ninety-three-million-miles - Tumblr blog

[ninety-three-million-miles]

to claire:

you’ve been through the ringer today so now isn’t the time to get into it, but for the time being i hope it’s okay if i say this much: i’m going to preface this by saying that i’m not asking for or expecting your pity or compassion here because i know that i hurt you horribly, and i don’t for a second want to diminish or discount that.

at the same time, if you’re in a place to engage in a bit of dialectics, it feels important for me to be fully vulnerable and honest here: pulling back in the way that i did felt so fucking horrid. like shredding myself from the inside out. from my perspective, our communication and dynamic had broken down to the point that we were both drowning, trying to rescue ourselves and one another at once but unable to stop pushing each other’s heads below the surface in our own desperate thrash for air. i couldn’t see any other way at the time to prevent us from doing more damage to one another. i’m not defending that or saying that i stand by it, only conveying where my head was at at the time.

but claire. i hated it. every fucking second of it. it felt like i was cauterizing a part of my soul. that’s so absurdly dramatic but i don’t have better words right now. i dreamed about you relentlessly, and would wake up with the split second relief that we had gotten to talk and resolve things before reality would wash over me and i would crumble all over again. i never stopped wanting you. i never stopped reaching for you in the middle of the night. i could never figure out how to reduce or at least ignore the amount of power you have over me, have always had over me. letting myself finally say yes to seeing you was one of the most frightening and exhilerating things i’ve ever done, and i just…. couldn’t bring myself to even try to practice restraint upon finally getting to see you in person. especially when i had spent months trying to find a way to come to terms with the possibility of never seeing you again — a prospect which has never not broken me.

so. emotionally speaking, i scrubbed myself raw in anticipation of seeing you again. i wanted to present only a soft and new and uncalloused self. i wanted to show you — to show both of us — not just that i wanted to get there with us, but that i could actually do it. i went into the weekend fully and even joyfully accepting that i would leave my dignity at the door. and i guess it showed.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

“I have PTSD; can you share some things that have helped your recovery?”

Not OP, but have a masters in clinical mental health counseling and have had both “standard” PTSD and complex PTSD (C-PTSD). I’ll hopefully keep this relatively brief, and I’ll try to interweave my training with my own experience where it may be helpful.

When treating trauma, evidence-based models suggest three primary steps that need to happen in the following order:

1. ⁠Safety and Stabilization. This is especially important as soon as possible in the acute aftermath of a traumatic event – and the sooner the better. Before the other, deeper work can start, you need to know that you have protection and security away from the sources/triggers of your trauma. If you’re a soldier, that means being removed from combat; if you’re a survivor of rape or domestic violence, that means having access to housing, resources, and other supports and spaces that your abuser doesn’t. PTSD essentially activates your fight-or-flight nervous system (aka the sympathetic nervous system, if you’re nasty) and then keeps it on high alert on a biological, neurochemical level. The more ways that you can find to reinforce the idea that you’re safe and that you aren’t alone, the better you’re going to be able to stay present and actually work through tough memories and emotions without your nervous system being overloaded and your higher thinking functions tapping out.

2. ⁠Processing the traumatic memory. This is the bossfight of fostering resilience from trauma. Major symptoms (and predictors!) of PTSD include feelings of shame, powerlessness, and violation/betrayal. These are foreboding emotions to face, but they thrive in the shadows, and their vested interest in their own survival creates another major theme of PTSD: avoidance of possible triggers and blaming yourself for what happened to you. The countermove in order to break this cycle is processing and reprocessing. (Re)processing involves telling and retelling the story of your trauma in a safe and supportive space. At first, it can feel like utter dogshit in a multitude of ways – you may feel alone in your experiences or reactions to trauma, or terrified of being judged/rejected when you reach out for support, or so horribly ashamed of what happened (or what you “allowed” to happen) that you feel you don’t deserve compassion, or reluctant to admit how much you’re struggling because others might view you as weak, or a million other emotions and lines of thought that boil down to “keep quiet and navigate this alone, you piece of garbage.” But you need to slog through the mud and the shit to make it out of the bog. Through processing and reprocessing, you interrupt these self-perpetuating cycles of shame and powerlessness. You tell your story and gradually expose yourself to triggers (in a safe space) until it starts to feel like just another anecdote you allude to in conversation with close friends. You realize in telling the story that you have power and agency as the narrator, and that the chapter may be complete but the book is very much not. You fully face the memory and the emotions that accompany it, and you realize that the shadows they cast are much larger than the space they actually occupy. Your body learns to distinguish between past and present, and you don’t always hyperventilate or vomit or dissociate anymore when you encounter reminders of your trauma.

3. ⁠Reintegration. So. You’ve found a safe anchor point and you’ve confronted and engaged with the traumatic memory. What lies ahead of you is reconnecting with yourself and with the world that your trauma pulled you away from. PTSD tends to create drastic negative conclusions about oneself, about the future, and about the world as a whole. Reintegration occurs when you reach a place where you feel strong enough to at least test or challenge those conclusions. You may reconnect with old hobbies or friends that you shut yourself off from because they reminded you in some way of your trauma; you may start taking better care of yourself because you suddenly discover a desire to stick around and see how things pan out for you in five or ten years’ time; you may go to places and allow yourself experiences that you had previously needed to isolate yourself from in order to feel safe enough to survive. If step one was building a house and step two was planting a garden, step three is harvesting the fruits. It’s an unfurling, a full ownership of your agency in your own life where you are able to introduce your traumatized self to the rest of who you are/who you’ve been/who you would like to be. It’s when you discover that all of these selves can coexist, and in fact make excellent counterparts and companions. You no longer feel like you have to quarantine or starve certain parts of yourself in order to be loved or accepted or understood or worthy or full of potential. It’s an internal revolution that flies in the face of every single lie your trauma/PTSD have told you; but, as you grow your connections to both internal and social supports, you newly feel up for that challenge. You begin to internalize that you are not defined by what has happened to you or what has been done to you, but by how you choose to respond to the things outside of your control. For the first time, you find that fact inspiring instead of paralyzing. It feels like a sunrise.

That’s what I’ve got. Whatever lies ahead of you, friend, I believe you have the capacity to emerge on the other side of it better, kinder, and more whole.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

1. you are like the quintessential protestor/advocate in my mind (and i felt this way before BLM)

2. you have literally mentioned metaphors to me that involve you becoming amber

3. there’s like this tone of bitter hardening that’s softened with sweet/honey imagery. like this, hmm... value in strength balanced by an inner resistance against becoming too hard. if that makes sense?

4. the line that stands alone very much feels like you. you say that kind of shit to me all the time, and i have truly (i’m not fucking with you here) felt more present at times over the last few months (because of you) than i ever have before. and that’s because of a mindset that you actively cultivate in yourself (and me, in turn).

5. the last line is like... there’s definitely an air of jaded cynicism, but at the same time, it feels cooly accepting. this whole poem just evokes this sense of balance between extremes that describes you so well.

6. do i need to explain why the last two lines remind me of you? that’s literally what your role is in my life a lot of the time. you protect me without being overbearing. like, if i’m standing under a stationary thing that’s shading me, i’m protected from the elements, but i’m also free to step out from under it without feeling like i have to fight against someone holding me back. i also know that you’re not going to move. so i can easily step back under the shade. ya dig?

[ninety-three-million-miles]

The world is burning at every turn; time to start writing again.

she said with full sincerity before never posting again

[ninety-three-million-miles]

“It's saying that I'll feel out of control and unhappy with myself and my body and that I'll have nothing else to live for.”

1. Do you feel like you’re in control now? Because in my experience, whenever someone chooses to go to treatment, it’s because they feel out of control of their own behavior and their own life. They feel like their eating disorder controls them. Their ability to enjoy things without asking their ED’s permission has diminished to the point that their lives shrink to the dimensions of their kitchen. Being terrified of a cookie is not, in my experience, a sign of strength or control.

2. I can’t speak to what your relationship with your self-image is all the time, but I can tell you that every day I learned to fight my eating disorder was a day I grew to enjoy myself more. Every day that I’ve learned to let myself occupy space, I make better and better use of the space I fill. You are a powerful person, Kat. Your eating disorder doesn’t like that. It will try to diminish your awareness of that at every opportunity. Even when I was “successful” within my eating disorder (restricting, not bingeing, etc.), I was rarely able to enjoy that fleeting sense of pride because I was preoccupied with being physically miserable and mentally exhausted. But most of the time, my eating disorder didn’t let me feel triumphant. Most of the time it gave me a magnifying glass and shined a light on every tiny reason I had to hate myself. I can’t describe what it’s like to not have that voice perpetually in your head, Kat. I had not begun to realize how much pain my ED was inflicting on me on a constant basis — not until I began to be free of it. I wish I could describe to you what it’s like to not feel my ED like a corset at all times. I can just promise you that the breathing is so much easier without it.

