but to touch, the words that form it and that they come from within you.

Well that’s great. I’m in a prison that I can’t break out of without someone giving me a key. Now what?

A man who knows he is in prison has more freedom than a man who refuses to see the bars of his cell. By seeing it, recognizing it, and knowing where it truly exists, you can take the next steps and begin the journey toward the freedom you need to reach your goals. I, as an ‘other’, cannot walk the path for you because it is a journey you must choose to take on your own.

 I need you to hear the rattling of the cage your thoughts are making while you do all this. It’s an important part of the process.That is why I can only place the ‘key’ within your reach. You have to choose to ‘take it’ and use it but to use it you must know a little bit more about the key itself. 

Ask yourself: 

What has ‘he’, this stranger on the internet, done by giving me this answer? Is THIS the key?

No, it’s not. Even if I would wish it to be, it isn’t. If you think hard about it, it’s not like anyone can reach out and physically touch your cage or place a ‘real’ object before you to use. So what then must they key be?

The prison is made of words, ideas being complex structures constructed out of words, but you cannot dismantle ideas with any other means than that which created it. To borrow a reference:

You must take it back to the fires in which it was forged.

If that’s true, can someone actually place the key anywhere but me or can they simply point out that I already had it? Note the use of can, because I do mean actually capable of doing something. Would? Certainly. I’m sure there are many people in your life who would love to free you from your cage, or at least open the door, but they cannot.

Even if they could, it would all depend on you seeking to leave the comfortable familiarity of it’s dimensions. It’s safe in there. Nothing can touch you, nothing can reach through or beyond those bars your ideas have created no matter how much part of you might wish them to.

You cannot take a hammer to the cage, cannot ‘blow it up’ by any means possible from outside it. It’s an impenetrable, borrowing a phrase again, fortress of solitude. 

What I can do is help you see the cage, learn what it is made of and pass on the way by which it can be dissolved because it cannot be ‘destroyed’. To do so would leave splinters to fester and allow it means to return. To be truly free of it you must utterly and completely reduce it to what it was made of and then erase those things.

Those pages with words and wasted space? Here we come back to them at last. Take markers, pens, colored pencils, anything not the same color (yet) as the words you wrote originally. One page at a time, in random scribbles write out whatever comes to mind that you would rather have, experience, or do as an activity instead of those words. Let them pour out on the page as words, shapes, sketches and doodles, the more creative and expressive the better but all the while leaving THAT word alone.

Don’t ignore it but don’t touch it yet. For now, pile everything else around it that you want, need or just imagine would be something you’d like to do. I cannot tell you what goes there because like the words that construct your prison, the key must be forged from the same material and I cannot directly interact with that. This part is entirely within you as the architect of the prison, you must be the smith of the Key.

Do that to every single page you left empty but that word. Fill them ALL. It’s ok if ideas repeat. Pass no judgment on what you fill the page with. Remember to not focus on the word but to fill the space around it with as much as you can. This is why digital doesn’t work. You can’t create such things with zeros and ones. It must be forged with joy and tears and perhaps paper cuts and revisions of words you misspell. It must be crafted of you.

This is a monumental task, I know, but that’s what it truly takes to be free.

You’re almost to the end now and the next step is to take all those papers covered in your feelings and go back and look at them all one last time. Think carefully on those things you’ve placed outside the cage of those words. That’s what you’ve done here, you’ve looked at the words that bind you and at what they keep you from truly having the freedom to experience.

How do they measure up now? Is that one word worth the rest? I can’t imagine the balance of the equation here laying on the side of what is instead of what could be. There’s no guarantee you’ll ever do all those things but I can promise that you’ll never get the chance if you remain bound by these ideas.

The final step is not to throw those pages away, they are filled with FAR more than the one word that keeps you and so cannot be simply discarded or destroyed, but to connect those words at last to the ones outside them. Take those colors and draw around the letters of those words, cover over the letters with the meaning that is found beyond them, but do not erase them. They are part of you and should not be destroyed but must be put into perspective. 

Take that which YOU feel is ‘ugly’ and keeps you alone and make it something beautiful, make them part of you again instead of being projected into the world around you.

Own the cracked and broken parts of yourself and your life, the jagged edges and things you’ve spent far too much time with to simply disown, and learn how they fit among all the other things you would have in your life. Redraw the borders of your world but removing the ability of such words to define your existence for you. 

They may never ‘vanish’, but they will lose their power to keep you imprisoned. I cannot promise anything in all of this beyond the simple truth that so long as these words hold so much power they will keep you from what you seek. You wish to be free from worry that you are not ‘struggling’ enough, I say that you are seeking in the wrong direction. 

I have given you all I can here. Beyond this you must do the work, forge the key and remove the bars that keep you from the things you would fill your life with. 

To truly find love you must be free to love.

To learn to stop worrying you must put it into perspective and own the fears that make you worry so. 

Now here, at the very end I have one last thing to say: 

Do not be sorry for reaching out. 

You are worthy of the reply, but more than this, you are worthy of the time to help you find the answer you need. That is why I have taken so long, walked down so many roads, with you just now.

You have my best wishes, and my hopes, going forward.

-Bearogenes 

[bearogenes]

I am a pedant who believes in reincarnation. I will beat that dead horse until it comes back to take the stick from my hand

Bearogenes Of Syncope. 

[bearogenes]

Ardua per Astra.

At the end of a year I will often take a day and think back on the things that have come and gone from my world. This year conspires to see many years of my life collapsed under the weight of myopia and I felt the need to really examine the years here and remember the scope of all this and I've come to a few conclusions.

I am a sentimental old fool. I never let go, never forget, and never ‘move on’ in the way others do. Past is past, but never gone for me. Remembering loss is part of honoring those who are gone. That’s why I wrote the story “I remember you”, as memorial for something that should never have vanished from my night sky.

I don’t shy away from pain, nor deny that it still hurts. Not to deceive myself into thinking its ‘better’ or the comfort of others who feel the needed for an oatmeal existence devoid of trails. As a bit of a stoic, my path is quite often pain, littered with broken dreams and the remains of shattered worlds that should have been but my feet carry me forward through it  even as my face burns from the salted signature of losses that cannot be buried or forgotten.

I have faced a singular question, many times, in just the few short years I’ve been here. It’s put my feet back beneath me when I can no longer feel the path or see the way forward. There have been many times I wanted to stop, to forget about all of this. I fell to that once before and for a long time I had no desire to return to a place that even thinking of broke my heart again. That was when I wrote that piece. I came back to tell it. Not at first mind you, but down the line I found the words and put them down to show the world that I had not forgotten the light that went out.

I stand here now as testament to my answer to the question I have been asking myself:

Why am I here? 

There are many lesser questions that help examine it, to clarify pieces so those small things can be digested over time, but it always comes back to that. What makes me want to be here. I say want because I don’t need to be. No one needs to see the things I’ve seen here.

My answer never presented itself in a single sentence or even a concrete concept I could wrap my head around to make sense of because it was in little things that didn’t form any pattern to make a logical structure out of. It was off the wall questions, the occasional ‘kink bait’ ones where someone would ask me leading questions hoping I’d play along, the ones seeking advice and even the ones seeking to vent their anguish at me; all of them were part of the answer for me.

I often downplay my contribution to things because I honestly believe, not that I have lesser value, that the answer would have been found without me. The lighthouse keeper, while thanks are due to his vigilance, doesn’t guide the ship to shore: he simply says “Here there is land. Mark well the shore”. That’s what I do so I see myself less as some would say I am and more the finger that points out of the ‘wood’ and toward home again.

The answer to the question: Why am I here (for me, as each person has a different answer) is simple, dangerous, and powerful. If I placed each of these things that has happened into constellations in my mind, they form a map pointing toward something intangible. They point toward hope.

Even the angry voices are still crying out for it in their rages and flung stones; they perhaps are seeking it more desperately than the rest of us. So many times the same words: “Do I belong”, “Am I worthy”, “will I be loved” appeared before me that they started to form the background upon which my response would help them find their answer.

When the iron white curtain came down on tumblr I considered leaving but more than that I considered stopping. It can be draining, this experience,  but it’s more rewarding than the cost so I don’t mind paying it. All the stories I have heard, good and bad, have made it worth being here for.

Part of my motto is to not regret, but to learn, and even the depths of despair found have taught me a great deal about many things but mostly about myself. Along the way I learned more about my capacity to care than I’d have known otherwise. Sure I’d empathized and sympathized in the past, but this experience has taught me more about agape than my entire life before it.

In traditional thought there are but three forms of ‘love’. Philic, Erotic, and Platonic. Those being: An appreciation of things, a sexual desire for things, and an affection for things. Things being people, places, activities and such. Most recognize these as things you enjoy doing and learning, ‘playtime’ activities, and bonds like friendship. This is not, however, the whole of the scope of ‘love’ in this context. The fourth form, agape, remains untouched by those definitions.

Agape is a bit difficult to translate, English (et all) lacks a real reference that fits especially in the context of what it means to me. Personal context always muddles definitions but in so shows how a ‘thing’ can evolve when touched by meaning beyond the ‘book’ definitions.

To me, Agape is the peace of communion in the purest sense. You and I, both of us travelers on a rock falling through space as it hurtles towards places beyond our ken, are family. We are , perhaps, more than that because family implies we are so different, but we’re not. None of us are once you scrape away the mud an dirt ‘personal experience’ has piled on us. We all have the same needs, the same fears, the same hope and the same despair.

Namaste, blends into agape for me because I hold the real you in the highest honor, treasure the gift of such beyond any capacity of language to express and I find myself coming face to face with this when someone I have never met shows ‘vulnerability’ and trust to me. I see beauty in it and in that kind of sharing I not only find myself, I find peace.

So at the end of this kind indulgence you’ve given me by staying through this meandering discourse, I hope the answer to ‘why am I here’ has become clear:

I am here because of you.

Your stories, your questions, your journey upon which you take that momentary pause to ask for directions, is the reason why I remain. For whatever it is worth I am truly grateful for the gift of your time. You've taught me far more than I could have hoped to pass on to you and this long winded piece is my way of saying thank you for everything that passed between us over the years but mostly:

Thank you for being you. 

