shayprose

[shayprose]

On long term recovery -- and what we don't talk about enough

I recently hit 29 months of continuous sobriety. Yay me! That's 883 days without any drugs or alcohol; so many hangover-free mornings, so much money saved, and so much joy in knowing that I have an actual lifetime ahead of me now to learn, to experience, and to grow.

And there are many, many more of us celebrating similar milestones nowadays, which means there's now a profusion of inspirational messages ricocheting across the internet. Instagram posts and TikTok videos that all say, "I was once an addict, but look at me now!" and I love them. I want there to be more of messages exactly like these, from all walks of life, so that the shame holding people back from making their own important decisions starts keeps melting away. We only get stronger by sharing our stories. Share yours, loudly and often, if you think it could help someone.

But (you knew a but was coming) we haven't done a very good job at talking about how hard it is to stay this way.

We're never really done recovering.

As long as society continues to normalize alcohol in social situations, we're going to be confronted with the same choice over and over and over again: do I stay healthy or do I do what's "normal" again?

For example, think about the last time you were at a restaurant. The server came to the table, likely introduced themselves, and then asked, "Can I get you started with anything to drink?"

To someone who is freshly sober, who hasn't dined out yet, this is an absolutely terrifying interaction. After years of alcohol abuse, the most natural thing in the world would be to respond with, "Dirty gin martini, please -- bone dry. Yes, exactly, that means no vermouth. Thank you!" Instead, the freshly sober person has to make a choice. Hopefully, they can stammer out, "No, just water, please, or maybe a Diet Coke?"

Someone who is 883 days sober, who's probably had a few hundred restaurant experiences since their first day off the sauce, can probably answer that question pretty smoothly now. We have developed a new muscle memory, so it no longer seems like we're breaking an ancient tradition when we abstain from that social ritual. We might even have our favorite dinnertime beverage of choice now, if water isn't going to cut it (mine's a soda water with lime). That is the new normal for us, and that's great.

On a good day, anyway.

People who are 883 days sober don't talk about their bad days as often. You might not even know what that means, if you aren't one of us. So I'll try to explain.

Consider the boulder Sisyphus pushes up the hill. It's really, really heavy, and although he might gain some strength after a while, the weight of that boulder doesn't lighten at all. On a good day, Sisyphus can probably roll that thing for miles; we can assume he's taught himself some good mantras ("one day at a time," and "progress, not perfection," and "every sinner has a future; every saint has a past") that help him through.

But what if Sisyphus is having a bad day? What if he's tired -- extremely tired, mentally and physically -- and hungry? What if, goodness help him, he accidentally steps on a pile of loose sand and stumbles a little, and that boulder bears down on him even more than it did before? He can't just stop pushing that boulder. He needs to keep going, even when he feels like he can't. Even though he's been pushing it for 883 days straight and could teach lessons on boulder rolling, sometimes, that boulder is going to feel heavier than it did when he started.

Sober people have bad days. I've been to hundreds of restaurants since I started this new journey, and it no longer feels strange or foreign to me to not have a martini glass in front of me while I'm dining, but that boulder starts to feel very, very heavy if I'm tired.

Or sad. Or lonely. Or hungry.

If I'm too much of any one of those things, something in me starts to whisper, "Well, the last time you felt this way, you had a few vodka sodas, a gin and ginger, and a glass of wine, and you were fine. Just be fine again."

We're taught in the program (AA, for folks on the outside who don't know what I mean) that you should learn what your limits are. It's up to you to figure out how heavy your boulder is each day so you can make decisions appropriate for your state of being. We learn early to check in with ourselves whenever we have a craving ("HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, or tired" is a good one to keep in mind!) so we can rationalize the sensation a little.

We learn what our other coping strategies are as we go, which is partially why I'm writing this all down now.

My boulder is feeling very, very heavy lately. I know it's a combination of being sick (thank you, global pandemic), putting work above my mental health (I just started a new role and need to prove myself over and over and over (the byproduct of an addict's brain, which I'll probably write about next)), and a month full of traveling instead of resting. Knowing why it's heavy is a big part of the solution, but I don't want to skip over the hard part of this story.

When the weight of my addiction threatens to disrupt my life, I need to think about what choices I'm making that might be making it feel so heavy -- and then engage self-preservation instincts like my fucking life depends on it.

Over the weekend, I watched two people I love so much share beautiful moments with each other. It was one of the most surreal experiences to see a gay couple surrounded by so much love while they celebrated their happiness together, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

But. There's always a but with us. I had only just recovered from a week and a half of extreme COVID symptoms and drove 8.5 hours to Philadelphia. I didn't sleep more than 4-5 hours each night, and then I drove 7 hours home. I didn't prioritize eating much while I was there, I was angry at the other drivers on the road and at all the traffic I kept hitting, I was lonely because I don't have a partner of my own to dance with or kiss at weddings, and I was tired. So fucking tired.

HALT. I know the acronym. I know that this means my boulder has hit critical mass again, and all I wanted -- all I really want right now -- is a bone dry gin martini (I promise I'm safe). For a very long, very scary hour after I got home, I manically cleaned the kitchen so I would distract myself from all the alcohol in our house. I cried while I stripped my bed to clean the sheets I never washed from when I was sick, I played Eric Whitacre as loud as I could in an attempt to self-soothe, and I tried watching What We Do In The Shadows so I could zone out from myself for a while. Then I went to bed.

And I didn't tell anyone I felt this way. Instead, I posted a chipper Instagram story to let all the people who knew I was driving home that day know that I made it home in one piece.

We don't talk about this part of recovery enough. We don't talk about how every single social interaction means having to decide whether you have enough energy reserves to get through it without hitting your limit. And because we don't talk about it enough, it feels strange when someone who has more than a year of recovery behind them says, "No, sorry -- I can't. I need to prioritize myself right now."

It's taboo for me to talk about how if I were to have gone to a restaurant last night, I would have started sobbing when the server asked me what I wanted to drink.

The boulder stays heavy. We just learn when we can push and when we just need to fucking rest.

(I've since talked to my sober friends, just in case you yourself are newly sober and are wondering what you should do in these situations. Talk to your community. And if you don't think you have one yet, you do now -- I will be your community. Just let me know. <3 We can't do this alone.)

[shayprose]

On my gender identity

When I was really little, I was othered almost immediately. I never could be sure why; I played outside like all the other little boys, I loved climbing trees, I went fishing and camping with my dad and brother, I played soccer and ran cross country. I did all the rough-and-tumble things that kids my age did, and I enjoyed them.

Despite those objectively masculine activities, there was always a specter of difference hovering around me that everyone could see but me. My dad's friends would curl up their lips in revulsion at me when I would tell a story about the hummingbird I saw in our feeder and the cashiers at our local supermarket would make snide remarks to my mom when we were checking out, as if I couldn't hear them ("We gotta toughen that boy up, Cathy. He must be last picked often, eh?").

Words like "faggot" and "homo" and "queer" were starting to punctuate sentences when it came to any discourse about my existence, and all of it was said around me, never really at me. With my youthful indifference to the world, I sort of shrugged it off and assumed all of my friends experienced the same thing. Why would it be just me?

My tale isn't really a unique one, and I've told this story before. I bring it up again now because, after many, many months of therapy, something new has started to bubble up in my subconscious as a result of facing all of these scarring memories: I never really liked being called a "boy." To be clear, I don't think I would have liked being called a girl, either.

Before high school, when I was still hiding inside my very active imagination, where every tree stump represented a way to talk to the fairies my Irish grandmother taught me about, I wrinkled my nose when I'd hear people tell my parents that I "needed to harden up -- be a man." Then, when my friends started working out because it's what guys do, I felt a twinge of fear because I wasn't interested in that (but I started working out, anyway).

I started wondering why I was being told to spend my energy learning how to fight when I could be just as happy writing stories in my head about rescuing children from evil kingdoms? If "being a boy" meant I had to exchange my parents' old Halloween costumes, which let me pretend to be Winnifred Sanderson, for a set of free weights, then I wanted no part in it. I just didn't know what else I'd call myself except for "girl," and that didn't fit, either.

I knew that because my cousins explained that to me. They are two beautiful and talented, powerful women now, and they were raised in the south before they were transplanted to the ultra conservative north. As such, they had a fairly similar upbringing to mine -- girls were girls, through and through, and boys were boys.

When we'd play together, I was so excited to brush their Barbies' hair and would dress them up in different outfits, but I knew by then that I had to pretend to hate it because this is what girls did. Not boys. So I developed this covert ops way of getting them to let me play with their dolls that involved a lot of cajoling: "Come on, Aimee -- I bet I can braid her hair faster. And also, let's maybe exchange tops, because your Barbie is a princess and I think mine just wants to visit the fairy kingdom, right? Or am I wrong? I think I'm right." They would remind me that it was weird that I, a boy, wanted to play with their dolls, but they were good sports about it. Thank you for that.

As I got older, the conversations about my differences weren't happening around me anymore -- they were happening at me. It was blunt and always directed right at the tender softness of my identity, where it would hurt the most: "No one knows what you are. Are you a boy? Are you a girl?" "I'm surprised you aren't wearing a dress, you faggot," and "So many people want to kill you. My dad does, even, you freak."

So, I'll pause here because the stage is set -- you know the rest. There were a few harrowing years of suicidal ideation in high school, a lot of black clothing, and the shared desperation I found in a ragtag group of "band geeks" to round out my adolescent experience.

I was a gender betrayer and people knew it my whole life, well before I did. I paid the price in tears and blood, and am paying it now in a whole lot of therapy bills.

