You never knew me either.

 It took me four years to get to this point. It was a long, hard road plagued with self doubt, suffering, causing others suffering, wallowing in old things from the past, and running straight into a wall trying to be things I’m not.

Lalita, this entry is not directed at you. You don’t belong in these ranks. You’re better than these people in every way. Thank you.

This is for the people who tried to control me. Those who thought they knew better about who I should be than I. Those who used me as an emotional dumping ground, a scapegoat. An example of what being bad looks like. “Don’t be that guy,” one of you used to say. 

Well. You didn’t know me. 

I already admitted to my wrongs, to the ways in which I mistreated some of you. I came clean and accepted responsibility for my actions. I may even have apologized for things for which I didn’t need to apologize. I mean, how messed up is that? What the fuck kind of society do we live in where we have to apologize for who we are?

Well, now it’s my turn. You get to face the music now. Because I’m tired of it. I’m thirty-two, I got through a grueling interpreter program, got a real job, a real house, and a real wife. I think that now I’m entitled to put it back on you. I don’t care if you’re ready.

Here are all the ways in which you showed how little you know me:

You got mad at me for quitting baseball. You got mad at me for experimenting with gender. You got mad at me for seeking affection elsewhere after you refused to give it. You threatened to expose me to your friends in order to control me and censure me for, yet again, experimenting with gender. 

You forced me into a double standard where I didn’t get to sleep with other people, but you could. You used me as your bank and house slave. You sought my help with a guy who never respected you, but refused to help me when I needed you. You cried in my lap when he came home to you, drunk and reeking of hard liquor, but you just mocked me when I cried from loneliness and frustration. 

You made me think that I couldn’t be an interpreter. You locked me out. You overloaded me with stress, fucked up my wrists, and caused me to gain weight. You intensified my imposter syndrome by a thousandfold.

You tried to soothe me with vaporous images of fantasies that cannot exist. You sold me an idea of women that is toxic. You hijacked my sexuality and implanted craziness in my mind. You hurt my partner.

You tried to force me back into Christianity by whatever means necessary, some of them including: dragging me bodily to church, begging and wheedling me to go to Mass, shoving Christian music concert tickets and CDs in my face, ignoring me when I raised my hand in class, intentionally misplacing the homework that I worked on and turned in, shaming me and calling me a devil worshiper, telling me that I was just mad at god, making me go to an Easter Mass where the priest ridiculed me for subscribing to evolution, which is supported by far more EVIDENCE than any part of your bible, making me watch satanic horror movies and then telling me that I’m like the monsters in them because I’m an atheist. I was in therapy for years to deal with this. I am not your garbage can.

You didn’t try to understand me. Why do that when you can just crush me and pave over me? That option offers far less discomfort. My not believing in god, not being into sports, and definitely not fitting neatly into traditional masculine roles made you too uncomfortable, oh no, how could you ever have faced that? 

How do you think it feels to be told you are wrong–like fundamentally just wrong? To be asked “What will my friends think? What will the church people say?” You said that you were a failure as a father just because I didn’t turn out to be a normal boy. Instead of understanding me, instead of meeting me at my level, you hit me, slapped me, embarrassed me, scared me, yelled at me, lectured at me for hours on end, took up all the emotional space, accused me of hating you because you’re deaf, held back knowledge and skills that could have helped me become a functioning adult, used me for unpaid interpreting services, let my authoritarian sister laugh and screech at me while you knocked me over and kicked me while I was down, pulled my hair, threw away my toys, demanded rent from me when I was barely making any money just to live in your house, mounted a years-long campaign to shame me back into church. 

Moreover, you turned me into a self-hating, self-harming, dysfunctional wreck. Kinda makes it hard to just be a person, let alone be a husband and to do my job or even just to have fun. There’s a little acid-laced voice in the back of my head that tries to ruin everything. I thank you especially for that.

And then you waited until my wife was asleep to tell me, finally, that I didn’t spend enough time with you when you knew I was busy. You love to set me up to fail. I have to play the villain in your narcissistic little dramas or else the world just doesn’t work correctly. You went behind my wife’s back to say those things because you’re a fucking coward. 

I’m too far along in life to continue fearing you. 

I know who you are. But you don’t know me. And you never will. 

I never knew you.

This is for Jane.

All these years went by without me ever really understanding who you are. Yes, we were young and had no clue what we were feeling or doing. You kissed me with your jaw clamped shut. I tried stupidly to jam my tongue through your teeth.

