Month: March 2016

So this morning I had my weekly meeting with Dr. Dragonfly. My pain level has been high since I got up and I’m out of sorts (I told her). We talked about where the balance was and what might push me over one way or the other. I think she knew not to take a direct route. We discussed things going on here in AZ, and planning for Brian to come down. We also talked about Trino and how nice it is to have him down here. We adapt to each other’s needs. I still really wish I had had someone to show me the way through a long time ago. (She was able to insert the spaceship full of my companions a few times throughout the session.) She wants me to start writing Bluestone and try to get through this crap with my Mom.

At the end of the session, I told her I needed to do some errands. She said, no, you’re in pain and not stable. Go home.

So Dr. Dragonfly and I keep running circles around the relationship between my mother and I. It’s very clear that my relationship with my father is dead. (Referred to as the Husk in Blackstone).

We’re trying to tap into that mourning or sadness that comes with wanting a relationship with a parent that the parent is not either willing or able to provide, and never has been. As with babies, you can only reach out so much before you stop. You never stop wanting the relationship though. It’s natural and deserved. It’s not selfish. It’s something that should’ve been there from the beginning.

A mother is, especially as a child-adolescent-the ultimate shield. She may not be your real confidant, but she is supposed to look out for you and your interests, help build you to so that you can function in civil society, protect you from harm, both inside and outside of the home, make you feel loved, adored, wanted, needed and unique. Mine did very little of either of those. However, somehow, through her dereliction and my father’s constant abuse, I was able to later realize that I had picked up the opposite behaviors despite them.

I became a chameleon. I could be anyone you wanted me to be. If I had to be the straight A student who never, ever got into trouble. Fine. If I had to be the quiet little boy at the table who didn’t fidget and ate his food quietly. Fine. If I had to be a little church mouse. Wonderful. If I had to be a raunchy, foul-mouthed employee working the back. Beautiful. I could adapt to anything. I adapted myself into not having a fucking clue who I was. I was so many things to so many people, depending on what they needed/expected, that I had lost myself in the process. I think I realized that somewhere between 16-17 y/o.

I knew I had to build a new identity for me. I decided to take the good things about the chameleon experience and put them together. I put my likes and dislikes together. I started questioning the validity, authenticity, idiocy and hypocrisy of the Christian religion (the others came later-on Blackstone, they didn’t exist) and their attitudes towards homosexuality.

My sexuality was one of the huge reasons I wasn’t able to establish my own identity. I had heard for the last 15-18 years that all homosexuals were an abomination to god and would automatically go to Hell forever whether they repented or not. One day, the good pastor was sermonizing back during the AIDS crisis. He had the audacity to repeat the AIDS was a plague from god to wipe out the homosexual population. (85-89ish). I didn’t take very kindly to it since one of my friends had recently died from complications from AIDS.  Mind you, this is a little country church serving two or three shithole towns. I stood up from the pew, sitting right beside my parents, called the preacher out and told him he was a fucking asshole and how dare he say something so blatantly ignorant and arrogant. I destroyed his feeble attempts at trying to counter me and looked at the congregation and to them that if they actually believed what that charlatan had just said, they were fucking fools and would end up right next to him in his precious Hell. I left. I had to work that day, so I drove. Once I got home later that evening, my father had an opinion. I don’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass about his opinion. Of course it was contrary to mine. I just told him to shut the fuck up and that if he really wanted to see what the disease does and how quickly it destroys a person, visit someone with it in the hospital.

Finally, graduation came. 1987. The only year that I was actually popular at school. I was the editor-in-chief of the yearbook. Everyone wanted to be my friend, ulterior motives obviously. I got through the year relatively easily. Of course there were the typical snide gay comments, even to the bloody end. To put this very clearly, I am fervently against censorship. In a senior yearbook, you have the ‘what will they be in the future.’ My future was the head bartender at the Blue Oyster Bar and Grill from Police Academy. I had no idea what it was. (I wasn’t allowed to see Police Academy bc my mother that is was too vulgar.) A friend finally told me. I was devastated. That last little knife when I didn’t think there was any more room. I let it stand though and the yearbook was published as is. Of course everyone complained that I had fucked the whole thing up. I did the best I could with the Jr. High kids that helped me (because kids my own age didn’t want to be seen with me) an advisor who didn’t know what he was doing and a less than helpful publishing company. It was perfect, but it wasn’t bad either.

