Officer Good Guy – why I don’t trust cops

I’m not ready to write about last night yet.  The situation is still too close and too vivid.  Instead I will talk about the first time I realized I could not trust the police.

As a child I’m sure I had officers come to my school.  They were always Officer Good Guy, the hero who saved little kittens and stopped the bad robber who broke in after dark.  I’m sure there were children in my class who aspired to be Officer Good Guy when they got older.  I never had the sort of inclination.  Mostly I wanted to grow up and be a dragon, but I had a fleeting aspiration of being a garbage man for a while, and sometimes thought about becoming a veterinarian.  At some point I developed a vague distrust for police, but nothing concrete.  I wasn’t into drugs in high school, I didn’t drink or get into fights. I was pretty much a quiet unobtrusive shy little goth, who sat reading in a back corner while others disrupted class, having already finished the next week’s worth of work.  I didn’t have a reason to dislike cops yet, I simply felt uneasy around them.  They seemed to constantly condescend to people, to treat people as though they were just waiting for you to do something wrong, whether they had reason to suspect you or not.  If I had been more aware of the world around me, I would have seen more of the racial issues in how they treated the kids from black and low income neighborhoods differently, and how much my privilege protected me.  It wasn’t long before my vague distrust had grounds to grow.

My group of friends would always hang out on a large patch of astroturf on one corner of the square of our town’s downtown shopping center.  There was a mall on one side, a movie theater and a series of outdoor shops on the other, another string of shops on the third, and the astroturf rounding out the fourth side of the busy square intersection.  Small concerts were held there, occasionally a flea market was set up, but mostly it was a gathering place where you could see a few folks playing guitar in one spot, card gamers in a yu-gi-oh battle in another, the Jesus folks giving a sermon in a third, and kids of all ages with parents and friends just running around and having fun.  It was perfectly allowable to be there after dark, so when the sun started setting on the hot summer days, many of us migrated up there from the library park that closed in the evening.  It was a place to be out in the open and just relax.  I won’t say that some of us didn’t sneak back into the library park to drink, or slip behind the shopping center to do drugs, or hide in the church parking lot to clumsily hook up with our grasping eager friends.  But when we were hanging out on the astroturf, we were in plain site just sitting and talking or wrestling around playfully, it was a safe zone for those who weren’t up to something, at least not at that time.

We were sitting on the concrete stair at the corner of the turf, me in my heavy tripp pants and cutesy wolf ears and tail, and my friend Sesshy on my lap.  Both of us very small and at the time very feminine creatures, about as intimidating as a fuzzy caterpillar.  We were laughing with a few other friends standing around when we noticed the cop standing at the top of the stairs staring at all.  My first reaction was to feel creeped out, chills going up my spine.  He wasn’t saying anything and the way he was watching us put me on edge.  We were polite, asking him if he needed anything, and he just leered at us.  Suddenly being one of two cute girls cuddling did not feel safe under his gaze.  We asked him again if we were doing anything wrong, if he needed us to leave the area, and he just took a few more steps down and kept watching us eerily.  Our other friends split, jogging off across the astroturf.  I don’t blame them, they were much less trusting of cops then we were, having grown up in neighborhoods where Officer Good Guy would beat down your dad for going to the corner store in a sweatshirt that just might “match the description”.

We crossed to the other side of the large steps and tried to walk up towards the new flashing tower they had installed with a button you could press if you were afraid you were about to be mugged or raped.  The thought went through my mind, if we press it, because we don’t know this man’s intentions and he’s approaching us in a way that feels threatening, who will respond?  The cop is already here, he’s the one we’re afraid of.  It didn’t matter because he glanced up at it and moved to position himself between us and the button.  At that point alarm bells went off and I took Sesshy’s hand and walked quickly away, chattering about all the people we were about to meet up with and how we were going home to our parents, anything I could think of that would sound reasonable and deter him.

The cop followed us to the bus stop.  He stood there watching, never having said anything, but still looking at us like a predator.  At one point he ignored a few calls on his radio, and then radioed back at one that he was engaged at the time and would respond only to urgent calls.  He followed us onto the bus.  I was too frightened to take it to our usual stop, because that left a mile long walk, some parts through the woods, to get back home.  We got off one bus and onto another, and then when we made our third transfer and got onto the metro, he finally stopped and walked away, leaving us terrified and confused.  Did we imagine that he was following us the whole time?  Would an officer of the law really stalk two young teenage, seemingly girl-children, half way across town?  Why hadn’t he responded when we asked why he was watching or following us, or if we were doing anything wrong?  Had we done something wrong, by simply existing as two feminine presenting folk sharing platonic and non-sexual affection in public?  And if he had gotten us alone, what would have happened?

I’m much less naive these days.  A cop does not follow two teenage girls across two bus lines for shits and giggles.  And if we had been breaking any law, we would have been arrested or spoken to about it at the time.  We didn’t get raped, but we very nearly could have been.  In no terms were we safe at the moment, and Officer Good Guy was not leering at us and following us to serve and protect.

That is not the only story, it is one of many I’ve amassed in a lifetime.  I am white, I appear now to be your average cis male even though I am not, I came from a middle class family and grew up in a nice neighborhood, and I don’t make it habit to break the law.  I’ve been privileged not to have to break the law to survive at times, and was generally pretty sheltered in my youth.  And I have enough bad cop stories to fill a small novel.  That doesn’t even compare to the Encyclopedia of Britannica length book series most marginalized folks can write.  I don’t trust cops.  I don’t trust their training, I don’t trust the system of power they are a part of, I don’t trust their morality in taking a job that requires upholding racist and immoral laws.  I don’t believe they can do their job correctly and also be good people, at least not in this system, and in this country.  Elsewhere it might be different.  Maybe there are places where Officer Good Guy you meet in kindergarten really is the childhood hero he seems to be.  But here he is the wolf in sheep’s clothing and I know better then to ever trust a cop.