When I got to college and my worldview exploded outward for the diversity of it all, I learned in an anthropology class that "gay" and "lesbian" were actually their own genders now (this was more than a decade ago, folks -- go easy on me here) and that gay people in general of course didn't fit the primary genders of "man" and "woman."

'Salvation!' I thought. This explains everything. I lived my whole life as a gay and had no idea that it could mean my gender expression was meant to be different from the true men I grew up with. No WONDER I didn't fit in.

And then the bifurcation of the gay identity became clearer to me. I wasn't just a gay man -- I was a "femme." The lowest on the totem pole. This was pre-RuPaul's Drag Race phenomena, and I found myself having to work out again. In order to be heard or noticed -- or loved -- I had to pile on the masculinity, wherever it made sense, and I had to pretend to hate the rainbow-plastered paraphernalia of that culture. If I embraced it, I'd be pushed even further away from the acceptance I desperately craved, and so I dismissed a lot of what my peers were doing. "Being gay is not my whole identity," I'd say, proudly. "I am much, much more than who I sleep with."

I didn't know back then that I was constructing an even darker narrative than the one I was forced to accept when I was a teenager: the gender identity that I thought I could inhabit safely and wholly -- a gay -- ended up betraying me again, and I had no other choice but to numb that hurt (a different story, but enter addiction). Other "gays" were so quick to dismantle the familiarity I was hoping for, even at my liberal arts university. It wasn't long before I found my way to the real culprit here: language itself.

Linguistics, one of my passions in school, unlocked so many new pathways forward for me. I could haughtily dismiss the prescriptive grammarians who espoused restrictive rules and order, declaring those Old Ways dated and not vogue. I could wield the freedom of curiosity like a sword, hacking through the patriarchal power that words held over our society, and I quickly snubbed pronouns altogether. 'Why must we all be thrust into a binary?' and 'Why are some entire languages constructed around this image of the dominant male versus the subordinate female?' were conversations I liked to have with people, which quickly turned into, 'Why can't men wear dresses? Clothing is just something to cover our nakedness; men USED to wear dresses, after all!'

In short, like most college students, I gained the ability to question our world's modus operandi. The word on my lips, to the chagrin of my professors (or joy, depending on who it was), was "Why?" Why must men like sports and women cook? Why are gay men who like makeup the last picked for dates? Why are lesbians the outcasts of the queer community?

Essentially, I was every other non-hetero experiencing the bright sunbeams of their self-awareness flicker through the clouds of our society that prefer tidy predictability: why must a person who is born with a penis never cry?

Fast forward several years, and I'm confronted by the same thoughts and feelings that occurred during my identity renaissance, but at a corporate level. In my current role, hiring and firing are among my duties, and I've experienced an array of conflicting conversations regarding this practice, especially as they relate to someone's identity.

In one example, a manager said, "It's maybe my bias here, but I don't want to see the man succeed. Let's investigate why other people have encouraged him to apply and go with the woman." This manager, who I respect completely, also identifies as a woman. I shrugged, assuming I missed something -- the other candidate (the woman) scored a lot lower in the process compared to the man, and the other interviewers for this role also identified as women. We did move forward with the second candidate and the man bowed out of the process, but it all felt a little forced. A little bit of that same "othering" felt like it was coming alive here for me, despite this entire situation being centered around a man being disadvantaged.

A few weeks later, in a casual conversation, the same manager said, "Guys don't know what it's like to have to fight for everything they have. Right, Shay? You can admit that."

Ah. That was the energy I was sensing. I was being joined into the same category as the "men" again.

I agree with this assessment of inherent male privilege, as an aside. The men who were invited to sleepovers, who had a lot of other male friends, who didn't ever have any rainbows to take off, who could walk into a room and never be afraid that they would stand out for their invisible otherness, who never experienced the cruel digs at their identities before they knew what their identity was -- they probably didn't have to fight hard. But I ... I had this:

You can't play with our Barbies, Shay. You're a boy. That's gross. You can't be on our team anymore, faggot. Go play with the girls. You aren't masculine enough. Butch up. Which bathroom do you use, queer? If you're going in that one, I'll wait here. I don't know how you haven't killed yourself yet, you boy-girl.

And I know it isn't that manager's fault. She knows my pronouns as "he/him," and I've never really thought to correct that. She sees me as a tall, bearded, male-presenting person, and so the assumption is clear to her that I inhabit this body comfortably, and from my newfound confidence from these past few sober years, it probably seems like I've always been this way: happily ambiguous, makeup-wearing and proud.

She doesn't know that a few years before this conversation happened, this moment was part of my story: A time when I was sharing with someone that I wanted to join the Account Management department at a former company, and their answer was: You wouldn't fit in with that culture, Shay. It's kind of a boy's club, you know? Not for you. Stay in Support. and that people who remember me from the past say: Wow -- I didn't peg you to be the type to work in tech. Isn't that where dudes work? Weren't you better off at Sephora?

She doesn't know any of my story, actually. All she can know is that I've never corrected how she interprets my outward presentation. And I know what this sounds like. Another white guy is complaining about not being as marginalized as X.

So, I'm stuck here now, living in the distance between being proud of my fight for what I have and being afraid of how I'll be perceived if I resist when people look at my body and claim some sort of awareness about my journey. If I accept what my mirror says -- a white, male-presenting person -- then I have to ignore the gritted teeth and sheer determination (and the rape and the numbing of my memories with alcohol and the physical assault and the fear at night I have because I "can't take my rainbow off") that it took for me to break into a world that wasn't built for me. I have to start wearing only "boy" clothes again and never do my eyebrows, and I have to "butch up" and "stop crying." It would mean that I ignore the fact that my every atom resents the word "male" on government forms because I have never been, and never will be, what the world thinks of when that word is uttered. I do not share the boys' club experience; it was never an option for me (just ask the ladies at the supermarket who told my mother the 7-year-old version of me needed to be beaten up a little to "toughen me up").

I don't really mind what words you use to label me -- he, they, she, it all feels a little arbitrary -- but whatever you do, please do not tell me that you understand my journey because you can see the beard on my face. To do so would be to invalidate the hell I've climbed out of to be here. And please be kind to people who pushback on your perceptions of their identities. We all struggle in this life, and to hold everyone accountable to a binary we were born into is pretty limiting. If you feel content and whole in your gender that was assigned at birth, then first: I'm truly so happy for you. Second, I hope you can also be open and curious about other stories.

All of this to say: I don't think I'm a man or a woman. I don't know what that means or how I'll proceed from here, but it feels so freeing to stop pretending that I have to fit in. I can just be ... me, beard hair, lipstick, dresses, hiking, and all, and if my story can help someone else who's struggling to find their way, then I'm happy to have told it. This is for you.

And to all the nonbinary, gender fluid, and, most importantly, the extraordinary members of the trans community who've boldly and proudly made this language possible for me to explore: thank you. Thank you for making the world suddenly click into place for me, 34 years later.

[shayprose]

On recovery and fear, and remembering who I am

I brim with the need to inspire and to heal, with words and with wisdom. I want only to help the world, an undertaking burdened only by the length of time I am meant to dwell here. I breathe in the pain of everyone around me and exhale with a desire to find the exacting phrase that will comfort and guide, and usually, I do. Sometimes I don’t. The intention, though, never wavers, and it is how I have always lived this life. 

Telling stories is when I believe myself to be wholly present, my eyes seeing what matters on your face in response to something I’ve said, my ears trained to every caught breath or shared laughter in response to my words. It is difficult to describe the pleasure — no, the need — for my thoughts to connect with your thoughts, my experiences to be shared through recitation, mingling and merging with your own for the briefest of moments. No sexual release can hold a candle flame against the inferno of this feeling, no adrenaline rush can ever compare. If it is a drug, then I am lost to it; no book, however big, can ever walk me back from the euphoria of knowing that my inspiration has inspired another. 

It isn’t hubris. It isn’t narcissism. It’s the painful need to fix you the only way I know how. It’s the overly analytical self taking shape through an all-consuming draining of my own energy to empower you, to hold you up, to be for you a lantern you can hold through the encroaching of your own darknesses. You see, I know those places. I grew up in them. I’ve learned that what pulls me out of them is exactly this: showing you a way. Helping, if I can, with the only talent that I have. Solace comes from uniting with you, for even the moments it takes for you to read this, when we’re magically bound by your reading of my words. It’s exhilarating and exhausting, and it’s in the core of my being to live this way. I used to apologize for it. I am learning to tip my hat to it. I’m still sorry for the intrusiveness of it, and am grateful all the same.

To call it teaching, this “it” I’m defining as storytelling, is to wildly undersell it. I am a learner by nature, and yet I don’t care to impart knowledge. That’s too simple. I need the challenge of plucking away at the layers of your heart. I want to expose the rawness of your emotional self, and I want to enrich it with the beauty I see in the world. I want your tears, your joys, your rage — I want to witness the birth of your own awe at the power of a good story, told by a skilled rhetor, and if that gets to be me, then we’ll share in that joy together. If it isn’t, if all I’ve done is introduce you to the same lust for this feeling, then welcome — we can look for it together.

But more than anything else, more than the blossoming of hope and wonder I crave from watching your eyes light up at each clever turn of phrase, I need the art in storytelling to hold me steady to this place. Without it, there creeps the lurking pull of oblivion, the growing maw made of broken thoughts that opens beneath my feet, where I’m bowed into obeisance by numbness itself. Without the invitation to inspire, without an audience to hold me still, I am a captive of my own disinterest in myself. It’s chilly there under the cold glare of impostor syndrome, without the warmth of your mind touching mine. 

