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.
cazandoconejos 