Rage

Anger is fleeting

Rage is a constant companion

It simmers below the surface

A heavy friend through dark times

When a friendly officer

With a sideways grin

And vieled threats

Comes to the door

Rage offers comfort to shaking knees

It is the only companion

That allows you to speak with a strong voice

As your life hangs on a precipice

And you questions the safety of your family with each word

The rage lives for each life lost

For the ones who couldn’t breath

The ones shot on a playground

The names you never forget

It hides inside giving strength

As you speak over officer friendly with death on his lips

Not knowing what choices will keep you safe

And which will destroy more lives

The rage waits for the day you can fight

Instead of just bow to authority

And live another day

Progress matters more than perfection

Today I am scatterbrained.  I’ve worked on adding a little here and there to some writings I am working on, but I can’t seem to focus on and complete any one piece.  I have to remind myself at times that completion or perfection is not the end go.  The process is what matters.

Yesterday I was cleaning my house with one of my housemates, Raichu.  I was explaining how hard it is for me to clean at times.  I get very focused on everything being perfect.  I was sweeping the floor of the living room and talking about how frustrating it was for me that I had the spoons to sweep, and even then to do a bunch more cleaning tasks afterwards, but did not have the spoons to move all the furniture when sweeping, so it felt like I was doing nothing because I was not in my mind doing the job completely.  They said “It’s okay, moving everything can be a few times a year thing, our house does not need to be perfect and a lived in house in more cozy anyway.  You can do just a little bit of something and even if it doesn’t look done or perfect, it is cleaner then it was when you started.”

Well damn.  I’ve heard this all before, I’ve said this all before, but it still made a bit of tightness in my chest go away and made me breath a small sigh of relief to hear them say it.  I’m not sure why my brain clings to the idea that only perfection is good enough.  Not true perfection, but that feeling of done-ness when I know I’ve done the best I absolutely can, and I don’t see any imperfections left in my cleaning job that I could conceivably fix in a reasonable amount of time.  The problem is, that idea of -having done the best I can- is based on me on my best days.  I’m not often having my best days.  I’m a well put together hot mess, and focus, motivation, energy, these are all often a huge struggle for me.

I finished sweeping the living room without moving anything.  The floor still looked dirty to me, I didn’t have the spoons to mop and the living room is the dogs’ room, so there are dirty paw prints on the floor and dog fur sticking out from under the dog crates that I couldn’t get without moving them.  It is not just far from perfect, but it may be far from most people’s basic definition of clean.  I think about how the room with a couch, a well organized bookshelf, a somewhat organized cabinet, the two dog crates, a large floor rug, a dog bed in the corner, and a few toys and water dishes, is so much less cluttered and so much more clean than it was four or five years prior.  Five years ago when I began de-cluttering and re-claiming my life from a constant alcohol induced stupor, the living room I have now would have looked fantastic to me on it’s dirtiest days.  When I began that journey of self improvement and sunk much of that into improving my environment as well, I also became hard on myself in demanding perfection. Because if I let myself slide with personal perfection I ended up a shitty person, so I demanded perfection from my environment as well or else I was just -not good enough-.

The people in my life are teaching me to let go of that.  I got up a good pile of dog fur and dirt and cat litter with my sweeping to dump in the bin.  I also wiped down counters and the table, took up the clutter sitting around the kitchen and dining room, washed and folded three loads of laundry, cleaned the toilet, sink, and tub, and helped change a light bulb that has been out since a couple months after we moved in (so about six years).  Nothing I did was quite up to my standards, but all of it was good.  And at some point I have to accept that, that means I did good, and I can be proud of myself.

What does adulthood mean for a Millennial?

When does adulthood begin?  I read an interesting article recently about a college professor who taught a class on adulting, all about coming of age in today’s society.  In teaching this class, the professor discovered that most of the students did not consider themselves adults, despite being over 18.  They were asked to write about what they felt were the markers of adulthood, something that has become increasingly unclear as we experience some major societal shifts as Millennials and now Generation Z are coming of age.  It got me looking inward and thinking about whether I feel like and adult and what I believe makes one an adult.  I also decided to do a little more digging into what the supposed markers of adulthood are.

I’m going to start by dispensing with the idea of turning 18 being the marker of adulthood.  We have many milestones of that sort, at 16 (or some places 14) you’re adult enough to work many jobs, at 18 you’re adult enough to vote and join the military, but at 21 you’re adult enough to drink, and only at 25 are you adult enough to rent a car, etc.  These are also relevant to the United States, but vary greatly in other countries, which does evidence in some ways how we’ve picked arbitrary lines to draw there.  Yes, they are a general guideline for when we believe a person can handle certain responsibilities, but they aren’t actually very helpful in determining what will make someone feel like an adult.

I found a few analysis of adulthood from a psychological perspective, with such traits meant to define adulthood such as rationality, and non-defensiveness and openness.  Well shit, that precludes the current President of the United States and a good many other political officials, many in their 60s, 70s, and above.  It also leaves out a lot of the shitty parents of folks I’ve been close to throughout my life.  People who have raised a now adult child, paid the bills, and often been little manipulative abusive shits who probably couldn’t grasp rationality and non-defensiveness anymore than they could bench press the Empire State Building, but there you go.  So maybe that isn’t the perfect milestone either in determining what would make the younger generations feel like we are adults.  Our elders certainly have not done a stellar job at modeling that as a determining factor in adulthood.

Going back to the article that started this line of thinking, there was a discussion of the students responses.  Many felt that marriage, having children, and home ownership were markers of adulthood.  I can certainly understand that, we’ve been raised by a generation that often followed a very clear life path, fit a certain mold, and taught us to do so as well.  I don’t remember a time where I didn’t just “know” that you were supposed to go to school, get into a good college, graduate, get married, buy a house, and manifest a few loin spawn to raise who would do it all over again.  There is a script to this, one many people in my generation haven’t been able to follow, or have decided to toss to the wind as we make our own path.  Which does explain why many of us are left not feeling like adults as we enter our 20s and 30s.