-Bearogenes. 

[bearogenes]

An open letter.

I feel it fair to warn people, this once, that here  you can expect me to exhaust a topic that is asked of me. I intend to be thorough and complete in the lessons I provide here. I am long winded, verbose, and wax poetic faster than you can say “what does Syncope mean”. For the record: this is meant to be syncope in the grammatical sense, of words being compressed for expression that when fully expanded are more complex. Here the simple is revealed and the complex dismantled into it’s simplest parts.  Therefore, I am Bearogenes of Syncope and I welcome you to my den. 

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: I often hate myself because of my sexuality.

Hey um I’m really uncomfortable with my sexuality. To the point that I go through extended periods of hating myself. Can you help me 

Bear in mind, this is like asking a random person to paint the Mona Lisa using nothing but their breath and a sheet of steel. You've given me two pieces of information that are so generic I could write almost anything and it would sound like it was getting to the point, but I would be swinging blind and you’d know I’d missed completely but I wouldn't. That, however, has never stopped me from trying which is all I can do here without more information.

In the broadest of terms ‘being comfortable’ with one’s self is an intensely complex challenge. It’s up there as one of the ‘big ones’ like finding purpose, meaning, happiness or uncovering ‘destiny’. Even discovering this about yourself can be intensely emotional. I've seen boys breakdown because they weren't ‘normal’, having just discovered a new kink or even an aspect of their sexuality they hadn't explored yet, or that they were improperly gendered.

The revelation of ‘challenges’, which those things represent, can cause frustration, depression, self-depreciation, and much more as all non-’straight’, non-cis folk know well as all of us have experienced it first hand in varying degrees.

For the record: I hate labels with such a passion and fire that I do everything I can to dismantle them as thoroughly as I can because if there was a ‘demon’ in with the skeletons in the closet, it’s labels about who we ARE, what we ARE, and our value when what matters is that we ARE. To hell with those other notions, but that’s a much longer rant for another time.

Your ‘comfort’ is most likely, again speaking in the broadest/statistically common factor, the result of that kind of ‘challenge’. It represents you not being ‘average’ or ‘normal’ (insert angry bear sound at those words) and that means you have to either sacrifice being in the ‘normal crowd’ (insert laughter at the idea of normal crowd) or you have to do horrible things to yourself that have only one end: the destruction of any stable psychological/emotional/spiritual sense of self.

Upon discovering your uniqueness, the very first choice you are given is to be alone (which is untenable because of the nature of things) or to ‘end’ that self that is different. Is it any wonder we have such universal challenges like depression, anxiety, and the rest? We’re virtually never welcomed ‘into the world’ before the ‘world’ tells us we’re wrong. The truth is that none of that is real or true or both. This may sound a little counter-intuitive but I think that’s where we need to go here to find your answer: away from ‘cognitive intuition’ and into something deeper.

There is no such thing as those things that are pushing you to be different from who you are; They are the lie you've been told and accepted. There is no ‘normal’ person and if it does exist, it’s so rare that in 7 billion, you might find it every few generations. This person who is just like everyone else.. the idea frightens me really. A ‘blank’ who fits in everywhere wouldn't be a ‘person’ because what makes us so is that we don’t fit in everywhere.

We aren't meant to. That’s not how the universe works on any level so it’s rather deluded to assume that on our ‘level’ it does. That’s like saying you wouldn't get drawn into a black hole because you’re made of ‘special atoms’ because you’re homo-’sapiens’. There’s no amount of ‘fabulous’ that can change the way things work in the universe. 

As much as we’d like to think so, you just can’t ‘out Queen’ a black hole.

The universe has some pretty simple rules: Everything has a place, everything fits and it all works when it is where it belongs. Please note that ‘getting it’ or ‘understanding’ really aren't in those basic principles because what we do as humans (drawing lines, making connections between concepts and assigning value to unrelated things) has little to do with the universe itself and more to do with what we do in that structure.

Everything “Fits” :

There is nothing that isn't created using the same template, a base code of atoms and chemicals and structures. It manifests in an incredible diversity worthy of the duality of it’s source because it is both simple and complex in the same breath. You are you because billions of atoms obey the rule of “Fit” and “purpose” set out by that ‘template’ that created the code that became the chains of color pallets known as DNA. Every single human has the same base code because we all ‘fit’ in that same sense as an extension of our ‘atoms’ fitting in the cosmos.

This means that from long before you could possibly have existed, you were ‘right with the cosmos’ and belonged here but you aren't always aware of it or able to sense those things because you aren't yet ‘where’ you (as grand component) fit yet. This happens at every level as well. Things come together, form shapes, change and separate making new bonds and forming new things but ultimately nothing remains ‘rogue’ for long at all. It just FEELS like you don’t fit because you aren’t ‘fitting’ at the moment. You’re not wrong but you aren’t right about the grander scale on which you do, and will again, fit perfectly. By way of this metaphor for life, nothing is a ‘universal’ fit because we all have unique bonds to make as part of creating a structure.

Everything has a “Place”.

You are here. Virtually every map in a building has this marker so you know where you start your journey. There’s no indicator, on said map, of where you’re going or a hint or guide of how to get to that place you have an idea of but no clue where it resides. You’ve got an idea that the world is a big place and that somewhere in all of it, there’s somewhere you fit and are happy, but no clue how to get there.

This is where ‘feeling different’ becomes a threat to happiness. A triangle isn’t going to fit in a round hole of the same size without being bent, turned or cut down to fit but it will NEVER be a circle no matter how hard it’s ‘shaped’, it will always be what could have been a triangle. That’s what we do to ourselves when we try to conform every part of our uniqueness to the ‘hole’ given to us at the start. That’s the thing though, it’s just the ‘start’ and virtually never does a piece begin and end in the same spot. “You are here” is only the first rung on the ladder you’ll climb and no indicator of where you’ll go or what you’ll do on your journey. Those are as unique as you are.

So why does the map exist at all then?  It’s the result of people who have been before you but it’s not meant to say ‘this is the only way’ but it is the only ‘example’ you could be given: the result of someone’s journey who went before you. They weren’t ‘constructed’ like you are, weren’t meant to fit the way you will because they weren’t YOU.

Following the atomic metaphor a little further, atoms are passed along because of environmental stresses. Sometimes we come together to form greater structures and other times the bonds aren’t stable (read: aren’t the right fit) and so we break apart and then move along following that ‘ladder’ or ‘chain’ of elements as we move along searching for that ‘fit’.

It’s scary but the only way to truly find that ‘place’ is to be you. In the absence of a genuine sense of self, you can never find a sense of belonging because it won’t be YOU that belongs, just that version of you that was created (by you and outside pressures) for the sole purpose of fitting in. It denies the idea that you could fit in better somewhere else and that to one degree or another you must do so because that’s why you are here after all. Denying that creates false self of place that leaves us feeling uneasy, nauseous because it’s unstable, and we always turn to ourselves as source of that problematic perception. It is, again, a fallacy. The situation/place isn’t wrong and neither are we, but the fit is because you aren’t yet where you need to be.

Everything has purpose.

This one gets ‘sticky’ and is very messy because it can challenge everything else because it’s the big ‘debate’ in philosophy, religion and psychology. Do we have purpose? Does that purpose entail a ‘power’ creating that purpose? The questions go on and on but are a byproduct of assumptions about the universe that are entirely our own creation. They don’t ultimately have any impact on the fact that everything has purpose and that the purpose has no ‘value’ in and of itself.

What I mean by the last is that since we assign value, one of our many human traits, we create this sense of measure that one thing is better than another. We discriminate. It’s our nature.We choose left or right based on one of those being better because of experience/learning but as we are constantly evolving, those choices aren’t always the ‘right’ ones. We push concepts onto the fabric of the universe and somehow expect it to ‘agree’ with us but that’s not how it works.

We’re all the same basic things, a few different kinds of atoms being shoved around until we form shapes by Forces like gravity and such. So too with the nature of human existence. It has no ‘value’ in and of itself, but we create those things when we ascribe meaning and purpose to it which is why we so desperately search for something outside ourselves to give it to us: because we know we can make mistakes and being mistaken about our purpose feels like a terrible fate we want to avoid.

Let me tell you a little about me as a way of illustrating this point. I have chosen to move, to follow the ‘pattern’ and to ‘drift’ a little now and again. I go where I am ‘needed’ rather than where I feel like I ‘should’ go because I know that should is an expectation and not a reality. The reality is that where I am now is a byproduct of being tugged at by a situation, a need in a specific area, or just a sense that ‘this’ is the new ‘place’ for a time. I’ve migrated my whole life and what I’ve learned is that I belong everywhere. I’m far from ‘normal’ but what I do and who i am IS needed virtually everywhere I have landed.

I build connections, create community, strengthen bonds and heal rifts. I weave things and mostly spend my days ‘healing’ the fabric around me. It’s what I do here on tumblr in spite of my original intention of just being a dirty old man since that wasn’t a side of me I got to really express in my day to day because it didn’t ‘fit’ with that situation. Instead my natural tendencies came to the surface as reflex because they were needed by people like you who felt alone, lost or just frightened.

When I was younger I tried to take my own life because I didn’t feel ‘connected’ didn’t have a ‘group’ I felt I ‘belonged to’ because my sexuality made me feel ‘different’ and that in discovering it I had become disconnected. The terrible truth was that I didn’t ‘belong’ anywhere.

In.

Particular... 

Where I was at the time, the place and social groups, were made of disparate ‘isolated’ elements that came together around me. I brought those like me together, the ‘isolated’ lost and ‘cast out’, and formed communities. Eventually I found myself drifting away from that and to a new place where there was ‘nothing’. Only to repeat the process there.

How do you find “Purpose” when you have no “place”? You come to understand the illusion of those things while accepting that it was your understanding of them previously that created the illusions. The truth is, I belong wherever I am because I am needed there. Time will come, as it always does, that I will ‘move’ again. While I may yearn for the ‘quiet life’ of house, fence, kids and dogs, my ‘purpose’ is to ‘create spaces’ as I do here and to share what I have learned of being ‘place-less but with purpose’ because it allows me to form ‘greater’ structures around me than you might if you had a perfect fit in a particular place. My place, it seems, is the whole confusing, complex, crazy, thing. Anywhere. Everywhere. Right here and now because you reached out to me.

