The Little Prince and the Fox

[Trigger warning: loss/death of parent, grief.]

Yesterday I went for a long hike with one of my climbing buddies who’s also one of my closest friends. The hike itself was quite an adventure as we went high up in elevation and despite the recent hot-spell most of the mountain was still covered in snow so the trail was mostly invisible and we had to pick our way through the tress, over streams, constantly walking and falling through snow. 

We spent the whole day together — just like we used to when we went climbing outdoors together on weekends — so that was really nice. 

It was also nice that we could spend the day together yesterday specifically, adventuring together, on Father’s Day, given that we’ve both lost our fathers. We didn’t talk about that in particular yesterday, but we did talk about our dads a bit over dinner & beers — this buddy of mine is one of the few people with whom I really talk about my dad, mostly memories of him from when I was younger, as my friend does with me. 

Before heading out on our hike, my buddy commented on my little mohawk that I just got saying that it suited me and that I reminded him of the “Lost Boys” in the movie “Hook”. 

I don’t know why I made him think of one of those characters, really, but I do feel like a lost boy. Very much so. Although, technically speaking, I’m not a boy: I’m a 42-year-old adult… 

But still, I do feel totally lost. 

… And the key fear or worry underlying my almost constant sense of not being enough is due to the sense — or worry or fear — of being admired rather than loved. 

With my close platonic friends I know I am loved: I know they love me despite all my many shortcomings and defects and even characteristics that make me straight-out impossible to deal with sometimes. 

But with this relatively new romantic friend there isn’t love, yet, it’s simply too soon. She likes me, I know that and believe that, but I feel it’s a liking coming mainly from admiration — for my being physically good-looking, smart, brave, or whatever else. 

It’s okay, and even nice, to be admired in certain, appropriate situations and in not-so-close relationships. But when I feel admired rather than loved by someone with whom there’s closeness & intimacy (of any type), then I get triggered and feel at risk of not being enough at some point — like now that I’m going through a rough spot… 

What happens when the admiration eventually diminishes or vanishes altogether?

It just hit me: the realization of how much I live in constant fear, or worry, of not being enough. 

When I injured my thumb and found out I couldn’t climb for at least three months after surgery, my first thought was, “Will my climbing buddies forget me? Will I lose their friendship?”. Then, when a couple of them reassured me (& one even showed me in action) that they would go hiking with me instead this summer, in order to maintain our connection or bond, my next worry was, “Will they want to climb with me again afterwards, once I’m healed, after having spent this summer climbing with other — and better — climbers? I’ll have to train my ass off to regain a position with them in climbing!” 

Such worries or fears with my platonic friends are more rare, at least once we’ve established a deep connection and thus trust. 

With romantic relationships, though, the fear is much bigger and gets triggered more easily, probably activating childhood wounds more directly. Or maybe, simply, because my romantic relationships of the past decade have been on less solid foundations than my platonic friendships.

It just happened again with the transwoman with whom I had a romantic relationship for the past three months. We’re both polyamorous and we were practicing relationship anarchy in our specific case. When she told me a few days ago that she had started seeing someone else romantically/sexually, too, that activated some old, deep wounds in me and the ensuing response to end things with her. 

I deeply believe in consensual/ethical non-monogamy both as my innate orientation and from a philosophical or social viewpoint. I understand and believe and truly feel that I and she both need more than one romantic and/or sexual partner — I’m very open about saying that she’s “not enough” for me and I rationally understand I wouldn’t be “enough” for her, romantically or sexually — I honestly don’t believe any one person can be sexually and/or romantically “enough” for anyone else — and it takes pressure off of me to think that my partner(s) would get some of their romantic and/or sexual needs covered by someone else rather than all by me. And yet, her communicating that to me in this particularly vulnerable moment of my life threw me for a loop that led me to ask her for radio silence until the end of this month (with the inner intention on my part to end our relationship). I know I have been less present or available for her in the past three or four weeks because of all the difficulties I’ve been going through — thumb injury & surgery with long, hard recovery; partial/temporary move now and then living uncertainty as of September; professional uncertainty, upcoming unemployment, and confusion/disappointment around my career; frustrations & disappointments around other “dating” situations for me; and maybe most of all now (apart from my thumb injury) the renewed pain and sorrow and grief from memories of my European queer ex-lover and the upcoming anniversary of my father’s death. All this has made me recoil, shut down, be less available for her or not feel “good enough”, not feel as “sparkly” for/with her as I was a couple months ago. I guess I’ve been feeling “less attractive” to her while also guilty of not being as present as I maybe should be. So her having started a new romantic/sexual relationship just now feels like a confirmation of my own “not being enough” rather than a simple fact of polyamory/relationship anarchy. 