3. Speaking of corsets, I can completely understand the fear of hating your body with recovery. I think it’s impossible to imagine gaining weight and not being mortally ashamed, and spending every moment consumed by that change. I’m not going to patronize you by making empty promises that you won’t gain any weight, nor will I pull some generic Dove beauty bullshit where I twirl in a meadow and tell you that you’re beautiful no matter what you look like. I think everyone has to have their own journey when it comes especially to their relationship with their body, so all I can do is share a couple things about mine. As I began to recover, I slowly stopped feeling compelled to fixate on my flaws or soft parts or rounded edges, and became in complete awe of my body’s incredible ability to heal. I watched scabs and scars fade to smooth skin, I saw my teeth get whiter, and I felt my mind reshaping itself, rewiring its neural pathways. I felt the hints of strength in my body again. Even though I entered treatment on the higher end of a normal BMI, I still gained about ten pounds when I was there. And despite not having had some miracle breakthrough about how much i love the way I looked, I left treatment enjoying and appreciating and being PROUD of myself and, specifically, my body in a way that I hadn’t been able to in years. At the same time, I stopped being so uncontrollably obsessed with my body. I regained so much time and mental energy. Which brings me to my next and final point….

i haven’t typed up my last point yet but it was already SO FUCKING LONG that i thought it would be better to send it haha

4. this one. oh, fuck, this one. I could talk with you about this one for a whole weekend. I’ll try and sift through my very loud feelings about this one to form something relatively succinct and coherent. In fact, before i get on some sort of soapbox, i would actually rather start with a question: What do you have to live for now, besides your eating disorder?

[ninety-three-million-miles]

“Human cruelty can be infinite. Human generosity can be boundless.”

Original Post: 

It’s been seven hours since my first class ended and I still feel just physically wrong.

From under the “Core Values” header for the department that hosts my counseling grad program:

“Multiculturalism and Social Justice: We believe in developing leaders, educators, counselors, and therapists who will advocate for equity and inclusion in the professional settings in which they serve. We believe in challenging all forms of discrimination, including race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, in our local, national, and global community and in working as change agents to undermine oppression.“

I feel so naïve. I believed that with no hesitation.

Today, Counseling Theories class: fifteen students. We’re discussing our values as individuals, and how it is ethically critical that as counselors, we do not attempt to impart our values on our clients. Our professor asks us to partner off and take a look at the following slide, showing possible types of people we could easily encounter throughout our careers, and discuss where our ability to be neutral reaches its limits.

Some items are repeated on the slide, but here’s what it lists:

adolescent girl who wants to explore her feelings about whether to have an abortion

gay or lesbian couple who want to explore their relationship problems and/or who want to discuss their desire to adopt a child

person who is troubled over an extramarital affair but is not ready to give up the relationship

person who has a great deal of hostility towards any form of religion

person who has extremely strong fundamentalist beliefs

person whose basic value system includes the attempt to use and exploit others for [their] own personal gain

a friend who wants you to “fix” their troubled marriage or relationship with [their] child

white supremacist who opposes any “mixing” of ethnic groups

a drug dealer who is court-ordered to therapy

teenager who is having unsafe sex with several partners and sees no problem with his behavior

middle school student who wants to explore her sexual orientation

someone who has told you he has put a person in the hospital from a violent assault and is not remorseful

interracial couple wanting to adopt a child and being faced with their respective parents’ opposition to adoption

person who angrily opposes the policies of the US government

parent who wants to discuss the importance of “capital punishment” for [their] child

court-ordered convicted pedophile

other???

The person I partner with looks at that list, and one of the two groups where they said they saw an insurmountable conflict with their values was.. the LGBT couple. And when the class was sharing their different challenge areas, another student said the same thing. When she did, four additional students nodded along emphatically. Both my partner and the student who spoke up in front of the class specified that they wouldn’t be comfortable meeting with these hypothetical people because they are morally opposed to non-heterosexuality, and because being around LGBT people makes them “very uncomfortable.”

They looked at a list that included a pedophile, a sociopath, a white supremacist, and a child abuser, and they drew the line at two women who were in love.

In response, the professor was just super understanding of that and did absolutely nothing beyond unreservedly validating those students’ qualms.

On the first day of this class, this professor also mentioned that we have these online forum/discussion assignments with our other students. and she was telling an anecdote of how things got really nasty with a former class. Evidently, one female student was talking about her personal experience with a topic and she said “my wife” in passing. And another student commented on her post saying that she disagreed with the first student’s ~lifestyle choices~ etc.

The professor’s commentary on that situation was that she didn’t know who was more in the wrong. She wasn’t sure if it was inappropriate for the female student to mention her wife because it made another student “uncomfortable”— a student who then proceeded to attack her in a public forum, derailing the conversation about counseling theory that was supposed to be taking place. And the professor thought that both students shared equal responsibility for how the interaction soured.

This one class session has changed my whole feeling about the course, if not the entire program — because I’m evidently back in a place where who i am as a person is a polarizing political statement. I thought I left that behind for the most part when I left Texas, when I chose a school whose program specifically identifies addressing and eradicating discrimination and oppression as part of its core values.

All of this on the heels of a weekend spent in Texas, where my first night was supposed to be a relaxing casual get-together of my brother’s friends and whatnot. And the topic turned to how multiple people at the table believed non-heterosexuality was a sin. And to one of my brother’s friends bragging — bragging — that his pastor was one of the people who signed the fucking Nashville statement. And my brother, who knows everything, who used to support me before changing his mind and deciding that being bisexual was a sin, of course said nothing. Did nothing. I shut the fuck down.

The entire duration of that three-hour class, I was shaking. I could feel my heart hammering for hours. It was all I could do to keep from crying in front of everyone. I just feel so fucking stupid. I really thought that by moving away from Texas, by moving out of my parents’ place, that I was putting the majority of this behind me. I assumed that this program was a safe space because that’s how it advertised itself. I assumed that being a remorselessly malicious person, an abuser, or someone full of ignorance and hatred would be seen as more difficult than being someone like me.

I am reminded that I still have no sense of community. I don’t even have most of my friends right now. I have no therapist. And the only LGBT person I have ever really been close to is my ex-girlfriend, who is happily in a relationship on the other side of the country. My boyfriend is as supportive of possible, and I appreciate him so much for that, but right now that feels like a pebble in an ocean when I need an island.

I feel tired and alone and unlovable. And it’s week three of classes.

Message from a total stranger (nightowllucas):

I'm so sorry you had a horrible couple of days, and I'm even more sorry to say that you'll probably have to get through other situations like this in the future, though probably not as much as in Texas (considering what I've heard of it, since I'm not even american). I'm nowhere near an expert in this, but I really believe you should look for LGBT friendly spaces and get to know people in the community, I'm not sure if you are able to due to social anxiety or maybe other problems, but the sense of community you'll get from them really helps in a situation like this, even if they're just someone you could vent to that will understand where you're coming from. Some gays/lesbians might be prejudiced because you are in a straight relationship, I've heard too many stories about this to disregard it as a possible issue, but I believe (I have to) that you will find people who you can bond with.

Other than that, is there a way to make a formal complaint at your school regarding what happened? I mean, this situation/professor is going against against their core values, so maybe something will come out of it? As a gay man, I'm way too disbelieving in the world, but it doesn't hurt to try, specially if you can do it anonymously. If nothing can be done I'd say you have to look after yourself and consider if you can continue studying there of it is gonna bring you problems (i.e mental health)

If you need to, feel free to reach out to me in the future, even if it's just to talk things out. Here's hoping you'll be able to get through this, follow the career you want and help as many people as possible as a councelor. 

My response: 

Holy shit. Thank you so much. This is so unbelievably kind. I’m honestly floored.. I can’t believe you took the time to type all of this out for a total stranger.

I emailed my professor at like 5 this morning because I hadn’t fallen asleep yet asking if we could meet (she has no office hours) and she hasn’t yet responded. I don’t expect that meeting to be particularly productive, but I feel like before I can go to a higher level (administration for my program, something of the like), I ought to try and resolve this directly first. I’m just still kind of reeling. And I was agonizing for hours over whether or not it was even appropriate for me to set up a meeting to express my concerns and clarify my expectations for conduct. Which then prompted me to get pissed off that I was debating whether or not I had the right to advocate for myself (during a lecture that was, no shit, supposed to be largely about advocacy), while the people who said those things during class didn’t think for a single second about whether or not they should consider what impact their remarks might have on other students.  

You’re definitely right about having a sense of community. I’ve always been too afraid to seek it out very directly for a few reasons (one of which is being bi, especially currently being in a relationship with a man), but I’m recognizing that I’m really going to need something like that. So I looked up my school’s LGBTQ center and they’re having a discussion group tonight. They said on the website to call the wellness center for the location, so I did. The first time I called I got hung up on... and the second time I called I was transferred to a second person who also didn't have the information... she said she would pass on my contact info to the woman running the meeting if she saw her and that she would "hopefully be able to get back to me within a day.” I even specified that it was somewhat urgent. I’ve heard nothing so far and the group is supposedly in a few hours.