It is why I so desperately try to engender a simple understanding in others: that you are critical in your natural state. I don’t mean ‘younger you’ I mean the real you, the deeper true you, because that is what bears purpose and can help find or create place. I may have tried to be an artist, danced my way through years of my life, and been a warrior who defends those at risk around him, but those were never the real me. The real me.. you get to glimpse him here. None of this would exist if I had continued to fight the fact that I was endowed with my unique tool set and that with that came a ‘purpose’ that didn’t ‘fit’ everywhere.

You’re struggling with ‘fitting in’ and understanding why you are the way you are, but the struggle isn’t really with those ‘facts’ about yourself: it’s with the way they ‘fit’ with society and your environment. While it can be a survival strategy to ‘conceal’ those parts of yourself you must explore them safely. I don’t mean go out and do everything your sexuality entails, I mean explore: read, discover that you’re not the only person out there with your sexuality and that in such a discovery find community and get to know what it’s like when people with a shared trait create such a space together.

Remember to breathe. Give yourself a little time. Discover the borders of the pieces of your ‘self’ that don’t ‘fit’ where you are and the discomfort they create and then set yourself on the journey of finding that ‘place’ and ‘fit. It could be as simple as fitting with just one other piece with complimentary borders.

While the map may read: YOU ARE HERE, it’s only the beginning.

I know there’s much more specific you want to ask me. This was, you could say, a primer for what comes next. Ask me what you will and I’ll answer as best I can, but remember I’m the kind of person that will write a book in an answer because I feel you are worthy of it and because what YOU are enduring is a battle other people face daily and if I can ‘double down’ on what my work can do, I will do so.

Tell me what is truly bothering you about your sexuality and we’ll go from there but remember this lesson as a ‘square one’ “you are here” moment. The next steps we’ll take together and see what road opens for you that you might not have seen before.

Until then, you have  my best wishes,

Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Letters to a Lost boy.

Hello there . I am a very top and bottom here. I still not fully educate since all my life I was abused only first lover done made me happy. I want to learn however I talk like a sir then I switch to serve well. I want to fall in love however I been in pure controlled behavior that was abusive then relationship after another was tough. I was forced to do what I done however I am a true faggot and cocksucker. I love to be piggy then I want to be owned and collared. yes I am a otter bear cub. Then is there anyway this cub be a good pup I am lost as hell. I never can tell what sex was. my flesh and blood sold me for sex humiliation as such in abuse way. how do I change the pattern I can find love again? I guess it’s complicated so what encouragement and such? i love to be in leather then I act and respect the leather community and bear community too. I want to relocate that I personally feel safe and sound then without being harmed on me what limits do I set and such?

I cannot imagine how hard it is for you, and while I understand some of what you’re experiencing the rest remains too personal for me to be able to help with in this limited form on tumblr.   So much of what you said hurt to read that I won’t even say that I understand. I haven’t shared your life so understanding isn’t something I , or anyone who has not done so, can say. I will instead say that I hear you. The part of me that has been in similar places hears you loud and clear. You have so much to say, so many questions, and so much confusion but the first thing you need to do right now is: 

Breathe.

I don’t mean simply taking in air and letting it out. I mean stop the world, take a moment to find where your feet are and rest before you try to stand. You’ve strained trying to find hope, a place to feel like you are safe and belong and you’ve fought so hard that I can sense it in your words: you began to believe that what you have been through is all there will be fore you. I ask that while you read my answer, go slowly, don’t rush through this reply and breathe. Begin there. Take a few minutes.

I received your note the other day but I’ve had to think of; how I can answer this, how I could help you, that it’s taken me more time than I would have liked to answer you. There was SO much that I needed time to ‘unpack’ it all, spread it out and look at it as I ‘walked myself around’ the story you were telling me in search of a new perspective or hint I could give you to help you start to fight your way out. It was,to me, as if you’d laid everything bare and said “help me” because nothing made sense to you or offered you any real sign of hope. So many words, labels really, that it was hard to see you past them and if I was honest with you I would tell you that even I failed that challenge when I put myself in your ‘place’ and looked at the pieces of your life that you showed me when you asked for help.

I know it’s hard coming from a past like yours. I know it can be confusing having had so much go so very wrong and even worse when every turn you’ve taken seems to lead you back to the same kind of situation. It can lead you to feeling like you’ve walked through a desert as you search for the ocean but can never seem to find it. It can seem that life has lied to you, tried to lead you away from happiness, but that is because you are caught in a web of bad experiences without the support you’d need to find the strength to break free of it. I can’t give that to you, but I can help you find it. It wont’ be easy, but I don’t lay challenges for someone that I am not positive that they can win.

The path out from where you are has many steps but, like I said, I wouldn’t show you if I thought you couldn’t do it.  Read the post linked here then come back to this note. I’ll share it myself after I finish as well so it’s easier to do so. https://bearogenes.tumblr.com/post/181145094946/its-not-your-fault

The first thing I see, when I look at all of what you’ve written, is that there are too many ‘words’. Not that you wrote too much but that you have so many labels over you, in part to protect yourself but most are ones given to you by the wrong kind of men, and that you can’t see anymore because they are in the way.

“Top, bottom, switch, faggot, cocksucker, pig, otter, bear, cub, pup, worthless, homosexual, crap.. “

This is just a short list of the words in the things you’ve written to me and if THIS is what you can share, I cannot imagine how many more there are beyond those. Every single one of those is another image, another idea, that you have to work on because while most are ‘harmless’, they are all in the way right now and making it hard for you to see beyond them to where your value is hidden.

In my mind I see those words in an order, a set of walls built around you but they keep you in as much as they help keep things out, especially when they seem scattered. The way to begin is to start with the furthest out. Don’t even touch the ones from far back in your past. They may hurt the most but if you start there it will make things worse while you try to find a way out. You have to start with things like ‘top, bottom, switch, pig, cocksucker’.

Your “grindr” profile terms, like those, are the first you really need to step away from for a while. Those are things you do, not who you are, but they have become labels for WHO you are and that means they don’t help in this situation. They only serve as ‘ways to see you’ for other people or are things you’ve used to try to make sense of yourself through all this.

For a time, be none of those things.

I know that ‘alone’ has been what you’ve felt was your fate but that is different from choosing to be on your OWN for a while and you may need the space to do some of the work you need to do. More importantly I want you to try to not think about those words for a while. Just set them aside in a pile off to the side in your mind. They are distractions that need to be silenced for a time because once we move ‘beyond’ those words to deeper ones, that pile may completely change.

There is a lot about you that, from the sound of your notes, you don’t know yet because someone told you about you and kept you from finding out who you really are. So put aside those words that describe things you do, even if you enjoy those things, because they are distracting right now. You can pick them up again later, and you will if you follow my advice, but for now they are the easiest to peel away for a time without causing too much damage.

When I try to help people in a position you are in I have them do things other than just ‘think’ because thoughts are what we are working through. In situations like yours I offer people physical ways to begin sorting through the chaos and I have two that I use often: Poker and Casting Stones which I will lay out for you in the next letter.

For now go back to what I said at the start: Breathe and then read my post I linked above. Then move on to the second letter. Until I’ve written the last, don’t reply to this. I don’t want you to concern yourself with responding yet. Just let the message sink in and

Breathe.

This is the second part of the letter.

This goes deeper perhaps than some might wish to go, but if you’ve read and listened, you should know what the next thing you must do is like and what steps you take to begin the journey out of the darkness you feel surrounds you.

The first of these steps is a question I want you to ask yourself over time. Don’t expect an answer right away. Breathe and give yourself patience and time. I’ll explain a little of where the question came from and why it’s important to ask yourself in times like you are experiencing.

There is a philosophy of psychology that asks one question of people who feel they are without hope. It was born in the concentration camps in World War two, created by a prisoner there who lived only because he was a doctor and could keep the laborers working. He began working to help ‘treat’ the depression, hopelessness and desperation the prisoners felt by asking them one, very simple, question: Why are you still here? The question asks why you still live, why you haven’t taken your own life. It’s a dangerous question but if you truly seek to understand the answer it can change your life. I have done this in my own struggles and found my own answer to it. In so doing I learned a great deal about myself and about where my strength flows from. Knowing the answer doesn’t 'cure’ the problem, it gives you a way to see past the things that are surrounding you. In trying to genuinely give the true answer you have to confront what matters most to you, to grasp the pure heart of your being, and then you can begin to find a way out of the confusing pain,if not the situation. The answer is never as simple as 'because I am still alive’ because that’s not a lasting answer, but the reason you truly are still alive that drives you to continue to struggle, to know that is to find a power to persevere. It can reveal a way to channel your efforts so you feel some satisfaction, help you find a goal to work toward that helps keep your head held a little higher than before and lead you to an emotional state where putting one foot in front of the other is natural and not a struggle. It’s never a quick fix, doesn’t solve anything, but it changes it all. For some it’s the way they feel about their family and other people are here because of the things they have yet to do. There are a few things you can do, some may sound strange but I have reasons to recommend them that are just too complicated for a simple reply and I don’t want to get into neuropsychology or brain chemistry right now. I’d rather focus on things you can do to help alleviate some of the stress so you can begin to answer the question above and perhaps to begin to see the path you need to take. To get to the mental place I’ve written about previously you need to be able to pause your life for a moment and find a little peace so you can have the clarity to reach the answer to that question.

You trusted me with these pieces of your life in the hopes that I knew what to say to help you, now trust my answer to you for a little while. Some of it won’t make ‘sense’ but there are reasons for all of it that are just TOO complicated (and that is ME saying it) to explain on tumblr or in a letter. So bear with me as we go along through these steps and trust me for a little further.

