From the Pages of my Notes App...

 

Write a blog post about how I plan to soon begin Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy.

About writing C the email about how I’m afraid of this therapy being so effective that I get over him, my unhealthy fixation on him. Afraid of what redefining our relationship in a “healthy” new light will mean for both of us. 

About how I lay awake every night and imagine a version of us together where we experience intimacy. How I’ve been doing that for years. 

About how it becomes it’s own alternate reality, the versions of us spring to life in their own world. And now, when I lay awake, I just imagine them talking about how it’s all about to end— they don’t have much more time together.

Whether they confide in each other that they believe they’ll get through this— that the love that they have for each other is more than my sickness, more than my delusion. That the feelings I have for him that make them possible aren’t some illness to be pathologized— that it’s not addiction. That it’s real love.

About listening to the song “Death Bed” by Powfu. How I have been listening to it for weeks now and couldn’t understand why I related so closely to it— the story of a young man laying on his death bed, lamenting the future he’ll never have with his lover. 

How suddenly it becomes the story of the versions of me and C that live in my head— one of them knows they are about to be fumigated from existence— which one is it?  Which one is on their death bed? Won’t they both die together?

God, I wish I could pitch this whole concept to C as a musical. But this might be a bridge too far, even for us. 

I think this has somehow just become the blog post in itself. Too bad, I could write it better. Maybe I will. Who is keeping track, really? Who is to stop me?

There’s a lot more to explore about Ketamine Therapy— about what it is, about what it could do for me. I’ll probably quote the email I sent to C when I explore this further, as that was kind of a blog post in itself.

Except, he will read it. I haven’t told him about any of these posts lately, and for good reason. But any of you out there who have begun to form an opinion of him, based entirely on the craziness that pours out of me— remember. You have no control about how other people might see you, what they might do with your image, how they might distort you. None of this is his fault.

And I wrote him and email tonight, full of honesty and bluster, about how sick I am over him. And how afraid I am to lose that sickness. It was a fucking tidal wave of honesty. And he will read it. And we will be okay.

Any of you out there who believe that he is the bad guy: he will read my words, and they will matter to him. And we will be okay.

He will accept me. So fuck anyone who believes that I need to simply move on from him, as if he is nothing. As if he isn’t one of the precious few that take me as I am.

And fuck me for still not being able to internalize that he loves me. Fuck how hard that sentence is even to type.

There’s a lot more to explore about Ketamine therapy, and what it could mean for me, and all of the many reasons that I am afraid.

But it is late.

And I am tired.

And I have date with myself in another reality. And she has a date with him. And they have a lot to talk about.

And so little time left to do it.

On with it.

Eponine and "The Middle Place"

I'm listening to "On My Own" from Les Miserables. It's such a beautiful song, and I've known it for years now. It must have felt just as potent for me back when I first heard it in High School as it does for me now, if not moreso by virtue of the youthful lack of callous surrounding my heart. 

I must have been thinking of someone specific every time I listened to it-- who was that someone? How many someones have their been over the years? I know who it is now, and it feels so real and so immediate and so much like today's someone is exactly who it was written for; or rather, that it was written for me, about him. 

But it wasn't always him. It was always me, though-- that much has stayed consistent. Somehow, I need to keep that in mind: I am me, I am here, and I do not fundamentally change no matter who I pine for. I am the constant Eponine to a rotating cast of Mariuses. However it is that you would pluralize Marius.

I had this conversation with his name, his real name, last week with an ensemble member, if you will. His name became this stand-in for an idea-- the faceless person who is wanted. The bitter dream of someone you can't have, whom you revere and hate in equal measure, for how much they inflate you with intoxicating smoke and then never, ever let the tension release from the balloon. 

His name became a code for that person, and all at once, it needed to pluralized. Because so many of us have our Mariuses. 

And it's sick how dehumanizing that is. That I would take his name, the name of this person that I truly cherish, and strip away the fullness of who he is, and make it into a hollow receptacle for an idea, the idea of what unfulfilled people try to fill themselves with. It's sick how casually I can take this name that is holy to me for what I feel when I am with him, what I can do when we're together, and the totality of this beautiful friendship and partnership that we have, and I can, in a moment of anger, reduce him to cliché and loan him out to others like me. 