Sometimes I wish I were more stereotypically/”visibly” LGBT or something. People constantly talk very openly about “people like me” to my face without realizing that they’re doing it. I know I’ll have to face people with intolerant views when working with clients, but I’d been led at every possible juncture to believe that attitudes like the ones expressed in class yesterday were not welcome among colleagues in this program. I can even understand allowing a space for students to discuss those issues without being punished for it, but I feel like it’s the faculty’s job to then invite the student to challenge their prejudices as opposed to unequivocally validating them. I can’t imagine that my professor would have responded the same way if a student had said they were unwilling to work with people of color due to a belief that they were inherently inferior/morally depraved or some such bullshit. I don’t understand why it’s okay to express those views about people like you or me. But standing up for myself in most contexts, especially in a formal one like this, is almost completely new for me (and it has NOT ended well the few times I’ve tried in the past). But I’m not okay with being quiet on this. I’m just not.

Anyway. Honestly, thank you so much. Even having one person reach out like this who has some sense of understanding (and, it sounds like, well-learned jadedness) and such remarkable compassion. 

As an aside: I'm finding that starting this counseling program has been a really good motivator for me to find effective coping strategies and productive behaviors. Like even though I feel personally incredibly overwhelmed and discouraged and a desire to isolate or be otherwise destructive, I have a harder time letting myself give into that because it goes against all of my values as an aspiring counselor, and because I can't expect my future clients to have the courage to do the tough shit if I can't even find it in myself. So that at least is a good thing.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

Brother:

Please bear with me here. I am trying to be supportive and to say only that which is helpful and necessary. I am trying to show discretion while still being genuine. It hurts me to say that this is the last time for a long while that I can take you at your word when you say that you care about what I think / how i feel. I honestly can't believe you didn't tell me you were proposing today — and the feeble excuse you used when you finally did tell me... after the fact. Did you honestly think that I would tell Linley? That I would tell everyone I knew and that she would somehow find out because of it? In using "keeping the surprise" as a rationalization for your choices, you implicitly communicated that you can't trust me to keep a secret. You trusted Mom and Dad (and Lori, I think) enough to tell them. Why was I the last to know (aside from Jay, who's a little busy today on account of having a celebration in preparation for his own meticulously-planned wedding)? I found out you were engaged because someone called me asking if I had seen Linley's snapchat story. Try and imagine how that feels. In my experience with your relationship with Linley, I've noticed a certain trend: You sometimes do things while seeming WILDLY oblivious to how they impact other people. Yes, it's your life and your choices, but Lord. I sometimes feel like you have showed me time and time again where your priorities lie. This time, from where I'm standing, it's clear to me that you chose the convenience and comfort of shaving a few months off of the time you two spent living in separate spaces over the deep and multifaceted emotions of your entire family. When we had a heart to heart after some boundary issues (aka the shower incident) when Linley & I lived together, you said something that has stuck with me. You said that, in the moment, it never occurred to you how your actions with her might impact me — and you didn't know if that obliviousness was even worse than knowing that what you were doing was self-centered / hurtful and choosing to do it anyway. You told me that you were appalled at your own thoughtlessness and that I deserved better from you. This time, though, I don't see how you could claim that you don't realize how profoundly hurtful and selfish the two of you are being with every step of this process. From what I gather, each of us in the family has individually been honest and vulnerable with you about our feelings. In response, you have chosen the course of action that seems to me like most deliberately spiteful thing you could do on every front. Truthfully, I don't know what you could do at this point to undo that damage. I don't recognize the person who's making these choices. I can't reconcile him with the person I have seen you working to become throughout your life. You have always been a peacemaker, a giver, the most thoughtful and considerate one of the three of us kids. Your choices here are at once bewildering given who I have always known you to be, and utterly unsurprising given the person I've seen you be when Linley is involved. This is the last time, at the very least for a long while, that I'm willing to talk to you about your relationship with Linley. At this point, I don't see the purpose in continuing to invest emotional energy in telling you how I feel or the effect your actions have, because your choices seem to communicate very clearly that you don't care enough to change your behavior. I don't understand how Linley is okay with any of this either. Assuming she knows even a fraction of how the family feels, I cannot help but ask the both of you: is this what true love does? And Zach, I have to ask you one last time: Are you living according to your values? Is this really what you feel called by God to do? Does this truly feel good, feel right to you? Don't tell me your answers to these questions. I just hope that you sit with them and feel at peace with whatever conclusions you reach. I love you. I care about you tremendously. I am trying so hard to be a better sister to you, to not take you for granted or abuse your goodwill. At the same time, I am disappointed. I have lost a good deal of respect for, if absolutely nothing else, your decision-making. Once again, I find myself burnt out on conversation surrounding your and Linley's relationship. I'm not particularly interested in an explanation from you about any of this; frankly, I don't think I want an apology either. I don't think I could put any weight to it if you gave me one. I know that your relationship is not about me, or mom and dad, or Jay. But your relationship and the way you two choose to operate does impact us. I want so badly to be supportive, but right now I don't think I could reliably and genuinely do so. I need some time to think, to process, to get some distance from a relationship that, if it isn't toxic to you, is certainly toxic to me. Right now, I can't separate you as my brother from you as Linley's fiance. I need some time. I love you. I wish things were different.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

An excerpt (as always)

I'm actually, thankfully, not apologizing for needing space. Even in the moment, I knew that I had to let myself need that without owing penance for it. I'm both sorry and incredibly frustrated that space is something that I still need in those moments. I'm frustrated with myself that there are still times when I can't let myself fully feel my emotions in the presence of another person — any person; that the impulse to put on that distant, protective veneer is something I can't always control. I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are a safe person — the safest person in the world to me, honestly. And some naive part of me still hopes that that will make you unconditionally immune to the aftershocks of trauma. I can't help hoping that the old trope of love 'breaking through' mental illness is true in those lowest moments, because it honestly feels like who you are and what you mean to me and how you treat me SHOULD be enough. By all rights, it should be enough. It should be realer than the memories that dictate my actions and responses in those moments. I want to act on the knowledge of who you are, to be able to fully let my guard down even when blinded by fear (arguably especially then). I want you to know that even when I'm afraid or I curl up in a ball and hug my knees to my chest or my whole body tenses like I'm bracing for what comes next, I trust you. I know that you are safe. And I'm angry and scared that, inevitably, sometimes all of that is still not enough. Even though I have somewhat miraculously gotten to the point where I can know that YOU are a safe person, there's a deeper part of me that still insists that I am not safe anywhere or with anyone. This is something that goes back to before Luke, before Michael. I don't think that it even started with Jason but it un-fucking-doubtedly intensified hugely because of him. For some of the most formative years of my life, the only way that I could feel something even faintly resembling safety and security, even in my own home, was by bricking myself up in whatever small space I could find and putting as much distance between myself and everyone else in my home as possible. Even when I was little, the surest way to make zach angry was to really cry. So I learned to hide and cry quietly when necessary. Once jason moved in, "when necessary" became "continually." And with him and my mom as my two primary examples of just how ugly emotions can be when they detonate around other people, I learned to hide by default and feel only when utterly unavoidable. I learned to think down and in until it was like I was seeing everything through fogged glass. I'm still unlearning those things now. I'm to a point where I'm more comfortable being human around you (and around people in general, but especially, especially you) than I would have ever imagined I could be around anyone. But I still have so much work to do. If I really thought that my natural temperament was one where I needed to be alone to feel and process things, I wouldn't be so frustrated, and I wouldn't feel so guilty. Maybe there are times when I will need that in a healthy way. But i say that I have work to do because in moments like the one where I left, it wasn't because I truly wanted to be alone. It was because I wanted to be with you, and to be comforted by you, so badly that I was terrified. I was beyond ashamed at the intensity of what I was feeling, at my inability to just fucking pull it together a little bit, and I couldn't bear the thought of you seeing me in such a pathetic state. I couldn't imagine you seeing that, dealing with it, and wanting to stay. I was afraid that all you would be able to do after that was pity me. I was afraid of how connected you make me feel to myself, and how enticing you make it to feel things without insulation or numbing agents. It was too much. I needed to put everything behind that murky glass again. And I am at a point where I have compassion for myself in that moment and others like it. I'm frustrated with myself, but not angry with myself. I try not to blame myself for still needing that crutch of dissociation at times. At the same time, I want better for myself. I deserve better, and YOU deserve better. I guess I do still feel like I let you down in that moment because you did nothing wrong. In fact, you did everything right. And for me to run away like that feels so cowardly and selfish and wrong. I do forgive myself for needing to isolate, but I have a harder time forgiving myself for how I know that hurt you — even though I know you understand. But I do expect better from myself in the future. Not just for your sake, not even primarily for your sake, but you are such an important piece of this. Often i wish that I could bring you a person who was more 'whole' or what have you. I wish you didn't have to be so patient or careful or cautious with me because of the scars other people gave me. I wish I could be more consistently okay and that I didn't often leave you feeling so helpless. I know it's not productive to think that way, but that doesn't seem to stop me. I know I can never give you a person who is undamaged or free of baggage, and i suspect that you'll protest the very idea because that would make me a wholly different person, but I do want to bring you something that may be even better. I want to give you a person who is healed. Not just surviving. Not even just recovering. Thriving. I don't know exactly what that looks like just yet, but I know that I'm working my way there. And i know that you have already helped me so much more than you can ever realize. I just love you, Drew, so fucking much. And i want my actions to show my love instead of my dear, because my love for you is what matters to me. The fear can get fucked.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