It is interesting, because many of the Millennials I know spend more time focusing on traits mentioned in the psychological articles on what makes an adult, than members of earlier generations I know.  That is of course not a conclusive study, just my personal experience.  Many of us suffer from mental illness, often times created by or exacerbated by our circumstances.  We are treated as children by the media and by older generations, accused of destroying industries when we don’t buy into consumerism.  We bought into the dream of college opening all doors to success in life and graduate with bachelors  degrees and 60k in debt, only to find our only job option is to be a manager at a Papa Johns unless we want to get even more in debt for a higher degree.   We put off marriage and having children because we can’t afford it, or we choose different ways of relationshipping or to be childfree because we recognize that we don’t actually have to fit every mold they made for us.  We find the middle class we aspired to has all but disappeared, so we work two jobs and still need food stamps to get by.  Then we wonder why we suffer from depression and anxiety in such high numbers.  We learn rationality because we have to fight irrational systems of oppression and crumbling aged lawmakers who refuse to understand that we are more interested in being allowed to express our love regardless of gender and make sure every town has clean water, then we are in corporations getting more tax cuts.  We learn to be open and non-defensive because we have to nurture each other and promote self care every day and across social media platforms or in person with our friends, because we have to wonder how many more friends we’ll lose to suicide this coming year.  This isn’t true of everyone in my generation, but its what I see growing around me in my small communities and in the thousands I connect with through online platforms every day.

For me, adulthood begins with disillusionment.  It starts when we realize the lies we have been fed, that the boxes we were taught to fit in are unneeded, that the life path we were taught to follow was unrealistic.  It continues as we start to unpack all of that and struggle with the impact it has had on our psyche, our morale, our self esteem.  We grow more into adulthood as we gain the ability to remove ourselves from the system, to choose which pieces of it work for us, and which to discard as soon as we gain the power to do so.  Adulthood is that determination to find that power, within ourselves to stand up for who we are, and within the system as we elect as more and more of our number to office so we can change the way the oppressive system functions.  Adulthood is being able to kiss your same gender partner in public after years of fear.  It is taking a moment to breath into yourself after two retail shifts, telling yourself it is okay to break out a coloring book if that is your self care, as you bat away the dread that you’ll be doing the same thing every day for the rest of your life despite the shiny diploma tucked away in a box in the wore out apartment you share with three friends.  It is choosing to not have children because you are comfortable not wanting any, or because you desperately want them but can’t face bringing them into this broken world or know you can’t afford them.  It is having four children and having to coordinate between family who takes care of them as you each try and work the hours your employer pretends to graciously give you, wishing you’d be taught about safer sex during the abstinence only age.  It is getting divorced for the third time because you have found the inner strength to leave people who abuse you.  It is deciding against marriage because you love all three of your partners equally.  It is wanting to get married but knowing that disabled people still don’t have that right equally, because you can’t survive without the disability benefits that cover your life sustaining medication, and your partner makes too much for you to keep them, but not enough to cover the prescriptions if you wed.  Adulthood is rebellion, against all that we were taught, and it is finding our own way instead and paving a better way for generations to come.

Refusing to be erased – on being seen as a trans man

“You can’t be a man, you didn’t play with trucks as a kid!”

“Are you sure you aren’t just a butch lesbian instead?”

“Thank you ma’am” “Uh, I’m not a ma’am” “Oh don’t worry, you don’t look manly” “No, I mean I am a man”  “Don’t say that honey, don’t worry, you’re pretty I’m sure.”

This is just a small cross section of reactions I got when coming out as a trans man.  It is not an easy thing to live your whole life feeling like there is something deeply wrong, or to know that the way everyone sees you is a lie.  It is not an easy thing to wake up one day and realize it after years of not acknowledging it, you have the agony of so many years gone by where your expression of self was mysteriously discomforting or feels false.  Once you finally feel that click, if you aren’t someone who was well aware that you were trans from a very young age, it is liberating for a moment.  The acknowledgement of yourself is sweet freedom on silver wings, it fills you up with golden bubbles of giddy hope.  That moment is often heartbreakingly short before the icy cold dread sets in. You start to wonder who you will lose, who will leave your life, who may hurt you, if you will become another murder statistic if you start trying to present yourself as you are in a cruel bigoted society.  I was extremely lucky, I’ve only been assaulted once (for being trans at least), I lost very few friends, and my family struggled but have managed to come to some degree of acceptance.  I had to fight for recognition for a few years before I developed the infamous “passing privilege” though.  Now when I go out, people see my face even with my new long hair, they hear my voice, and to them it all speaks of man.  The years before that were true, were a hell though.  Once you have felt incredibly whole and at home with yourself when you acknowledge your gender, you have something precious that society can tear pieces out of with every misuse of pronouns or deadnames, with every slur, with every unfeeling comment.

I did play with trucks as a kid.  My favorite toy for the first seven years of my life was a big yellow dumptruck and I played with it outside incessantly.  I hated dolls and teddy bears, though realistic plush animals were something I adored since I had always loved animals.  I loved my StreetShark action figures. I hated going to a school where skirts were mandatory, and insisted if I must wear them that they be patterned with lizards or frogs and have hefty pockets built in for collecting rocks.  These things mean nothing to determining my gender, gender isn’t built by your toys or your hobbies or your interests.  But when I came out, my father cited my lack of interest in trucks to explain his surprise.  The fact that he’d apparently blocked out such a large portion of my childhood to get that facts wrong was irrelevant.  The message was the same, he would rather forget the markers that could have clued him in if we’re buying into binary gender rolls, and he needed me to justify the core of myself with childhood toy preferences to be valid in his eyes.