I didn't know you then and I know you even less now. And the reason?

I was so self-absorbed that I couldn't. I could not look at you as you in terms of yourself. I did not try to step outside of myself to understand anything about you. I pushed and shoved at you until you had no more space. And not for a second did I even barely consider how you felt. What it must have been like for you. I wouldn't leave you in peace. I'm amazed that you even reached out to me a year after it ended. That you even supported me and spent that day with me four years ago. I'm sorry for continuing to ignore your feelings on that day too.

When we were together, I was more in love with an idealized version of you. And you kindly, gently tried multiple times to get me to see it, but I wouldn't listen. I didn't get it. Girls really do often grow up faster than boys.

If I had really loved you for who you were, the whole thing would have turned out quite differently. I would have known that we could never work as romantic partners. I would have moved to save us both from the turmoil and heartbreak and chosen not to have a relationship with you. I caused you far more trouble than I realized. I'm sorry.

I blamed so much of what happened on you for years. But you tried that whole time, and even when you were moving on for yourself, you still considered my feelings. So I imagine, by the end of March nearly three years ago, you were just so fucking tired of it. Of me.

Six long years. It was time to let it die.

And still I didn't see it.

Maybe you knew me. Maybe you didn't. Either way, you eventually had to let go because I still refused to see you for who you are.

You are your mother's daughter. You're a Christian. You had the real university experience and it changed you. You're a southerner, and you're smart and insightful and kind. People who know you always told me you are the sweetest person they have ever met, especially when I tried to tear you down.

But even today, in the last week of 2018, I still don't know you.

To me, you're a stranger with a familiar face.

You never really owed anything to me. But I owe you an apology. I have no idea whether you'll ever see this. Maybe I should send this to you so you'll have closure.

I'm sorry.

Let's fly away from this endless darkness! Hold my hand.

I believe that one of the best things in life is reclaiming a song from darkness in the past. There are only a few things I find as fulfilling as taking back that music and giving it new context that connects to the experiences and people in my present. One such song is "Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku" by ZARD and Field of View, the flagship song of Dragon Ball GT.

Regardless of the quality of the anime, that song is beautiful and long ago found a deep place in my heart and stayed there, for better and for worse.

Its old context was my relationship with Jane, now nearly a decade dead. We listened to this song every time we saw each other. Dragon Ball Z was an anime we shared. We sent each other silly DBZ-themed texts and messages, wore the shirts, and even made Valentine's gifts for each other with DBZ characters and dragon balls featured on them. It was sweet, but kind of ridiculous.

After we split, I found it nearly impossible to enjoy this song. Over the next eight years, it retreated into a dusty shelf in my mind. Any time I stumbled across it, I felt an unavoidable twinge of acute sadness. When I was alone, I would weep for something long-dead.

In my last few months as a Math Fellow this past school year, I taught students who shared their love for Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. One seventh grader would sit with me at lunch and talk about Dragon Ball Z nearly every day. At first I met his conversation with feigned interest. But of course, kids can tell how you really feel. I was letting my old pain get in the way of my present. He didn't know about how anything Dragon Ball-related triggered those feelings and he had nothing to do with it. So I just let it go for a few minutes and let him talk animatedly about the DBZ game on his phone and about all the different levels of Super Saiyan that Goku and Vegeta achieve in the new anime. We discussed the power levels of the other characters and laughed about Hercule Satan and Fat Buu and Team Four Star's efforts to create a hilarious parody of DBZ.

Throughout those days, I felt a positive change. I tried listening to the song again after the student and I talked about it. All my memories of our interactions, the strides Lalita and I have made in our relationship recently, and the joy I had from teaching my sixth graders in my afternoon class all came together to pull the song out of the ruins of my relationship with Jane.

Now, when I listen to it, I feel only the joy from the things I mentioned above. I feel like a kid again, but deeper and wiser. The time I took to rebuild myself through pain, suffering, experience, and new love supports the better life I made for myself.

I believe I've come very far from the time Jane left me and when I first shared "Ghost Rider" by Rush with Lalita after I first met her.

There's a shadow on the road behind
There's a shadow on the road ahead
There's nothing to stop you now
Nothing can you stop you now

I rode through the shadows and found someone I can fly away from the endless darkness with. And since then, I've only grown more like myself.