Oh! Yay! Good!! One of the mistakes I've made in the past is keeping quiet about a lot of my self-talk for similar reasons to the ones you just gave. I didn't want to upset the other person; i didn't want to come across like I was just fishing for compliments or being dramatic or saying those things for attention; I didn't want the other person to feel bad when they couldn't change my mind; I was afraid that voicing those thoughts out loud would prompt an epiphany in the other person wherein whatever rosy spell they were under would be obliterated and they would see the truth of who I was. But I realized that I wasn't protecting the people I love at all by all shielding them from my self-judgement; i was sniping them. In concealing those thoughts, I rendered all of my loved ones powerless to help or support me at all. I blindsided them when I rejected their perspectives or refused to believe them when they spoke highly of me. And i hurt them when I found myself unable to accept their love because I thought they loved a lie, an impostor. Staying quiet about my uglier thoughts wasn't noble; it was cowardice. It wasn't selfless or mature or strong. It was a force field that only i knew about. And i watched person after person run into it with no warning and offered no explanation when they came away bruised. That's some bullshit. That's what I've gotten a lot better at doing! Positioning. That's really well put. But it helps that that's also how I think of things now. I used to be confident (if not certain) that I saw THE truth about a person or situation. Now I know that whatever picture I get is subjective and incomplete. Not without its value, but human and limited. I can only relay my truth, my perspective, and my insight. That is valuable and finite and those are both good things. But if I ever slip into old habits, call me on that shit post haste. Please.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

PLOT TWIST

Well.. Okay first I have to say this. The part that makes the least sense to me is my ability / willingness / active desire for intimacy with you. I genuinely thought that was very possibly something I would never be capable of ever again. I can’t overstate how god-awful it felt to tell you about the STI. I was so fucking scared, and I felt more ashamed than I can remember being since I was consumed by my eating disorder. How I went from flinching at the sound of my name being said out loud to where we are now is utterly inexplicable to me. That’s part of why something as simple as your fingertips skimming over my skin caused such a profound, visceral response. It was a total shock to my system. An oasis. And it made me aware of how totally I was starving myself of intimacy, of how desperately I still craved it. It was disorienting and wonderful and terrifying. So I hid. I hid, but I didn’t run away. And what shocks even me is that I came back. I came back before I was ready to, so I ended up hiding again. Which obviously was so fucking unfair to you. I was a mess and I didn’t handle it gracefully at all. For that I will never stop being sorry. But then, somehow, I came back again. And this time I found I could endure the brightness of being seen and the warmth of being touched. I was astonished to find that these things weren’t purely painful; that a part of me could enjoy them. And that part of me hasn’t always been the loudest, but it is the truest. It’s the part I find myself listening to. I know I’ve poured all of myself into working towards being capable of that, but all of my hard work is still insufficient to explain how it’s actually possible. The obstacles at this point really feel like they ought to be insurmountable. But God, I am so, so overjoyed that that is not the case.

But, at the same time. I’ve spent this last year+ intently, relentlessly, deliberately working at finding and building my sense of self. I always felt fragmented before, or hollow where a core should be, or hopelessly adrift. This was the year that I did what it took to change that. And that work is paying off. The things I was building were tested in ways I never would have imagined and in ways I never could have withstood if they had happened even a months earlier than they did. It’s been a devastating year in many ways, yes, but more important are the ways this year has been a triumph. I am more whole and centered than I have ever been in my entire life, and I continue to be that way even when I am hurting or afraid. I don’t scatter with the wind. Finally, finally, I am tired of hiding. I am ready to outgrow it. So in these ways, when I think about why now, I can’t think of any time that could have been better.

And as for the question of why you, of all people. Jesus, Drew. Where do I even start. Of course, you are intelligent and hilarious and charming and a hundred other wonderful things that make me enjoy you as deeply as I do. But those things alone are insufficient to truly address the question. You are a singularly engaging and empathetic person. In our every interaction, you exhibit not only a willingness to tolerate every part of who I am but an eagerness to embrace me in my entirety. There is a kindness to you, a gentleness that emanates from the very foundations of who you are. Compassion is a cornerstone of your worldview, more so than I think you often realize. You are not just accepting; you are welcoming— you perpetually invite me closer with no pressure or expectation or ulterior motive. Just by being who you are, you challenge and inspire me to openly emote, to revel in my own sentimentality and goofiness and, perhaps most importantly, to celebrate the hard-won ability to choose to be soft. You have taken risks and broken your norms and radically stepped out beyond your comfort zone to meet me where I’m at in crucial moments, and you trust me enough to let me do the same for you. You are constantly looking for ways to grow and improve and keep moving forward; you are incompatible with stagnancy. That is a trait to be venerated. You are one of those rare few people whom I believe are genuinely altruistic. You give joyfully, genuinely, and without expectation. Your selflessness is not a performance of virtue; it is a manifestation of your authenticity. You put so much thought and care into how you impact others (especially me, but that’s just speaking from my very limited experience), to the point where it permeates and punctuates your every word and action. You want so deeply to do good, to BE good. You are honest and brave and you treat others with respect. Being the recipient of your affection is genuinely breathtaking. You work tirelessly to ensure that you are a safe person for me, even though such a goal would probably be deemed impossible by most people at this point. You are patient and understanding on a level that I don’t fully comprehend. In all the time I have known you, you have always been these things, but you more openly and more deeply embody them with every passing day. Jesus, Drew, how could it be anyone but you?

[Holy. Fucking. Shit. What a roller coast of emotions. Where do I even start? That was so incredibly well articulated, for one. And it fills in A LOT of blanks about… everything. Thank you, so so much for being this open with me. If I could kiss you on the nose (and every other conceivable place) right now, I would. Fuck. I didn’t think you were willing OR able. Hannah. Given all you’ve been through, I couldn’t blame you for never being capable of intimacy again. I’m so so glad that isn’t the case. Clearly the STI wasn’t a deal breaker or something I thought was shameful. At least I really hope that was clear. Because my immediate and only thought was how do we work with/around this? We. As in, together. Oh fuck. Hannah. You’re too far away. I really would love to hold you right now. And rest my forehead on yours. Thinking about all you’ve gone through and that there was once a time that your own name made you flinch, fuck. That hit pretty hard and I had to stop for a bit to collect myself and take a breather. I care about you QUITE A LOT. In case you’d forgotten. An oasis. My god, that is such a beautiful, poetic way of putting it. Oh is that what caused the full-body blush? Hmm You don’t have to be sorry for hiding, it was always okay. I don’t blame you. Even then. When I didn’t know why, when I didn’t have answers or expectations. Only hope. Thank you so much for coming back. My god. I can’t thank you enough. Is that warmth still painful sometimes? Whoa hey now. Yes, all of your hard work IS sufficient to explain how it’s possible. Hannah, give yourself some damn credit. (this was in response to the first long text, before I had read the second) I’m overjoyed that isn’t the case too. So much. Oh shit wait, never mind. See, you know exactly why. Do you remember me telling you that you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for? There were a few times. It seems like you’re finally giving yourself some credit. That actually makes me really excited. Yes yes yes yes yes (yasss kween, I rolled my eyes too, don’t worry). But. My god, you’re articulating this better than I could. I feel so proud of you for how far you’ve come and how much you’ve overcome. I’m so glad you view this year as a triumph. Whole and centered? Bloody hell. So many happy tears. I love you, Hannah. You are wonderful and beautiful and strong and you never cease to amaze me.]

[ninety-three-million-miles]

It is so goddamn confusing

To care about you so much and miss you perpetually while also hating what you did to me. It should be so much easier to hate you; I can’t do that and I won’t try to. I hate that this still fucks me up on a constant level. I hate that I can’t fucking move forward. I can’t shake the feeling that none of this was supposed to happen.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

I wonder how many times I’ll have to have this conversation over the rest of my life. I wonder how many times my hands will shake while I teeter between quiet tears and vacant calm, waiting to hear that the person across from me echoes everything I suspect about myself. I wonder how many people will rightfully decide that I am not worth the risk. I wonder if I will ever be able to hate myself any less for being a contagion. I wonder if I can ever feel anything but white-hot terror at the prospect of intimacy.