My father was the same person who asked me why I couldn’t be a butch lesbian when I came out as a trans man.  As the man who reacted with homophobia when I first had a girlfriend, it was clear what this meant.  He had come to accept I was something he didn’t understand, something he had prejudices against, but good god at least that something wasn’t transgender, and now that it was, he wished for the good old days where I was just a “mild normal queer”.  I tried to explain to him that I could no more be a butch lesbian than he could, since neither of us was a woman.  In fact, I was farther from such then he was, because at least he was interested only in women, whereas I had realized by that time that I was mostly gay.  I spelled out how in being a man who likes men, I was pretty much the opposite of a lesbian by binary gender and sexuality standards.  His response was to protest, “but if you were a lesbian you could still wear flannel”.  Yes father, because I would like to undergo societal prejudice, risk my life by being myself, inject my muscle with a big ass needle every two weeks, subject myself to extensive surgeries, and have to fight to even be seen by the people closest to me….because I want to wear flannel.  If this was about flannel I would have just bought out a fucking L.L.Bean.

A nice woman at school was selling cookies.  She “ma’amed” me, and I was tired of not standing up for myself, so I tried to correct her.  Instead of hearing me when I said I was a man, she tried to reassure me, thinking I was talking down about myself.  It didn’t occur to her that I might actually just speaking my truth, that my words might mean exactly what I had said.  It was easier for her to interpret some imagined hidden message and apply it to me than it was for her to just see me as I said I was.  I spent a week replaying the moment in my mind, formulating the perfect responses for next time to be more clear.  The only thing that usually works is outing myself.  If someone doesn’t want to see you as a man because they don’t fit their notion of it, no matter of insisting on it seems to help.  You have to explain you are a trans man, another breed of human in their eyes so they can justify why you don’t fit inside the boxes they can’t look beyond. So for the few years it took for me to develop a deeper voice and some facial scruff I was faced with a series of choices.  Either I could try and insist I was a man and not be believed, I could crumple inside with every “ma’am” or “miss” and have the words repeat at night until I wanted to disappear or die; or I could out myself, usually in public in the hearing of multiple strangers.  I didn’t know which of those were accepting, supportive, indifferent, or deeply prejudiced.  I saw trans friends dying every year of violence, killed by partners, acquaintances, family, and strangers.  I couldn’t know which passerby might hear me and be so offended by my very existence that I would be the next funeral in an endless procession of trans deaths.

These days my existence is happier, I am safer existing as I am.  I don’t have to make choices between my mental health or physical safety multiple times a day, I don’t have to justify my childhood toys or clothing choices to prove myself.  That spark of joy that shone so bright when I finally acknowledged this aspect of me has been fanned into a bright flame.  There are still shadows though.  My safety is contingent still on not being seen.  I am acknowledged now as a man, that is far more affirming then before.  My identity is respected and seen.  But my experience is not, because I am not just a man, I am a trans man.  I have a lived experience in fighting for manhood that a cis man will never have.  And my safety and comfort on a daily basis is contingent on my lived experience being a carefully guarded secret.  None of this can change until society does, and I fear for my new baby trans friends who are just beginning to come out.  My heart aches for what they might face, especially knowing the road I barely survived was one of the easiest paths to this end.  All I can hope for is those moments of joy and acknowledgment, that exhilarating feeling of freedom and truth on it’s vast silver wings, will be enough to carry them through.  Or society can change, one leap at a time we can stop with the assumptions and the stereotypes and the enforced gender rolls and the bigotry, until this life path is just as much a challenging but engaging climb as any other, and not a harrowing trip through the valley of death.  I still out myself when it might help, when it might change someones thoughts, when there is a chance it might pave the way for the trans folk of the future.  That choice is worthwhile for me, there is still something worth risking my life for, and it is a better world.

Global warming

Winter comes

With balmy gusts

Snow a distant memory

Ice caps melt

Well we’re fucked

Seasons shift make history

Warmer days

Herald the end

Of childhoods filled with snow

Without a change

The world will burn

From seeds the greedy sow

 

Today that is about all I have in me. It’s been an exciting lovely relaxing exuberant day in my personal life, but around me the government is shut down and those I love are scared of what this will mean for even surviving. I’m feeling some impending doom one way or another, and even fixing the current political fiasco won’t solve the long term problems we’re ignoring. So I wish I could bring some hope in a world that’s becoming more inhospitable by the day. Maybe it is just the good days, the personal triumphs and joys, that we have now that can guide us through. Spread any little good the lights your heart outward and use that brightness to set fire to those in power, we’ll build something better from the ashes.

The fluid nature of trust

One of my clearest memories from childhood is walking barefoot on the gravel driveway at the farm I lived at until I was five. I remember the way I had to step slowly so that the gravel wasn’t painful on bare feet.  I had gotten out of the car and was walking around it to go up towards the house, and one of my parents was still in the car.  I remember distinctly as I walked in front of the car, making sure I had my hand on the hood the whole way around. It wasn’t for balance, it was because I rationalized that if I had my hand on the hood, they couldn’t run me over.

Now my parents have never been abusive.  In fact, they have never so much as hit me, my household was one where spanking was never an option and I’m glad for it.  I had absolutely no reason to fear that my parents would out-of-the-blue decide to run over their small child, but for some reason that was a fear of mine at that young age.  Not even a fear really, I don’t think I really felt a fear of anything at that age, it was just a vague concern that I wanted to prevent by having my hand out to steady the car at all times.  Aside from the fact that this indicates to me that my young child brain was not as good at being rational as I thought (because how the hell is my hand on the hood going to in any way prevent someone from running me over if they wanted too?), this is something I have thought about often and wondered if I had trust issues.

As a preteen and then young teen, I liked to say that I was very un-trusting.  That someone had to work hard to earn my trust, and if they done fucked up then that was it, trust wasn’t coming back.  Honestly though, that didn’t mess up with my experiences.  I often depended on people in ways that left me disappointed, and my intense heartbreak when people I was close to didn’t measure up to my expectations, shows me that by that point I had started investing a lot of trust in the few people I was close to.  But I didn’t want to be seen as someone trusting.  Was that just edgy teen angst, or did it reflect back on my strange childhood relationship with trust and unrealistic concerns about being hurt?