Dan dan kokoro hikareteku
(Bit by bit you're charming my heart)
Sono mabushii egao ni
(With that dazzling smile)
Hatenai yami kara tobidasou
(Let's fly away from this endless darkness!)
Hold my hand

Different Strings

Lately I've thought often about some of the friends I don't hear from anymore. For some of them I feel resentment, indignation, confusion...but for all of them, there's an empty place where they used to be. Charles, Taylor, some people from the two places where I went to college. I try to rationalize why we no longer communicate. Does that make them bad friends? Am I a bad friend for not calling or texting them? Maybe. There's no real way to tell.

I'm afraid our culture has made it too easy to move on and leave people behind. I'm definitely guilty of doing that myself. It's kind of funny how I spend more time on trying to understand (or convince myself) of why I don't ever hear from them than on trying to contact them myself.

But here's the problem with that: I've already tried doing that. I extended an open hand for months, even a year after I moved out here. Only David and Scott stay in contact. So then the questions bounce around in my mind--

Did I say something wrong? How did I mess up this time? Am I no longer interesting? Should I just try again? 
 
It almost always ends up like this: I text or call a couple of times, maybe get lucky enough to have an actual conversation. And then we make somewhat vague promises to stay in contact, maybe call again in a few weeks. I wait. And wait. Weeks and months and eventually years go by and nothing. So then I begin to assume that they forgot. Some more time goes by and then that thought changes to they no longer care. 

I can understand getting busy. Relationships and jobs tend to eclipse most other cares in life. We've been out of college for a few years now. We have bills, rent, debt, family obligations (or we're studiously avoiding them so we can attend to the aforementioned items), and so on. So then I think about the depth and meaning of friendships I've made. I'm not the type to have dozens of friends. I pick a few really good, truly good people who pass my shit-test and try to stick with them as long as I possibly can. Lalita and I have known each other for almost eight years. Scott's been around for ten and David for fourteen years. Even Andrew, who's been around for even longer than they have, seventeen years, still sends me a Steam message sometimes. He and I talked about the merits of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask just a couple of months ago.

So then the question of whether the silent ones care anymore materializes again.

Jane defenestrated me because my coming out as poly very likely scared her. Normal, boring-ass people who cling desperately to the majority societal norms tend to run away screaming from anything that has the barest whiff of difference about it. So that one's blatantly obvious.

Charles stopped bothering talking to me because he thought that I was making another mistake in moving out here to live with Lalita. To him and his wife (my first-ever ex--awkward), I am a crazy, desperate serial monogamist. Note that I have to be a monogamist to them, because of course, the truth is too weird and uncomfortable to bear. So I haven't heard from them in years. Charles and I were friends from sixth grade up until when I moved. When he didn't support me in my decision, he betrayed his lack of faith and exposed his misunderstanding. I guess that's how friendships end.

What happened to our innocence?
Did it go out of style?
Along with our naievete
No longer a child

Different eyes see different things
Different hearts beat on different strings

It's funny how tradition separates people. Is it because of a need to feel some kind of superiority? Do religion and political ideology afford you that? I guess they would have to suffice so that they can quiet the reverberating emptiness that yawns inside. Neoliberalism has only exacerbated these trends.

Anything that contradicts, anything that sticks out, anything that causes you to squirm must be dealt with. Removed. Expunged. Forgotten. So I guess that means love isn't strong enough to overcome that for them after all.

Too much fuss and bother
Too much contradiction
And confusion

Peel away the mystery
Here's a clue to some real motivation.

A few months ago the poly discussion group I attend sometimes introduced me to the idea of relationship anarchy. It's supposed to do away with traditional relationship norms, like the relationship escalator, labels, expectations, that sort of thing, in favor of allowing space for people to agree on something better befitting how they feel about each other. I love this idea because it releases the fetters of hierarchical polyamory and expectations that burden people in these situations.

There was especially mention of the types of relationships where parties don't stay in regular contact. Of course, the first people I thought of were Julie and Taylor. I still love them, but I almost never hear from them. I say almost because Julie actually texted me this morning. Taylor has remained silent for more than a year.

Sometimes I wish my memory wasn't so good. I wish I could forget stuff like this.

If I'm to try to live according to my values, which include the paradigm of relationship anarchy, should I accept the dynamic between me and those I never hear from as normal? Isn't this supposed to be a two-way street? Or should I be the "better person" and leave the door open for them?

Maybe the answer lies somewhere in between those ideas.

Or maybe it's just time to grow up.

All the same, it still hurts either way.