I am burnt out by this body. I want nothing more to do with it.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

.

Time passes.

It carries you, nipping at your heels to match your pace; heaving to pull you forward as your toes dig into soft clay.

You are borne on a current you can’t control. This simple truth is your ballast.

Time passes.

You cry for her continually. Daily, you wade through the accumulated echoes of your desperate shouts of “traitor” that you’ve hurled at your reflection. They gather in heaps at your doorstep, inky black barbs coated in tar, penance for each violation of your house arrest. Every night, you add to their number. Even now, your voice is still hoarse and often breaks.

You dragged her with you away from the flames, but in doing so, you made her watch as everything around you burned.

Time passes.

You visit the ghost of your new home often, peering between blackened beams at the already-crumbling foundation. A bolt of lightning struck the frame before walls could be finished; everything was razed to ash in seconds.

You lay flowers where the hearth was supposed to be.

Time passes.

You consider the possibility that your quarantine is self-imposed, that your exile need not be a life sentence. Hearing your name aloud no longer makes you flinch.

You begin to feel like more than a ruin.

Time passes.

The decay recedes, like a time lapse of fruit in a bowl played in reverse. Sometimes, now, if the hand is gentle enough, you can be touched without bruising.

You limit the number of times in a day you are allowed to apologize.

Time passes.

You still cry for her — and, in stolen moments, you quietly cry for yourself, too. You accept that you were fracture critical; you remind yourself that you did not begin that way.

“I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” bottleneck at the back of your throat. She deserves more than a stillborn “I love you.” You both deserve more than being collateral for another’s pain.

Time passes.

You have taken stock of your broken pieces, envisioned the ways they used to interlock. The old design no longer inspires you.

You gild your jagged edges and fuse them into something new.

Time passes.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

Pandora’s pithos

as told by Hannah to an initially uninterested audience:

ok so there were two brothers who were Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus. Prometheus is a bonafide homie who gets a bad rap, like Lucifer or Guy Fieri. so the gods think Prometheus is a scablord because he stole fire from them and gave it to humans so we could stop being such miserable shits blindly bumbling around our world without tools or cooked food or any important shit like that. so they like chained him to a rock and had him eviscerated by vultures everyday for a small eternity or whatever but then one day they were like “haha yoooo fam we’re chill now.” and “forgave” him. prometheus was like “um......press x to doubt” and didn’t trust those shady motherfuckers because he is at least as smart as your average four year old. so one day prometheus is going on a trip and he’s like “my man, epimetheus, broski, listen. while i’m out, don’t accept any gifts from the gods bc they’re tiger-fuckingly insane” and then he peaces out. well, wouldn’t you know it, eventually Hermes(Greek)/Mercury(Roman) swings by the place and is like “AYYYY u seemed lonely so we, the gods, whom you should trust, have decided to send you this companion, an unfathomably beautiful woman named Pandora who will fuck things up in no way whatsoever.” and epimetheus was like “ok i know my brother warned me about literally this exact scenario but look at how hot she is! that obviously has to mean that this isn’t a trick, somehow.” and he welcomed her into his home.     so they chilled for a lil while and then the gods showed up with ANOTHER gift and hermes/mercury was like “in a move that is equally unsuspicious, we have decided to present you with this giant jar called a pithos, which is super heavy and mysterious and is to be opened UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES EVER, which is part of why it’s totally a super rad gift that is not at all part of any kind of malicious plot to fuck over your dickbag brother whom we hat—i mean, who we forgave. because we’re chill. like we keep saying.” and epimetheus heard all of that and just said “oh fuck yes, a jar!” so now he has this kind of stupid but beautiful woman and this giant mystery jar that she is to touch under no circumstances (this is literally the story of the garden of eden). and epimetheus is like “oh dip, you know what i’m gonna do? i’m gonna regularly be gone all day and leave my semi-sentient sex doll at home with nothing to do and nothing to think about except the giant-ass enigma jar that i put in the middle of our living room. i fail to see any way in which these conditions could lead to some sort of unmitigated disaster.” and so naturally one day, pandora plays the white person in every horror movie and goes, “ok ok i know the gods said NEVER to open this for ANY reason but like, i bet they didn’t think about how fucking BORED i would be all day and so they’ll probably just like shrug it off if i open this ominously weighty jar of unmentionable evil for just like A SECOND.” so she opens the jar just like a teeeeeensy bit and IT’S THE FUCKING SPANISH INQUISITION ok not really but it was a bunch of terrible shit collectively referred to as the Troubles. you know, death, disease, suffering, the works. so pandora’s like “SHIT SHIT SHIT I FUCKED UP I GOTTA LOCK IT DOWN ASAP” but all the Troubles are stinging her as they’re flying out like little wasps who are somehow even worse than actual wasps. and right then epimetheus gets back and the super-wasps start stinging him on their way out to fuck up the world and he’s just standing in the doorway like “THERE WAS LITERALLY NO WAY FOR ME TO ANTICIPATE THIS SEQUENCE OF EVENTS.”

and that’s the part that everyone knows. what’s weird to me is that the most important part isn’t one that i hear talked about most of the time.

so Pandora finally gets the lid closed but by the time she does there’s literally only one thing left in the pithos. like wow you evaded being a complete and total failure by a technicality so minute that it’s not even statistically sifnificant. ya dun goofed. especially because as it turns out the last little winged creature in there was called Elpis, or Hope. and it convinced Pandora to let it out of the pithos as well, which frankly wasn’t all that hard i imagine since pandora is a weapons-grade melon. so pandora’s like “well, i fucked everything up this hard, i might as well lean into it and be true to my personal brand” and yeets Elpis into the sky. But instead of wrecking even more shit like all of the other Troubles, Elpis is like the party mom of the whole clan and starts trying to help the world get its shit back together. she comforts the dying and the sick, she brings peace to those who are fighting, she gives strength to the suffering, etc. so a bunch of terrible shit got out into the world, but let’s face it, the gods were big enough dicks that that was going to happen anyway. but what pandora did was she brought hope into the world at the same time and that’s some pretty important shit.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

i give up

    so. context. when michael sexually assaulted me, he didn’t force me to do anything to him at all (i mean, i don’t even knowhow he would have since i was semiconscious BUT). and at that point in my life, despite having been in multiple relationships in high school, i almost never let anyone touch me or see me without clothes on (TBT to my fear of bathing suits. yikes). with nick g., i would do what i thought i was obligated to do in order to be a good girlfriend, although neither of us was comfortable with more than oral sex. and he would always push me to let him touch me or reciprocate in any way but i flat-out refused. basically my eating disordered hatred/shame towards my body combined with a steadily reinforced conceptualisation of sexuality/femininity as toxic due to my relationship with my spirituality to produce this all-out terror at the idea of being exposed or vulnerable or viewed as sexual in any way. so basically despite being in relationships and having gone so far as to regularly perform oral sex, as far as receiving goes, i was downright virginal. and Michael didn’t make me do any of the things i was kind of used to forcing myself to do at that point because i felt some twisted sense of owing it to my partner; he did something that’s apparently incredibly unusual for the circumstances—he performed oral sex. that was already something that i already feared and avoided at all costs because of the degree of vulnerability; because of the fact that, as the receiver, the focus would be on my sexual pleasure, which was something i learned to see as sinful and shameful by nature; because i would be seen as a sexual being instead of a sexual utility for gratification — and at that point, the most experience i had with being perceived as a sexual being was with Jason’s incredibly predatory comments and advances; and because (partially due to a particular Evangelist dogmatism and partially due to said encounters with jason) even the thought of being the focus of someone’s sexual desire/attention left me feeling tremendously dirty, used, and empty. and oral sex is way more vulnerable to me than any other sexual act ugh.     so i already had this huge complex about it, and Michael and I had actually specifically talked about that in our friendship because I confided in him about some of the fucked up shit Nick would do/say and how that still affected me. he knew that i had never let anyone do much more than kiss me, and he knew that my sexuality was a huge deal to me. and normally, in an assault situation, people do what Luke did on New Years—they take, they force the other person to do things for their gratification, and they obviously give zero fucks about the other person’s sexual pleasure. a very small minority of rapists are actually sadistic in that they derive pleasure specifically from causing the other person pain or violating their boundaries; usually, they’re just either indifferent or they’re (often unintentionally) ignorant of non-consent. and that’s where what michael did was the absolute most fucked up thing he could have done to the person i was at that time. we’ll set aside a fact that i’ve told almost no one, which is that i had my first orgasm that night—after all, i’d never let anyone touch me, i had never even considered masturbation, and i was drunk out of my damn body to the point that my body’s physiological responses were so completely separate from my headspace or my emotions. he did a lot of other things over the four and a half hours i was in his room; he took a lot of firsts and granted himself the right to explore my body at his pace and according to his boundaries. he did these things knowing full well that i would be not just unwilling but incapable of consenting to them if i were sober and fully conscious — even if i hadn’t slurred “i don’t think sober hannah will like this” at one point before drifting out again, he knew that i dreaded every possible encounter with sexuality and intimacy. he knew that feeling exposed in any way at that point in my life was agonizing and all-consuming for me. and, knowing all of that, he did what he did. it was desecration disguised as an act of service. superficially, he performed a sexually ‘selfless’ act, but he was never after sexual gratification. he always, always hunted my vulnerability. he saw what a sacred space i had built for myself and how fiercely i guarded it and he saw it as a challenge. not only that but he saw himself as the right person for me, regardless of the fact that i didn’t agree, and i told him that. many times.     if he had forced me to do something to bring him pleasure, or even if he had simply had sex with me, i would have been so much better equipped to deal with it. it would have still been traumatic, but it would have been an extreme point within a whole data set of being/feeling manipulated or taken advantage of in regards to sex. i had already taught myself how to disengage my mind and my body so that i could fulfil my obligation without making myself truly vulnerable or involving my emotions. i could have employed that same utter pragmatism (in fact, i’ve done just that with Luke) and it would have meant that I would have been able to insulate myself at least partially from the violation. but he saw me at quite literally my most vulnerable—alone in his room, semiconscious, blacked out, and emotionally defenceless (i had come over that night to hang out with the group because i was really down and i needed my friends). and yet the first thing he did when he closed the door was ask me why i was still wearing my shirt. no part of me was allowed to be guarded from him. and that feeling of violation, of absolute exposure, of being hollowed out by another person, of defilement so diffuse that not even my pleasure belongs to me—those are still here. The act of receiving oral sex in particular is one that I struggle with. I reflexively feel unsafe, overexposed, violated and tarnished at the thought of it. But I’ve wanted to challenge that in myself, to reclaim that experience and that agency of choosing to be vulnerable with a person. And I did challenge that with miles. There was definite progress: I learned how to let myself stay present, how to tell him if I was starting to shut down or drift away, how to say no without apologizing, and in select moments, how to actually enjoy myself. I still cringed whenever he suggested it, always kept that destabilizing hyperawareness, but I learned to experience other things, better things, alongside it. Even in the healthiest, most nurturing, most positive and safe relationship I have ever even imagined, I still couldn’t shake that core drive to recoil from that intimacy.