There would never be a ‘good job!’ for me on Blackstone, but I had graduated and hatched a plan to flee to Bluestone. College. My parents would never set foot on Bluestone unless they absolutely had to. Graduation day came and went. When the ceremony was over, mom and dad went home and left me at school. They didn’t realize that they had left me until someone asked where I was and they couldn’t find me. By that time I was sick of the harassment of my classmates and had started walking home. (In a time and land before cellphones). It was only a mile and I was almost home by the time they got around to picking me up. I wasn’t happy, but I went upstairs, splashed some water on my face and enjoyed the festivities. I stayed pretty close to my grandpa. He was one of my few supporters.

I worked at the truck stop as much as I could between mid-May and August that year. I would work late hours so that I didn’t have to deal with either of my parents very much. I didn’t have a social life, so work filled the bill. Finally, mid-August came. I had played the tuba/sousaphone since Jr. High, so I was accepted into the University of Toledo Rocket Marching Band. I was so happy. The Husk kept reminding me that it wasn’t Ohio State. Even when I was the first person to enter the football field, that wasn’t enough for him, but I digress…My parents went with me to help me get settled on Bluestone. (The only universities on Blackstone were dogmatic. That wasn’t happening.) They left as soon as everything was in. They couldn’t stand to be on Bluestone. As they told me, ‘Be careful son. Bluestone is beautiful, but it is a den of iniquity and immorality. You must be on your guard lest you lose your soul to the fires of Hell.’ The door closed and I was finally on Bluestone.

Dr. Dragonfly wants me to visualize all of the people and pets waiting for me both at Blackstone and Bluestone that I’ll eventually meet who will be happy to see me, protect me and help me along the way. She wants me to feel the connections to these people/pets and how they’ve helped me either by showing me how to write with felt letters (dyslexic) or just a big old Lab with his head on my lap trying to calm me down. That, I’m able to feel and see. The second part, I can’t. The first is a visual like a globe with a sphere of the stars around it. I see them and I feel them. I know who is there and who has made an impact on my life.

On top of that, she wants me to put all of those pets/people in my spaceship when I return to Blackstone so that I can feel them personal support or physical support they give me while I deal with the devastation, the Fire elemental, the Husk and the aftermath of being turned away once again. I see them there. I feel them, but as a memory. I’m not able to link the memory to the present regardless of how the memory makes me feel. This is going to take some work.

 

I feel odd. I know it’s part of the depression or the PTSD, but I feel odd. I should be very happy that the headaches are not horrible. I should be very happy that I have my Trino with me and the cats. I am happy about those things. However, I have this nagging, depressing feeling with me constantly. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that I don’t like that Brian’s still in Chicago and that I haven’t come to complete terms with having to move out here just because I have a fucking headache. (I understand that it’s more complicated than that, but, the feeling remains.) I think the worst part about the whole thing is Ohio. My brain just wants to shut the whole mess off and get on with it, but when I look at it over time I see:

A binary planetary system. One planet looks much like Earth. It’s green and blue with white clouds swirling around. From the vast, expansive darkness of space, it is warm and inviting. However, I did not come from that place. I fled from my home world to the safety of that place.

My gaze fixes on the Mercury-like dark planet. Void of anything except the large chasms and craters that are reformed every day through it’s violent gravitational war between the sun and its binary neighbor. I left this planet many years ago, but the banshee’s call still sings in my ears.

I approach the planet for the first time in a very long time. I see the scars of what once was and what will never be. I watched the trail of tears, sparkling in the dim light and hard as diamonds, and broken expectations from the safety of my starship. I saw the dead volcanos and devastated mountain ranges. Many of them lay in my wake. I had to learn to survive. I was not physically strong, so I had to rely on my intelligence and persuasion. I could, and still can, destroy someone with a few nicely placed words. Divide and confuse.

I set off in the landing craft to survey what once was. All of the tears, volcanos devastated mountain ranges and endless chasms pointed in one direction. A massive volcano had at some point appeared on the dark side of the desolate planet. It followed the trail. What I saw completely surprised me. I expected a huge, raging volcano spewing out various megatons of magma. It was a massive volcano with one little dying magma pool in the center. This was new to me. Everything else on this planet had died away for me a long time ago, when I left for our celestial twin. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some dimly glowing Nordic runes. I could barely make them out, but recognized them sufficiently to know that my brother still inhabited this world as well. I always hoped that his children would flee like I did.

A fire elemental managed to scrape up enough energy to appear. “You must come down and talk to me. I must see you. You haven’t visited in a very long time. Don’t you miss me?”

I look down from my view screen and answer it. “I can’t. If I leave the ship, I will be destroyed.”

“No pumpkin,” she insisted, (the voice becoming more familiar) “I will protect you. I’ll keep you safe and I’ll make everything ok. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

“Odd. I remember those words echoing in my past often. Each time they rang hollow.”