And oh, to confront the rolling eyes and the muttered words said by fetid, discouraging breath, from the mouths of people who snicker at stories like this one. In my darkest days, they’re all I can hear, a dissonant symphony of reminders that if you are not part of my audience, if you do not cheer for my balm, you are an agent of the same darkness that held me down for years and years. Why terrorize someone who seeks only to add another voice to the din, however small or big, whose intentions are only to soothe, to empower? 

I’m afraid of those voices. I shrink back from those rolling eyes. Those people build the cages I live in, from which there’s no escape. And then, the doubt rolls in. Are you one of them? Do you read my words and then snicker? Are you thinking now, to yourself or sharing with another, that I’m stepping too far out of bounds of the life you think I am meant to live? Do I terrorize you, too, just by being?

That’s when the demons dressed in rags of alcohol and other drugs would lend me their false strength, when they’d hold my hands and wipe away the memories of your cruelty. I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t any safer then. They couldn’t hear my stories, those demons, and they didn’t let me find solace in a deeper connection. They would soothe my need for a story by giving me nights spent in the arms of men, who were also in the throes of ragged addiction, casting spells meant to trap and entangle until my body stopped being my own. I still can’t have sex; not without thinking about those nights. And those demons would promise sleep, for the price of hospital visits and grim prognoses, charged at the door of every bar in town.

Even in this story within a story, where I am unraveling big, cloudy thoughts, I imagine I’m only talking to a group of stone-faced “friends” by association only, who never truly counted themselves amongst my loved ones. I feel alone, so unbelievably alone, in this morass of terrible memories, and I can feel the rolling eyes on the periphery of every word, hear the taunts of voices I thought once held fondness for my only gift in this world. Each story that occurs to me, every plot or poem, is chased down and murdered by the reminder that I’m broken now. An unlovable. A memory of a memory.

It’s hard to feel this. It’s not all the time. It is right now. And I know that I’m supposed to feel this; I know that recovery is part of this. I know that the years of not feeling have brought me here, to the altar of my own repentance, where the stories I’m confronted by might not soothe or heal you. They might not bring laughter from your lips, or convince you to love me (please love me -- please? I promise I’ll get better). But it’s part of this journey. Every sinner has a future, and every saint has a past. Zoom forward now, back to the story.

Every word that drips from my fingertips onto the glimmering screen feels so grossly laced in highfalutin allegory, stretched near to breaking by an irrational fear that the carbon-made machine crafting syllable after syllable is an impostor, now a husk of a would-be talent, hollowed out by years of running into the arms of alcohol. Of listening only to the people in my life who sought to show me why I am unworthy. Into the arms of a man who could never really love me back, and who made it easier to fathom the cruelties of this place that stories used to hold me grounded by.

And the circle is complete now, in this part of the story. It started bright and now it’s pretty grim. Nothing gold can stay. The petal blooms and rots. From sun up to sun down, versions of this tale are right behind my eyes, especially when I’m in the room with you, but not really there.

Each day, it’s the same cycle, the same repeating pattern of jubilation, the exhilarating memories of giving speeches, reading poems to enraptured faces, penning stories of power and brilliance for strangers to read and love, and then the twisting guilt that comes from remembering the breadth of my addiction, the relationships I’ve lost or corrupted along the way all echoing back at me with every glance in the mirror. “Who cares about your writing now? About you at all?” their whispers come, the smell of my favorite red wine like a specter after each word lands. 

But I haven’t done this yet. At least, not to this degree. This is surely how pattern breaks, yes? With this string of words, and more like it, all given back to the brightness of light outside of my mind, I am creating what I described above: a balm for myself and for others similarly afflicted. I’m reaching for that part of me who needed to write this in order to breathe easily again, and whether you reach back is irrelevant now, because we get to have this thought, without a shred of the old numbness, brighter than any sun could ever be: 

Our story isn’t finished yet. We have more to share. 

I get to live. 

I am 679 days sober, one brave day at a time, and I can write again. No one tells you that losing the ability to read or write often comes from a decade of addiction, that it’s possible to lose everything that makes you human. But I fought my way back to these precious words, and on my coldest, darkest days, they can keep me warm again. 

Thanks for reading. I love you. 

[shayprose]

On Sobriety, my Quiet Place, and the Sliver

It’s difficult to wrap my mind around where I am now. Not the physical — my body is in Somerville, MA. That’s easy. I’m talking about the bits in between where my body is and where my mind drifts; the emotional and the spiritual, the elusive two states that are hardest to describe.

I’m sober, you see, and with that comes the immensity of where I was. You can’t think of one without the other, and the shoe that drops on the other side of sobriety is — well, it’s a topic that sells sad artists a lot of albums. The little golden medallion I carry around with me to signify that I’ve made it through a year of “recovery” is so heavy in my pocket because of its significance. It’s a little metallic tomb full of memories made manifest of a very, very dark time.

But if I’m practicing radical honesty, then it — “it” — is actually the pinnacle of so many other things, so many other memories, all interwoven into one point. The threads of a long life of good things and bad things, all culminating in the reason I carry that medallion around with me, despite its heft.

It all started when the quiet place I used to go to, deep inside myself, the safe place with all of its carefully hewn comforts, where pleasant memories and dreams were the wallpaper and the rosewood floors, was destroyed in a 9-alarm fire called addiction. And I miss it there, so, so much.

This thought dump is rambling already, but bear with me. I suppose the nature of what I’m saying is the rambling point I’m trying to make: so much of my days now are made up of trying to grapple onto the thoughts that started spiraling around me like a hurricane when I let myself black out every night. Rambling is par for the course.

Right before I tipped over the edge, after a night (or an afternoon) of drinking, I remember thinking every so often, “Self, you’re really fucking up, my dude,” and having the actual sensation that my mind was melting. It was a vibration that ran through my face, surged through my brain, and then ricocheted down into my outer extremities. A few times, that shockwave made me panic and I filled up my Google search with things like, “Effects of alcoholism on the brain,” and “Can I lose my mind from alcohol?”

Scary stuff, right? I think the scariest thing, though, is that after a while, I stopped Googling those things. It didn’t really matter anymore, after all — neurodegeneration was, according to my 2 a.m. panic-laden internet searching, impossible to reverse, so fuck it, right? Black out, self. Go for it. Let it all fall away, and if you remember anything from the night before, well, try harder to forget next time. The recipe can always be tweaked, after all! Don’t stop at three shots after your four martinis. Add a fourth, and chase it with a Truly. Add a beer if it’s a work night — they fill you up so you don’t have to eat dinner.

The quiet place was still accessible in those early days of my downward spiral, to some degree, fragmented though it was. And then, it wasn’t.

The most painful part of my shredded humanity, I think, was when I tried one day to make the journey to my quiet place, through meditation and soft music, and I stumbled over the corpses of the things that I sacrificed for him. There was Dignity, her face bruised and slapped around, still beautiful in death. Over there was Desire, who held all of my dreams on his back, now reduced to a crumpled-up heap on the floor, barely recognizable anymore. The hardest body to see was Hope, whose glowing effulgence used to be the light that powered my quiet place, her soft illumination the fuel for all the pretty candles that lit up the darkness. Her light was snuffed out completely in death.

And so, my light was dimmed in life.

When I finally waded through the mistakes and the tragedies, I arrived at a place I called home for so many years, the place inside myself I built through all of my childhood traumas, to find the windows shattered, the garden ransacked, the curtains torn. Every square inch of my safe haven was hollowed out. In November, 2019, the last time I tried to go there before I let it go completely, I remember thinking, “You did your best, and it wasn’t good enough. You’re free.”

I had woken up at 3 a.m. to make sure he was safe, and when I saw that he wasn’t, I drowned the terror in half a handle of gin. The next morning, when I got to work, I started packing my desk because I didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with it. A few cigarettes, a few pills, a few coffees later, I unpacked my desk, went to a few meetings, and then purposefully forgot the way back to my quiet place.

In therapy, I learned that something like my “quiet place” is a very real trauma response folks can develop. My therapist explained that I was wise beyond my years to have taken so much pain in my childhood and translated it into a lighthouse, where I could always go if I needed to escape. “It’s healthy,” he said, “to know that you are safe inside yourself. What changed?”

What indeed. Before I started writing this, I took a trip through the pages of this old tumblr and remembered where I used to be then, emotionally and spiritually, and the difference seems to be that back then, when I thought I was giving myself wholly to whatever mission I was on, I still held back just enough to keep the quiet place alive. A sliver of my mind was always tethering me to safety, and I think I knew that. I took comfort in that. It was me remembering to spare some energy to keep my own lights on. Good job, me.

There’s no sense in trying to rationalize addiction, and that’s not what I was doing when I flipped through these pages — people spend their entire careers trying to decipher the origins of that disease, and I’m not going to crack the code by rereading a young adult’s foibles. However, I do think there’s something important in the work of sifting through the examples I’ve left behind for myself. To maybe see where the path I walked so carefully through life became so twisted.

The sliver I mentioned before, the place in my mind that tethered me to safety, took a risk. He reached out a hand to someone who said they needed me, and in a state of perfect trust, I allowed him to free fall. After all, who’s wouldn’t after hearing these things?

“I will always love you. It’s just you and me now. Don’t worry; I got you.”

A running leap over a cliff, and then

“This terrible thing is part of me. I understand if you want to leave, but I can’t stop crying. Do you want to leave me?”

eyes closed,

“It’s not your turn right now — I love him, too — but someday, I’ll give you what you need. I love you.”