so long story short, now we’re at erika. where allowing myself to exist as a sexual being is also tangled in a layer of accepting my bisexuality. i don’t do well with firsts, and she is a huge ‘first’ in terms of milestones with intimacy. not just sexual involvement but emotional and romantic investment with another woman—that’s huge. and wonderful, and terrifying. but i had to start that process all over again of working up to getting myself to a place where i was comfortable enough with choosing to let her give rather than receive. it took months with miles even after a couple years of pre-existing close friendship, and there were still times when i had full-blown PTSD responses. well, with erika, that lucky woman got to witness one of said ptsd episodes on the first fucking night that we hung out at one of our homes instead of in a public place. i think i told you about this. but she was just fucking flawless. so empathetic and understanding and accommodating and comforting and patient. that event anchored her in the category of ‘safe’ for me. and so i want to challenge myself to be vulnerable again, to show that i am capable of that intimacy with more than just one person, to work from the start to distance past trauma from my present and future behaviour patterns. and i’ve been talking about it a good amount with Deborah (LGBT therapist) who has been really supportive (as has Lisa, other therapist) in me challenging my defense mechanisms and cognitive distortions with all of this. so, a couple of weeks ago, four or so months into our involvement, i actually brought up the topic myself and asked erika instead of simply acquiescing to a request. that’s the only time i’ve ever received oral sex from her. once. as the culmination of months and years of hard personal work and a desire to nourish a healthy relationship with my sexuality, and i enjoyed it.

cut to about a week ago, i am experiencing constant, nearly excruciating pain and discomfort. terrified, i make an appointment at the TCU women’s health center. i go in, and the OBGYN tells me that it’s either genital herpes or folliculitis/cellulitis. for a whole host of reasons that are irrelevant, folliculitis makes way more sense and is much more probable — especially when taking into account the fact that i was/am simultaneously experiencing folliculitis for the first time on one shin, and i was a dummy and used the same razor for both areas. and erika does not have genital herpes; even if she did, i don’t actually know how i would get it very easily since there’s no, uh, direct contact? yikes. i’ve never seen her with a cold sore either, but a lot of people are asymptomatic so that’s no guarantee. but even if she had HSV1 (cold sores/oral herpes), the things that would have to happen for me to contract genital herpes include: 1. she was either ignorant of the fact that HSV1 can be transferred to genital herpes through oral sex, she doesn’t know she has it, OR the virus would be shedding independently of an outbreak; 2. this invisible, undetectable window of contagion would just so happen to align with the FIRST AND ONLY TIME in four plus months that i have received oral sex, 3. that the STI to which i would be exposed would happen to be one of the few that is incurable and, BONUS, can be REALLY symptomatic, 4. that, despite being discerning and responsible to the point of paranoia at times about safe sex, i will have still been the only one of all of my friends (that i know of) who has had a miscarriage AND contracted an STI, 5. that, in the course of trying to dismantle and replace my negative associations with experiencing sexual pleasure, i will now have incurred TWO of the worst possible consequences, and with an STI that is stigmatized as “dirty” so strongly that people often CONTEMPLATE SUICIDE after hearing a positive diagnosis. 6. that i would happen to develop a staph infection (my first that i know of since the second grade) on my shin, an area that i shaved with the same razor CONCURRENTLY with also contracting genital herpes, and that the two conditions would present essentially identically

because of the severity of the outbreak and the fact that before this i’ve never had so much as a yeast infection, the OBGYN said that, if it were herpes and not staph (folliculitis and/or cellulitisP), then i almost certainly would have contracted it within the last 2-14 days. so it’s not like this is significantly possible that it could be a latent thing or that i’ve just never noticed outbreaks before. so i would be very confident that i got it from erika.  but, again, the probability of all of those things up there compared to the MUCH, MUCH simpler and more probable explanation of folliculitis points towards the fact that i didn’t “catch” anything from anyone; i just need an antibiotic.

but i went in on Monday and they sent the herpes test in, which takes 3-5 days and then they email the results. in the meantime, just to cover both bases, they start me on herpes medication and also one of the antibiotics used to fight MRSA. both of them, especially combined, have wreaked havoc on my functionality. i’m woozy, dizzy, nauseated (and starting this afternoon, i’ve been vomiting pretty consistently), my insomnia is way worse (not just because of stress), and OH. you’re supposed to avoid sun exposure as hard as possible, but it turns out that being in direct sunlight for the time it took me to walk from my classroom to my car in the parking lot was long enough to give my lips a sunburn so bad they stopped just short of blistering. and these are the meds that are supposed to be healing me and they’re decimating my ability to operate effectively. i took two finals today while in no state whatsoever to do so. i may not be able to graduate from the honors college because i cannot fucking finish my thesis. so today. i go into the health center because my shin, which initially looked like it had a lil bug bite of some kind, is now getting kind of scary and deep red veins are becoming visible leading to it and i’m just generally uneasy about that situation. so they schedule me with the doctor i saw a couple days prior because she already knows my whole situation and she knows what meds i’m on since she prescribed them. i’m sitting in the empty room, idly looking at a poster on the wall, when she breezes through the door and, casual as you fucking like, “well, it’s herpes. we got the results back today.”

So the moral of the story is that now I feel more ashamed of my body than ever and I feel filthy and utterly unattractive and I never want anyone to have to get near me again.

And I have no fucking clue how to have this insanely important conversation with Erika. 