I found the pieces in my hand
They were always there
It just took some time for me to understand
You gave me words I just can't say
So if nothing else
I'll just hold on while you drift away

The cities grow
The rivers flow
Where you are I'll never know
But I'm still here

Disposable

I've been wanting to get around to writing an entry about some of the concepts that have enthralled me the most recently. I'm aware that any of you reading this are already quite familiar with some of these ideas and motifs because, if you've lived on the Internet even for a small space over the last seven or eight years, there's no way you could have missed this, or some iteration upon it:

Vaporwave is an aesthetic and a kind of music that features outdated, goofy computer graphics and marketing images, slowed down and heavily distorted forgotten hits, as well as elevator/mall music from the 1980s and 1990s. The most famous example of these is the oft-cited Floral Shoppe by Macintosh Plus, also known as Vektroid. The track, roughly translated as Lisa Frank 420, is the standout here, creating images of an abandoned mall playing Diana Ross's "It's Your Move"  over its PA system as it skips, slows, and eventually breaks down. Jesus--does anyone remember Lisa Frank? The notebooks, pencils, their own version of beanie babies, clothes, lunchboxes, etc.? The late nineties, which I spent in elementary school, were overloaded with the paraphernalia. You hardly ever see it now, because it dwells in a dusty corner under your bed or your closet and in your mind. If, of course, it hasn't been sold off or given away in a yard sale yet.

Vaporwave, for me (and some others), is a commentary and indictment upon the throwaway market-driven culture of the aforementioned era as well as its current iteration. It never really ended. Marketers never really intended for this material to be remembered that far past its creation and implementation. So it's all the more unsettling that vaporwave drags it out of our cultural landfill and exposes it for what it is: the refuse of a pretend culture based on neoliberal values.

Neoliberal values which have, through deregulation of industry, privatization of more and more of the commons, and reducing taxes on corporations and the already quite well-off, gutted, drained, and ravaged the middle class and ground the poor even further into the dirt.

Why should the thieves have all of the fun
Selling us water by the river
They don't speak for everyone
I'm ready to run and you're making me crawl
Selling me water by the river
They don't speak for me at all 

Yeah, you can tell that this thing pisses me off.

Listening to vaporwave brings home how much money, resources, and time were poured into distracting the public from regime change, austerity, and deregulatory policy. While corporations pulled up stakes and descended upon poor countries like Vietnam and Mexico in pursuit of cheaper labor, they tried to lull workers into a dream state fueled by celebrity drama, pop music, and fast food. Think of the 1950's hopped up on steroids and sugar, throw in some pastels and heavy synth, and you've got it.

Vaporwave, in repackaging the sounds of the eighties and early nineties, not only mocks neoliberalism's attempts at its own repackaging of art and culture into something cheaper, more marketable, and consumable, but also reveals it all to be fraudulent, designed to placate and deceive. Which would explain its tendency towards sounding like muzak.

It is, as aforementioned, the muzak continuing to play over the PA system of a darkened, abandoned mall, skipping, repeating, and running out of battery power.

These distorted lines from "Lisa Frank 420," previously Diana Ross's, reflect how neoliberalism is itself disintegrating:

I'm giving up
On trying to sell you things
That you ain't buying

Toys R Us is closing its stores worldwide. KB Toys no longer exists. Malls, fortresses of consumer capitalism, lie dead and dying across the nation. Workers in the 99% aren't putting their money back into the economy like they used to because they can't afford what they used to. So the malls empty, darken, and deteriorate. Instead of paying workers more so they, too, can make more money, the neoliberal elite are just investing more in surveillance technology, very likely gearing up to stop anything that exudes even the barest whiff of uprising against them. Jeff Bezos has a $600 million contract with the CIA. The corporate government from the canceled Canadian science fiction show, Continuum, seems almost inevitable at this point.

They're giving up on selling us things that we aren't buying--economically and politically. When capitalism has no recourse, it resorts to fascism. The neoliberal elite, like Chris Hedges writes, has lost all credibility. Their moral bankruptcy is revealed for all to see, and now people know not to trust them. And that definitely manifested itself in a significant part of the country's population's rejection of Hillary Clinton.

Only 58% of voters showed up to desultorily vote for two nearly identical candidates--and got a neoliberal vaporwave presidency anyway.

Trump's election indicated voters' incredible resentment and rejection of the establishment and their economic policies. Trump, being quite a marketer himself, rode straight to the White House on that pent-up rage, and, eerily, like Obama, immediately reneged on his promises. Then, like a simpering little doggie, hopped into the lap of the 1% and obediently continued the status quo. 