But that anger is what I wrote about last week. C is obviously the common thread here, C is the name so holy it shall not be typed, C is Marius if anyone is bothering to keep up. So before we go too far back into that very well-explored theme all because I had the bad judgment to choose to play "On My Own" and then start writing a blog post, let's keep moving. I have this whole piece of paper where I wrote down the things that were running through my mind, things I was certain would best be worked out in the form of a blog post. Things I didn't want to lose track of while I took a short break from my angst  to eat turkey bacon while watching twenty minutes of "The West Wing" before continuing to this site. They are as follows:

 

As I understand that it would be the height of hubris to assume that anyone actually cared enough to make it work trying to decipher my chicken scratch, I will transcribe, faithfully, here:

Write a blog post about
    - "the middle place"

    -sexual dysfunction and wanting to give up sex as a force in my life

    -C wanting to stop talking about sex & feelings of rejection that come from that

    -Last night. B. Acceptance. The healing nature of a woman's touch.

Well, this is awkward. Now I have to hold to all that. All because I've become weirdly dedicated to the "meta" style of referencing my writing in my writing, much the way a weirdly high number of Cher's songs mention in the lyrics that it is a song. That always annoyed me.

If I work backwards-- and I'm not fully committing to that yet, I have a feeling this could, in fact, be quite the byzantine path-- it actually provides me with a tricky transition back to my opening thought, which I was worried would go unfinished: "B" is the reason I am listening to "On My Own." A female friend of mine who I have been spending increasing amounts of time with, B was here last night when I invited her and C to come hang out with myself and my husband. (Who I guess is "D?" If I'm going to be posting more often, I'm going to have to come up with some better naming conventions.) 

B is an excellent singer. I am working tirelessly, of late, towards the goal of also becoming an excellent singer...no. "Tirelessly" is wrong there-- it's exhausting. But it's this huge part of what I've always wanted-- the earliest goal I ever remember feeling rejected by: my father was a singer, and I desperately wanted to be, but I was told often and by multiple people that I was "tone deaf." I wasn't. People suck.

I mention all of that because, somehow, it's relevant. It's going to be relevant. The psychological weight of that initial moment of becoming convinced I wasn't good enough to be worthy of something. My first real memory of being ashamed of myself.

It makes more and more sense as I type it. To me. I'll get around to it.

Before I do, though, I should mention that Google Play music has transitioned off of the movie version "On My Own", which it played several times, onto, I think, the Original Broadway cast, and it's clearly the version I had downloaded off of Napster all those years ago. The familiar voice, sung with more compression, a higher larynx than the movie actresses voice-- this woman is less classically skilled and probably the technically inferior singer, but she sounds more like I would have back then. I've learned a lot recently about how to open my throat more completely, but back then, this kind of singer would have been a revelation to me, a rare kindred spirit in a world of open-throated songbirds who mocked us.

 This is a lot. I get it. My whole point is: I have the feels for this version of the song in a sentimental way. Also, the movie soundtrack version cuts off before the final "own" if you're not listening to it in the context of the entire act, and that's just the biggest, shittiest cocktease I can imagine. 

Oh wait, no. I am the biggest, shittiest cocktease I can imagine. But we're not at that bullet point yet.

B, C, D and me (I guess I write as "Elle" on here, so there's a weird coincidence happening right now) were all in my new inflatable hot tub last night. We'd all been drinking, we'd all been smoking, and at some point, she asked us to guess what her all-time favorite "Les Mis" song was. "On My Own, " I said without hesitation. I wasn't guessing. 

"Yesssss!" she exclaimed, excitedly.

"The greatest anthem of all-time for the friend-zoned chick in love with a guy who doesn't notice her." I said in B's general direction, except everyone there knew-- and kindly ignored my drunken humiliation of-- who exactly I was talking to. 

She began to sing the song but struggled a bit with the lyrics, and so it happened that I began to feed her the lines, one by one, spoken in the moments before she would deliver them. 

D told me today that it made for a impressive performance from the both of us, that there was something the collaboration. The reality is, she likely didn't need me for more than a line or two. The reality is, I needed her for her voice.

Because I can't yet sing well enough to do it so freely. I can't yet sing well enough to be over the embarrassment of that young girl, not tone-deaf but forever scarred by the accusation.