I know that when the dust settles, I'm going to be angry with her. Because like it's your job to stay educated about your own body and health. Especially when it can literally color the rest of someone else's life. And I know our society is fucked up about sex ed, especially queer (ayooo) sex, but the internet is a thing now. I look to her in many ways as a mentor in how to engage with my own sexuality with regards to women, and so the (near-)fact that, not only is she ignorant of crucial information, but that I'm the one who has to be the object lesson. I'm the collateral because she either hasn't gotten tested recently or because she couldn't be fucking bothered to google a condition that she knows she has. But also I already know that that anger is a dead end because no amount of resentment or blame can undo what's been done. And I'm so afraid that this has poisoned my ability/desire to be vulnerable with her. Or with my sexuality at all. I'm scared at how much this strengthens the voices of my eating disorder. I feel violated again and I was so unprepared for that from her. But it's the same feeling of contamination. My body once again is unfamiliar to me; it doesn't feel like mine. And I am doing everything in my power not to make black-and-white conclusions and not to just 'accept' that vulnerability is inseparable from shame or regret, but I feel so blindsided by this. And my desire from day one has been to challenge myself to let myself grow and accept my sexuality and even enjoy it without the hangover of those negative emotions. And it's hard, it's so so hard in this specific moment, to keep from shutting myself off to all of it. But then I would be back where I started, or worse. I am just so frustrated and afraid because this is my first fucking experience with a woman and it felt like a clean start where I allowed myself to explore my identity without shame or apology and it was a safe space to do that. And now it's like a barrier has broken and all of the most toxic ways that I internalized my sexuality have swept in and they're burning everything else down. And I know this next part is logically ridiculous but it just really fucking feels like a one-two punch where yesterday I had another three hour conversation with Zach about why he believes that marriage is solely heterosexual and that having gay attractions is fine but you can never act on those attractions in a way that is morally alright. Where there's this undertone in my family and a lot of my support network at home my sexuality is something about me that's broken, or sinful, or if the attraction itself is fine but the action is sinful, something that's an affliction or a burden. The best treatment I can hope for from most of the people who claim to love me more than anything else in this world is for them to see me as diseased rather than deviant. And that's fucked up. Fighting my mom and my brother on that paradigm is exhausting, and my ability to disregard their judgements is weakened by the fact that I feel very much diseased and dirty as a result of expressing my sexuality. I hate that. I hate that linley knows because I know she feels the same way as my brother and that she sees this as the inevitable consequence of me choosing sin. And I just don't have the energy right now to fight back anymore. I just want to be embraced by people I love and who love me, but it feels like my family has to pause and put on surgical scrubs first. And my newest safe space now, for the time being at least, is an echo chamber for all of the worst things I believed about myself. I just. I think a good way to sum this up would have been "I am overwhelmed."

[ninety-three-million-miles]

Coming Out

The whole time I was trying to evaluate whether I was ready to come out or not, the worst case scenario I could imagine was my parents just not believing me. I knew I wasn’t going to be exiled from the family or shit like that. so since I’d reached that point of confidence in my identity and my voice, I felt prepared for even the worst possible outcome because their lack of validation no longer nullified my perspective. in getting ready for the conversation, pretty much the entirety of my preparation had to do with fielding my mom’s denial/dismissal. but it turns out that my gauge for determining whether I was ready or not was significantly off. She believed me immediately, which shocked me on multiple levels because, a: she acknowledged that bisexuality exists (although she had no understanding of it), which is not a given even within the LGBTQ community. and b: she instantly accepted that my bisexuality was valid without challenging whether I was right about myself — which, for my parents, is virtually unheard of. But she was devastated at the news. She was mostly incapable of talking about it outside of her fears re: how my sexuality impacts my attitude towards Christianity — and it was clear that any issue would be with my perception, not with others’ perspectives, however intolerant or ignorant. My mom has often cited my ‘woundedness’ as the cause of my reticence to claim the ideology with which I was raised, but she’s never considered that those wounds were not self-inflicted.

Some direct quotes (I took a voice memo for part of the conversation and literally took notes as soon as I got home because there was so much I knew I needed to work through): ¥ “who is this girl? Does she spend the night with you? I hope she doesn’t.” ¥ “I don’t want this to get in the way of finding out who God is in your life” ¥ “the people that love you are always going to love you but they may not approve of or accept your choices” (said while mandating that essentially none of our family friends or san Diego community can know about this because they ‘wouldn’t take it well’) ¥ “I’m really sad. It doesn’t feel good to me that you’re having a relationship with a girl.” ¥ “I’ll still always have hope that you’re going to come home with a guy someday and go, ‘mom, this is the one.’” ¥ “please don’t ask me to meet Erika. I’m not at all ready to go into that world with you. I don’t entirely know why, but it’s a place that is so painful and I’m not willing to go there.” ¥ “I have to grieve the loss of a dream”

