Bright eyes

I have better noticed patterns, with Amber in particular, that bother me.

One example that jumps out is asking Amber her opinion on things that could be better answered by a coin toss. The original reason was to enfranchise her, having felt that I lacked enough of a voice in other relationships. Amber doesn't want to have an opinion on trivial things. Asking frustrates her and does not get me what I want, so why would I keep doing it? It has been years that I have been conscious of this friction, but default to it anyway. Almost every time I do it, I annoy both of us.

It came to a head once with asking her what dinner she would like for the evening. (She made me the de facto cook in our household, a role I have embraced.) Thanks to COVID, I plan dinners two weeks in advance. Her only input is when I ask if there is anything she does or does not want in the next fourteen days. (Respectively, the answers are "tacos" and "things that are not tacos.")

With her, and in general, I am sillier than I intend to be, which feels disingenuous. I have a sharp sense of humor, honed by defense mechanisms and being the weird kid. (Both are the best way to be a comedian, which is why so many of their jokes center around neuroses.) I am not, though, some gushy man-child. I'm a goofy Oscar Wilde wannabe at worst.

I don't want to succumb to bad habits because they are familiar and easy. I don't want to be some sugarcoated expectation rather than my authentic self because it takes less work in the immediate.

A high school girlfriend once snapped at me that I said exactly what I was thinking when I did, which could be tedious and vexing. I would speak just for the sake of not sitting in silence, not because what I was saying contributed or mattered. I had not been consciously aware of my doing this until that moment, though she was right. (The snapping was not necessary, but it was high school. Teens are a snappish bunch.) I was operating almost by automatic, a sort of laziness that neither of us deserved.

In all these years, I sense I have returned to this.

Changing this takes only a small conscious effort. Not to speak if I do not need to. Not repeating observations as though I am an NPC being triggered. Keep my voice mine, in short.

Fifteen years ago, I cut my hair short because I was not taken seriously while substituting in schools and not when applying for jobs. When I got interviews on the strength of my resume, the administration was split between finding me adorably young or conspicuously unprofessional for wearing my hair that length. Losing it may have been a totemic sacrifice or my bending to prejudices, but I needed to begin an adult life. That required that I better look the part.

When my hair was shorn, I was no less myself. I did not need to cling to something external to define me, as hard as I would have found this to hear then.

I cannot compromise myself now when I do not have the hair to spare, literally if not metaphorically. I do not want to be underestimated because I am taking a more well-trod path. It does not allow others to love me for who I am, and all concerned deserve that.

I have worked hard to become more who I am and would resent acting as though I hadn't. For instance, why should I behave as though I am uncomfortable in social situations because anxiety had once made these difficult? That is a fiction. In the right mood, I can be the most charming person in the room and the leader of any professional group (particularly when people are getting in the way of my lunch break). My strength over myself was hard-won. I am better than I am allowing myself to be.

In doing a final read of Holidays with Bigfoot, I am reminded of how kvetching I had been with people who loved me. I am not reluctant to chronicle these moments--they are both accurate and funny--but they do not reflect who I am. This retrospective, coupled with responding to initial entries, gives me a clearer mirror for who I should be: not him. Not that boy I was. Not even who I was before I accepted medication and therapy. I understand why he was this way and can forgive him, because he did not know much better. I cannot forgive myself for refusing to accept lessons earned at some high costs. I can do and be better now because I am incapable of going back to make him better. Living more authentically is the only remedy.

Months ago, I had two trans girls in my classes at the same time. (This has happened before, but not recently. Our population is low, but we are also the safest place in the juvenile justice system for them.) Both were a high-pitched and flouncy. In the gym one day, while practicing dead drops and splits (against the gym teacher's wishes), the older said, "Okay, now let's use our real voices." All at once, the students I had known for months were deep-voiced and masculine. I startled that they consider these their "real" voices. It shone an uncomfortable light on who they had been raised to be. For all our facility had done for them, all the comfort and safety we had given them, it could not be real enough.

When one left, it was in pink and fluttering. The other bought long extensions.

But being "boys" was still who they thought they were at their cores. It might grant them a false realness until they forget what it was to be authentic. It is a constant struggle to remain who you are in a world that will always make it easier to be smaller and less.

After major breakup--3 months before the wedding, isolated from my friends and family, teaching at a rapacious boarding school--I understood that I had developed a fictional carapace. It was a defense mechanism against living a life that I did not want. (The breakup was a far overdue blessing. I'm addressing only my role in my own identity.) Reconciling this was a process that took years after the initial crisis. Then, I would fall to patterns that were no longer healthy and would recognize what was happening. It would not always be enough to stop it, but I would at least be aware enough that I could resent that I was not stopping it.

In high school, I would lessen myself so that I didn't have to explain the things that I did know. It is understandable that a teenager wants to keep a low profile, but I have no need of this now. I'm not concerned with my peers disapproving of the fact that I use appropriate words to the situation, a salmagundi of linguistic and referential influences that results in my freest speech. I am a recognized author with eight books to my name, as well as published stories and articles.

Ken said to me once that it took him some getting used to the way that I spoke. He thought that this was affected. I assured him, no, this is how I speak. It is the best way that my brain has learned to communicate, short of putting me in front of a keyboard.

My teachers in high school noted that I wrote differently than I spoke. In part, this was because I understood the necessities of schooling, though I did not yet know the concept of code-switching. But, mostly, it was a matter of taking a pride in my writing that I could not give to my daily interactions. How I wrote counted, stilted though I may find it in retrospect. I was too anxious to speak the same way, to admit that I could think quickly enough for bon mots.

At nearly forty, I have no time to be false. I spent too much of time and money on therapy to water myself down.

Before Amber, I struggled to figure myself out. I thought that I had a handle on it, but I was perpetually at the beginning. A newer beginning, built on more ignorant beginnings past, but a beginning all the same. In the weeks before Amber, I had begun again to like myself as an entity distinct from any lover. Even though Melanie had left me so much more capable of loving, I was not this man until after I married Amber and accepted that I had not been living to my totality. From the outside, I suspect few realized the stress under which I put myself. I kept it even from myself for the most part.

Though I credit Amber with giving me the motivation to take the steps necessary to work on my mental health, I did it for myself, because it was overdue that I acknowledged (and kept acknowledging) my vulnerability and how my blocks were interfering with my better life. Best to keep it up now.

Soon in Xenology: Probably more about COVID-19, since, you know, the world is ending and everything. Black lives mattering.

last watched: Travelers
reading: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human