People are waking up and they're not happy with the abuse neoliberalism has been serving up for the last forty-five years. I often wonder when the revolution will occur, or if there will even be one at all, considering the ubiquity of distracting entertainments. I mean--who's got time to organize and revolt when there's a new Samsung Galaxy phone on the horizon? When the bills need to be paid? When your thoughts focus solely on debt and where your next meal will come from?

America is a dead mall. And vaporwave, the broken-down resurrection of tired siren songs, provides the soundtrack to its madness.

Some thoughts on children.

Something happened this morning that brought up some of the issues I've been working through. Lalita had a hard day at work yesterday and didn't feel like talking about it. It seemed like she was demoralized and exhausted, so I didn't press her any further. She was still feeling low this morning, so I instinctively avoided her, worried that she'd yell at me or say something hurtful.

But she hasn't ever and would never treat me that way. She has been my friend for going on eight years and has never once lashed out at me with her emotions, even when there have been plenty of situations in which she could have.

The ride to work this morning, for me, felt taut with tension. Again, I was expecting something terrible to happen, but it didn't come. She told me that I was acting weird, and when I said that I was afraid that she'd be upset with me, she reminded me that I acted this way because of how I've been treated throughout my life leading up to when I moved here. Of course. It all made sense in that moment. The most frustrating part is that this isn't the first time this has happened, with Lalita and my other relationships. I always expect swift and decisive punishment. Bracing myself for retribution was a useful survival skill, but now it's a faulty program that needs to be overwritten with a long-needed update. I've got to get out of this mindset.

I've been to the psychologist twice this year and will have another session this Thursday. I really hope that my therapist is a good fit. The thought of having to tell the story of my whole life again to a different stranger just magnifies the exhaustion in my bones.

Here are some words from "Fire Maple Song" by Everclear on their first album, World of Noise, that inspired me to write this:

Turn away from the pain you don't want
Turn them down to avoid them when they call
Strange words of hurt a long, long time ago

I wish I could go back to a summertime

I knew more than twenty years ago

Lay between the sheets

Lie underneath the maple tree

Now I can't smile

Children are beautiful. If the evolution of our species prioritized their care to ensure the survival of the next generation--huge, round eyes, their smiles, innocence, and sweetness--you'd think that as a species, as all the different societies we arrange ourselves into, we'd try harder to actually care for them. Children haven't been corrupted by the evil in the world. They know hardly anything of capitalism, socialism, wars, religions, economics, climate change, politics, death, poverty, the self-serving nature of the superrich. There is no such fucking thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child. Child labor laws have existed for barely a century. Hillary Clinton approved African tin-horn dictators' employment of child soldiers. Those pictures of families all wearing "Make America Great Again" hats. And then those news stories about those parents who kept all their children chained to their beds for years. Their twenty-nine year old doesn't even weigh 100 pounds. Anti-bullying policies in schools are an extremely recent development. Where the fuck were they when I was a kid? And for all those who suffered before my time? Are we really this slow to react? 

It doesn't matter if kids are born into poverty or with silver spoons in their mouths--they didn't deserve the world adults fucked up before they were born. They didn't ask to be born, as Lalita often reminds me. It isn't their fault--the conditions of poverty were created by those who put the silver spoons into the mouths of their own kids. And then parents on both sides, because of their backgrounds or for no reason, load their children up with their problems.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had,

And add some extra, just for you.

I can already see it in how my sister treats her daughter. The cycle of emotional violence and authoritarianism always repeats itself when people don't or won't analyze themselves and then take steps to get better. This is a large part of why I refuse to help make children at this point in my life--

I'm just not ready to. I haven't sufficiently sorted through my own issues to where I wouldn't pass them down. 

Sometimes it gets so much

I feel like letting go

Sometimes it gets so hard

I feel like letting it go

Sometimes it gets so goddamn hard 

I feel like letting it all go

Working here at this school, I sometimes see through the cracks in some of my students' facades. I can see them shouldering the weight of their parents' expectations. Their judgment. I just look in their eyes and know. I want to hug them and tell them they're beautiful, intelligent, that they really are more okay than they think, more valuable than people have told them. I don't care how these kids look, whether they wear hand-me-downs or Air Jordans, how well they do in school, or even whether they're well-behaved (by the standards of our society) or "problem students"--they, just like anyone else, but especially because they're children, deserve to be loved. Are people really so wrapped up in themselves that they can't see this? I don't mean to make myself seem like I'm the only person who does (I'm definitely not). I'm just really frustrated.