Thus followed a good many dysfunctional relationships, I was a bit of a hot mess, and not very self aware.  I thought I was self aware, because honestly compared to my peers I certainly did more introspection.  I would ask acquaintances and strangers in high school about things like what they thought of themselves, how they would describe themselves, their passions and dreams, what motivated them, what they would change about themselves if they could, and so on.  Many were unable to answer and admitted they had never thought about any of that, they were just living day to day.  Thinking back, maybe they weren’t comfortable giving those kind of answers to a quirky quiet kid who was suddenly badgering them with personal questions.  A lot of folks I accosted did seem genuinely confused that these were even topics to think about though, and I was left feeling like I was clearly so much more self aware and far beyond my years in philosophical thought.  So, I represented myself as such, and fucked up a few close relationships because of how much I did not know that I did not know.  I was good at seeming wise, but I barely knew myself, I had only scratched the surface of what I thought on a regular basis, and was not good at understanding and dissecting my motivations, or working through what I felt.

Fast forward through trauma, abuse, and the drunk years, and you have who I’ve become in the past four years or so.  I pause often before I speak, and try to really dig deep into my own thoughts and history and motivations.  I still have not figured out if I have trust issues, either in being too trusting, or not trusting enough. I know that the way I trust has adapted and become much more healthy, I feel, through my exploration of polyamory and relationship anarchy.  When you have multiple relationships and no one person carries the burden of being expected to meet all your needs, you trust different people for different things.  When relationships do not need to check off specific boxes of all being romantic, sexual, etc, you can tailor what you expect and depend on folks for even more to the specific individual.  With labels and prioritization of relationships mostly off the table at least as a standard, I find it is much simpler to base trust on the unique dynamic I have shaped with someone, rather then on an idea of what trust should be as an all encompassing thing.

The way I trust now is a circumstantial thing, it is adaptable, it is fluid.  I base expectations on what people tell me they can do, and what they show me they can do.  If someone tells me I can trust them to be supportive, but they consistently disregard my feelings and are not present to listen when I need help, I try not to react with anger or betrayal.  Instead I re-evaluate my trust in their ability to do what they say.  They are no longer categorized in my mind as someone who can be supportive, instead they are someone who wants to be supportive but often falls short, and my expectations change.  I also may be less trusting about other things they say they can do, but it is not a judgement meant to disparage them, it is an awareness that they are probably not quite aware of their abilities and limits when they communicate what can be expected of them.  There is no concept in my mind anymore of absolute trust, there is just a continued assessment and re-assessment of what the people in my life say they are capable of, how that matched up with what they show in their actions.  I do need a baseline level of trust in key needs, security that I am physically safe with someone, that they strive for honesty in their communication and are often successful, that they make every effort to take commitments seriously and don’t make them casually and with a disregard for their abilities.  But what I can trust people to do and be is variable.  I don’t think I have trust issues now, though I don’t buy into having the faith in people, the magical “complete and absolute trust” that I hear lauded as an ideal.  Trust is given in equal measure for what is provided in return, and those things need not be great or numerous for me to be content, it is just a descriptive for what I can expect and what I cannot.

Memories fading

I realized today I had forgotten your laugh

It was a whisper in my mind now

Once your most defining feature

I don’t remember if you laughed often towards the end

When we were stars exploding into black holes

 

I strained to think of our first kiss

Your lips on mine come easily

But the words you said has faded

They were once tattooed brightly across my heart

Life has worn away so many layers now

 

I long to remember the sound of your voice

Sweet whispers remain against my ear

The ones you never shared before

To macabre for the light of the world to reach

But tucked away safe in my memory

 

So much of you has become lessons now

Your touch and your kiss transformed

A reminder of a person I once was

A constant warning of what to never again become

A mercy cry to the future

 

The days you were my lover have set

And I made a dawn of what you taught me

Turned you from a lover to a teacher

Because using your memories up to fuel growth

Is the only future we’ll ever have

 

For my Kitten. I’ll always regret who I was for you.

New year’s resolutions

It’s a brand new year, all shiny and hopeful and just prime for a good fucking up.  So, in the nature of things that are just waiting to be fucked up, I’m going to make some new years resolutions!  I’m actually very fond of the practice, it can be a meditative exercise for me, figuring out what I need to change and focusing on it, examining the motivation, and trying to imagine the progress and reaching the finish line.  This year I snuggled up in bed with Kelev and we decided to each come up with three resolutions, preferably well grounded goals, since our extensive and loftier ones last year lasted until mid February.  Here are my three:

Health

My first resolution is to improve my health.  This is actually a multifaceted one, a series of mini resolutions you could say.  First, I need to work on eating better.  I have some food intolerances I have been ignoring for a while now, which leads to chronic pain, so to start I need to better stay within my limitations in what I eat.  During the spring/summer/autumn I get most of my veges from a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) program through a local farm.  It helps me eat seasonally and support a local business, and I know my produce is raised in a way without a negative environmental impact.  I did not get a large enough CSA share to store and can for winter though, so winter this year is when I get to choose what is “in season” for me from the abundance at the grocery store.  In some ways it’s lovely, I really did miss avocados a lot during the rest of the year, but it doesn’t fit my ethics in the long run.  Plus, when I don’t have an automatic big box of fruits and veges that I have to go through in a week, I tend to hop more on the pasta train, and eat out way too much.  So, limiting the eating out and adjusting my diet to a more healthy balance again.  I also need to reincorporate yoga into my routine, my flexibility has dropped drastically since I got too busy for it, but I want to do it weekly at the minimum and then increase that.  Also trying to consistently get to 10k steps on my step counter.  I’m very good at that some days, but during school I do a lot of sitting and studying, and those days my step count is pretty sad.