I let myself fall.

“I tried to kill myself — it was all set up, and I was ready. But your face is what stopped me. I didn’t because of you. I need you.”

I knew I shouldn’t have jumped, but

“I promise I’m trying to get better. Therapy just doesn’t work for me; meetings just don’t work for me. But I’ll do it for you.”

if I could help someone, someone who needed me,

“I told you I’m working on it. If you don’t believe me, then you are hurting me, and hurting me will just lead me back to the darkness. Don’t hurt me.”

then who cares if I get hurt.

“They don’t love you like I do. Let’s go get breakfast, and I’ll teach you how to take care of yourself.”

I fell. That sliver, that tether, fell farther and farther, until I couldn’t see him anymore. He was weighed down by all of the affirmations, all the promises of love and safety, all the hollow words. And the cruelest:

“This is a risk for me, too, but that’s why it’s so important that we do this together; no one else understands.”

Without that tether, without the quiet place, I was numb. And I liked being numb. I kept adjusting the recipe to be number longer, and that was how I lived.

So much of AA is about putting yourself into the shoes of your peers who are going through the same thing. Everyone has a story like mine. They might not think about it the way I do, with personification and magic, but their stories all have a similar energy to them, which is accompanied by a familiar far-away look in their eyes. Every story also has something that ties us all together —

— when all of us felt a spark. A tiny mote of light that flickers behind our eyes and tells us that there’s another path, less twisty and less dark, where we can take a deep breath, if we’ll just follow it. A moment when the free fall stops, even for a second.

Mine came when I woke up next to him one morning, the day after I sobbed my way home on a bus from NYC. We had gotten too drunk at a bottomless brunch, and we went to another bar (probably at my pressuring). I spilled a martini, I fell off my stool, we left, and then the memory becomes hazier. We fucked in our hotel room? We ran through Manhattan to the bus terminal? We almost missed it? My memory picks back up with me weeping because I was confused. Where are we? What are we doing? Please don’t be mad at me — I hate me, too. Will you marry me? Please? When is your next trip? Will you please be safe? Will you be safer if we’re married? I’ll protect you. Just think about me. Am I enough?

My spark ignited. The day after that trip, I looked down at him and, as if I were waking up from a nightmare, I thought, “You will never change. But I can. And fuck you.”

As I climbed out of bed that day, my brain fried from my hangover, I grabbed my phone and sent a message to a friend who had gotten sober the year before. He told me we could get coffee so I could ask him questions. I went. That’s when he told me about a meeting he was chairing. “Come,” he said. “It’ll be easier to explain if you just see it for yourself.”

So I did. My nightmare came with me, supported my decision, held my hand, and while I was watching my friend chair the meeting, as I listened to the stories of everyone in that church basement, I realized I wouldn’t be whole, I wouldn’t be safe, unless I didn’t need that hand in mine anymore.

A year has gone by since then. Over time, the spark grew into a candle flame, which exploded into a fire, and I haven’t had a drink or a drug since. The medallion is heavy, and it brings me back to NYC, to the thousandfold traumas of emotional abuse, to the guilt of allowing myself to be caught up in a whirlwind of self-doubt, but I’m learning to find comfort in the weight of it.

This is the first time I’ve written anything like this since I lost my footing. It isn’t anything like my other posts — my therapist says I’ll probably never get that same easygoing talent back, not without a lot of effort, and so I suppose that’s what this is. My therapist inspired this post, actually. He’s sober, too, and knows what I mean when I talk about not being able to wrap my mind around where I am; when I talk about the weight of the medallion, and the two sides of that coin. He says to me, over and over:

“You can trust yourself again now. You never lost your quiet place, it’s all still there. It’s just different now.”

I’m pleased to report that my new quiet place is in bloom. Hope is alive again and her light is as gentle and steadfast as ever. Desire and Dignity are rebuilding my gardens, and the Sliver, the little tether I hold closest of all, is the gatekeeper, the star in the sky, and the only thing that matters to me anymore. His name is Shay, and I love him again. I can’t wait for you to meet him.

[shayprose]

A little something I wrote for my work’s newsletter. The tl;dr: stay out of Salem this October!

[shayprose]

Resistance is a drag

It has been a minute since I’ve posted anything.

The globe has been turning all along, but I’ve been caught up in the human world and all that it means to be there. 

Trump is our president. Our hard-won rights are slowly being dissolved in a flurry of paperwork and skewed news stories, and it’s disheartening on a very subconscious level. I say this because I do not consciously bring my thoughts around to this nuisance of reality willingly unless I am actively focusing on it, but I know it’s there, deep down, percolating beneath the layers of mental safeguards I’ve put up for situations like this.

Today the subconscious and the conscious merged, in a few different ways. 

It started this morning, when my Lyft driver told me that his friends won’t stop making jokes about global warming. In my sleepy daze, I chuckled darkly and said, “Well, there’s a parallel here -- when people are sick, we get a fever. The planet is sick. It has a fever. The difference is, we can medicate ourselves to feel better...but who will medicate the planet?” I know. It sounds like a very Socratic and philosophical thing to say, but truly -- who will medicate the planet? 

His response was to continue on with a story about how he loves letting his feet touch the bare grass, and how the people around him don’t do that enough; how the same people actually joke about waiting until the planet dies so they can populate Mars. I drew another parallel by pointing out that only a few organisms on this planet vacate their dead hosts to infect another, and that’s eerily what we would become.

We rode in silence the rest of the way.

Later on in the day, I caught myself marveling at my complexion. I’ve been really, truly practicing my makeup skills more often, and my own face is a good enough canvas to try new products, new techniques, new ways of framing shapes; it’s fun, I feel good after, and it helps me perfect the looks I do when I’m in drag (yes, I’ve been doing that, too, which is certainly a topic for another post). 

Partway through my self-admiration, I realized something else -- I consciously wore my sunglasses today, despite how dark it was out this morning. Because I didn’t want my Lyft driver to see me. I didn’t dwell on this in the moment, but I was afraid for another person, in these United States, to see what I looked like with a full beat -- eyes, face, lips, the whole shebang. I didn’t want him to hurt me, emotionally or physically. That startled me for a variety of reasons. 

For starters, I’m the one who constantly encourages everyone around me to live their truest lives. If you want to wear a black lip and rock a miniskirt with a full beard and no eyebrows, you better work. If you choose to rappel down a skyscraper without double-checking your gear first, you go ahead and live dangerously (as long as you don’t accidentally hurt someone else). Do what makes you feel wholly you, and nothing less, but there I was, staring at myself in my mirror, smiling from ear to ear with the completed art, and immediately wondering how on earth I’m going to be able to cover it up so that I don’t have to face the crushing reality that I’m a thin, gay man wearing a full face of makeup, in the daytime, in a nation that strongly discourages this kind of behavior. In a sense, I was afraid of the repercussions for looking different.

Another reason this startled me relates intrinsically to this election. #RESIST has become a motto for me, internally and loudly externally, and I applaud everyone who stands up and says “this is not my president, and these are not my values.” Black rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, science rights, refugees, teachers, and everything else that matters and has a bullseye painted sloppily across it -- these are the reasons we fight against the horde of people who would go to extreme lengths to reverse the small victories for equal rights for all, not just the straight white cisgender male. How am I playing my part if I’m hiding my made-up face, which to some, might be a symbol of feminine gay culture? What am I doing if I’m hiding from the prying eyes of people who might disagree with me?

This idea came up later on today, when I’m answering the back door at work. A very belligerent truck driver stopped by to pick up the piles of refuse left over from the night before. There was an overnight installation of a few components of whatever, whatever, and the garbage piled high for it, enough that a truck company was used to take it all away for us. He arrived, huffing and puffing because of how the loading dock is blocked off, and then demanded to know how to get to our sister store in Fenway. I calmly explained that he would stay right on Boylston and head toward the stadium. His thick, very dense Boston accent was my clue that he has probably driven by it a few times, and his insistence that he is a prominent driver confused me when he told me he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Then he looked at my gray lips and glimmering highlight, rolled his eyes, and changed his tone to one that screamed “you couldn’t actually know, faggot.” He drawled on, telling me that going down Boylston in one direction would make the numbers go down, not up, and I should be clearer. I told him to head toward Mass Ave and read the signs, and he’ll get there without any issues. He snickered again and said “You want me to take this truck down Storrow?” I paused a second too long, just long enough for him to roll his eyes again, and finally yell “this shit has got to go and I need to go, so figure it out!” 

I got nervous when he raised his voice. I’m a thin person without a lot of muscle mass, and this huge guy is already sizing me up as an easy target. I’m alone with him in a hallway. No one can hear me, and my only comfort is the headset on my ear that works maybe a quarter of the time. 

Sighing, I closed the door and told him he would figure it out and that I had to go back to my job. I regretted my makeup and the fact that I shaved my beard the night before. I felt myself regretting that I didn’t look like everyone else.

Shortly thereafter, I am packing up my things to leave when I caught my reflection again. It wass starting to fade a little and there are places on my nose where the foundation was starting to melt from all of my natural oils, but I didn’t touch it up. I knew I was going to take it off, anyway, because of my train ride home. It never once occurred to me that I’d actually wear it on the Orange Line, let alone at the train station by my house. “Did I want to get shot?”, I laughed to myself.

I must have made that comment out loud because a coworker overheard me and, her smile waning, asked, “Wait -- do you really think about that? Is that really something you think about before you go anywhere?” 

My subconscious and conscious minds merged in that moment, and the safeguards came tumbling down. 