...this metaphor goes so much deeper when you know that, I mean. It's going to be tough to parse in a throwaway paragraph....and it probably deserves a more in-depth explanation someday soon. But B has been brought brought on board a project where her job will be to sing my words. And those words are largely about being rejected by C.

It was a good moment. Her singing. Me feeding her the lines. Her letting me feel like I was really a part of it-- I wasn't. But it was a good moment, and an equally terrible one.

"I am large. I contain multitudes." I quote Walt Whitman a lot for someone who has only ever read one line of his writing. 

I am overwhelmed of the enormity of the job I have given myself here-- to make it through this checklist and, in doing so, deconstruct the nature of my relationship with sex, the nature of my depression, the nature of the poison I pour into every relationship that I manage to cobble together. I am overwhelmed by the fact that it is nearly two AM, and I have been writing all day-- I HAVE been writing all day, remind me to get back to that-- and that I have given myself the task of pushing out the cacophony in my head, like air through a tuba, so that I might arrive at some whittled down understanding, some pearl of wisdom...so many battling metaphors and I can't come up with what I'm looking for. Some phrasing that means that chip away at the layers and complexities and tangents, until I have this one, clean, important concept that I can share with other people. I put this up here and rant away all of the asides until I find the essence of what it is I need to tell the people in my life-- and then I can tell them without feeling so much like I am a freight train and they are tied to the tracks.

It reminds me of these files C sends me when we write music together. Used to be, he'd only send me finished tracks. As the years went on, and our partnership deepened, he began to send me these files-- audio tracks where he just hits record and works his way through an idea, repeating the same riff over and over again, clarifying it every time. Sculpting it away as DaVinci did with the stone, to reveal the statue inside-- that's how he likes to talk about it. Like he's letting the music of the universe come to him.

I suppose my metaphor is a bit less delicate. My point is, I would like to relegate my crazy to this blog for a while, and give him and everyone else the highly edited version of me. Anyone who is interested can opt in to the director's cut here-- but I think we both know that they won't.

"So Big, So Small" from Dear Evan Hansen just came on. NOPE. NOT RIGHT NOW. Music off.

I spent all day writing: or, a lot of it. I am currently enrolled in one of the two final classes required to complete my Bachelor's degree. I only need the credits to meet the residence requirements, so it's a total accident that my advisor signed me up for creative writing without even checking with me-- though it's possible I mentioned it to her on a list of "easy classes" that I would be okay with, as I was looking to finish with the least effort possible. 

The first draft of our "final project" was due today, and I had committed in earlier assignments to writing a humorous personal essay in an attempt to get back to my roots blog-writing roots. I hadn't fully committed to the direction the whole thing, all two-thousand words of it, would go when I opened with the following line: "Lately, I have taken to contextualizing my eccentricities with the following confession: I seem to be having a midlife crisis."

Because THAT'S how you start an essay to turn into a stranger for a online creative writing class. 

The whole thing ended up being a somewhat meandering walk through my feelings regarding the intersection of being a mother and being a sexual being, though FAR more straightforward than anything I've written here for a while. I actually continually went back and checked in on what I had written earlier, to be sure I stayed on point and made sure things I referenced earlier actually paid off. Speaking of which...

I'm not quite finished with the initial bullet point, except to explain who "B" was, but I feel like there may be some themes there that are worthy of a separate post, and, anyway, at this point I'll be here until the son comes up if I don't make some headway on cataloging my psychological torment, as I command myself do on the paper.

And resistance to that is futile. It is, after all, ON the piece of paper.

So, onto the next bullet point up, which I think will rather quickly give way to the next up still. We'll get there, dear reader, dear psyche, deer in the headlights. We'll get there yet.

"C doesn't want to talk about sex." This happened recently. A week or so before my birthday, I guess. I had been feeling, prior this, closer than ever to him, somehow. This is BEFORE my last post, clearly. At any rate, I said something to him that was sexual in nature-- I don't think a come on, really, but something that made him uncomfortable, nonetheless. He didn't respond for a long time, but moved on when I did-- then, when I brought up sex again in a relatively short period of time, he responded to tell me he didn't think we should talk about sex anymore.