From what I see in your letters to me, your day is over-full of things you must do, too many things you must be, and this isn’t healthy. You’re never just ‘you’ when hidden beneath so much weight and behind so many ‘words’. You need some ways to step back and set down your burden for a time. Everyone, no matter how strong, needs some way to find more strength or they get exhausted and that is when hopelessness begins to take hold.

To fight that: you should take at least 15 minutes every day to practice stillness and mindfulness. These two things help your body 'reset’ it’s stress response and can give a sense of peace that helps with the day and the struggles those can bring. Given a little time, it will help you find you have more strength than you realize.

As I mentioned before there are two tricks I teach people that accomplishes those things when they need this kind of ‘reset’ time and a way to clear their mind of cluttering words: Poker and Casting Stones.

Poker.

I want you to take a piece of paper write out the words I talked about in the last letter; Top, bottom, switch, faggot, cocksucker, pig, otter, bear, cub, pup. leave a lot of room between them, enough to tear the paper carefully into squares. It doesn’t have to be pretty or neat. What matters is that each is on it’s own square when you are done. I want you to put them into a ‘hand’ like i poker so you can see the words clearly but have them layered on top of each other so the one on the right is on ‘top’ of the rest and the one to the left is below the rest.

Take a slow breath and look at the one that is on ‘top’ of the rest. Think about what it means and then pull it from your ‘hand’ and flip it face down in front of you. Let go of what that word meant, breathe, then move on to the next without thinking about the one before it anymore. Do this to all those words. Stack them face down one at a time and when you’ve emptied your hand, leave them face down but put the stack somewhere safe for now. You’ll come back to them in time but if you get through this exercise you will be able to see a little differently than when you started.

Repeat this every day that you find it hard to see past those words. Later you will begin working on the ‘deeper words’ but for now, keep this only to the ones I give you to think about. Take as much time as you need when you start. In time the process will become easier and you will be able to do it with other things in your life.

There is another layer to Poker that involves more than just the hand you’ve been dealt so far but that’s for another time down the road. For now, focus on those words we’ve talked about so far. While you are going through the steps of Poker, set aside a little more time for the next method because they are meant to be used together.

Casting Stones.

Each day, go for a short walk in nature (if possible) and find a stone, whichever one catches your attention is fine, and take it somewhere safe. It helps to find ‘green’ when doing this but isn’t too important a point and I don’t want you to get ‘bogged down’ by the details I’m giving.

I want you to sit, breathe slowly and close your eyes. I want you to then concentrate on how it feels in your hands. Be as precise with your concentration as you can. Feel the cracks, the edges the texture, the warmth or coolness of it. Study it with your eyes closed as you breathe slowly. The first time can be a bit tricky but there is one more thing I want you to do with that stone because this is not about what you see but about what you feel. When you have been mindful of the stone for several minutes I want you to picture the things you feel are missing in your life: the affection, support, love, all of those things. I want you to imagine them as clearly as you can, really focus on how they feel when you think of them, not on any 'image’ that comes to mind of who or how they come about. Just concentrate on your reaction to those thoughts. Try to experience the feelings you are ‘missing’ in these moments without judging yourself either. None of this is about any form of judgement but about being able to feel something you may have forgotten that you can. If you find it painful to think of them there will be a second exercise to do the next day and after that until that changes, but for now I want you to hold onto those feelings, good and bad, and imagine them flowing from your heart like water and filling the space inside the stone. There’s so much room for small things between the atoms in a stone and love is the smallest thing in the world after all. Spend a few minutes concentrating on feeling those things you’re missing currently no matter what comes up while you do and allowing those feelings to fill the stone you are holding.

If you find that you can ‘imagine’ those feelings without being painful, or when you reach the state of mind that you can call them up without that pain; I want you to do the following and if you can’t move on to the step below then return here once you find yourself able to concentrate more easily on the good things.

Feel it becoming warm, and by touching it you touch the emotions you filled it with. When you feel at peace, place it somewhere safe in your home for now. Do this again tomorrow with a different stone and place it beside the first. After a week of this, take those stones somewhere away from your home and place them carefully somewhere that they can be found by a stranger. Leave it as a gift with joy in your heart knowing that someone who needs that kind of love will find it because you placed it where it could find them in their moment of need. Now. If when you think of what you are missing it hurts and you cannot truly imagine those feelings you desire, I want you to do something very similar to the previous exercise in addition to it. I want you to fill the stone with those tears, that pain, to empty yourself of it. Do this until you begin to feel the pain diminish. Don’t forget to control your breathing: do it slowly and evenly and deeply. This is part of purging yourself of the stress and pain but you need to keep control for it to be effective. As you are being mindful of the stone, if holding it becomes painful or touching it brings the pain back: stop. Put it down away from you, but not out of sight yet. Breathe, close your eyes, count to ten then, when your eyes are open, I want you to reach out and turn the stone over. Feelings are like water, they come as gentle flowing streams, pouring rain or terrible crashing waves, but like love they can fill the spaces between atoms in a stone. When you turn the stone over imagine the darker water of your pain emptying out and draining through the floor to be dispersed by the earth below you. There’s no harm or danger there, you are putting water back where it came from. Take this stone and place it somewhere outside that you can find. This stone is not for anyone else to take, it is for you to see, to remind you of how you felt. Repeat this exercise daily, and like the other, when seven days is up take those seven stones somewhere away from your home. These you do not keep in your home, or leave for strangers to stumble across. On that last day take these stones out into the ‘green’, wherever that may be and then cast them out among other stones, toss them into rubble or garbage or into a sewer. They are empty now and those feelings are fading away so you no longer need them.

If you found it hard to even imagine what it would feel like to experience those feelings you are missing in your life, continue with the ‘second’ part as long as you need and worry less about the first that has you focus on ‘good things’  When buried under so much pain those good feelings can become a source of pain too. Causing you more pain is not my goal here, but some may happen because this is some of the hardest work a person has to learn to do. I want you to know that before you begin the lessons I talked about above.

Now for a little explanation of the madness in my methods. This simple exercise has a secret to it: When you think of love, you keep the stone upright and like a cup it keeps the good feelings inside it. When your thoughts are painful the stone is turned over when you are finished filling it so the bad feelings dwindle away. It is a metaphor that your subconscious mind understands: I wish to keep good things but let bad ones fade away. You make that subtle mental process an active one by concentrating on those simple difference in actions in those exercises. Over time this will help you deal with both the absence of those feelings and the presence of the negative emotions. Do not be surprised if you can’t feel the good things at first. That’s why there are two versions of the exercise. Over time you will no longer need to turn the stone over as often and it will become easier to see the good feelings. This is to help you un-clutter your heart and mind so you can see the true answer to the question. It is, in my own strange way, my method for helping you discover this truth and take the first steps toward the process of freeing yourself from those negative feelings.

There’s much more to be done, but these are just the beginning. Once you’ve started on the journey to understanding the answer to that question the rest becomes finding the right tools to help you do more than cope: to grow stronger in the adversity you face. When, in time, you find an answer to that question above of ‘why am i still here’, don’t just accept the easy answer, question it. Interrogate it and seek to understand it. We struggle to hide these answers even from ourselves, because they are part of what keep us alive and right now, you need this understanding of yourself and your inner strength. There is much work to be done, but I am confident that you can do it.

What gives me such confidence in your ability? Think about what you’ve done by writing me. Think about what you’ve endured as a whole (instead of incidents). I have no doubt of your strength because of these things and while I know I am asking an incredible amount of you over all, that is why I have broken it up into very small steps that can grow larger over time. Eventually, they will help you to break the chains those words and thoughts have become and set you free.

This is the third and final part of the letter.

I’m going to take a few moments now to talk about the other things in your notes to me other than letters or labels. Some of the thoughts belong together as I talk about them that way so I will group them as individual topics and say them in the way that I heard them. Perhaps that way you will also see the pattern as I do because these are your words through my voice here. Written as if you had said them to me for others to see.

Growing up my family abused me, sold me for sex, forced me to or would throw me out. They sent me to conversion lessons, to not be gay, while they were selling me for drug and alcohol money and telling me that I was worthless if I didn’t do what I was told. I blame myself for letting it go on as it did but because I am gay I thought they were all right in how they treated me.

I had one lover, once, who treated me right and showed me how good it could feel to be loved but all the others have been like my family and treated me poorly. That one lover helped me start to get free from the situation, helped me fight and be strong, but I haven’t felt that way since. I want to feel loved, but am afraid of things being how they were before

I have tried my best to be whatever someone needed me to be so I could feel that way: needed. I am gay and while I am proud of who I am now and know more about what I enjoy in sex, I still do not feel like I’ve found my place anywhere. I try to find  some enjoyment in the things I do and even take a little pride in them.

It hurts when I read stories about boys who are abused, like I was, because I understand how they feel and wouldn’t want anyone else to know what I know from experiencing it. I know what it means to be afraid of raised voices, raised hands and any weapon those hands might hold. I know what it means to be told by your family, loved ones, and even your church that you are worthless garbage and have no place in the world but to serve or die.

I know I have a lot to learn about being part of the gay community. I know I am not the ‘smartest’ or ‘best’ at saying what I feel or explaining what things mean to me. I know I want to reach out for the help to be better, to feel safe, but I don’t know how to or where to turn to find those things. Help me find a way to change this pattern so I can stand even a change of reaching for happiness again.

Can I be a good pup for someone who will treat me carefully and respectfully after the things I have experienced? Is there still hope to be proud someday of being collared by someone like that? To be owned, to belong, to someone who truly cares for me?  How do I set limits so I am safe and still able to be the good boy I need deeply to feel like I am for someone who cares for me?

These are your words. I used my ‘voice’ when writing it but only to bring them all together and show you what they were really saying beyond how they were said. I simply told your story as I saw it. I hope that in this version you begin to see it the way I did. Now to talk about them without those ‘label’ words I had you try to put aside in the first letter.

In your words I see someone who has been through a kind of hell no one should ever experience. I know I don’t have to tell you, or say, what the scope of it was because you know all too well and my readers have an idea of it and that’s enough. Through this, past the pain in your words, I saw some other things that you might miss.