Will I ever resolve, or overcome, this fear, this worry, this almost constant sense of not being enough for people? 

Can I ever “be enough”?

[Trigger warning: some explicit references to sexual and end-of-life themes.]

I have the sex drive, lack of confidence, and outer shell of a sixteen-year-old boy. I have life experiences that rival those of a sixty-year-old and a burden of grief and lack of hope similar to those of a ninety-year-old. 

Nothing aligns with my biological age of 42. 

And I’m starting to really struggle with this. 

People look at me and say I look a decade younger — that’s been true most of my life and it was the same for both my parents and my grandparents for most of their lives, too, so there’s probably a genetical thing there. 

For the past decade I’ve enjoyed hanging out with people much younger than myself, even a decade or so my juniors, and didn’t really feel an age difference. But now I feel it. Because I feel so old inside. And I also don’t feel “queer enough”. Most of my queer friends or acquaintances, the younger ones as well as the older ones, all seem to have more familiarity and/or experience with queerness than me: their “queer time” has been longer than mine, by decades, and/or their exposure to, or ease with, queer concepts and behaviors is greater, more pronounced, more confident than mine. Some were already openly gay or bisexual as early as middle school or high school; others started “transitioning” decades younger than me; others feel comfortable with kink and/or sex toys, and/or have a lot of experience with ethical non-monogamy. 

I have none of this. I spent most of my life as the “pretty boyish girl” having vanilla sex with (mostly straight) cis guys. I can hardly find the courage to go into a sex shop to buy myself a new vibrator to explore by myself. Romantic and sexual relationships continue to be a total struggle & debacle for me (to the extent that I’ve ended things with the transwoman with whom I was romantically involved for the past three months and deleted dating apps from my phone).

I cannot find an alignment between my external looks & internal feelings, as I continue to struggle with how people look at me, perceive me, and behave with me; I would never go back to my earlier looks, from even just 2-3 years ago, but I still cannot wrap my head around how I look & feel now nor how people behave with me, apparently because of how I look. And maybe having a queer community around me could be helpful but it scares me and makes me uncomfortable and I keep avoiding it, at least partly. I have a few very close queer/trans/non-binary friends whom I trust deeply and with whom I feel safe & comfortable; but I struggle to broaden my connections in the queer world, to pursue new acquaintances or even watch queer shows. Because I don’t feel queer enough. Because with respect to my biological time I’m old but with respect to my queer time I’m still so deceivingly young & inexperienced. And because I wasn’t allowed to discover, explore, or express my authentic self for most of my life, for the best years of my life, so I still feel a huge amount of sorrow and anger and grief around “queerness” that prevents me from being able to connect more deeply or broadly with the queer community (be it even only through queer shows or queer artists).

Inside, I don’t feel just 42: I feel 84, I feel 100. I feel like I’m at the end of my days. 

I always thought I would die young. Not in a morbid way, but rather in a realistic way, maybe on one of my wild adventures. And I really don’t want to live in an aging, decrepit body. 

Part of why I’m feeling so old now is because I feel I’ve already experienced all there was to experience and there’s nothing left for me to do or try — at least, not without failing again as I’ve already failed in all my past endeavors, be they professional or personal. I’ve tried several careers and abandoned them all. I’ve tried to build romantic partnerships but failed miserably and gotten my heart broken so badly that I don’t have it in me anymore to try again. 

I have a couple short-term goals now: to help my left thumb heal so I can start climbing again and to train for my first full-marathon on trail for October 19th. Then what? 

Then nothing. No more goals after that, no more dreams. 

All I can see & feel for myself is burdens, inadequacy, and disalignment. 

[Trigger warning: some explicit descriptions of thumb/hand wounds.]

Carried away by my own innate optimism along with the enthusiasm of other people around me, I thought this past Wednesday would be a wonderful moment filled only with relief and good news as I was going to have the post-op splint removed from my left forearm & hand, fifteen days after the surgery on my torn UCL. 