-“Leave him. He’s just an overeducated, queer pompous ass.” Declared another husky disembodied voice. I recognized it immediately.

“Hush, I can’t. He is my child. I must bring him back to me. It will be different this time. You’ll see. Why won’t you come back? Don’t you love me anymore?”

“It’s not a matter of that. Partially, it’s for reasons you refuse to understand. Mostly, it’s because I can’t anymore. I can’t spare the emotional capital and the eventual let-down that comes with it. It’s for all of the times when I needed help and protection and none came. It’s for the moment that I learned that unconditional love really doesn’t exist. It’s for your priorities. I was always at the bottom of the list. If you had time. I didn’t cause any problems, so I didn’t need as much attention as everything/one else. It’s for fleeing the Husk and then returning. It’s for the idiocy of your religion and how everything took a back seat to your relationship with the Great Toaster in the Sky. I’ve always been last on the list. You would always drop anything you and I were doing should someone or something more important come along.

I fled this place and became very successful. I went to school and made something of myself despite a debilitating medical condition until I could no longer do it. I have a world view, not dogma. I’ve been on other worlds and learned the various customs of the people. My world is not limited to your little magma pit. You tossed me aside for my brother as the black sheep of the family, but in reality, both you and the Husk never realized that he was the actual black sheep. I went off, got married and have had a nice , successful life.

So, now I stare down at you in your much diminished form. I don’t even bother to look for the Husk. It wasn’t relevant by 15. It simply occupied space and was a horribly abusive ogre to both of us, but you did nothing. There’s a special corner of the Universe waiting for it and I’ll be there with the popcorn.

I have to ask, was it worth it? Was it worth forced Sunday school, church, church camp etc? Was it worth spewing all of the hate-filled dogma that made me feel like I was worthless? Was it worth ‘what will the neighbors think?,’ Was it worth ‘people didn’t get divorced then?’ Was it all worth it? Was it worth telling me that you wanted to be more of a part of my life and then backing off each time? How about, ‘I didn’t want to call bc I thought I’d interrupt you.’ Was it worth changing the subject and/or ending the conversation if you thought it was going to get a little messy?  Was it worth it? To look at you now, defeated and everything, my guess in no. However, you’ll never admit it. You’re a prideful woman and your deity will take care of you regardless of what happens in this existence. No, it wasn’t worth it because you didn’t allow yourself to live.

I would like to see you. I’d like to visit you, but not on your turf. On Bluestone. I can’t visit you here. I can’t not only because of the atmosphere, but because you’ve kept the Husk around. It, and you by extension, are toxic to me. You must come to me or I will have to find a way to mourn this relationship as you slowly pull away and that fills me with both anger and sadness that I don’t know how to release.

You have much to consider. My decisions have been made. My consequences are my own and no one else’s. I have no need to lay them at the feet of some made up god. I’ll continue to reach out to you, but there has to be something for me to hold onto or I’ll eventually go my own way.”

She melts back into the magma pool without a single word. For a moment, the pool glows very brightly and gets somewhat bigger. I was hoping she’d reform and answer me. Instead, I ended up with the disembodied Husk.

“Leave us you ungrateful little bastard and never return. You never did amount to a hill of beans, just like I said you wouldn’t. I told you over and over again that you wouldn’t amount to anything. You went out and got all citified and liberal and tried to bring all of that shit home. Well, it doesn’t belong here and neither do you. Go back to your city and your godless existence. Go back to your ‘friends’ because you really don’t have any. I don’t understand how you people can even go out. It was much easier when all you queers were still in the closet. We didn’t have to deal with this shit. Go back to your pretentious, overeducated life where you know what’s better for everyone…”

I cut him off without a word. Punched in the coordinates and returned to Bluestone.

(part 2-bluestone soon)

 

 

I haven’t been here for awhile. I guess it’s been a nice vacation. I had a shitty stay in headache rehab. For the first week, the headache didn’t budge. Finally, after the second round of DHE, it did. Unfortunately, so did my ammonia levels. They went to the point to where they were toxic. My blood had become toxic. My ten days quickly turned in 17 days. The ammonia levels did not want to fall.

Now, I’m back in Phoenix and doing pretty well. I don’t have consecutive yellow or red days, so that’s a plus. I have my favorite babysitter. I have to say that the cats are wonderful, but I really did need to have a human around, especially when I get confused. It’s spring here. It’s lovely and everything is blooming. The desert is gorgeous when it’s in bloom. The days are in the 80-90s and the nights in the high 50-60s. It doesn’t get much better than that.