You still feel compassion, still can sympathize and empathize with people. Your heart still works the way it should. You have not turned fully inward where the only person that matters is you and your needs. You still connect to people in the world even though it hurts you and you’re afraid they will do to you what has been done before. Yet.. you still do it and this shows a great strength of will and determination. THIS is why I have no doubt that you will make it out of the darkness you feel.

It is also why I know that what I have asked you to do will hurt and I am sorry for that. If there were any other way that would bring lasting change and not hurt a little in the process I would use it but this way is the path that leads to finding your strength and learning to own it. I say lasting because you can ‘surrender’ this victory to no one but yourself in the end. With no ‘master’ but you on this path, there is no one to steal your credit for doing the work and that’s an easy thing to let happen when guided on a journey like yours.

I want you to remember where the power came from. I want you to learn to NOT be afraid of it. I want you to embrace it, to own it, to truly make it part of who you are. I want YOU to peel away the shame and doubt and guilt left over from a life you were given but did not choose to live. Instead, I want you to find the ‘words’ and ‘tools’ that help you CHOOSE the life you wish from here forward.

There will be sadness. There will be pain. These things are always part of life but from today until the end, I want every glorious moment of joy you find to be a reminder to you that you ARE worth everything to the right person. I want you to hold to the faith that such a person IS out there who will understand your past, treat you with the kindness and respect you deserve and help you grow used to being in a whole new kind of ‘place’: One where you are valued, cared for and respected for your strength and courage.

Here, at the end for now, I leave you with the heart of my message:

You deserve respect.

You are worthy of love.

You are stronger than you know.

One day, past all the pain, you will find the place you Belong.

From this day until the last, you have my best wishes.

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

No exceptions. 

[bearogenes]

A special message from the universe addressed to.. you.

I have a message for you. Yes you. Who else would I be talking to right now? Since I have your attention, take a few minutes to listen to this old fool because there is something important I want you to see.

I want you to look down, all the way down past your knees. See those things at the very end, those are your feet. Think about them for a moment. 

You may not like how they look but how they look isn't important. It’s what they do that matters. They are adjustable for a reason. They can stand together and bring you to your full height by rising, they can spread wide to keep you from being knocked over. They press themselves into the surface of the world like the roots of a tree but let the rest of you move like a reed in the wind. They are so much more than just the thing that carries you from point to point, they are an anchor and a voice. They can strike the ground and thunder or touch gently leaving no sound in their passing. They are your stride, your stance and your endurance. You can feel exhausted from the stress and trials of life, but when you need to be or do more they rise to the occasion.

They are attached to some of the most powerful parts of your body; your legs.

 Your capacity to lift amazing weight comes from them. They are an extension of your roots, allowing you to compress and spring into action or remain still while the storm rages around you. Working together with your feet they can remain stalwart against a rising tide or a crashing wave. They lift you from rest and propel you into action. They can galvanize your foot into a weapon, or soften your stride into a spiral as you dance. They are amazingly powerful.

These rise and bind to your hips, and further still to your back. Each piece can move independently with its own strength but become a monument to your power when they work together. They all connect and lock to the one before it from your feet to your shoulders and beyond.

From your back and joined to your shoulders is your neck. It gives you breadth of vision, focus of attention and holds both firmly and with softness the way we see the world. Such a powerful set of tools that lead to this point from bottom to top and there is yet more because they spread out into branches; your hands.

Hands that greet, dismiss, hold or release. They are expressions of not only your inner world, but also your deepest reserves of strength. Legs and feet can keep you from moving, but your hands and arms are extension of your desire to hold, defend or raise someone up. They can pull you higher if you reach, or balance things with gentle care.

At the crown of this magnificent collection of tools is your head, upon which rests your face. The most powerful tool you possess. You can bring what is within to the outside world. It strikes out forming expression, opens to give form to the formlessness of thought, perceives and interprets the world around you. It can release tremendous power, both to harm and to heal. It can radiate light or darken into deepening shadows. It can be a welcome or a warning. Just past it lies the heart of the system, the piece that gathers and hoards, shares and imparts and runs the whole show.

Pulling in the out, pushing out the in. Holding all your secrets or revealing your truth. It is the point at which everything your other parts do becomes coordinated, the great Conductor orchestrating the symphony of motion, bringing into expression all that lies beyond the curtain. And yet,on this journey from your roots in the earth to reaching towards the world, there is still more to understand than this. Their symphony is only an echo, a fading chorus compared to the greatest part, which remains invisible to the naked eye but luminous to the heart. They are but indicators pointing toward the greatest of their secrets. They are but pieces, that when assembled create something truly amazing:

They are you.

You are more than parts, no matter how extraordinary they are. You are the driving force that rises, that lifts the mountains in your world, brings close your loves and keeps at bay that which would harm them. You are a Titan of old, a force that strikes the ground like thunder or rises like a cloud. It is you, you are the sum of the system that leaves the equation with an unresolved remainder, that undeniable piece that not only unifies the parts but makes them work in servitude to a greater cause.

Your body may be formed by the motes of stars that fell, but they chose to come together, called by some greater purpose, the combined power of gravity, evolution and destiny, to gather and form the vehicle for that great spirit that is You. The sword that deflects the blow, the shield that cast the reflection to Medusa, the bandage that binds the wound so it may heal, all these things you are and so much more.

You are the notes in an amazing symphonic life; full of arpeggio and crescendo, cadenza and concerto, calando and fortissimo. The grand interface between time and space and multiple realities at once; where learning and understanding conjoin with intuition and dreams, the intersection of paradox and paradise.

Atlas, Athena, Njord, Skadi, Brahma, Krishna. So many names for similar beings, but there is only one that matters.

You.

You are the greatest thing to rise in this world. You are the living embodiment of worlds that were beyond dreaming to your ancestors.You wield power beyond measure. You are the universe exploring itself. You are the one true wonder of the world, all the rest are echoes or were made by creatures like you. They are reflections of the Sun, but you are the light at its heart.

Let that sink in for a few deep breaths and take a few minutes before considering the next part. When you are ready, read on.

If you are reading this, you are alive and that has meaning and implications for the world.

Consider the match and the falling star. 

Strike a match and in the minutiae of moments there is a swirl of air which bursts into flame. That is you. Floating in the darkness between worlds, that piece of the heavens that could pass unnoticed but instead touches the surface of our world and becomes a star so bright all eyes turn toward it. That is you. 

You come into this world, not silently, but in a roar of life and hope and dreams. You rise and begin your journey, illuminating the world so you can see all its beauty and its flaws. You touch others lives and are not diminished but amplified by sharing your aurora with theirs. Some lights you travel with for a long time, some for the whole time you are here, and some for the whole time they are here. Others will come and go, passing like stars over the horizon.

Consider where you are at this very moment.

I am sitting here coalescing the sum of my learning in this world that I may share it with you, and if it resonates with you, it then amplifies your light. To that end I scatter them high to guide your path, and bury them below your feet, as treasures for you to find for yourself.

You are sitting there, with all the skepticism and patience required to observe my thoughts. You reach beyond your fingertips through the air to pluck them from the sky and pull them from the Earth.

We are two lights forming a bridge that defies distance and erases time. You and I, we shapers and dreamers, weavers and makers, joined together for a single purpose in this time and place.

Each moment we are lighting this world, we are engaged in an intimate dialogue with the universe, ourselves and the ‘others’ in this world. We identify the rules of the world and then render them moot with the growing knowledge and power that we share. We are amazing things, each of us a singularly spectacular event in time, and we stride this world like giants in the playground. Each unique, with nothing truly like us before or after us, with our own gifts to share. We are material things that are driven by the invisible and ephemeral; thoughts, emotions, sensations and dreams. We, each and every one of us, is a precious experience in this world. We  exist for a flash in the scope of things, but echo until the end of time, the percussive note that continues beyond our measure for the length of the song. Now for the hard part.

Keep all this in your mind and read on.

Look down now. What do you see?

Do you see thin strips of leather holding bone in place, shapes you don’t care for or feel have failed you somehow, or do you begin to see yourself the way I see you; as the explosion of light and sound and the walking form of the whole of history that pushes the past into the now and carries it into the future? Do you begin to see that incredible tapestry that describes your journey but cannot contain the You that I see? Can you feel the world moving beneath your feet, but held still by your will? Can you then feel the sky spiraling past you like a breeze but slowed down by your desire to see it? Will you see yourself at last, as the most beatific expression of time and space and dreams?

Take this moment, the one we have shared just now that passed faster than you realized but felt longer than you imagined it would when you began, it is my gift to you in thanks for sharing the wonder of your being with me.

Carry on being marvelously splendid creatures hmm? I’d hate to see ‘return to sender’ on a gift as wonderful as who you truly are.

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: How do I handle a long distance relationship?

Hi, My partner and I are in a long distance relationship and it can be hard sometimes . Do you have an tips for keeping this going? 

It’s a funny old world we live in and some things never change. Our technology has evolved to make things ‘easier’ but that comes with a dual edge and simultaneously complicates things by setting an expectation of it being easy to create opportunity to use it. It’s not always so, but because it’s quick to send a text we assume by default that our ‘ease’ is the same as the one we’re sending it too. This is made worse by things like being told it’s been ‘read’ or ‘someone is typing’ when in reality there’s a character in the box but they aren't typing actively.

I have spent ¾ths of my life in long term relationships (more than 6 months) and of that time, 2 have taken up 22 years in total. I’m no expert on dating, finding new relationships or partners, but I do know a lot about why things work and why they fail from the other side of that. I can tell you that, with certainty, it always comes back to the same key point, the same skill and the same commitment to the process. It’s the benchmark by which you feel good and secure and by which your heart knows that something is wrong. The key to maintaining any relationship is the same:

Communication.

Not everyone is a master at texting, some of us with ‘big hands’ hate texting because there’s nothing worse than fumbling with a tiny button or hitting 3 letters at once when you’re just trying to say you love someone. Even though technology lets us send little notes to each other whenever we feel the need or have the time, it comes with no guarantees of reaching it’s destination with the intended effect. In person you can recover from a mistake faster than over a text so distance becomes a complicating factor in this kind of communication even as it cuts off the ability to ‘recover’ because they are within arms reach.