“Yes,” I replied, in a quiet, contemplative voice that contrasted starkly to my typical jovial baritone. “I guess I never really thought about it, but yes -- I’m afraid of what would happen.” 

Pause. 

I use #resist on all of my drag selfies because I believe gender disruption and all versions of shaking up the “heteronormative status quo” act as a big fuck you to the people who are trying to take it all away from us. I go to rallies when I can, I give fistfuls of dollars away to charities and activist groups, and I proudly tout my “Not My President” pin. I fight down people who confront the simple civil liberties I want for all of our not-so-minor minorities, and I build up people who are struggling. But I take my makeup off to ride the fucking train?

Resume.

Once, a little bit before my birthday, a very dear friend of mine told me she had a paralyzing thought about the election. She told me she doesn’t believe this, and felt some shame in it, but she knows, deep down, that if she didn’t fight the Trump regime, she would, essentially, be unharmed. She wouldn’t ever be truly affected by it, not personally or physically, and she could just slide on by until the next election. It is the easy solution. 

She could take her makeup off.

She shook her head immediately and told me that she would keep fighting, however, because she believes in the cause. I believe her implicitly. But that stuck with me. She could take her makeup off and she would be fine. She would blend in with the crowd, not for or against the grain, and would be “fine.” 

This isn’t an exact parallel, of course. I took my makeup off today out of fear of physical harm. I read an article yesterday about the tragic death of a drag queen in New Orleans. At the time it was posted, the details were still hazy, but the overall timbre of the piece was enough to shake me a little. New Orleans, while in Louisiana, is still a very rich environment for gay night life, and it’s disturbing that one of our own would be killed for being who she is. For living her whole life. My mind immediately went to Boston, and how the night life here is almost non-existent, and how, despite the bubble of liberalism that pushes against the oppressors trying to break down the peace of our little metropolis, there isn’t a magical forcefield to keep out guns and the hateful people who use them for cold murder.

A young queer wearing a pound and a half of makeup could very easily be the face of the evening news. “Grizzly death of gay Sephora employee leaves community rattled.” “Queer man killed by unknown assailant on the Orange Line.” “Boy wearing makeup beaten to death.” 

Can fear really be an excuse? Is this really a reason to #resist-lite? Am I doing a disservice to myself and to my community, and thereby to the entire movement, by letting this sort of thing change me? 

Someone recently told me that I gave them confidence because of how courageous I am. For doing drag, for being a storyteller, for pursuing my dreams -- all the nice things you hear when someone applauds your impact on their lives. Did I let this person down?

So I suppose, in conclusion --

I will keep wearing my fucking makeup, fear be damned. And so should you.

[shayprose]

Catharsis

Something happened to me last October. More on that later.

I went home recently. Home to me, for the uninitiated, can be summed up as a bank of painful memories. It was where I grew up, in a home that was not always happy, in a town that was very closed-off to anything or anyone in the “other” category. I love my parents, but they could not be a safe haven against all of the external stressors of being gay in a village that hated difference. It took them several long years to recognize that difference was not evil, too. I went to college in that place, however, and it was there that I met incredibly influential people. 

I’ve shared this time in my life before. I was featured at a storytelling organization’s weekly free-tell, where I talked about growing up in a tiny town, where the cows outnumber people, where I found family in my friends and my professors, and how I eventually learned to equate these people with the reason I’m still going. They are the family I’ve chosen, and it’s only fair that I mention them now, in a stream-of-thought blog post about my visit home. 

As an aside, I was also a featured storyteller for WGBH. I don’t think I’ve written about that yet. For posterity, it was the Valentine’s Day telling in 2015. Lawrence came with me to watch, and I told a story about how my version of love is the Unitarian Universalist Church. Or, rather, how it helped open my eyes to what love can be in a world that hates LGBT people. I mention this now because it is pertinent. Rather, it will be pertinent to you by the end. I think.

When I went home, I meant to discuss my future with my professors. That was my primary objective: I wished to gather their insight. Was I fulfilling my potential? Could they help me define what “potential” means in a world that can hardly hold itself up anymore? Who has potential? Who doesn’t? Was being able to write cohesively still a marketable skill? What if I’m not writing at all, but have found a new medium to express myself? Was school still just a racket that private businesses (i.e. loan companies) are banking on to turn a profit? I asked maybe three of these questions of my gurus, whose advice I’ve always taken, and they responded in the way only they know how --

“You are a writer. Write more. Use your brain more. You will at least be happier if you are using your brain more, which isn’t to say that you don’t use it at Sephora...” 

“Here are the ways you can do what you’re doing now with technology and still master the arts you’d like a degree in. Do this, because it will be profitable and you will be happy.” 

“What is the actual goal? Are you happy? Are you surviving? Be proud of those things, because Boston is expensive.” 

They were right. About everything. I need to write more to be a writer. I need to write, period, hard stop. They were also right about survival and happiness, and how those two things are not mutually exclusive. I am not financially dependent on the place that hated me, nor am I stuck in a world that made me ill just to wake up. I am free. That is something.

And then, in maybe 45 minutes, I had my sense of understanding about things ripped out from underneath me. Christine, as she insists I call her now, pushed and pulled and plucked and dug, until I was baring my entire soul to her. I hadn’t been that raw since... well, since where I’m going later on in this post. In her way, which is so unrelentingly kind, she reminded me that words have meaning. That writing for writing’s sake is one thing, but if my overarching goals are to help the people around me, then I should try to marry the two. And so here I am. I will do that. 

Nearly one year ago, I was raped in a night club in Boston. 

I wrote about this five days after it happened. Writing is how I process thoughts and feelings, and I thought that by publishing something like this for the world to see, it would make my experience less real. Or at least, it might make what happened more tangible in my mind. I could see the words after I typed them, which helped me to understand that this was something that happened to me. 

But I immediately made it private. 

I was afraid of what would happen when my loved ones, friends, family members, and coworkers took notice of the post. I didn’t want to answer thousands of questions and I didn’t want to confront what happened over and over again, so I hid from it. 

That is a choice to make. You do not have to share your experience, if you have one to share, if you are not ready. In fact, I encourage you not to unless you believe yourself to be ready. And if you are never ready, do not feel shame. You are a person, and you do not need to let a single eye graze that part of your heart.

I, however, write to feel these days, and this is something that will help me. If my written account of what happened can in some way be a method of healing for one person, then I will not have exposed this wound in vain. 

Here are a few things you need to know before you click the link below: 

- I do not know who it was. - I have not seen him since. I think I may have. I also was very tired and had not slept, and it was only a week later. I do not really trust myself to really know for sure.  - I did not go to therapy yet. I still want to. I will.  - I haven’t edited this piece since I wrote it, and I do not think I will.  - I want to hear your stories, if you wish to share them.  - I am not, however, a licensed therapist, nor would I ever masquerade as one, so please do not ask me for that level of healing. I will go with you to your first appointment, if it will help you. I will help you find a good doctor. I will hold your hand and hug you if you just need to cry with someone. 

You can find the original blog post here: http://shayprose.tumblr.com/post/131583643560/a-blurry-memory

If you can relate, then please, please know that you are not alone. That was the sensation I felt for several weeks. It was crippling and all-consuming. I also felt pangs of silliness, where I asked myself why it was a big deal at all. “Lots of people are raped. I’m nothing special,” I’d tell myself, and then I felt all the crazier for listening to that scared voice. Because that’s what it really is -- fear. I was afraid of people seeing the violation in my eyes. I was afraid of people sensing the impureness rippling outward from my body. I was afraid of people thinking that I asked for it, or that I somehow liked it. So I never talked about it. I smiled at the people around me and held back the desperate urge to beg them to hold me, to tell me that I was still who I was before. 

Writing all of this now also feels silly, but I’ve moved past that. It is no sillier to share this experience than it would be to talk about how happy I am to be in a fulfilling, healthy relationship (which I am, by the way -- maybe I’ll write about that next!). This is life, and this thing happened, and the anniversary of it is coming. 

My gift to myself is letting go of it all, by telling all of you. 

Please be kind to yourselves. 

[shayprose]

A Matter of Heart, Part 3

Exam 1

Heart’s eyes were unfocused and half-closed as he waited to be seen by the doctor. His limbs felt dense and thick, his tongue ran dry, and his chest ached for a yet unknown reason. When he walked lately, it was with a slow and plodding fumbling, and he couldn’t bring himself to really bother caring much about anything. 

“Heart? Is there a Mr. Heart here?” The voice of Dr. Mind was pleasant enough, if not a little short and laced with a slight suspiciousness. 

Heart stood and nodded, glumly and without much of an expression. He followed Dr. Mind down the hallway, where he was ushered into an examination room.

“What seems to be the trouble?” asked the doctor.

Heart sighed. “It’s my head, I think. I just...” He trailed off and made a vague gesture with his hand, signifying the end of his sentence.

The doctor seated himself and made a note on a pad of paper. His desk, which was tidy and extremely sterile, sounded hollow when he scratched his pen across the paper’s surface. The bright fluorescent lights hummed low, filling the silent moments with the buzz of electricity whenever the doctor finished a line. 

“Well, it seems plain to me, Mr. Heart, that you are suffering from a bout of hopelessness.” The doctor looked up from his notes and stared, straight-faced, at Heart over his tiny glasses. “Does that seem sensible to you?”

Heart nodded and then looked away.

“Very well! I can fix that in a jiffy.” 

The doctor motioned for Heart to move from his chair to the examination table. He then helped Heart out of his shirt and then gently eased him back.

“Ah, yes. See? It’s all right here. The scars are fresh.” The doctor drew a line from Heart’s stomach to his sternum. “Now, this may hurt a little, but you’ll be good as new.” 