And weight loss.  Big sigh.  Weight loss for me is often a side effect, not a primary goal.  I have struggled with an eating disorder since my teens, which was at its worse around the time I developed adult onset bi-polar.  So I’m very very careful with weight loss, not to mention it often isn’t a focus when I’ve learned to really enjoy the fat on my body.  I embrace body positivity whole heartedly, and I love when I see myself taking up space and having curves and rolls to my body.  When I was getting the most complements and praise from my parents and friends, was during the times where I would eat one day out of an entire week for months as a time, and subsist in between on cigarettes and sips of vodka. That was when I was applauded for looking “healthy”, I really had to decide on my own what healthy was for me, and body fat is a proud part of it.  It means I’m not self-destructing, I matter to myself, I have a will to live.  That all said, I know weight loss will be a side effect of the changes I’m making, and I plan to embrace that if it is happening in a healthy way, and also later transition to gaining muscle so that I can still take up space in a way that makes me feel real.

Finance

This year the founding group of the intentional community I’m a part of is beginning to meet regularly and move forward with our plans.  As such, I really need to learn to budget tightly, and help Kelev do the same, so we can start planning for our future there and map out what we are about to do financially.  I want to cut down on eating out for my health as well, and hope that in doing so, I can also save a little money.  I try to be a prudent person who does not buy what I don’t need, but the stress and lack of spoons from school has led to me leaning more on pre-made food because it was a choice many times between having the energy to study or having the energy to grocery shop and cook, and I chose my grades first.  That is reasonable, but I want instead to find solutions where I can still maintain my study habits, but also have time to cook and eat healthier and cheaper meals.  I also will be looking again at my budget, as I do every year, and figuring out what I can trim back.  And, when I do my yearly spring cleaning and de-cluttering this year, I will see what I can part with and sell, as the beginning of my savings for my community venture.

Learning

I had an amazing first semester with nursing clinicals, and a difficult and stressful second semester.  I did not take enough time to relax during break and then went in to the semester already stressed and scrambling to keep up.  That feeling pervaded through the entire fall, and while I did the best I feel I was able, it was a struggle, and I would like to feel more competent and on top of things this time around.  I also am appreciating the amount of personal growth that has been coming of writing this, and place to continue it daily and learn as much as I can about myself in the coming year.

 

So, I am looking forward to a year in which I can let these three guiding resolutions or areas of focus light my way.  If it is anything like last year, I may have a lot of change thrown at me and have to adapt to all that as well.  Maybe this year will bring more relaxation and time to recoup and plan.  I hope so, because I am setting the building blocks to forge ahead to a bright future and many ambitious plans, and I’m ready to do this right.

A year in review

I have to say, 2018 was one of the most tumultuous years I have ever faced.  It was jam packed full of big intense changes, and well, human beings are not known for dealing well with change.  I survived though, and it was one of the most transformational years I’ve experienced in my lifetime.  In fact, I would say on a whole, despite some exceptionally hard moments, it was a very happy year with an abundance of personal growth.  So here is my year in review.

January

I started the year off attempting to do Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project.  I had a whole list of aspirations for each month, and wrote a couple sentences about my day in a journal each night, and every day at the end of the day Kelev and I would check off which out our happiness project objectives we had done well with that day.  It was definitely beneficial, I grew a little from that the first few months, but it really wasn’t a format of doing things that I could keep up with.  Also in January, I took the TEAS and scored in the 99th percentile, securing myself a spot in nursing clinicals. The other important event in January was going with Kelev for his social security hearing in front of a judge.  After three years of fighting for disability benefits this time around, and close to six years or more including previous attempts, he finally was able to get in front of a judge and present his case.  We finished January knowing that we had done all we could, and now we just had to wait and hope for a good result in a few months.

February

On one of the last days of January, I got a message on a site I’ve been on for thirteen or so years, and actually met quite a few of the most important people in my life through.  I was intrigued and responded back, and in the beginning of February began texting back and forth with Hoffy.  Over the next month we fell in love.  I was cautious going into the relationship, because I had previously decided not to get involved with folks new to polyamory, or people who were not out (about polya, sexuality, etc) because I was not willing to be someone’s secret.  He was so intensely open and honest, with a desire to learn and a completely refreshingly curious outlook without judgement.  I make most decisions based on my rational mind, and I knew the intensity of my emotional connection played a part in me making an exception to rules for myself, but I also knew such intensity was something I so rarely felt in my life and I wanted to explore that as deeply as I was able.  Also towards the end of the month, Kelev and I visited a friend and were taught about a couple new kinks that we had not explored before.  One of them, fireplay, had been a limit of mine for year, not because of disinterest, but out of fear.  I decided this was a year to face my fears, and not only did I learn a little about how to engage in a fireplay scene, but I also took the bottom role and let it be done to me, something I would never have allowed in the past.  It was exhilarating, both facing my fears and having such a surprisingly relaxing experience of sensations.

March

March was a pretty exciting month.  I met Hoffy and our relationship intensified after the weekend we spent together.  I was one of the most wonderful weekends of my life and I was a bit blown away but how much comfort I felt in person with him, as someone who has struggled for a long time with being comfortable sharing space with people.  I also attended my first play party this month.  I went with Kelev first to a rope demo, which was a whole lot of fun, and then to a play party following it.  While I’d experienced several impromptu kink events in the past, this was the first organized one I had attended and it was a whole lot of fun.  I was in awe of some of the scenes I witnessed, one I saw really stuck in my mind because you could absolutely feel the profound connection between the two people involved fill the whole space.  To be honest, how beautifully intense their bond was, and the vulnerability and trust in that scene coupled by an electric energy, almost brought me to tears.  I also tried porcupine quills for the first time, my second experience in bottoming for a scene in many many years, and I was surprised to find that I very much enjoyed it.  It was also my first time getting to that floaty headspace that pain play can produce, and it intrigued me and opened up my mind to the idea of bottoming for more scenes in the future.  I revised my personal definition of myself from strictly a Dom and top, to a Dom with no desire for submission, but a willingness to bottom for scenes to explore all the experiences I am comfortable with in life.  March has a feeling of new beginnings and an exhilarating desire to test myself and experience all I could in life with a curious and open mind.