I keep on having the same bad dream

And it makes me want to hurt all the people

Who have done this thing to you

When I see your face

I can see you smile

Read all about you in the New York Times

When I see your eyes

I can see your life

When I think about what happened

It just makes me crazy

This makes no sense to me, yeah

This eye for an eye thing

It has gone too far

I don't know anyone who does not hurt inside

I would like to believe that we can learn from this

And maybe some day

Make things right

Thinking about this, I realize that I owe a couple of students some apologies. Like my mom tried to apologize to me somewhat recently. It felt weird mostly because it took her years to do it. She offered to talk about it, but I turned her down. I just felt so much revulsion and resentment that I couldn't do it. My students don't deserve to have me lose my shit on them, especially not because my mom did it to me throughout the time I grew up. I will not take years to apologize to my students. The fact that I lived in a house where I thought that the conditions I faced were normal makes me frustrated beyond whatever efforts I could put towards describing it in words. The feeling of gritted teeth. Desperate searches for escape into sci-fi and video game worlds. Everclear songs.

I will never be safe

I will never be sane

I will always be weird inside

I will always be lame

Now that I'm a grown man

With a child of my own

I swear I'm not going to let her know

Of the pain I have known

Though my feelings absolutely resonate with that, I won't resign myself to that kind of thinking. I am taking steps every day to get better. I think about how I act to Lalita, my students, and myself.

I'm not ready to give up. 

Open your heart...

I think I'll skip the usual self-flagellation that has come with returning to this place after a long period of silence. And I think you'll agree with my decision. Thanks.

Plenty of life happened while I neglected to post here. Lalita's husband moved out. I had issues with feelings I developed for someone I shouldn't have. I learned how dark and twisted I can become if I lose control of my emotions. I also learned, from painfully hard-earned experience, that communication is key in relationships. Like, I mean communication that dredges absolutely everything there is to know from the depths of yourself and your partner(s). So detailed and fully disclosed that the amount of information you learn about each other could make you puke.

It's all right--Lalita and I are still together and living in the same place. It's just that we've survived quite a few Category 7 storms this year, and many of them resulted from poor communication (as well as poor decisions) on my part. I thank her, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Cthulhu, and Joe Pesci every single day for how understanding and patient she has been with me thus far. She transcends the concept of saintliness. The English language hasn't yet come up with a word for how amazing she has been in this year and a half that I've been spilling the results of childhood trauma and decades' worth of suffering under Anglo-American, Christian, capitalist, Southern norms while trying to keep my shit together in Colorado. Seeing a psychologist has indeed helped, but I give Lalita much of the credit for the fact that we've stayed together through so much turbulence. And turbulence might be too sanitized a word for what we went through. Maybe I could try grueling.

Also, before I forget this and allow myself to appear as a victim--those norms and causes I listed serve to explain things, but aren't an excuse for my mistakes. And, as Lalita would argue, some of those things weren't really mistakes. She said last night that I'm way too hard on myself. And that is unfortunately very true. The challenge with this issue lies in ferreting out, accurately, what is and isn't my fault.

Nothing is perfekt
Certainly not me
Success to failure
Is just a matter of degrees
Working at perfekt
Got me down on my knees

Recently I raised the Titanic. I dug through the folder containing the .xml files my old Xanga website got compressed into after their servers went dark in 2013. Of course, I could double-click on them and read them in between html commands in a browser. But it just didn't feel the same. So I went back to what's left of Xanga and found that I could port it to a website that supported Wordpress-related sites. And, before long, I put the processes into the motion that lifted my old Xanga from its grave.

So here is the ship, raised from the depths, in all its reckless folly and arrogance:
blastfromthepast1977

So much for avoiding self-flagellation.

For a time, I considered picking up where I left off on my old Xanga. The last post dates back to 2012. I read a few entries from it to get a feel for that blog again. I used to be able to read it for an extended period of time before succumbing to revulsion at its cringiness. Now, I can't read very far past 2011. I shared this with Lalita and she said that I had just grown up. I will stick with this blog, because it makes sense for there to be a clean break between this blog and the old one.

One of the most formidable challenges to growing up at this point in my life is accepting the me who makes mistakes. And then, of course, the me who did so in the past. You'll probably remember the entry before the last one where I talked about gently taking the iteration of myself whose roots lie nearly thirteen years in the past off the wheel, but not killing him.