My heart sank. I tried to play it off, but it was an emotional blow to the stomach-- a wall between us, where I wanted there to be none. An off-limits subject of far and wide-reaching consequence in both of our lives. And, more obliquely, yet another rejection of me as a sexual being.

Earlier this evening, it occurred to me why it had strung so deeply for yet another reason: C is aware, had been made aware, that I am currently seeking a radical treatment for my PTSD in the form of Ketamine-Assisted therapy. Before arriving on this more widely-available option, I had, at great length, sought out the more extreme version, currently only available in clinical trials: MDMA-assisted therapy. The latter is known to be an extremely forthright but painful way to get to the heart of trauma: the chemicals involved allow you to feel safe enough to approach the trauma in ways that you'd never been able to before, but as they leave your system in the next few days, they leave you alone with it, exposed, and needing to push back against the weight of the reality that your mind had once chosen to shield you from. At least, that was what I read on forums devoted to the subject on Reddit.

Ketamine-assisted therapy is said to be a similar, if gentler, process. I'm not sure that I fully understand the difference, but I suspect it's that Ketamine infusions are also used to treat depression for several months at a time. By which I mean, it's possible that the initial process of retrieving the trauma through a delivery of chemicals that allows you to feel safe is the same, but that the Ketamine's effects shelter you from the pain of the trauma for longer after the initial retrieval. 

I don't know. I don't know if any of this is accurate. All I know is, moving forward with any of it is frightening-- and something about the Ketamine's reportedly reliable treatment of depression is the scariest part of all: I want to face the PTSD head-on, but I feel as though I wanted to use that as a starting push on a journey to earn my way out of depression.  

Or rather, to navigate to a place where my brain could heal, physically, enough from the trauma that I began to sleep more and relax more and ultimately feel less depression as s result. I assumed I'd still be depressed-- just, let so, and with fewer debilitating side effects that were really from the PTSD.

That's what I wanted...but this...false-feeling infusion of ketamine and contentment-- that I don't trust. If all of my other reasons stem from a very suspect "impostor syndrome" that I should absolutely pay no attention to for all the sense it makes, then one reason that feels legitimate is this: I don't want to know what it's like not to be depressed for several months, just to lose it again when the ketamine wears off.

But back to C-- he knew that I was going down this path, because I made it clear to him that I was frightened and would be in need of support. So it occurs to me today that what I felt must have been feelings of betrayal that he would cut off my ability to talk about sex write now, in this crucial moment. Except...

Except, that how could I really expect him to understand what I've so plainly internalized about myself as to think that it required no explanation at all: that sex is at the root of literally everything that is wrong with me, everything that I hope to exorcise from my psyche during this process. Every single demon that might come screeching forward from my helplessly agape jaw to fill the room in a loud, swirling cyclone of fear...that is sex. That is where all of my pain comes from.

So I feel like we're pretty well on the "sexual dysfunction" bullet point now.

If it sounds as straightforward as "I don't enjoy sex," well, then you missed the point where I compared it to a whirlwind of poltergeist. And I'm not sure how to get this across in any kind of...I don't know, I'm worried that if I start typing it, well. It won't stop.

But it's not just about not enjoying sex enough. It's not just about the fact that I have to be drunk or stoned to initiate sex. It's not just about how my fixation on C may well be the result of a lifetime spent scarred by every person she I did touch, until my only safe option for sexual expression was for people that I couldn't touch, people who could be trusted to reject me, until that strategy became a pathology, until it developed into full love addiction.

It's not just about how the person I felt safest thinking about, who I spent most of my life fixated on for that reason, is suddenly no longer available to me in that way. When I imagined writing this earlier, I tripped on the fact that he is, in fact, another "C", and I can't believe that that didn't occur to me when I first decided that this "one initial only" thing would suffice for the very few people who feel emotionally relevant to me. This other C-- the O.G.C., if you will-- would be familiar to my loyal readers (if they weren't entirely comprised of my poltergeist) as having been mentioned here for the full nineteen-year run of this blog-- and eighteen years ago, was, in fact, when I first fell for him. So he's not exactly in the ensemble.

Except that he will be, from now on. He's met someone, and...I want him to be happy, no matter what I want him happy. So I'm forced to sterilize whatever connection we have left....