April

April was the beginning of the great departure, as I’ve come to think of it.  Since I had left for college at seventeen, I had lived with an increasing number of partners, friends, metamours, and loves.  At the most, I think we at one time had nine or ten folks living or staying for a spell in my previous home, and after buying this home, there were usually four to six of us living here.  I finally hit a point of high stress over the end of last year and through the beginning of this one, where I had decided I needed space and to live with less people.  I also felt for once that I had the place to ask for that.  One of my housemates was talking about moving across the country to be with one of their partners, their partner who lived with us had expressed a desire to have her own place at some point, her other partner who had taken up residence in the basement had not intended to be a permanent fixture here as far as I knew, and our other housemate had moved across the country to move in with us a year prior but with the eventual intent of getting their own place.  That left myself and Kelev, and he has been one of the few people in life I’ve had such a deep comfort with and desire to cohabitate with, that I knew my need for space still allowed for living with him.  Since everyone else was open to the idea of moving elsewhere, I felt for the first time that I was allowed to ask for space, and I had begun doing so months before.  In April my queer platonic partner, James, was the first to move out, getting a place with one of my other partners, Witty, who had been looking to move up to our town.  They relocated to a nice home a few blocks away from mine, which was a perfect mix of being close enough to visit often and offer assistance to each other at a moments notice, but relieving me of some of the stress of a decade of living in crowded homes.  I also got to see Hoffy for another visit in April, which was another intense emotional rush, and really cemented my attachment and desire for that relationship as a long term commitment in my life.

May

In May I went to my first potluck with the local polyamory community I had connected with.  It was a wonderful experience, I have talked before about how fantastic it was to begin getting close to some of the leaders of that group, and how much it inspired personal growth in my to see them grow as people.  May was really the beginning of all that, and I found a group of people who have become like family to me in many ways.  I also began my nursing clinicals in May, and it was the start of what is a much more challenging and invigorating program then I could have imagined.  I started of with an abundance of determination and I strong desire to do better then I ever had before with formal schooling, in this new venture. May was also when Kelev finally heard back about social security and was granted disability benefits.  It was a fantastic victory after fighting the system for years to acknowledge his illnesses, and I was so ecstatic for him.

June

June was a busy month, school was in full swing and I was scrambling to keep up with a new program that was more challenging than I had ever imagined, but which I was very thoroughly enjoying.  I was also preparing for the continuation of the great departure, Kyuu was getting ready to move across the country in the beginning of July, and Floof and Bear had begun discussions on getting a place together and started looking at apartments.  I also got to see Hoffy again, his visits had become bright rays of light in my year, always full of an abundance of love and a feeling of safety, coupled with a very exhilarating excitement at the intensity of out connection.  I was by that point struggling quite a lot with knowing that our relationship was a secret though.  It was what I had been afraid of when cautiously getting involved, and he had talked about coming out to family and friends after the first time he visited, but I was still waiting for that to occur.  It was a delicate tightrope I felt I was walking, trying to be honest and open about my emotions, but also not trying to apply any external pressure on a big life decision that I felt he had to make on his own time.   I often felt I was hiding the depth of anguish it caused me to spare his feelings, but I knew that during the few frank conversations we had about it I was blunt, and I felt to continue to address it more often just because it was a constant weight on me, would have crossed into pressuring him on a choice I felt was not mine to make.  After this visit we discussed it yet again and I could see how much he was struggling as well, but that he was strengthening his resolve to approach it soon.  Finally at the end of June he told his parents about his sexuality, and our relationship.  I know for him it was probably a life changing moment.  For me it was a huge sigh of relief.  I wanted to respect how big that moment was for him, coming out is never easy and he had hidden that part of himself for a long time, and experience I couldn’t relate to because I had always been explosively blunt about newly discovered parts of myself regardless of what sort of reaction I feared, so I did not know quite what it felt like to speak that sort of truth after a long period of hiding.  I know for myself, hearing about that moment filled me with not just relief that I was no longer a secret and the deception was over, but also overwhelming pride for a partner who had come to mean so much to me in such a short time.  Seeing someone cultivate courage and face their fears, growing so much since I had first met them, it was inspiring and heartwarming in ways I still fail to describe aptly.  June was already such an overwhelming month of highs and lows, and I was gearing up at the end of it to help Kyuu move out, and Floof and Bear soon to follow.  Then Kelev dropped the bombshell on me that he would be leaving as well.  The whole story there is one for another time, but in short is was a profound shock and one that fucked my up real good for a short bit, but once I recognized that it was not a changing of our connection but simply of our structure of life, I handled it a little better.  The knowledge that it was something he needed to do for both his mental health and the good of his family, helped immensely.  I had always taken the role of trying to care for him in any way I could, so doing what was best for his mental health was a decision I fully supported.  His family as well had made me feel welcomed in a way I don’t even feel my own extended family always has, and their best interests were also of great importance to me.

July

The month of great change.  July is when the big changes actually happened, Kyuu and Kelev both moved out in the first week, and Floof and Bear were gone by the middle of the month.  I was alone in my home, living by myself for the first time in my entire life. I was concerned, I spent many hours alone in my parent’s home as a teen and it had led to suicidal ideation,  depression, self destructive habits, and worse.  I was also concerned I would love it too much, become so comfortable in my aloneness that I wouldn’t want to go back to living with others.  Neither really happened.  I found a lot of joy in my time to myself, it was refreshing and invigorating, the breath of fresh air I really needed.  I did a lot of introspection and worked on myself during that time, and I felt more -me- then I had been in many years.  I empowered and reclaimed myself, and I also found more joy in my relationships with others now that I could truly be alone.  I was also lonely at times, it was a feeling I savored sitting with calmly and accepting. I was looking forward to when I would transition to living with others again, while also treating my time to myself as a glorious vacation and a time to grow into my own skin once more.