Long Distance Relationships can test a person’s resolve and commitment. View them as opportunities as much as challenges. I’ve done some research to find ways to show you rather than just tell you what I’m talking about so be warned; past this point is a very serious answer to how to make relationships work and a hard look at why they fail as they illustrate communication through the lens of modern technology. 

My partner and I have been together nearly 14 years and at our most fragile point, in our first year as a couple, we were separated by many miles for a period of time. In the scope of that many years together, the time apart has been minimal but in so early a phase of development that distance can become a threat.

We solved the main issue of maintaining communication through ‘regulation’. We had habits that we kept to, mini-promises that we never missed doing, that kept demonstrating our commitment and affection. Now, with the addition of cell phones that would be easier but back then neither of us had them so we had to create other avenues in our time apart. Now, whenever one must be away from the other, we do our best to keep the same regular ‘rituals’ we have in person even though the other isn’t there directly.

In our only real gap (longer than a few days at most) we looked at our schedules and set mutually acceptable times for regular communication. The easiest way was via email whenever ‘mood’ hit, or there was something funny to share. We’d leave notes on instant messengers and chat whenever we could but we always had ‘regular’ channels at regular times and things we never missed. The most critical of those I would say are the good morning and good night messages.

They are dual function messages because they not only let our partners know we were thinking of them first thing in the morning but also remind ourselves that having them be one of the first thoughts is important especially in their absence. At the end of the day, the good night messages (double down on this one, especially if love is how you feel for each other) were the most important ritual. Things could always disrupt the chance to talk in the morning or delay that first message, but the one before bed was the most consistent as everyone sleeps eventually.

These regular intervals, at specific times, create the sense of continuity and affirm to your partner that you care and that’s a vital part of sustaining any relationship, long distance or not. If you cannot be in their presence, you have to remain ‘vivid’ in their heart and memory. This doesn’t mean crazy smothering texting every second of the day. It means keep to a promise. Set aside a minimum of those two moments you promise to talk and do it faithfully.

Now, with the introduction out of the way, on to the ‘BearTalk ™’ on this subject.

When it comes to failure it can be easy to dismiss individual examples based on situation which is why I selected a few from across various demographic differences because in looking at the data, it’s clear that the answer is fairly universal:

Communication regularity is a cornerstone of stability.

(source)

(source)

(source)

The trend between these three different stories is that when the connection feels strongest, communication levels are most regular. Factors like frequency and content are something I’ll touch on later. You’ll notice that at the left, either when the relationship starts or when the long distance portion begins, communication sees a rise to maintain the relationship in the situation. Throughout these ‘high communication times’ the ‘responsibility’ being shared equally seems to be a trend as well. As dissatisfaction grows, no matter the reason, that number drops.

The short version of interpreting that data is this:

To maintain a relationship you must maintain communication and equally share that burden.

The last part there is a key feature that separates successful communication from regular communication. Regular communication doesn’t have the sense of partnership that successful communication does because neither partner feels the burden of being the responsible one for it because both are. A one sided relationship works under no context. There must be some form of reciprocity, both must get something out of it, or it’s not really a relationship.

Now to contrast:

A detailed examination of the habits of a successful relationship and then a companion word analysis from a different one to look for the patterns in word use as well as frequency/regularity of communication.

(the next one should open in new window for a clear view of the data and there’s a LOT of it)

(source)

(source)

Now that all the graphs are out of the way there’s a few key things in these two successful relationships that might not stand out at first.

1: Frequency and length seem to be a strong factor but why? Answer: Time. The expenditure of time represents effort and interest. “Oh, he took the time to write me, how sweet’ hasn't changed in centuries. Texting doesn't get you off the hook but things like emoji and one words (lol in particular) are perfectly fine now to use occasionally.

What matters in this example is a perception of time spent thinking about someone and then taking the effort to write. The actual content isn’t too much of a factor. What matters is that sense of connection and participation in their life across the distance (any distance actually, even arms length).

2: Word use. The last graph in particular plots the most frequently used words in texts from a successful relationship. Note the focus on the recipient. The most frequently used word was YOU, followed by things like smile, love, world, and one. These are ‘intimate’ words that show you’re interested in them and the things going on with them even more than the things you’d like to do together.

To the effectiveness of word choice, the second (and final) one contains a cloud of words that if you look carefully you’ll find another ‘hidden trick’. Notice how the words there are ‘common’ ones and not centered on ‘missing/sad/lonely’ feelings. They talk about the world around each other as if together, the longing can be understood but vocalizing it can amplify it, and they are continuing as if the other was simply in another part of the same living space.

Using these tricks won’t erase those feelings of longing or missing them, but it does allow you to create a sense of continuity that flies in the face of the ‘logic’ of distance. The human heart has never been much for ‘rules’ like time, space, distance or any such so by speaking the language of the heart those things mean less and less over time. The trick is to talk about the mundane things as much as the dreams and feelings and to be ‘together’ as close to how you would be if you were physically together as possible. 

To briefly summarize the key take-a-way points for all of the above:

The key to long distance relationships is regular communication, for which both partners are mutually responsible, that focuses on involvement in the lives of both involved. It isn't easy but if you both are committed to doing your mutual best, then the greatest asset you will have is patterns of communication.

For now, this is a good enough start and if taken to heart will at least help ensure that you've given it your best so win or fail there are no regrets that are yours to bear.

Until then, you have my best wishes as always.

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: I’m a person with some mental problems. Should I not try to find someone anymore?

hi. i'm a boy with a few mental problems, mainly anxiety and depression. would it be best for me not to try and find  or be involved in any sexual/romantic relationships until i fix myself? i get really really lonely, but at the same time i wouldn't want the other person to deal with some of the baggage i carry.

Why would that be for the best? Is there something broken or wrong with you? Those things may never change, may never go away fully, so what you’re saying to me is that you shouldn't try to find a partner who will understand those things, care about you, and be the support you need to learn to cope with those parts of yourself? If there was anything wrong that was made apparent by your question it’s that you think there’s something wrong with you.

There is an image associated with difficulties like those and it comes from one of the greater evils of our age: The diagnosis becomes the condition. The second someone says one of those buzz words: ADD ADHD BPD, Any of them, all of a sudden people will ‘re-frame’ their understanding of you based on those letters as if some how your oddity (and their confusion about you) makes sense because it’s all the fault of those letters.

Do you know what the prevalence of anxiety and depression is among LGBT people? Each on their own exist in varying degrees in more than half our numbers. Together? Nearly every one you meet will have, or be, enduring those things. Conditions like Generalized Anxiety Disorder are so common and consistent that people just feel uneasy in social groups and so become introverted. In fact you could say that GAD is an acronym diagnosis for just not bloody liking the idiots that surround you most of the time. If that’s the case, that’s a new set of letters to add to my bandoleer of freely distributed (and misunderstood) pop-psych badges.

I’m going to throw a few things out for you to consider, things that have been thrown at me personally over the years, and while you think about them bear in mind that these ‘definitions’ are how people see them and not the truth. Unfortunately that often defines the truth for those words and people like to just throw them around as they see fit. Real definitions are more complicated, but the simple understanding your average person is what fashions the weapons they use to hurt, marginalize or shame another person. 

That said here’s a few of the ‘winners’ in most inappropriately used diagnoses I’ve had thrown at me : 

I am Anti-social because I do not care for ‘norms’ or large groups of people. Truth be told, my lifestyle is completely counter to social norms and that I refuse to live in an ‘acceptable’ box because someone tells me I should makes me anti social.

I have PTSD from being repeatedly beaten, harassed and threatened physically, mentally and emotionally by people who gave themselves the authority to judge and punish another human being. In reality, nearly everyone has that same condition for those reasons. If you've ever endured trauma and have survived it, you have post-traumatic symptoms whenever you feel threatened again. It never goes away.

I have Anxiety. I know they mean the constant feeling of being in danger, of needing to run, and almost anyone who has ever been nervous has suffered anxiety. When you get excited, you are anxious. When you are afraid and anticipating something, you are anxious.

I have Depression. The common person thinks depression is feeling blue. They are wrong. Depression is feeling gray. It has no trigger or warning, it just is. It’s like someone turned down the contrast on life until things become black and white, senses become dulled, pleasure vanishes and the world becomes a bleak hell while you sit feeling isolated in a flesh colored straight jacket. There is nothing blue about depression. You aren't sad, that’s a whole other emotion packed into it.  

I can keep going through the entire DSM if need be. Hell, according to the big book of boxes, I’m schizotypal because I actually think that I matter to other people. “ characterized by severe social anxiety, paranoia, and often unconventional beliefs. “ How awesome is that? Who the hell ISN'T Schizotypal that grew up gay and in a place where homophobia exists. Pretty sure everyone has traits that qualify under these umbrellas.

There in is part of the problem. If I were to go through the DSM (the diagnostic manual for mental health issues) you’d see how wrong people are who those words that way and you’d also recognize their ‘common usages’ the way I do: Tools to harm, and not to help anyone but the speaker feel ‘safer’ about themselves by making you ‘crazy’.

I want to be clear, I am not angry at you. I am frustrated with this particular demon because it haunts SO many people.

My point is this: what makes them ISSUES is not the condition, it’s what you (and to a degree others) think they mean. So what if there are days when you need more affection and others when you need more space? So what if you happen to need that feeling of being safe that a loving relationship can provide? Do you think perfection is something you can actually ‘be’ or is it the journey from where you are to where you wind up, the quest itself to become more, to be stronger but most importantly: to be happy.

The ONLY way it poses a risk is if you use the relationship as a crutch or therapy. A partner can’t realistically ‘fix’ you, only you can do that. What they can do is provide you safe space to process, understanding of your difficulty, caring and compassion while you do the hard work and appreciation for all the effort YOU put in to overcome what inhibits you now.

Yes feeling good can become a drug to ward off depression, but it can never fix it and so it will come crashing back down harder than before. What you need from a partner when you’re having a hard time isn’t sex, it’s companionship and support. They may give you a hand so you can lift yourself up, arms to fall into when you need to cry, and a smile to try to cheer you up a little. That’s not because they think you are sad, but because sometimes it is the VERY thing you need to see so that you can try to reach for happy even when you don’t think you can make it.