I'm forced to lose the memory of the one person with whom sexual touch ever felt truly safe.

...that's right. I hadn't thought of it before. It wasn't part of my original concept of why I've been breaking down so much lately, making so many bad decisions. But while O.G.C. and regular C may have, until recently, been switching off in the place of honor in my brain of "the man that I feel safe wanting because I cannot touch him," there is one key distinction between them: I have touched O.G.C.. I've been with him. Eighteen years ago, to be exact, and this whole thing started when I realized that I felt safer with him than I ever had with anyone who had ever touch me. "Baptized by his touch", to crib a line from the Indigo Girls.

He and I kissed, and he put his hands on me, and instantly I felt cleansed and renewed and reborn into an understanding of the beauty of sex and intimacy that I would spend the rest of my life...chasing.

And then he told me he didn't want me. And eighteen years, one month and one day ago, I wrote this line in a post:

"Ever been humbled before the eyes of heaven?"

He read it relatively soon, and I remember him reacting to it, concerned and slightly affronted by how over-the-top it sounded. We've referenced it since then, I think, as something of a punchline about how  youthfully dramatic I was...but I wasn't. If anything, I was underplaying it.

Take it from me, Linda from July 2nd, 2002: you had it right. 

...Now I only hope he doesn't read this one, too. But I mean, the chances are WAY lower.

So O.G.C. is gone, more or less, and with him, the only hope I ever really had of being, again, with a man who made me feel that sex could be a pure and righteous expression of love. And everything that is leftover is demons. Swirling, howling demons.

It's not just my addictive feelings for C, and shame as to how that undermines my genuine love for him. It's not just my inconsistent and always inebriated sexual connection to D. It's not just my recent desperate attempts to use online dating to tape over a wound that continues to bleed-- it's not just my shame at having been with someone I didn't know well enough, who turned out later to be drunk during the experience, and who regretted it.

It's not just the use of Instagram to farm validation because I feel like, if I am not sexually viable, I am nothing. It's not just the sudden fascination with new male friends, followed by an almost clockwork ruin of those friendships by my compulsive need to sexualize everything. It's not just being triggered by my son touching my feet because the one only clear example of sexual abuse that I do remember-- although it's obviously not the inciting incident for the trauma-- began with rubbing our feet together while we laid in bed until it became overly profane. It's not just the whole of my pained and beautiful sexual relationship with my ex-husband, all the damage we did to each other, the shame of it.

The shame all of it.

Shame, shame, shame.

THAT is what my poltergeist are made of: sound, and fury, and sexual shame.

...But, like I said. C didn't know that. So now, maybe, I can find a much, much shorter and saner way to explain it to him.

Last bullet point. "The Middle Place." 

This post now is about to break 4,000 words. Lotta words today. I'm gonna break and grab a snack before I commit to this.

Okay. Back.

I texted a friend of mine earlier tonight-- the guy from Tinder that I hooked up with only to find out later that he likely would not have done it sober, except that I missed that he was drunk  (and if you out there in TV Land didn't know yet that I was in an open relationship, congratulations, now you do)-- to ask him if he could relate to this concept that I was stuck thinking about, "the middle place." 

Like me, he suffers from depression, so I expected he'd have a better frame of reference to understand what I was saying and possibly relate to it. He's also very recently sober, which I wanted to check in with. 

The poltergeist,, by the way, interpret this very positive change for him as "sex with you is so shameful that it makes somebody re-evaluate their mistakes. You are rock bottom." My poltergeist are narcissistic dickwads.

I told him that, when I was younger, my depression would make me fantasize about suicide. My strategy for preventing myself from acting on it then wasn't much different than it is now, just less absolute than it has become over the years: I would simply think about the effect it would have on my mother, and resolve to keep going for her. 

Nowadays, when the days get dark enough for the thought to arise, it is that same basic premise, but stronger: I have children of my own now, and my parents are still alive, and the friends I still have, after decades of losing them, have been elevated to a new level of importance.

What this all adds up to is, I don't think about it much in those same terms anymore. Not never, but not as over.