Sometimes I lapse into excoriating him. It's easy to blame and criticize someone you used to be, because that person can't exactly come back and deliver retribution or mount a defense. But the real problem is acceptance. Accepting that person's foolishness, errors, and bad choices led to who you are now. I distinctly remember an episode from Naruto Shippuuden where Naruto, in order to unlock the greatest powers of the kyuubi while still maintaining full control of himself, had to overcome his darker, wilder, more hateful, and childish part of himself. Instead of  engaging in a bitter fight, he does this with love and forgiveness.

Lately, I've found this rather difficult. Growing up, I was raised by people who installed behavior-management mechanisms in me that could reproduce the effects of their punishment without their having to constantly stand over me and redirect me.

Speaking plainly--they made me into a person who beats himself up for nearly everything. Everything from spilling juice on the kitchen floor to forgetting a partner's boundaries in a relationship. I guess most people eventually get over things like those, but for me, they stick. Often years after the fact. And having parents who refused to let me forget  or get over mistakes and bad choices made a long time ago didn't help either. I still learn from my mistakes, but I feel like it's a much more painful process than it should be. 

How strange: I can forgive my students for talking loudly and not listening to me during class. I can let go of the fact that Lalita sometimes doesn't clean up after herself in the apartment. I can even, with time, realize that my love for my exes exceeds any lingering resentment I might hold towards them for whatever they did in our past relationships--

But I find it almost impossible to treat myself with the same kindness. When I mess up with Lalita or say something stupid to a coworker or other friend, I always expect swift retribution. I tell myself that I deserve whatever punishment comes my way, 100%. And most of the time, especially since moving here, I find that that's just not the case. And then I realize that I'm in a new part of my life, living in a new place, having new experiences. The one that stands out the most is receiving understanding from Lalita and others. I'm not saying that my parents ultimately weren't understanding people, but I do have to say that they weren't exactly very good at helping me see that my mistakes don't define me. 

Because, for much of my life, they did. I was told again and again that I was like some other problem child they knew from the community of deaf people we interacted with. I was told that I would never get anywhere and that I was "no good." An asshole. "All you do is fuck us." At twelve years old. Even fifteen. And it continued past age twenty-one and the time I moved back in when my gambit living in Woodstock failed.

Wax me

Mold me

Heat the pins and stab them in

You have turned me into this

Just wish that it was bulletproof

Even though I had apologized in detail for everything that I had done before that point. And since I had done so, I made it clear that they could no longer treat me the same way unless it was absolutely justified because of something I had done. From those days forward, I committed to helping them around the house, interpreting for them, providing them with company and news from the world, explanations for concepts they needed help understanding, and so on. I even got to a point where I could forgive them for the mistakes they had made as parents. They did the best they could with what they knew and the time they could spare. My dad worked two jobs for most of my life, often coming home at around 11:00 PM or midnight. I often went days without seeing him. My mom had evil, horrible, authoritarian, fundamentalist Christian adoptive parents who used her as their house slave until she ran away at seventeen. She wasn't given any good examples as to how to raise children properly. Of course, this brings to mind a poem I've shared with you before--"This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin. 

So, ultimately, I find myself in a place where I can forgive the people who shaped me in this form, but I have to try very hard to forgive myself. The operations of an outdated, malfunctioning program whose purpose has long since died. We are all left to sort through the detritus our parents create.

Lalita is falling in love with someone again for the first time in a while. My initial reaction was one of frustration. Where's my new partner? When do I get to feel NRE (new relationship energy) with a new person? When will it be my turn? And so on. It's like banging my toe on something hard and made of metal. I curse loudly in pain and then realize that nothing's broken. Then I realize I have been silly. I remind myself that she worked extremely hard to get where she has. All the good she enjoys now lay on the other side of a mountain of grinding misery last year. And now she's on that other side. Like I said to her the other night, I guess I've got a little more to go before I can have that too.

But I am with her. She isn't going anywhere. And it could be a hell of a lot worse.

Probably the most difficult challenge I've faced this year is changing my mindset from one of I have to find someone else to I appreciate the people around me and the life I have made.

I have to stop living in desperation mode. For most of my life, because of the influence of media and comparing myself to others, I allowed my mind to get locked into a way of thinking that made me panic trying to find someone to be with before I die. And any of you reading this who know me well enough--this is exactly the thing that caused me to rush headlong into some of the very worst relationships of my life. Because I could not stand to be alone.