August

Whee vacation time!  In August I went to Hawaii with my parents, the first trip with them that I had managed in a number of years.  It was a magical life changing trip, I fell in love with the climate and the people there, and oh goodness the food.  I miss the food, I miss it desperately deep in my soul.  I’m a food oriented creature and I love putting raw fish in my face, and Hawaii delivered that in spades.  I also decided it was a chance to challenge all my fears.  I’m afraid of heights, of mechanical failures and depending on human made objects (cars, roller coasters, ski lifts, airplanes, etc), of being underground and being buried alive, of swimming in deep water without assistance, and of ants.  I went zip-lining,  walked across wood and rope bridges high up in massive trees, explored underground lava tunnels, went snorkeling with dolphins with no life jacket, and made friends with a wide variety of insect life including a good many tiny ant friends.  I honestly wasn’t really afraid, I had decided to challenge my fears and somehow that decision to face them helped to nullify them.  Things like being on a wind rocked wood and rope bridge a hundred feet in the air which would have triggered an intense panic attack before, but I had resolved to be a different person there, a person who forged ahead bravely and somewhat recklessly into any adventure I could get my greedy hands on.  I took a bit of that person home with me.  When I got back, I left again a couple days later on a second vacation, this time a trip to Ithaca with James. It was the first vacation of my life that I have planned and budgeted for entirely on my own, with no assistance from my parents.  We explored Ithaca, hoping it might be a landing ground for out intentional community, staying in an ecovillage there and visiting another.  We also met up with Hoffy, all three of us touring the ecovillage of Ithaca together and hiking through state parks.  It was a lovely experience, though we decided that it might not be the place we would eventually settle in.  Coming back from vacation, I started my next semester of school, though I was tired from a break that was more adventure then relaxation.

September

September was exciting.  I was adjusting to living on my own, and finding that my relationship with Kelev was all the stronger for the change. We went to our first concert together, Alice Cooper, and it was a thrilling experience!  I enjoyed the York fair, the food truck festival, and struggled to keep up with school during a semester of high stress and low motivation.

October

At the very beginning of October, or maybe the last couple days of September, I got two new housemates.  My longtime queer platonic love and friend Raichu and their partner A. moved in, ending my three month experience of living alone.  I was grateful to be around people again, I know three months does not sound like a long time for living by yourself, but it was enough for me to get a feel for the experience so I could say I had done it once in my life, and then to move forward.  Their coming certainly heralded moving forward.  I had been talking with them over the years about forming an intentional community, and we had begun more serious conversations about it starting in the spring, along with James, Kelev, Hoffy, and a friend of theirs.  They took the leap and moved back from the west coast, so we could begin planning out our dreams and then manifesting them into reality, so our community could begin construction over the next few years and we could come home to it within the next five, or so we hoped. I’m sure if I didn’t also mention that the new Halloween movie came out, Kelev would be distraught, since that was likely his biggest event of the year.  We went to see that and it did not disappoint.

November

November was the month of Thanksgivings.  Our polycule had our celebration early and it was a wonderful gathering.  Almost our whole group came, Kyuu visited, coming from across the country and staying for a week.  James and Floof and Witty and Kelev were all there, and my partner Shara also came up from Philly which was wonderful.  My parents were in attendance as usual and were incredibly helpful with making the food and being as fantastically accepting of our eclectic little polycule as always. We missed Hoffy, who couldn’t manage to get off work to come down for the weekend, and Kwik, who is up in Canada and had not yet made it down to visit.  And James brought his new partner, a gorgeous badass goth, Nikki, who has now become a dear part of our family as well.  After first thanksgiving, I had second Thanksgiving with Kelev’s family.  It was amazing being able to host them and cook for them, and it reminded me again of how much they have always accepted me and welcomed me, which I appreciate beyond words.  Then Kelev and I celebrated eight years together, going down to Baltimore where he chose a trip to the aquarium for our day of celebration, and I chose the Hard Rock Cafe for our dinner following that.  I also had my first clinical experience with patients, which was terrifying up until the moment it began, and then morphed quickly into a fulfilling but somewhat anti-climactic experience after all the fear and hype.

December

December began with my birthday, and I managed to not have a crisis as I realized I was now only one year away from thirty.  I wondered how, looking back as my life, I had lived so much in a mere twenty nine years, and at the same time how I still felt like a bumbling teenager most days and was close to hitting my thirties.  December has been a chaotic month.  I untitled one of my dynamics after a period of personal growth that led to me realizing the pressure of a title was often instrumental to me pushing people away when I couldn’t handle the expectations I put on myself in certain types of partnerships.  I also had confirmed the ending of a few other dynamics prior in the year, though they were ones that had really just morphed from romantic or sexual shaped to more platonic friend shaped, and it was just a discussion and confirmation of that.  I also began a new kink dynamic with Kelev and one of the amazing folks I had grown close to in the local polya community I found towards the start of the year.  That took a lot of thoughtful communication and soul searching, because I am hesitant about new titles and dynamics as a whole, though I do understand the increased importance of titles in kink related dynamics for the structure it helps to provide when that level of trust and structure is needed.  I also shy away from triad shaped dynamics because of problems with couples privilege and so on, so there was a lot of unpacking to do before that took shape.  During that, I was able to be incredibly vulnerable with D., the other person I got involved with, and had a bit of a breakdown/breakthrough with her, and with help from Raichu, that led to a much greater understanding of myself and how I approach relationships and experience attraction.  That is something to address more in depth at another time, but it helped grow an intense closeness that was already developing between us, and I’m grateful for it.  I also completed my year of sobriety that I had decided on last December 1st, and while I have continued to refrain from drinking, I was fulfilled knowing I had proved to myself I could accomplish that, after the years of increasingly productive moderation that followed my decent into alcoholism and beginning of recovery.  I also chose as my challenge for this year to write daily, and thus far have been successful in that, another path that has led to increasing introspection and personal growth.

 

There is so much more I can say about this past year, this really just scratches the surface.  There are many events large and small that I left out for last of time and stamina to write about them all, or because I cannot even remember the wealth of experiences this year held.  It was the most impactful year of my life thus far I believe, or certainly high up there in the ranking.  I go into this next year full of joy, appreciation, and hope, eager to see what new changes and experiences are waiting.