Now, when I am low enough to feel the urge to give up, I think about something different-- a way to give up on myself without punishing others. A "middle place" where I could go-- metaphysically, I suppose-- such that the parts of me that would be needed to live in service to my children and family would be preserved, but that my own sense of self would be stripped away. No more ambitions, no more desires, no more selfishness at all-- a husk of me filled enough emotion that I could still raise my children and do my family duties, and my absence would not be noticed.

I know it's impractical-- any version of me full enough an un-suspicious life would surely be me enough that the wants and dreams and hopes would slip through. But it occurs to me, rather bitterly, that the only thing that has ever really made me suffer is the ambition of happiness.

The guy I texted this to couldn't fully get behind the idea, but I'm still compelled to write some kind of...work of fiction about it. A story or a play. Maybe even a song. There's something here-- I don't know if, in a plot, it makes more sense as a pharmaceutical solution or a literal, metaphysical place where you can retreat to and leave just enough behind. But the idea of giving without hurting anyone-- the idea of unselfish suicide. Surely, that must hold some weight for more people than just me.

It's impracticality weighs on me for the purpose of writing it somehow-- and I suppose that would be the thrust behind the plot-- someone attempted to undo their decision, perhaps, when they realize that, against their only meaningful wishes, they've somehow managed to leave their family as betrayed by their exist as they had given everything to avoid.

...sub-vocalizing the words as I wrote them, I found my way to that inevitable plot twist and began to cry the words I typed out in anguish. Of course, of course this place can't exist. Of course, if I want to live in service to others, I have to do the work of trying to happier, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how often I fall, no matter how much I wish I could simply lay down.

And so I will. As I've declared I have. I'd been e-mailing with a therapist who practices Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for weeks and had just gotten to the point where a call was more practical.

...but then a lot of things happened. I don't know. I don't know. 

C told me he didn't want to talk about sex, anymore.

I can't imagine it's that clean. I can't imagine it's that obvious. If I look back at the dates of the emails and the dates of that text, I'll find that I am magnifying, intensely, a connection that was minor at best. 

...but for the purpose of this writing, it's a damn good circular reference.

My face is wet from howling out those words. Sometimes, when you do this, you hit upon a revelation of some kind...something you never knew was coming.

That's why you do it. That's why you write yourself a note about the points you want to hit, and then just keep smoking pot and forcing yourself to stay at the keyboard. You can get this out of you, you can get this out of you yet. You ARE strong enough.

The most straightforward translation of "The Middle Place" is wholly impractical. But it was not but a few hours later that, having had a fight with D that seemed perhaps mildly motivated by his frustration that we haven't been intimate recently, I arrived at a more focused version that, if somehow within my reach, I think I might be able to live with: if the ambition of happiness is the only thing that has ever made me suffer, than the ambition of sexual satisfaction, as a subset of happiness, surely accounted for at least 65% of the suffering in my life.

Remove that, I say. Remove that forever. It's clear to me that I'll never get any closer than this to any level of satisfaction that would make me understand how sex is a net positive in some-- most?-- people's lives.

There would be causalities. Relationships that would suffer. D and I may or may not make it through, depending on how we adapted to have his remaining needs met, and whether he could keep them far enough away from me to not infect me, anew, with shame. 

The good news is, my relationships with my children and my parents would be fine. Changed maybe, but I can't imagine any way in which it would be for the worst.

Many of my older friendships have evolved past the point where sex is an important element of the energy between us. Anyone who was mentioned in this blog in it's hey day would be fine.

And no one else really matter all that much...except C.

So, so, SO much of our relationship is informed by, or tainted by sex. And so much of our work is made better, made possible by my harnessing of the endless energy I get from being near him, from wanting to be near him. 

I think, at first glance, he might say it was a welcome change. But I'm not sure he could easily stomach the absolute loss of his most verbal fan. And...I love him, I swear him for what he is...but how much of my perception of what he is has been through the lenses of addiction and desire?

I would never stop loving him...that's what I want to say, that I'd never stop loving him. But as we explored, at length, last week...I'm still not really sure that he loves me at all. And if I lost my sex drive...in one way, or every way, I suspect I'd stop being useful to him.

So, in this version of "The Middle Place", I lose C. Forever. Every other relationship I have is saved or even strengthened, and I live a life of significantly less pain.

But he and I can't do our work. The work...I live for. The one truly bright spot in my life.

And I don't want him anymore, and maybe our friendship can't take that.