Heart winced each time the needle pierced his skin. The bright red thread tugged and pulled, but when the Dr. Mind was finished, the scar of hopelessness was faded and the red thread, which spelled the word “HOPE,” seemed to sink into his skin. 

The doctor smiled, satisfaction in his eyes. “You’ll let me know if there are any complications?” 

Heart nodded, his expression already brimming with new life. 

“I will, Dr. Mind! Thank you so much!” 

Heart threw on his shirt, jumped off the table, and headed to the front desk to settle his bill. Dr. Mind smiled and waved him away as he cheerily bade his next patient to come forward. 

Exam 2

Heart stood mutely in the doorway of Dr. Mind’s office, waiting for someone to notice him. Nurse Spirit glanced up and shrieked, then ordered a nearby scrub nurse to find a stretcher, stat. The tears in Heart’s eyes finally fell as he was lowered, gently, into the care of the staff and was whisked down the hallway to Dr. Mind’s examination room.

“Tsk, tsk,” sighed Dr. Mind. “This case is clear as day. Grief.” 

Heart’s face was bloodless, all of the color gone from his features. His eyes swam heavily with tears and he held himself as tightly as he could, as if his insides were trying to escape. Although Nurse Spirit cooed and whispered kind words, all in an attempt to coax Heart out of the fetal position, it took Dr. Mind’s strong hands to pull away his hands. 

“My goodness, my goodness,” Dr. Mind mumbled, as he cut away Heart’s shirt. “You are lucky you came in when you did. It will take quite a bit of extra thread for these scars.” 

The scars wound across Heart’s midsection and chest like the thin wounds of a blade, deep and still bleeding in some places. Grief itself stretched across his skin like cobwebs, and each time Dr. Mind tried to stitch one fresh scar up, Heart’s skin ripped wide with another. 

“Nurse, maybe if I could have your assistance?” 

Nurse Spirit obliged immediately and began whispering again, directly into Heart’s ear this time. Dr. Mind couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but he knew that it would be exactly what Heart needed to hear in order to let the threads take hold correctly.

“Ah, yes, yes, good,” muttered the doctor as he worked.

After several long hours, Dr. Mind snipped away the last thread and tied it off. He looked down at his patient and nodded grimly.

“You will have this thread for much longer, Heart.” The doctor frowned as he continued. “Be kinder to yourself, yes? Chin up, and all that.” 

Although Heart looked much better, he still winced when he stood. Nurse Spirit handed him a fresh shirt and guided him toward the door, where he waved goodbye for a second time. Dr. Mind waved back, a frown still drawn across his calculating expression. 

Exam 3

The sirens in Dr. Mind’s office boomed to life like a clap of thunder. Nurse Spirit jumped to her feet, spilled hot coffee all over her white scrubs, and immediately started snapping orders at the open-mouthed nursing attendants. Dr. Mind himself came running down the hall, his eyes alert and his teeth clenched tight. 

Suddenly, the double doors burst wide, and a team of first responders brought in a badly bruised young man whose face was so swollen, it was impossible to make out any features. Blood pooled onto the stretcher beneath him, and where his limbs were exposed beneath blood-soaked clothing, it was possible to see the thousands of deep lacerations that used to be flesh.

“My god,” gasped Dr. Mind. He went to work immediately, not bothering to rush the John Doe into the examination room. 

Nurse Spirit helped the doctor pull off the young man’s shirt to better assess the situation, and when his chest was fully exposed, the both stopped moving completely, as if someone hit pause on a recording.

They stared, mutely, at Dr. Mind’s most recent work -- red thread that spelled the word “GRIEF” clearly across a bloody chest. The barely-recognizable Heart moaned low in his throat, which snapped Dr. Mind and Nurse Spirit back into focus.

“We will need -- “ 

Nurse Spirit raised her hand and nodded. She went to work with her whispering, this time using her hands to soothe away Heart’s blood-matted hair. With each pass of her fingers across his forehead, she shed a tear, until she was weeping openly onto her patient. Her whispers became more frantic and rushed, until they were not whispers at all, but vocalized pleas of mercy and forgiveness. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Mind abandoned his needle and red thread and instead used red staples as sutures. He pulled skin closed, but this caused it to tear open in other places. He then wound yards of gauze around the open wounds until they were soaked through, and then he did it again, over and over until his hands were redder than his thread. Although he didn’t weep openly, he, too, shed a few tears into his work. 

After days and days of hard labor, the exhausted Dr. Mind and Nurse Spirit lowered their shaking hands to the table and bowed their heads. The orderlies and scrub nurses all lowered their heads, too, and slowly dropped the extra supplies they held. 

“Time of death: 11:30 p.m.” Dr. Mind rasped.

The staff stared at anything but the body in front of them for several heartbeats. Then, slowly, they each did their part to move forward from this moment. The orderlies began cleaning up the bloodied bandages with the scrub nurses, Nurse Spirit wiped away her eyes and moved on to other patients, and Dr. Mind began making notes on his pad. 

When the coroners arrived to take Heart’s body to the morgue, they asked Dr. Mind what he supposed the cause of death might have been.

Without looking up from his desk, which glimmered brightly from having been freshly scrubbed clean, he uttered one word:

“Love.” 

[shayprose]

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, his lips touching the folds of my ear. It was all I could hear. Not even the music, which pounded against me like wave after wave of tidal power, could overpower the sensation of his breath against the side of my face. I remember smiling, trying like hell hold back the blush I knew was creeping across my face. He was also beautiful and I didn't want to look like this attention never happens, even though it doesn't. Not this viscerally, anyway. Not by anyone so wonderfully random. "Thank you," I rambled back, too quickly. Flashes now. Blurred lights. Blurry music. No more pounding bass, no more club at all. Just my breath, coming too fast, and his sweaty body. "You're the most beautiful guy in here." I melted. I thought I was beautiful in that moment. I was indestructible and exotic. I was a sunset and a sunrise all at the same time, and the music, which thrummed through my bones, was a reflection of my heartbeat. Too fast. Too loud. Then the pain. And the blood. And the shame. "You're beautiful" has become the phrase monsters say when they reach out from the shadows to take you away. "You're beautiful" is what ricochets around inside my head when the bass is too loud, and then the fear comes. What are you supposed to do when you can't scrub the words away? They sit on me like dirt and grime, and although my skin is rubbed raw, I can still see them, clear as day. "You're beautiful." "You're beautiful."

[shayprose]

Help. I have done it again. I have been here many times before Hurt myself again today And the worst part is there is no one else to blame

-- Sia -------

“Again,” whispered the fractured voice.

The sounds of ice cracking in the air was enough to dress up the cracking of the whip in another sensation altogether. A far-off clap of thunder, perhaps, or the sinister tearing away of bark from a young tree. Not the truth – not the jagged straps of leather against bare skin.

A few heartbeats passed with no sound at all after that, and the world listened.

“Again,” whimpered the voice.

This time, the settling ice couldn’t hide the terrified screaming. Little rivulets of blood joined the frozen water and made mosaic designs on the ice.

“Why do you keep going?” wept Mind, his eyes wide and full of fear.

Heart turned to face him and frowned. His eyes narrowed in determination and he rose, shakily, to his feet.

“Again,” he whispered, his lower lip quivering.

Mind pulled back his hand fired the end of the whip forward again, tears streaming down his face. One. Two. Three. Each time the knotted leather fell against Heart’s back, Mind closed his eyes and counted before he opened them to see the fresh damage wrought.

“Again,” wept Heart.

And Mind obliged.

Years passed, and the two men stood as they always did, adrift in a frozen wasteland. The ice they stood upon broke and shattered and then reformed overnight, and the sky flashed lightning. Only the briefest flickering of shooting stars illuminated the scene, leaving them both nearly blind in the perpetual darkness.

It was the same every day. Heart would bare his skin and close his eyes, whisper his command, and Mind would do as he was told, unaware of the reason. It was just the way it has always been.

“Again,” cried Heart, the fortitude of his voice so drowned by terror that it came out in a rushed sob.

Mind closed his hand around the whip’s handle and gritted his teeth. As he drew back his hand this time, light flashed in the sky, and he looked at what he was holding for the first time.

Without a second thought, he dropped the weapon and took Heart into his arms. He whispered soothing words as his friend sobbed into his chest, and the two men stayed that way for years.

When Mind stood to take stock of this change, the first thing he did was throw the whip away. He watched as the handle, emblazoned with the word “LOVE”, sank beneath the icy water.

[shayprose]

A Matter of Heart, 2

Heart walked down the gravel-laden path, shyly watching the people he saw as he passed. Each time he turned a corner, new faces stared back at him, and a series of new eyes and souls bared the teeth of simple questions:

Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? Can I know you?

Heart walked forward, head down, eyes furtively touching each person as he went, but never lingering. It wasn’t until he saw the young girl crying that he stopped, his whole attention focused on the situation.

Her tears were full of real anguish and her silent sobbing was enough to fill the room. Her ache echoed across the world, and, like an arrow, found its way straight into Heart’s chest.

Without a second thought, he reached a hand into himself and withdrew a piece of who he is and handed it to the young girl. Startled, she took it and turned it around and around, investigating its beauty. What a kindness, she thought, that this person would give himself so fully to a person he’s never met. Smiling now, she moved to rise and thank him, but to her dismay, Heart was already walking away from her, his head down and eyes carefully guarded.