There is one last thing I want to add here. Don’t judge a potential partner before you give them the chance to show you that your ‘baggage’ doesn’t stop them from caring about you. Nothing is easy, especially not finding love, so you can’t take that as a judgment against you.

Do I think you should be single until you’re ‘fixed?.

 No. 

I don’t think you should deny the opportunity to be happy. I don’t think there is anything “wrong” with you. The only thing that makes it so is you. As I once wrote to another person wrestling with similar issues:

“The problem, you see, isn't that you’re in a wheelchair. The problem is the wheelchair in your MIND. It’s that you see yourself that way, as lesser, because of the difference you think that makes you so. You need to learn to put the wheelchair in your mind away”. 

You need to put away the words others give you to describe who and what you are. Don’t think of yourself as anything other than who you are. If you feel you have work you need to do on yourself, more power to you, but don’t let that kind of thinking prevent you from being happy or even finding love. Struggling, as you do, is hard enough without feeling diminished because of the fact that you DO struggle.

Forgive my rant but, you see, I have had too many experiences with people who feel broken because they struggle through difficult times. It saddens me to see anyone throw themselves into the trash because they feels that’s where they belong.

 You don’t.

You belong somewhere that makes you happy and proud to be there. 

You aren’t broken.

Someday, perhaps, when I am feeling VERY talkative I will tell you all of my philosophy of being human, but for now I want you in particular to know something: 

Life will crack you, split you apart and leave you in pieces, but what makes YOU beautiful is that you survive. Your courage, your effort and your determination become a new bond between pieces, a filling of gold, that changes you and makes you even more beautiful than before. Your history, who you are right now, is an extraordinary thing. You simply need to put aside your thoughts about your value and allow someone else to show you that you are wrong.

I want you to understand that you are beautiful, just as you are, because you have endured and survived things most cannot comprehend. You are your own creation and that makes you a singular wonder in the world. you don’t have to be proud of your pain, but you should be proud of the phenomenal accomplishment of still being here. Take hope in that fact too because every day you are, every breath you continue to struggle to take, brings you one step closer to where you want to be.

Along the way it really doesn’t hurt to have someone to talk to. Their perspective might help you find the strength you need to change the situation from within. Find a therapist to help you with the really difficult things and show you ways to start learning to cope with things.

My best, as always,

-Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: How do I show my partner how beautiful they really are?

This is a lesson all to itself but I can give you a way to start.

Stop.

Stop everything. Stop letting them be part of your world, put the world away when they are near. Stop letting them think that lust and love and beauty are tied to each other; they aren't. 

Silence.

Silence the fear and objections to being appreciated in non-sexual ways. Silence the doubt about how you care (and why) by showing that they have yet to grasp all the ways that you do appreciate and value them. Silence all those feelings by saying nothing because now is not the time for talk.

Show.

Show them everything; from the lines they cannot see to the way your  touch feels everywhere. Show them that they have nothing to be ashamed of for being appreciated and enjoying it. Show that there is nothing to fear, that they need not harbor any guilt over what they are feeling. Show them that they are worthy but most of all show them that you say it is so.

Take the time to slowly unwrap the greatest gift, them , and make sure your appreciation is obvious and for more than their sexual appeal. Explore their body, drink it in with all of your senses and give yourself over to the abandon of the exploration and bring them along with you on that journey.

This isn't about sex, so don’t make it about the obvious things like genitals. Involving them can actually distract and diminish the impact of times like this so avoid them as much as possible. You can acknowledge them, but don’t tarry long. Spend your time in ‘strange’ places. Devour them in these moments.

Lift them from the crowd of billions ‘like them’ that they feel lost in and place them in your arms where they belongs. Among all those billions of people out there, there is only one person who calls them ‘mine’. Remind them of why you’ve made that choice. Share  what a marvel they are and show how much you appreciate that. Above all else, explore joy in silence, in touch, in sensual expression of something they cannot see. 

 No one can see their value, nor can they even glimpse their beauty. It is the nature of life. A candle’s flame sees a dim world, never knowing it is the reason the world is bright to everyone else or that to special people: they glow almost too brightly to look at for too long. How are we any less blind? We look out at the world but a mirror is the only way we can look back at ourselves and that is ever a flawed fragment of reality: a 2D slice of a creature with many more dimensions than that. 

These are lessons that can be difficult, even painful, for some to face but they are the truth. 

In this moment, right here, this chance passing of my words to your eyes is the result of millions of years that an unbroken thread has woven itself through history to come together to create you. Wars, famine, plague pestilence, disaster and tyrants have all failed to stop you from being here right now. That makes you pretty amazing if you think about it.

Take that and show it without talking or giving in to the desire you both will feel once they begin to understand that you truly mean it. Save that, prolong that. Make the exploration and mutual enjoyment of such the top priority, not sex and remind them why you chose them:

Because they are the most beautiful creature to ever grace the sun with their presence so it could shine on such a thing as they.

My best, as always,

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Love: In the long term.

There are things about love, and about a truly long term relationship that no one tells you. It doesn't cross anyone’s mind when they talk about what it means to be in love and spend a life together.

I've been with my partner for a third of his life, and he for a quarter of mine. That difference will never change, even when in a few years I will have been in his life for half the time he’s been in this world. Yet in all the things that love brings, the little changes are the ones that can mean the most.

Their place:

It never occurs to people that your body changes the more it gets used to something. The way he sleeps on the same side of me, cuddles into the same arm and rests his head on the same side of my chest; all this means my body has changed. Like an old mattress you've spent your life on, it knows the shape of your body and has molded itself to your form. The muscle of that shoulder has stretched to allow it to wrap around you as you sleep, so used to holding you close that it can lock in that position even while I drift off myself.

New Math:

They tell you all sorts of things about the world when you are in school; things like 1+1=2, but that’s not true anymore. When you've been together a long time 1+1=1 and 1+1=3 at the same time, and yet isn't in conflict. It’s a duality that happens gradually over time. To the outside world, and to a degree between you, the differences between you become smaller until it might seem you’re one person and not two. You've shared so much that you understand one another in a way other people can’t and so you one truly can speak for the other and be right about what their answer would be. This comes from being able to hear their voice and correctly imagine what they might say.

The second equation is what you've created by being together. The two of you don’t dissolve and vanish, you become parts in equal measure of something entirely new and different. We are both still individuals, but have become the catalysts for the creation of this separate thing: I, he, me, you, his, mine become We, us, ours. A third entity now exists, greater than the sum of its parts, in the form of the unity of the whole of “We”.

Life Changes:

Nothing is the same, but especially the things you don’t really think about. Showering together, sharing a meal, watching a movie, going for a walk all become a reason to smile instead of what they used to mean. Doing for, and with, each other becomes something you treasure no matter how ‘mundane’ they seem. Sitting at respective computers and puttering around on tumblr is vastly different in his absence. They become part of every facet of your life that you enjoy, and even become a large reason you do find happiness in those things. They are etched and woven into the structure and fabric of your life in ways you can’t explain or quantify, and in ways you couldn't imagine your life without them.

Standards change.

What was great in the past no longer holds the same ‘shine’ as it used to. Everything, and I do mean everything changes. Pleasure in everything before them seems like training wheels, something you made due with until you found  this kind of love. You give and receive something that cannot be expressed with anything but touch and closeness. Words fall short and have to be discarded. The intimate things become the most important: sex, cuddling, and anything that lets you be close to each other. It makes the world a bigger place, expanding the idea of what ‘good enough’ is, and leaves the alternatives much dimmer than before this kind of relationship.

The only thing that matters is the Love you share.

It’s the lifeline, the place you call home, and the way you interact with the world. 

Lessons like this are not meant to make you feel jealousy or envy, but are intended to instill hope. It is meant to tell you that this kind of thing really is out there, that it’s real, and that it’s something you can find and that you deserve to experience. If nothing else, take with you the knowledge that someone out there like that is looking for you, and that this “Sage Bear” hopes and wishes that you two find each other soon.

My best, as always,

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

It’s not your fault.

You wanted love, to be cherished, treasured and cared for. You wanted the happily ever after with the prince you dreamed of. You even though you had found it for a while. It was a few weeks or a few months before something changed, and you weren't sure at first what it was. He let you know, in no uncertain terms, that it was clearly you that changed, weren't measuring up, and weren't what he thought you were.

When he would get angry at you, he’d apologize and be so sweet to you afterward, that the only answer to the question of what was broken had to be you. He showed you how much he still cared, and how much it angered and frustrated him that you suddenly, or slowly, became unworthy of him. All you wanted was his affection, for him to need you in return and for him to care for you the way you cared for him. You even thought if you loved him enough, the way he told you to, that things would get better. Even the things that hurt most, that you were too fat and ugly to be loved, being accused of sleeping around like a whore, being more like some dog than a man, even those things started to fit you like old clothing.

You remember, every day, how happy you were, and every day you try your hardest to be the person he wants and needs you to be so that he loves you again.You stop talking to your friends, they wouldn't understand and since he was right so often, they wouldn't like the you that you had become. It’s never about when you want to be intimate or want his attention, because your timing is always bad, or you initiate things in the wrong way. You just can’t get out of your own way, everything you do, even little things, just seem to get under his skin. You know that even if he were to hit you, it would be for your own good, to smarten you up or to help you ‘man up’ and be tougher than the weak, soft, and almost useless thing you’d become.

Love, it seems, turned you into something frail, stupid and constantly smothering, too far removed, or just clumsy to really be worth the time. So you wait for him to call or just to respond, cry when you are alone because he can’t stand the sight and cannot seem to feel anything good at all unless he gives it to you. That person, the one who wanted love, was wrong. The one who thought he could have happily ever after was a fool, a child and was not even worthy of sitting in the corner with someone like him.