...do I take the deal?

"Without me
His world will go on turning
A world that's full of happiness

That I have never known."

On with it.

"Do You?"

I'm unsettled lately. Deeply. And it keeps coming out as a need to express itself to some specific person, someone I end up longing for. Maybe that person changes as I find someone new to distract myself with. Maybe, when that new person loses interest, or I do, it reverts back to the same old, same old. Maybe I'm just terrified that, one day, everyone will have had their fill of me.

None of these are maybes.

But I didn't used to be this dependent on other people. I didn't need to spill my words out onto someone else's lap to express myself. I'd come here. I'd spill it all for an audience, that, over the years, became less and less of an audience, and more of an imaginary friend. Every time I write now, I reference that-- that no one will read this.

It's getting old. Write some new jokes. But the reality is, I am preserving today for tomorrow. And I am reaching out to the people I really trust the most-- the future versions of myself that will look back.

They, too, will get sick of me, I have every confidence of that. But they have less choice in the matter. I am a part of them whether they like or or not.

I've been spending a lot of time talking to old friends lately-- Jeff and Elorza, in particular. Two people whom have been unfathomably important to me, their names on hundreds of pages in my story. Two people with whom I've had...equivalent contact with in the last five years as posts on this page-- a few conversations a year, maybe. The entropy of it all is somehow both inevitable and entirely subject to change. It's somehow both deeply sad, and a weird point of pride: we're set now. Me and Jeff. Me and Elorza. (Separately, I don't believe they ever met). But the point is-- if we go five years from today without speaking again, it will be waiting for us where we left it.

Until, of course, it's not. It's very important to understand that sometimes life goes ahead and changes things in ways you simply can't get back.

I tell them I love them without hesitation. They say it back. In the case of Elorza, it took years and years and years for him to be capable of that. When we were in high school, and onto the years after, I very much struggled with that. Telling him. Knowing he felt something in the same family but-- he couldn't say it. And I, therefore, could not believe it.

As a...child, basically, I created a lot of drama around that. I tried to be accepting for a while, but ultimately, I cried and yelled and made a fuss, and it became this bigger thing than either of us was mature enough to manage. It drove a wedge between us and made everything more tense than it needed to be. I didn't handle it well.


I'm an adult now. My...functional best friend-- I have so many of them through the years, I hesitate to even mention the concept of the rank at this point, but, well, the person who is to me now basically what Elorza was to me then-- also cannot say the words.

I handle it differently. When I can. But then I can't again. And I do not handle it well.

I know he loves me. Logically. It's important to me that I understand that-- and I've made it clear that it helps me to hear it, but his affliction doesn't change. It's important to me that, as an adult, I make allowances for the fact that whatever his reasons are, they are not lack of love. Whatever his reasons are, they are about him, and not me.

I need to assign him a name. Jeff and Elorza are really named Jeff and Elorza, but I was just a kid when I started calling them by their real names here, and, you know. They're set. They're not going to be upset that their real names are back. But this guy, he needs a name for this space, and even though he's been referenced here before, he does not yet have one. And I am an adult now, and I don't write people's real names on websites. We'll call him "C."

I came up with the idea that at the end of the night, every time I'm with C, I would just ask him, outright. If he can't muster three words, then maybe he can muster two-- "I do." Or one, "Yes."  I made a deal with myself that I would simply ask him-- afford myself the opportunity to get what I need from him-- what I, for some reason, so desperately need. Afford him the opportunity to give it to me. Afford us both the opportunity to release this tension between us, this anger I have over not feeling loved, no matter how I try.

I was going to ask every time I saw him. Over and over again, simply and patiently, until it became a shorthand-- we would cut it down. "Do you?" "I do." "Good."

That would be it. He wouldn't have to worry about the word itself: we'd have our code, and I would know. I would know. And no one else would ever have to-- if that was his reason, if he was worried about what they would think...no one would know. It would be our secret.

I asked him once. I forced myself to be brave and look him in the eye. I reasoned with myself that I knew what the answer would be. And I could just do it. Just tell him what I needed. Just let him give it to me. No more anger.

I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say.  And I felt, in that moment, like it was resolved. Like I had fixed it all with my...forthrightness, my communication, my understanding, and my confidence that if I could just ask, he would tell me.