 I'm a moth
Who just wants to share your light
I'm just an insect
Trying to get out of the night
I only stick with you
Because there are no others

I would take whoever came my way, even if I didn't like them that much or saw red flags early on. This persisted all the way until somewhat recently.
   
I met a girl from the week-long professional development thing I had to do to get into my current job. She had Keats written on the back of her neck, wore glasses, liked anime--do you see where this is going? If you've been around long enough, you saw this coming ten miles away.

A couple of weeks later, we met at a video game bar and there we found out that the other person was poly. It totally threw me for a loop. It isn't every day when you go to an otherwise boring and uneventful professional development training thing and randomly meet another polyamorous person. So, yet again, I allowed myself to slip into that pattern of thought--better stick with her because, hell, when will you get this lucky again?

Which, of course, is baldly incorrect. There are such things as poly meetups and the new group of friends with whom Lalita and I have gotten involved. But resisting years and years of programming and wrong thinking is a lot harder. I know these things in my brain, but my heart vehemently disagrees, and out of fear, races ahead. So about a week later, she and I met at her house and things escalated far more quickly than I had anticipated, and like I always had, I went along. After that, though, I got the distinct sense that I had outworn my welcome in her presence.

After she had finished with me, I was no longer interesting to her. I haven't heard from her since. Yes, she did take advantage of me, but I put myself in such a position to where it came too easily for her. I fell into the same old trap once more. My feelings outran my logical processes.

When I think about it, now might not be a bad time to return to listening to Rush, because the struggle between the heart and mind is, I would argue, the most prevalent lyrical theme of their entire body of work. Some I can think of right off the top of my head:

1. "Lock and Key." Hold Your Fire.


Behind the finer feelings
The civilized veneer
The heart of a lonely hunter
Guards a dangerous frontier
The balance can sometimes fail
Strong emotions can tip the scale

2.  "Emotion Detector." Power Windows.

Sometimes our big splashes
Are just ripples in the pool
Feelings run high

3. "Cygnus X-1 Book Two: Hemispheres." Hemispheres. (Skip to 7:27 for Part V: The Sphere)

We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim
Let the truth of love be lighted
Let the love of truth shine clear
Sensibility
Armed with sense and liberty
With the heart and mind united 
In a single, perfect sphere

So there's wisdom all around me--in the Rush lyrics close to my heart, the experiences I've had until this point, and, most importantly, in the people who care about me. Which would bring me to the title of this entry.

"Open Your Heart," from the anime .hack//SIGN by Yuki Kajiura was the song for last year for me. Any time I listen to it and its reprise version, I instantly relive the experience of pulling out of my parents' driveway for the last time and driving off the ramp away from Ringgold to Colorado. "Open Your Heart" means taking risks with the knowledge that you can and will lose something or someone who means a great deal to you. It means accepting change and the suffering that accompanies it. When I listen to it, I can also feel time speeding up and my perspective on it zooming out, so much as to induce vertigo. It's an emotional and heart-wrenching song that teeters on the knife-edge between overwhelming feeling and checking out. Knowing that you could slip to one side or the other and challenging yourself to stay in between them.  

This year, it has only grown in significance to me. I have worked harder than ever to improve my emotional regulation in my relationship with Lalita and in tough situations I encounter in everyday life, like some of those that very nearly ruined the life I've only just started to make here. I have also tried harder to open myself up to the possibility and reality of moving into a mindset no longer fraught with desperation. A mindset that has overcome the arbitrarily pressing hunger to find yet another girlfriend when I clearly don't need to. I'm learning to look up from the ground and to stop shuffling around. That isn't my life anymore.

Open your heart
To eternal dimension
Open your heart 
For love and affection

Open your heart
Your every emotion
Open your heart
To tears and rejection

Some people, like Jane and other deeply conservative people I know from where I used to live, can live happily within the tightly confining boundaries of the safe world in which they've been socialized to grow up. Those people are done. They've willingly relinquished their potential. They can go no further, and the disquieting madness that underpins it is that they're okay with it. They don't mind and, furthermore, they want it. Anything outside of that scares them far too much. So, of course, therein lies the most important factor that led to my departure from them in just about every imaginable way.

In just the year and a half that has passed since I moved here, I have left those people so far behind that I feel like I've become a different species. They would never understand me, let alone even try. And that's just fine with me.