As he pressed on, he found several more like the girl; a young man whose mother just died, an old widow by her husband’s grave, an abandoned mother with a family to feed… On and on, he walked, and each time he met a victim of this world, he reached deep inside himself and withdrew handful after handful, until eventually, he felt faint.

Heart, his limbs aching and his eyes half-closed, was slower to move away from his the next hurting soul -- a gentle woman whose brother had just died.

“You helped me so much, friend…but it is you who needs help now. Please – Can I?”

Eyes wide with fear, Heart scrambled away from the woman, avoiding kind eyes. He nearly cried out from the shame of lingering for so long. He had done as he always had – another person needed him, and so he gave. This was the way. How could he have made such a terrible mistake this time?

Tears fell from his eyes as he looked nervously from the hand on his arm to the path that lay ahead. Yet, knowing that he was too weak to leave on his own, he let the woman guide him to his feet.

“Who helps you when you are hurt?” asked the woman, kindly, her hand still clasped lightly on Heart’s shoulder.

He sighed and shook his head.

“It is not for me to want, gentle lady,” he whispered. “I am content to know that the people I meet are better than how I found them.”

The woman frowned and looked away, thoughts drifting through her eyes. Finally, after several heartbeats, she supplied, “What will you do when you have nothing left?”

But as she turned back to where Heart stood, he was already walking away, slowly and with a limp. He kept his head bowed and his eyes guarded, and the next time he bent to heal a wounded soul, he felt the kind woman’s touch on his arm.

[shayprose]

Shay-would love to give you a VIA shout out. What Sephora store are you at?

Hey! That is incredibly, incredibly kind of you. Thank you so much for taking the time to reach out, and thank you doubly for offering to write me a VIA. I’m honored and so grateful that my little experience could have reached you in this way. :) I work at the Cambridgeside Galleria location with a team of incredible people, all of whom would have given this inspiring client the same attention. 

[shayprose]

"Excuse me. Can you help us?" 

I whirled quickly to come face-to-face with a tall woman whose overwhelming motherness radiated from her skin. She smiled with her whole face, deep-set wrinkles and all, and she seemed tired, but in an accomplished way. Smiling at me from just under two inches below her shoulder was a curious little boy, whose brilliant blue eyes took in the whole world. He felt more comfortable in his surroundings than I did. 

"Of course! What are we looking for today?" 

She smiled graciously and shook her head. "No, no, sorry. I'm all set," she beamed. "My son, however, has a couple of questions." 

I turned my whole attention onto him then. He was the client now and was in the hot seat. I immediately anticipated questions about skincare for unruly 14-year-old skin or requests for the perfect cologne for an upcoming date. I smiled, my mind already working out the details of our likely conversation, and I was ready to take him straight to the back corner of our store where we keep all of the blue-packaged “manly” products. 

"I was hoping you could help me find the right concealer," he said, in a shy, rushed voice. "You know, for my eyes so I look awake and not like I stayed up all night watching Arrested Development." 

I paused and replayed the scenario in my head a few times because I was having trouble holding in how completely elated I was. There I was, standing in my beauty store, talking to a young man who could not have been older than 15; a boy whose mother had just encouraged to ask me about makeup. 

Instantly, my mind raced back to my formidable years, long before I felt comfortable enough wearing anything other than the denim-and-flannel fare of my hometown; to a few years after that when my only clothing comfort zone was as black and as baggy as I could muster, all in an effort to avoid any unnecessary part of me showing -- an attempt to keep the world from seeing just how uncomfortable I was. 

Goth kids typically aren't trying to be radical, by the way -- actually, they're usually so afraid of being who they really want to be that they will go to great lengths to become an extreme example of something else. It's easier to avoid being told their ideas and dreams are uncool and unattainable if they bury them under layers and layers of black clothing and silver spikes. It also helps keep out the unavoidable influences of pushy friends and family members who would like nothing more than to turn them into carbon copies of everyone else. Who'll try to talk the creepy goth kid into giving up his poetry books and journals if he's wearing a shirt with headless bats on it? 

"Sure! I can absolutely help with that," I responded, my client service smile becoming more and more real by the second. "But I may have to put a little concealer on you to make sure it’s the right color. Is that ok?" My eyes flicked toward his mother. 

"That's perfectly fine," she said easily. With a loving smile for her son, she wandered away to the haircare section and left this perfect example of everything I hope the rest of the world can become in my care. 

I stared at him with a mixture of real respect and, somewhere deeper down, the overwhelming desire to take him under my wing and protect him from the world. I could not stop thinking about how brave he was for standing there in a makeup store and talking to a grown man about concealer shades. Didn't he know that I was called a faggot for wearing red shoes to high school one day? Didn't he know that I was thrown into lockers for wearing smudged black eyeliner? Didn’t he know that one of my teachers told me he felt sorry for my parents because I had long Kurt Cobain hair and wore big, baggy pants? 

No. He didn't know any of that. To him, I was a cool, tattooed adult, and he looked at me with his own expression of respect and awe. I beckoned to a passing makeup artist and asked her to hand me a brush so I could show him a few tricks. During our ten minutes together, he warmed up to me completely, and by the end, he was comfortably asking me hundreds of questions: 

"How does strobing work?" “Is it a good idea to watch YouTube videos?" "My mom had a tinted moisturizer she lets me play with, but is it a good color for me?" "Do you like the glitter on my eyes?" "How do you get the highlight to be just right underneath your eyebrows?" "Can you show me other palettes I can use? I only have $25, but I'm willing to look at anything." 

On and on. I walked him all over the store, happily pointing out different things. I realized slowly that I wasn’t just talking to my young client. I was also showing the part of me that is still a scared, abused little boy all of the same things. I was telling myself that the things I withheld from myself, all those years ago, were OK to enjoy, and that my interest in this industry did not make Young Me weird or strange. 

I also made it my personal mission to show my client that the world can be a kind place. I wanted desperately to tell him, through my care and kindness alone, that he will always have a safe haven here, with us, with all of the colorful makeup around him. Even though he never asked me outright, I answered him, in my head: it is OK to love the beauty industry as a man. It is OK to be as fabulous as you feel. You can be that person here, in my store, where we'll keep you safe. 

I felt like I needed him to know all of us were there to help him. 

I introduced him to our Beauty Studio Captain and Class Facilitator, and encouraged her to use her very accomplished titles. I introduced him to a woman whose whole heart radiates through her every word, and asked her to show him a few eye makeup tricks. I introduced him to another woman who looks like a living effigy of an angel on earth, whose makeup is always flawless, and asked her to compliment his eye contour. She did, and I watched him smile with his whole being. 

Then I felt a shadow creep into our happy place. A middle-aged man was watching us from afar. He was watching me show my client the planes of his face so that he would know, later on when he got home, where the highlighter should go. My heart skipped a beat when he walked up to us. 

Do I react the way I want to, like an angry mama bear with her cub? I wondered. Who is this guy? What could he possibly want from us? We aren't doing anything wrong, and, as I was already insanely protective of this innocent kid, I was willing to throw anyone out of the store who even attempted to make him feel strange or Othered, my job be damned. 

"Oh, hi, Dad," he said, just as happily as he addressed his mom. "Shay's just showing me highlighters. What's up?" 

He reached out and ruffled his son's head. "Just letting you know that your mom, sister, and I will be at the Gap. Have fun!" 

Before he left, he smiled at me and then, with what I can only describe as pride and love and immeasurable fondness, beamed at his son like he had just made a winning touchdown or finished first in a Cross Country meet. 

"Ugh, sorry. Dad hates it in here. You were telling me about the shimmers?" 

It took me a few heartbeats to recover from the shockwaves that pulsed through my veins. My mind rocketed back to all of my friends who were thrown out of their houses by homophobic fathers. Who were beaten within inches of their lives by their mother's ex-boyfriends for being caught with mascara. This charmed kid, who smiled up at me like I was his new Yoda, had no idea how amazing it was that his family supported him this way. Normal, to him, looks like his parents dropping him off at a predominantly female-oriented beauty emporium, filled to the brim with makeup junkies. 

I wanted to know everything about him. How did this happen? Were they from Canada? Mars? Did he have a lot of gay family members who may have paved the way for this miracle of acceptance and love? 

We did another tour before I left him to his own faculties (I think he knew more than I did, anyway), and I practically ran to my boss. 

"I just met the most amazing client who was like 14 and a boy and wanted me to put concealer on him don't worry his mom said it was ok and ohmygod his whole family was amazing they encouraged him to be in there and to let me show him things and I can't describe how cool it was he was just taking it all in and I helped him and it was amazing!" I said it all in one breath. 

She smiled at me and said, in a very knowing and wise way, "I want you to remember this when you start to question the world again. This is how it works. He'll remember you, too, because you were so accepting of him." 

Tears filled my eyes and I walked away, just to soak it all in. What would have been different for me if I had met someone like the person I've become now? I'll never know that. I do know, however, that I am changed. 

I hope, someday, he'll pay it forward, and slowly, the world will be a better, safer, easier place for another little boy who might not fit in.

“Bye! Thank you so much! Mom, look, I bought this -- are we going to eat now?” 

They both smiled and waved, and I waved back. 

[shayprose]

An ode to the fugly-chic fashion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[shayprose]

A blurry memory

And another one bites the dust Oh, why can I not conquer love?

The lights were dizzying. It was a new place for me, and I wasn’t familiar with all of the unique sensations; the smell of stale liquor laced with expensive fragrances, the pulsing of a bass that felt like it was coming from the floor, the chill of the door opening and closing despite the suffocating heat of too many bodies in a small space. 