I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say. And it was fixed, and I was happy. And I felt, I felt....I felt like all those years of fighting with Elorza, of going in and out with Jeff, of going in an out with everyone else not mentioned here by name, and losing everyone else whose names I try not to type anymore...it felt over.  My quest for it was through. And everyone who still loved me still loved me, and he loved me, and I, I in that moment loved myself. I felt so loved that I thought...I would never need to be loved anyone new.

But I never asked again.

The next time I saw him, something was just slightly different about the air around us. He didn't...move to hug me at the end, the way he usually does. And I felt like it was my job to initiate that and...I did, but. That took enough out of me-- this compulsion to make sure that we kept that one simple....the acceptance of my body into his space, him into mine, the physical touch that assures the other person that...they aren't....repulsive...it was gone. And I....I had the confidence to reach out for that, but...how could I ask?

I didn't want it to go away, what I'd worked for, what I'd established last time. I was working towards a shorthand, I had to be consistent. So I made myself text him on the way home. I told him I promised myself I would ask.

And he answered. And I exhaled. And I promised myself that I'd do it for real next time.

And I never asked again.



In the past few nights, I've been working through much of this in conversations with a new person, who will get tired of m. A new person who has, by my calculations, like a .0001% chance of ever being "set" the way Jeff and Elorza are set. As I work through it with that person-- whom I won't even assign a name here because I just can't muster the optimism to believe his name will ever matter again, will matter by the time I get around to coming back to write here again in six months or a year-- I realize that I have been punishing C, I've been angry at him and taking it out on him behind his back every bit as often as I do it to his face.

I'm angry because, well...it feels like it's supposed to be because I feel things for him that he cannot feel for me-- not just things he can't say, but things he literally doesn't feel. Yes, he loves me-- as oddly hard as it is to type-- but my feelings for him are deeper and stranger and less convenient than just that. And he won't feel those back, and he can't feel those back, and that strips something from my confidence, and it makes me lash out.

That, that is what my anger is supposed to be about. But...

He and I were talking the other night, and I mentioned to him that he and I are the same in one regard: we both have a sickness insomuch as we equate our attractiveness with our worth as a person. I mentioned to him that not everyone does that. He said that he knows.

If attractiveness is deeply intertwined for me with my sense of self-worth, then it would make sense that wanting him the way I do, and not having him want me, has been slowly (or not so slowly) driving me crazy. It would make sense that that is what all of my anger is about. That is why I am punishing him to his face and behind his back.

And it's not his fault. And I have to stop. And I have find a way to change the narrative so that I don't think so goddamn much about him. So that I don't need to spout off to strangers about how his indifference is ruining my poor, pathetically single-minded psyche.

This inferiority complex of mine is not his fault. Not wanting me is not his fault. The fact that I feel unattractive is not his fault.

But...


But if I really equate my attractiveness with self-worth, then surely, what I am really lamenting is not my subjective lack of attractiveness, but my subjective lack of worth. Surely, if someone could find a way to make it clear and unambiguous to me that I do have worth to them-- make it so I felt secure about that, and never questioned it-- surely that might cool the sting of the rest of it.

Surely, it would all be okay if I could just believe-- as I did that night, as I long to again-- that he loves me, he loves me.

What, what, WHAT is wrong with me that I need so badly for him to say it? Does this go back to Elorza, is it his fault? Should I transfer the anger to him?

I can. He'll take it. We're set, he and I. Because

He
Loves
Me.


Elorza loves me, and he says it, he says it now. And I'm not afraid of what will happen if we don't talk for the next five years. And Jeff, Jeff loves me. And we have fought, and we have stopped talking, and we have always, always come back. And I am confident that we always will. Because

He
Loves
Me.


But there's one person in my life that now fills my days in the way both of them used to. And as much as it means to me that I can go five years without them and be okay, I can't go those five years alone.

And C, C is with me. And we have goals together. And we've been through so much. And I want to believe...that we'll get through so much more. That I have worth to him, whatever form it comes in, whatever specifically he does and does not want-- that I have worth to him. I want to internalize that. I don't want to question it. I want to let go of the anger. And, to do that, I need to believe that

He






...but do you, C? Do you?

On with it.