He’s never wrong, especially about you, and you know it. He doesn't even have to tell you anymore, you are sure he is because he was so right about you. The best thing you could do with your life is to obey him, to be there when he called for you, and to give him whatever he wants. He’s right because those moments when he calls you, when he wants something from you, are the ones that make you the happiest you've ever felt because he needs you even if its just for a few moments. They make you so happy you want to cry, and sometimes you do, and it ruins the moment and make him angry. It’s not punishment, when he stops talking to you for a long time, its what you deserve and you know it.

You wish he weren't so right about you, but he is. He’s even right about your friends. They stopped talking to you after a while, told you they didn't like what they saw, but they could never understand because you could never tell them how perfect he was, and just how awful a person you really are. It never changes because you aren't strong enough, or good enough, to love him enough or be a better person to fix what’s wrong. You know it’s you, it has to be, because you were so happy when it started. He loved you, made you feel so special and precious to him, but you just weren't who he thought you were. You know he still cares for you, otherwise he wouldn't get so angry at you.

——————————————————————————————-

This is not love.

Love is not about who is right or wrong, good or bad, who is prettiest, smartest or best between two people in love. Each of you is clearly the better partner in the other persons eyes. Love is about mutual support, companionship, respect and enjoying being around each other. It IS about needing the other, but not like this.

People like this use the nature of love against the person that falls in love with them to gain an advantage and uses it to control their partners behavior. How they treat you is so very often exactly how they feel about themselves, what they have been told to believe about being weak enough to love someone, that most of what they say isn’t even about you. It’s about themselves, a person they need to see through someones eyes that aren’t theirs. Their self image is always seen in a fun house mirror, warped and twisted to make themselves feel better about the bad things that really are inside them.

This is not respect.

In any relationship, respect is a crucial foundation component. Trust, respect and mutual companionship are critical to any relationship that will last, and these become tools to twist you around, bend you to their will, and take away any positive self esteem that you had before meeting these people. If he respected you, even a little, he would not belittle you the way he does. You may fear he is right when it starts, because very often you haven’t had a great deal of experience in relationships, or what you have has been bad, much like him.

Your self respect, your friends and family, any way out at all for you, is a threat to him and you've seen how he responds to threats like those. He slowly walked you away from your support until you realized you have no one at all to talk to anymore. He’s guided you slowly until you are all alone, which is exactly where you have to be for him to feel safe.

This is not caring.

Caring is a whole different experience from this, and usually you get a taste of it like a sample from a drug dealer to get you hooked and needing more. Caring for each other makes you stronger, gives you confidence to make decisions and is there to comfort you when you make mistakes. It is not, repeat NOT, about fulfilling their needs over yours, it is not about sacrificing everything for someone else, especially not when there is nothing given in return.

A pat on the head, a smile, or even sex are not gratitude for your efforts, nor should they be seen that way. Yes it is important in a relationship to be grateful for each other, but the reciprocity and mutuality must be there or it is a fantasy and not reality, and usually not your fantasy past the honeymoon phase.

This is NOT what you deserve.

He was so wonderful up front, the perfect man, charming, smart, kind, sweet.. all the things you believed you wanted and deserved in a partner. He paid attention to you, gave you things, treated you like a prince, made you feel so loved and cared for that your heart felt like it was going to explode in your chest. You deserve those things, but not at this cost. They should be given by both of you, not expected or demanded from you and you alone, as if the only person responsible for maintaining the relationship was you.

So often victims, yes VICTIMS, of this kind of predator are made to believe that it is entirely what they deserve because every fault in the relationship is the victims responsibility. The smallest flaw becomes a huge problem, and because it is even partially right, the victim believes themselves the cause of everything wrong.

This is not your fault.

The hardest thing to hear is that it ISN'T your fault. It doesn't matter if its been two months or ten years living like this, it can happen to anyone and happens so often without being spoken of that no one believes it. 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 GLBT people experience this, and of those, few will report or try to escape it because they are blackmailed into silence by threats of being outed, embarrassed or worse.

Society sets up expectations of being treated poorly because as a minority we are already used to this from other people, and that makes us very easy targets for people like this. The absence of legal recognition of the relationship reinforces this and enables the abuse to go on without repercussion.

——————————————————————————————-

Going Forward:

You need to know that you are not alone, this doesn't just happen to you, and it is not something you did wrong. You couldn't have known, and should not blame yourself for it happening this way, there is absolutely nothing you could have done that would have made this any different. It is how these people go about their lives, because of their own history of abuse and their own psychological issues.

They say it is all your fault, but the reality is, if you look at it, that it really is all about them. How they talk to you, how they treat you, how they make you feel.. all of this belongs to them, not you. Don’t carry their broken self esteem like it’s your cross to bear. It’s not. You DESERVE love. You DESERVE respect and most of all you DESERVE to be happy.

The first step to changing this, to getting out of it and recovering is recognizing what is happening to you for what it is: abuse. The second step is remembering you are not alone. You are not the first person to suffer like this, and while your heart is breaking, there are still people out there who care about you and will help you recover from this. That is what love is.

Love is respect, caring, companionship, compassion and most of all:

Love is what you deserve.

http://www.loveisrespect.org/is-this-abuse/power-and-control-wheel

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2011/06/14/9850/domestic-violence-in-the-lgbt-community/

http://www.thegavoice.com/news/national-news/5774-cdc-lesbian-gay-domestic-violence-rates-same-or-higher-than-heterosexuals

http://www.safehorizon.org/index/get-help-8/call-our-hotlines-51.html

- Bearogenes

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: A letter from a chameleon child.

I’ve hesitated asking you this because I know you spend a great deal of time helping others and thought perhaps my question may pop up at some point but it hasn’t.  I technically fall under the trans umbrella but I will never transition. I am a boy but only sometimes. Sometimes I’m a girl, sometimes I’m androgyne, and other times completely agender. My therapist calls it Poly-Gender.

I just call it being a Chameleon. Typically a “shift” happens when I am sexually or romantically attracted to a person in a specific way. Body parts are just tools of expression for me, a paint brush if you will. But there are some ways of expressing that I don’t have the parts for and you are right, it really shouldn't matter but it does to some people. My partner and I talk about everything together. We are radically open and honest. He knows about me but…

He knows about this and is completely straight. He accepts me as I am but I can tell it makes him uncomfortable. I suppose my biggest question here is if its non-consensual to be in a boy shift when I am engaging in sexual activities with him. I’m attracted to partner all across my shifts. Perhaps having to ask that question indicates that on some level it is… We are poly (lazy poly at that) and I could try to find another to be with but I’m worried

Worried that the same problem will occur but in reverse. I guess I’m just very conflicted and confused. I want to apologize for asking a stupid question but my therapist says I need to validate more so instead I’ll simply say Thank You for taking the time to read this letter.      

Most Sincerely,

A Chameleon Boy    

I am going to ignore the deprecation of ‘stupid question’ and I won’t redress the questions you asked that you have already “answered” here because I have a hypothesis that I’d like to share with you that might help clarify them and change those answers.

The only exception is about his discomfort. That may well be a concern because he doesn't know how to help you come to understand and be comfortable with yourself. To that end, here are my thoughts in hope that they change your point of view and help you find a better way to not only approach yourself, but to find a way to be more integrated instead of disparate.

You've been defining yourself by your borders and found there aren't any. Labels only fit when there are edges, and if you’re remotely ‘rounded’ there are no places they can fully identify. The borders would have overlap, conflict or just remain unclear because they aren't labeled and readily understood through those labels. I think, perhaps, you may have been spending too much time trying to find the words instead of finding the shape of things and the why of those odd ‘movements’ that make you ‘shift’. I hear you struggling to understand yourself but I think you've been trying too hard and worried too much about the ‘consequences’ of those aspects of yourself that defy labeling so I have a few to give you to replace the inadequate ones and hopefully they will help you find a better perspective (of your own) on your nature. 

Complex, but not really complicated, the ‘shape of YOU’ isn’t an edgy geometric pattern that’s meant to ‘stop and stay’ on one ‘face’. You’re adaptive and able to conform to the situation but you are also bearing ‘inertia’ from coming into it (as you must) so there is shifting and adjusting and ‘coming to center’. The situation puts pressure on you and you begin to change. To put it another way:

You are water, my friend.

You cannot find ‘edges’ to apply labels to that will fit because that idea fails to grasp your nature or your ability to change. You may ‘conform’ to an idea of the moment but it never permanently defines you. Shatter a glass of water and what happens? The ‘label’ of the glass you’re in is destroyed but you, the water, crashes outward in seemingly chaotic movements.

You will conform, for a while, to any situation but can’t truly be contained by it no matter how much you might wish to be because you are mutable in nature. In fact, I might guess here, that your emotional states frequently make you ‘rebel’ against those ‘containers’, even the ones you love start to feel like they don’t ‘fit’ in those moments. While you may return to feeling comfortable in them again, there is still that moment when ‘inertia’ makes you want to shift your way out. 

To change metaphors for a moment: A candle never sees its own light and denies it’s existence because all it sees is the darkness outside the reach of it’s light. This is the moment when I hold a mirror up and show you what I see. In this case, I see something different and because I find such to be beautiful I wanted to offer my insight in the hopes it helps you learn to embrace the splendid gift of who you are.

I always leave room to be wrong about the things I see, but the point here is not about me being right but about you learning to see yourself from a different perspective. It’s meant to offer you the tool to realign your understanding as you see fit, not to make you ‘conform’ to my idea of you because that doesn’t matter here. What matters is how you learn to see yourself and from there redefine those borders and learn to accommodate a different potential dynamic in your life.

You cannot master anything but yourself. Embrace your nature, especially the things that are ‘uncomfortable’ to you because only then can you truly learn to choose the shapes they will take and how those things will fit. You’ll learn that they do indeed fit, even though they don’t yet feel like it, because they are waiting for your will to decide what they will be in that moment. Nothing is ‘permanent’, and being adaptable is the ultimate goal of life because it means you have a greater chance to survive turbulent times.

Worry less about being tide or mist or ice and more about learning how to turn one into the other and to channel those ‘moments when you change’ into a confidence and comfort with your nature. You’ll find that you are far more powerful than you realize.

You are unbreakable. You “fit” everywhere. You “belong” nowhere.

You are water.

My best, as always,

- Bearogenes