I remember smiling. I saw friendly faces peering at me through the crowd, and I could tell who was near me. I could have reached out in any direction and felt their hands. The comfort of closeness made it easier to overcome the anxieties I try to bury deep when I’m confronted by things I do not know. 

And I might have thought that we were one Wanted to fight this war without weapons I needed a drink pretty badly after only a few minutes of adjusting to the chaos. It was one of those places where you were either drunk or uncomfortable, with very little room for bargaining on that point. A friend and I sidled up to the bar and ordered our typical libations -- a beer for him, a gin and ginger for me. It feels silly to admit this, but the cup in my hand made me feel a little more at ease. I guess it’s kind of like when smokers just need to feel something between their fingers sometimes to soothe their nerves. 

And I wanted it, I wanted it bad, But there were so many red flags Little by little, our little group grew, until the dirty dance floor was more like a friendly house party. One where you knew practically everyone, except for the one or two guests no one is sure who brought, but you trust them anyway. Why else would they be there? 

The evening was wearing on. I remember the thumping music was keeping the energy high with very few low moments, and when I felt his hand on mine, it was in the middle of one of the highs. His other hand made its way to my hip. 

“You’re the most beautiful man in here,” he whispered. His breath smelled like undiluted vodka. His shirtless and muscular body smelled like alcohol and sweat, with just a dash of one of those expensive fragrances I smelled on my way in.

“Thank you. You’re pretty handsome yourself,” I said, with a laugh. 

We danced his way, which was to press as much of his body against mine as he could without knocking us to the ground. He held my back straight while he pushed himself even closer, and I felt his breath on my neck, his hair, slick with sweat, on my cheek. My heart hammered a rhythm in time with the DJ’s beat. We were only one being for the span of five long minutes, and then I felt his hand on my drink hand again. 

“Drink up. We’ll see each other later.” 

And he was gone. 

Now another one bites the dust Yea, let’s be clear, I’ll trust no one

“Who was that?”  “He was hot!” “Ooh la la, someone’s popular!”

I laughed and took a sip. Then laughed again and laughed and laughed. Then the lights were just little spinning circles. I remember the DJ getting louder, or maybe my ears were getting quieter? The room was spinning. Or was I spinning? 

I reached out, mentally because my arms didn’t seem to work, for my friends. I stood still and looked around, then saw someone I recognized at last. My feet moved, one at a time, and then I saw everything again. 

“Are you alright?”  “Yea, I’m fine."

Someone knocked into me seconds later, which knocked my drink to the ground. 

“Fuck. I don’t even want a new one. I’m feeling a little drunk.” “You only had a couple at my house. Are you sure you’re alright?”

You did not break me I’m still fighting for peace

The lights changed again. This time, they spun faster and grew dimmer, and although I could tell there was still music, my memory can’t piece together whether it was faster or much, much slower. 

Then he was there again.

His breath on my neck.

His body on mine.

He guided my hand to his chest and held my other behind my back. 

“I told you. You’re the most beautiful guy in here.”

I remember squinting past him. Where was everyone? Who could see me? 

“Tonight, I love you. Tonight I will show you I love you.” 

I turned around, but he held my hand. I remember how strong he was. His lips were on my neck again. 

“Let me love you.” 

Another pair of hands. Not his. Not mine. They held my arms tightly against my side. Someone craned my neck. 

I twisted, pulled, but stayed firmly in place as my pants opened, button by button. He grabbed me, hard, and pulled and pulled.

“You’re so beautiful.” 

Then, from behind, I wasn’t alone in my own body. 

Two, three, maybe four pumps. My body was not mine anymore, but a vessel of pleasure.

The hands let go. I looked down and saw him swinging free of his own pants and hurriedly closed mine. 

“Thank you. I’ll keep these.” My silver plugs, ripped from my ears, were between his teeth. 

Well, I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart But your blade, it might be too sharp I’m like a rubber band until you pull too hard

Like a switch, my eyes focused and I could separate lights from the miasma of confusion. The music was still loud and the room was still full of people. No one seemed to notice what happened.

“It’s time to go,” I said, as I pulled my friend away from someone’s lips.

As we walked outside, I found another friend, whose eyes must have also skimmed the crowd blindly only ten minutes before. They were blind. They had to be. They had to be blind to not see. 

“Hey. What would it take for me to get one of those?” I joked. He shrugged and handed me one. 

I turned, laughed, and asked the small crowd who’d like to light my fire. They laughed and someone stepped forward, lighter burning.

“Thanks.”

We walked down the sidewalk. 

“Tobacco is whacko,” quipped my friend.

“I was molested in there. Did you know that?” 

“Haha, yea, I bet. He was hot.”

“I’m serious. I was...I think I was...”

“Did you see the guy I was making out with?

We talked about his new friend on the way home instead.

Yea, I may snap and I move fast But you won’t see me fall apart ‘Cause I’ve got an elastic heart

I cried for hours that night.  My best friend and roommate made sure I was OK. She kept me safe from my thoughts.

I will repay her someday.

I’ve got an elastic heart Yea, I’ve got an elastic heart

“Hello, Fenway Health. How can I help you?” “Hi. So. Three days ago, I was... “Sir?” “Three days ago, I was raped. Sexually assaulted. Something. I think I should be tested.” Pause. “I see. I’m...I’m so sorry.” He formalized his approach from there and told me what the protocols could be, if I elected them. He forwarded the line to another office, who would schedule my STI screenings. The line clicked back over prematurely.

“Sir? I’m sorry again, I just think...it was three days, you said?” “Yes. Saturday night, Sunday morning, around then.” “We might have something else...I think it is worth it. Have you ever heard of HIV prophylaxis?” 

I sighed and then cried and then agreed.

A day later, I was in the waiting room of a clinic. A kind woman was explaining something to me, but I couldn’t really hear her. She told me I had a window of less than 12 hours to start the treatment for it to be effective, and my mind shut off.

Was this a punishment? 

And I will stay up through the night And let’s be clear, I won’t close my eyes

I arrived at the local CVS and presented my insurance card.

“I’m sorry -- this is not what I need. Do you have your prescription card?” 

I didn’t have one.

“Without that...I’m sorry, but your insurance doesn’t cover much of this.” “Ok. What do I owe? I have some money.”

She looked down at the screen and then reluctantly met my gaze again.

“For the...” she whispered the word “...Truvada... it will be an additional $800. For the...” another whisper “...Isentress... it will be the same. $1600 in total. Can you pay that now?”

I started seeing those lights over again. They spun, and spun, and then I felt a chill sweep through my body.

“No. Thank you. Let me, uh, let me call my doctor.”

Two hours passed. She called me, I called her, and finally, she told me to forget the pharmacy. She’d figure something out.

Is this a punishment?

And I know that I can survive I’ll walk through fire to save my life

“Take these. Your doctor called ahead. You have to see someone tomorrow to fill out the paperwork, but you’re fine.”

I cried on the sidewalk back to the train, the weight of the drugs clanging against my thigh in my shoulder bag. 

And I want it, I want my life so bad I’m doing everything I can

“It doesn’t...hmm. Have you filled this card out before?” “Have I... what?”

The first dose, as promised, made me extremely nauseous and fatigued in a way I’ve never felt. It was like my whole body strained against being awake, and it was everything I could do to keep my head up. I wasn’t understanding things well that first week.

“Have you filled out this copay card before?” “N-no, I don’t...no.”

I sat in silence as the counselor dialed numbers, pressed buttons, shuffled papers, and asked for my birthdate over and over and over and over. 

Finally, he straightened back in his chair and handed me a few pieces of paper.

“This will cover you completely. This one...it might be $800. Hmmm... let us know what it is, and we might be able to help you.” 

The same chill swept through me again and I exhaled, smiled because it is polite to smile, and then let myself out. 

I rode the train in silence, foregoing my headphones. It was too loud and I had a headache. Loud music was still a sensation I didn’t like. I also didn’t like fragrances, the touch of someone’s hand on my shoulder, or people talking behind me. 

I arrived at the pharmacy where I picked up my medication and sighed in preparation.

“Hello. What can I do for you?” “I...have to settle things. I think I have to pay?” “...excuse me? Are you picking up a prescription?”

I remember this guy being particularly abrupt and annoyed.

“No, I...I was working with someone else. Is she here?”

There were probably 20 people. I didn’t know what she looked like, only that she sounded kind.

“You know, let me go check and see if “she” is here. One moment.”

I watched him walk behind the counter and talk to a few people. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, made eye contact with me, and then another girl stepped forward. She slammed her hand on the counter, pointed at another piece of paper, and sent him away.

When he returned to the counter, he looked at me apologetically and then glanced away.

“You’re all set. Have a good day. I’m sorry.” “I’m... what? I think I owe something?” “No. We took care of it for you. You are all set.”  “I -- please tell them thank you for me?”

I looked through the window at the girl who slammed down her hand and she smiled back.

I cried on the sidewalk back to the train, but this time, because I could breathe again.

Then another one bites the dust It’s hard to lose a chosen one

That was two weeks ago. I am still fatigued, but I only have two weeks left of the medicine. The screen is negative. One of the other side effects is that I am still kind of hollow, so writing is hard. I can’t end this the way I normally do.

I’ll be fine. I’m already better. It’s just these random flashes of memory now. Flashes and dreams. 

I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart. 

[shayprose]

“I don’t have a plan. Phoebe, do you have a plan?”

“I don’t even have a pla.”

Friends (1994-2004)

[shayprose]

Typewriter Series #1261 by Tyler Knott Gregson

*All The Words Are Yours, is available for Pre-Sale through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound , Books-A-Million , or iBookstore! *