How wrong I was! 

Most of Wednesday afternoon was marked with tears: tears coming from shock, fear, and pain — mostly emotional pain along with some physical pain. 

I think I love my body as parents love their children. And seeing the condition of my left thumb so completely helpless shocked me. 

My left thumb is currently so swollen it’s almost twice as thick as my right thumb and the joints are practically invisible, hidden by the swell and the dark bruise. The upper joint of my left thumb is practically immobile. And the nail on my left thumb hasn’t grown at all in the past two & a half weeks, since the surgery. When I mentioned that to the doctor, I was told it’s normal: my body is using the energy and the material (collagen) to regrow the torn UCL so it cannot waste any extra energy or material for my left thumb nail. 

I think it was this last fact of the thumb nail that really brought it home to me, how much work this part of my body is doing now. 

And the stiffness, swell, and immobility of the upper joint in my left thumb is so terrifying to me because I’m really afraid of never regaining enough strength and mobility in that thumb to be able to climb again — which for me would practically be a death sentence. 

There’s so much work and effort and care I need to put into my left thumb & forearm now and for several months to come… I’m trying to tap into the memories and energy from when I fractured my right humerus seven years ago and made an incredible and much faster than expected recovery… But it’s not easy… Somehow I feel I’ve lost a lot of the hope I had back then… 

You saw what I am saying, that is

Why this is playing on your mind

And you know, there’s nothing I’d rather say to you

I’m just a little bit surprised

We’ve come so far, together and for the better

It’s like our wetter weather’s dry

It stares me in the face, it taps you on the shoulder

They’ll hear us singing, you and I

But goodbye, goodbye now

When you leave please try to see me somehow

And so long my friend

And I’ll wait to say hello to you again

We move on like in a pantomime

Or in a summer sky so gold

And birds will always fly, whether or not it’s golden

Just as long as they get home

I’m telling you, I would find any color

Just to stop you going blind

And you told me, I would still love you brother

Even with so much left to hide

But if you fall, you’re falling

And in your dreams, you’ll still hear me calling

And do you mind? Are you minding?

Everything that you have been hiding?

Goodbye, goodbye now

When you leave please try to see me somehow

And so long my friend

And I’ll wait to say hello to you again

Goodbye, goodbye now

When you leave please try to see me somehow

And so long my friend

And I’ll wait to say hello to you again

[“So Long!” by CoCo & The Butterfields]

To little boy Arys from daddy:

If eyes could talk then yours would sing

It’s true you are the most beautiful thing

You’re mild like a Sunday morning

Your smile as bright as daybreak dawning

And nothing’s ever made more sense

And I will, promise to kill

All the monsters in your dreams and in your head

So hold still and I promise to fill

All your waking days with happiness instead

So if I took you by the hand

Would everything go exactly as we planned

Tonight you wouldn’t even notice

If I could just steal one more soft kiss

And everything would just make sense

And I will, promise to kill

All the monsters in your dreams and in your head

So hold still and I promise to fill

All your waking days with happiness instead

The monsters will be dead

The monsters will be dead

And she said

Bear with me, bear with me, bear with me

I won’t forget

Bear with me, bear with me, bear with me

I won’t forget wohoo

Bear with me, bear with me, bear with me

I won’t forget wohooo

Bear with me, bear with me, bear with me

I won’t forget wohooo

And I will, promise to kill

All the monsters in your dreams and in your head (your head)

So hold still and I promise to fill

All your waking days with happiness instead

And I will, promise to kill

All the monsters in your dreams and in your head

So hold still and I promise to fill

All your waking days with happiness instead

The monsters will be dead!