She was also deeply concerned with my behavior in public, asking if I was ‘shoving it in people’s faces’ at every opportunity. Of course, she’s never asked me about my public behavior with boyfriends. She was so disgusted by the notion of me being with a woman. She kept saying that she was so afraid of the possibility that one day I would bring a woman home for Christmas, of how painful and uncomfortable and devastating that would be for her, as if I would ever subject my partner to an environment so toxic and hostile. She returned many times to the fact that she was just so certain that God’s will is for a man and a woman to be in a relationship/married, and that anything else is not God’s intent, and therefore not natural of course. Intrinsically perverse and hedonistic. She assumed that I had been dating Erika while also dating Miles because bisexual = promiscuous nymphomaniac, you know? She also assumed that Miles didn’t know I was bisexual because he would have broken up with me if he had. She elaborated that she couldn’t imagine a romantic partner being able to trust me or feel secure in our relationship because of the possibility that I would leave them for someone of the opposite gender, which would be so much worse for some reason. She stopped just short of explicitly expressing pity for any romantic partner I may have, lamenting that they must be haunted by fears of being inadequate and threatened by my indiscriminate taste. She expressed a concern that I would never be able to be fulfilled in a relationship because I would always be in a state of conflict over ‘which way to go.’ As if the gender of the person I commit to reveals my true sexuality. In the moment, I was really appreciative and focused on positive aspects of what she was saying. Yes, most if not all of the things she said were objectively still bigoted/ignorant, but what I heard more than anything else was her working really hard to meet me where I’m at. and I’m still grateful because there are avenues of potential growth that I see moving forward. But as time has gone on I’ve been less and less able to ignore the parts of the conversation that are rooted in a kind of veiled hate/toxicity, and those roots run deeper than any of the potentially positive things she said. When faced directly, they’re utterly incompatible with a healthy understanding or genuine acceptance of who I am. But these beliefs are veneered with pseudo-tolerant terms and proclamations of unconditional love. And that’s actually harder for me to deal with than outright hate. What’s really getting to me is that she said all of these things and more, but bracketed them with “I love you and I accept you for who you are.” And she doesn’t understand why that’s confusing to the point of being painful and disorienting for me to hear. But by insulating her beliefs with statements of love, she claims immunity from association with bigotry/hate, and from the possibility that she might have cause to re-examine her beliefs. My parents have a pattern of doing this, to the point where it’s been pointed out by multiple therapists as one of the most toxic elements in our family dynamic. They say “we don’t expect perfection” as a preface to scrutinising my actions to identify all of the ways I have failed; they bookend their disapproval and disappointment with “we support you and enjoy your independence;” they say “we value your voice and respect your boundaries” before erasing them and delineating their own instead. And I learned a while ago to never show my confusion because despite this clear pattern, they get offended, angry, and hurt if I mention that it’s hard for me to register love when it’s utilised as a garnish for condemnation. If I were to point out that these supposedly sacred words, when used in that context, are clearly more for their own comfort and reassurance than my own, it would be spitting in their faces. Of course, I don’t think that my parents need to be super gung-ho about everything that I do or the all of the choices that I make. and as of pretty recently, I don’t need their approval in order to feel okay with doing what feels right to me. I value it, but I don’t need it. But there are a couple of issues with applying that framework to this particular topic/situation. The primary one is that, in disapproving of my sexuality/continuing to believe that it is against God’s will and implicitly perverse or wrong in some way, that carries the implication that my sexuality is a choice. My parents have every right to disapprove of my career choice (which they sort of do) or my political beliefs (hahahahahahaha holy shit) or the way that I dress. Hopefully, they can still accept me, but they certainly are not obligated to approve of those particular choices. But when my mom says “I think that a woman being with a woman is wrong, and I don’t approve of or accept the ‘gay lifestyle,’” she communicates that a part of who I AM is wrong. Throughout the conversation, my mom seemed to shift a bit towards the premise that that who I am is okay, but acknowledging or engaging with this facet of my identity by dating a woman is not. And so in that way she can “accept” that my sexuality is not a choice while still blaming me for it as if it were. It’s like having a child who’s naturally blonde, telling them that you love and accept them for who they are, and then forcing them to either shave their head or dye their hair brown — and punishing them every time their roots start to grow out. The whole conversation got less grief-tinted as it went along, and superficially it seemed like my mom was already starting to find peace with it/me. But I suspected even in the moment that the only reason she was able to focus increasingly on her “acceptance” of me is because she began to displace all of her cognitive dissonance onto the hypothetical woman I am/might be dating in the future. Because I’m bisexual, she has far less trouble categorizing any relationship with a woman as a choice for me rather than an expression of my nature. And as I’ve gotten to process our conversation, it becomes more and more evident that she blames/resents the other woman in that equation, situating her as a scapegoat instead of confronting those feelings as they apply directly to me. In her paradigm, the other woman is the one who corrupts me, who tempts me and leads me away from the path that God intends for me. And it’s a lose-lose for that woman. Because if she ends up hurting me or playing a negative role in my life, then that’s just more 'evidence’ that gay relationships are inherently unhealthy, perverse, and toxic. But if I’m genuinely happy with her and I see her as having a positive/healthy impact on me, then she’s all the more dangerous — insidious, even — because this woman has convinced me that I’m happy and fulfilled, all while pulling me further away from God. But by interpreting things this way, then no matter what, I am the victim and the other woman is the villain. And this narrative also suggests that her discomfort and intolerance are not only acceptable, but are actually the most loving reaction she could have — because embracing my bisexuality means giving up the spiritual battle for me and encouraging me to turn my back on God. It’s a very tidy ideology that allows her to utterly dismiss my agency in choosing to be with a woman. So, through that lens, she doesn’t view me as evil, but instead, at worst, as someone who makes mistakes (i.e. dates women). And those mistakes are in no small part the result of being misled, manipulated, and enabled by my female partner. And so even if I’m acting against God’s will, I’m just sinning out of misguidedness, not that I’m irrevocably damning myself to hell — after all, we are all sinners. So when I act upon my attraction to women, I’m choosing a harder path than the one God had planned for me, but I’m not automatically a lost cause. To her, the danger actually lies in me continuing to ‘sin’ without remorse or shame, as well as in her notion that ‘the gay world’ is ‘inherently godless and self-centered.’ In that context, if she actively welcomes my involvement with women, then, rather than being a beacon of truth and redemption, she is subverting my well-being by reinforcing the 'lies’ that I can have a healthy, fulfilling relationship with a woman, and that such a thing is natural and falls well within the boundaries of God’s love. She is, then, ~loving me well~ by clinging to her intolerance. (have we talked about my personal history with the phrase “loving someone well”? It is deliciously appropriate here). I heard this quietly condescending undertone as a common thread underpinning every analogy she made throughout our conversation. She compared loving ‘a bisexual’ to ministering to convicts in prisons. She compared choosing to date a woman to Adam and Eve choosing to eat from the tree in the garden of Eden. She compared my coming out to the hypothetical of her telling me that she had had an affair and that my parents were divorcing as a result. She’s positioned God just over her shoulder, speaking directly into her ear, and she’s painted me as a happily shackled prisoner in Plato’s stupid fucking cave. From that angle, her convictions are unassailable — and my perspective, however sincere or well-reasoned, is based on illusions. Part of where i’m struggling in terms of moving forward is that i feel like i have little to no starting ground for finding a support network/community with this. It’s pretty evident at this point that the community i grew up around in San Diego is not one that is welcoming at all (but they believe they are, which is more painful to me than outright disownment). And yet i’m about to go back there, live with my parents, and completely be immersed in that environment again. Only now it’s undeniable that i cannot fit there. But it’s already clear that i’ll be expected to pretend that i do. That couldn’t be a sharper contrast with the ways that i feel at home and safe and accepted with Erika. Being with her has been kinstukuroi for the soul. The prospect of going back home, a future I was so excited for but is now reframed by this past weekend, really struck me for the first time tonight. I’m overcome by fear and dread in equal parts, and I feel tremendously vulnerable. I’m afraid that my binding is still fragile, that I can be pulled apart again. I feel powerless to protect my hard-won self-unification from being labeled and treated as brokenness, and vice versa; I feel a deep, discouraged heavy-heartedness that I finally feel unified and whole and secure in my self-affirmed identity, and that my mother is ashamed and disappointed of the space that my newly solid self occupies. [“If you can bear to hear the words you’ve spoken/ twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,/ and watch the things you gave your life to broken,/ and stoop to build them up with worn out tools…”] I am exhausted after explaining and defending myself to my current environment, which is astronomically more accepting, or at the very least more straightforward about where I stand. After finally being able to outwardly acknowledge who I am, I find myself begging no one in particular to offer a way to keep me from having to return to an environment where I am explicitly expected to be ashamed and apologetic for the bravest and proudest four months of my life, and where I am told that it is worse for others to be uncomfortable than it is for me to be unwelcome among self-proclaimed friends and family. It’s not hate or rejection that I fear; it’s the denial of their presence, the misnomers of love and support that are assigned to them. The last several months have yielded the sort of clarity that I’ve sought tirelessly for years, they’ve grounded me firmly in the present and within my own body and self and senses, and they’ve encouraged me to cautiously consider taking up residence there. It’s been the culmination of years of breaking and rebreaking myself until I am both gentle and pliable. I’ve finally reset a critical fracture, and I desperately need time to let it heal. I have hope that I’ll figure out a way to do so; I always have in the past. This is the biggest challenge yet, but I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, too. I just wish I didn’t feel largely alone and ill-prepared heading into it. I am so, so tired and I’m realizing that I’ve only just started out. More than anything, I wish that my parents viewed the reality of their daughter as more worth protecting than their charade of tolerance and Christlike love. I wish they could claim their prejudice for the dogmatism that it is. And I am afraid of the fact that, for the first time, I am allowing myself to feel these things face-on. I can’t call out their denial/delusion without also noting my own. So long as I kept these feelings in the periphery, I balanced amicable coexistence with my family and internal self-advocacy on a razor-thin tightwire. It isn’t sustainable. It’s impossible to selectively assign weight to someone’s words and perspectives. To keep myself from being poisoned by my family’s (with the partial exception of Zach) attitudes, worldviews, and perceptions of me, it is very possible (if not inevitable) that I’ll have to emotionally distance myself from them significantly. I can’t take their loving words to heart and pretend to discount their unloving ones — especially when they are so often dressed identically. If I believe that their praise is meaningful because it is reflective of who I truly am, then I would have to accept that their criticism is just as grounded in reality and truth. But accepting their premises means utterly dismantling and discarding my voice and my beliefs, even my beliefs about myself. Choosing to agree with them means choosing to believe that I perceive most things incorrectly, that I fabricate more narratives than I remember accurately, that I invent reasons to feel pain and play the victim, and that my inability to feel welcome in most of their environs is the product of my own stubbornness and warped vision. And yet, they are my family. They never aim to be abusive, and are being completely genuine when they tell me they love me and want nothing more than for me to be happy and flourishing. And I often have a hard time seeing why they are any more to blame than I am for the fact that the love we offer is in two radically different currencies. I am in so many ways an anomaly in my family; it makes very little sense that I am who I am given how I was brought up. From their perspective, I really am the difficult one. And it seems like I am constantly finding new ways to reject the values that are sacred and central to them. I know without a doubt that their intentions are, and have always been, good. I’ve been trying to delay the building reality that their good intentions are fundamentally incompatible with my well-being, and that inevitability is finally coming to a head. I don’t predict some catastrophic fallout or dramatic crisis, but a painful and incremental extrication, degree by degree. Not completely, I’m sure, but my ill-fittedness is already incontrovertible enough that I feel somewhat emotionally homeless. That will pass, I know, as I build other homes whose dimensions can actually accommodate me, but that doesn’t change this part of the process from being overwhelming in the worst ways.

[ninety-three-million-miles]

this is the absolute best i’ve been able to articulate any of this so far so.

yeah i know exactly what you mean. like even when i was with miles it was never a question for me that i would study abroad or do italy or go live with my parents in Shanghai for as long as i could because there are some individual experiences/goals that exist outside of the relationship. and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are incompatible with the relationship by any means, but having that space/ambition carved out for individual growth and experience is a super super healthy thing i think. 

and that’s part of why i felt like i wasn’t good to be in a relationship right now. like i feel like i’m not at an age/place in life where i can healthily sustain being accountable to another person on that level. like obligated (not that it was a chore to talk to miles every day at ALL, but it was just expected) to be accessible and to bear the responsibility of knowing that so many of my actions had a significant impact on another person. part of me felt like a relationship, even an incredible one like i had with miles, includes a sort of contract where you agree to be more or less the same person from day to day. of course there’s a standard deviation of circumstantial influences and stuff, and of course people change from day to day on an incremental level, but for me right now the scariest part about long-term commitment is committing to having a consistent identity. and yes, i think to an extent most (if not all) young people feel that way and share that apprehension to varying degrees, but i’ve come to realize that i’ve allowed myself so little identity exploration. because in some of my most formative years — age 15 onward — my goal was primarily to be one of two things: i wanted to either be no one at all, just to be invisible and occupy no space and have no needs and be of no consequence, or i wanted to be a mannequin whom other people dressed to play the role they saw fit. essentially, i spent so long wishing that i could disappear except when i was needed that i think i started to believe that other people make me real. and since starting treatment in 2012 that’s gotten much better, but in a lot of ways i’m still so behind. and I’m only just now zeroing in on the fact that a lot of my struggles with mental health either stem from or are aggravated by the fact that i have a very tenuous grasp on my identity independently of the roles i play in others’ lives. because i still don’t trust my voice or even know how to let myself speak until someone i do trust validates what i see as real — my parents, miles, my best friends, whomever. and i need to learn how to trust my experience and my voice sometimes without needing that permission/approval/validation.