[“Monsters” by CoCo & The Butterfields]

Most “love songs” are written for romantic love but to me, especially now, so many of them feel like platonic love songs that the father in me could write/sing to the boy in me, that my daddy could sing to my little boy, and possibly even with close platonic friends joining in. It is, in fact, greatly thanks to the sincere affection, support, and camaraderie from my close platonic friends that I can find some unconditional love for myself. Their concrete gestures and words of platonic love towards me help as I father the little boy in me, trying to “kill the monsters in his dreams and in his head” & “promising to fill his waking days with happiness instead”. Like the reminder from one of my closets non-binary friends here that as much as my European queer ex-lover truly loved me, they also disrespected me & some important requests/boundaries of mine. Or the comment from my closest climbing buddy: “I don’t really like the situation you had with A. last year because, honestly, I think A. took advantage of you”. Or the gift from my running neighbor & dear friend down the street who, upon hearing that I yearned for a copy of the book “Under the whispering door” and was undecided whether to unearth the copy (with dedication) that my European queer ex-lover gave me last summer or buy myself a new one, went and bought me new copy as a present and gave it to me with a simple but lovely dedication that I’ll always cherish. 

These words, these gestures, indeed, help “kill the monsters in my dreams and in my head” & “fill my waking days with happiness instead”, sustaining me in my endeavor to father the broken-hearted boy in me. 

And while grief from my losses will always remain part of me — as another friend wisely reminded me — hopefully, eventually the monsters will be dead!

I think what I miss the most from last year’s summer love story with my queer European “ex” is how I felt. How I felt in that precise moment of my life and how I felt with them in particular. 

As deep and special as it was, that love story was circumstantial. 

Spring and summer are seasons in which I feel alive, I come alive, and want to be alive, wild, minimally dressed, out — outside, outdoors, out there. And last spring & summer were the first “season of aliveness” for me in my “new” body, post-gender-affirming-surgery, in the body that finally felt aligned to my identity. So I was both yearning to be out there even more than usual but also scared and worried and shy and vulnerable in my “new” body, in my new presentation. 

It was in this context that the love story with my queer European “ex” happened. A special context for both of us, albeit for partly different reasons. 

Having known them from the previous spring and there already being a familiarity and liking and closeness between us, helped me feel instinctively safe and comfortable with them — as they did with me. So I could come out with them slowly into the world as the non-binary gay boy that I was, that I am. 

It was with them that this non-binary gay boy started blossoming. 

And it was with them that I once again, after years, almost decades, opened my heart unconditionally to love, letting myself be in love, letting myself be loved and loving back with abandon. 

And that’s one of the main things I miss now: that aliveness, that enthusiasm, that blissful abandon.

I knew it back then, a year ago, that our love story wasn’t going to last beyond the summer, beyond their summer visit in Colorado. And yet I let myself consciously and willing fall in love, I let myself love with abandon. I chose to let myself feel and enjoy all of that NRE (“new relationship energy”) along with all the pain and difficulties. 

And despite the pain and difficulties it was worth it, totally worth it, and I would do it all over again (hopefully just not making the same mistakes).

And I wish I could do it all over again now. With someone else, of course, but let it happen again. Meet someone with whom I could let it happen again. I want to feel that way again.

I am a gay boy. A non-binary, transmasc gay boy but a gay boy nonetheless. Even in this period of renewed sorrow there are moments where I feel alive in that particular way that mutual attraction with other gay guys sparks in me. I want to feel that aliveness, enjoy it. 

The circumstances would be — are — partly different now. I am more comfortable in my body and even somewhat more confident in my masculine presentation (although the latter is still mind-boggling to me): these are big differences, important differences. But the seasonal aliveness, the seasonal yearnings, and my authentic identity as non-binary gay boy remain unchanged or, rather, more awake and conscious and open than ever. 

I am yearning for some “summer lovin’” again, some “gay boy summer lovin’”… 

I’m feeling tired and sad and empty, as if I had been gutted from the inside, hollowed out like a log. 

I feel like a hollow log. 

A hollow log drifting aimlessly and out of control, carried along by the waters of a cold, cold river.

In my dream last night, I was sailing to an island. Sailing in a ship or a big cargo boat (not a sailboat) that somebody — my father? my parents? — wanted me to take control of. But I didn’t want to, I didn’t feel ready. 

It was nighttime and the waters were dark, like most of my dreams of the sea or ocean: it’s almost always nighttime, with dark waters. 

And then we (who “we”?) eventually got to this island — it was daytime and sunny. It was a city-state or an island-republic, independent and fairly touristic, ancient, historically important, with some form of government building in the main square that was reminiscent of those on some Mediterranean islands. 

And then we were inside the palace and had guests for a meal and fowl was being served. 

This was unexpected for me and isn’t something typical for me at all, not only because I’m vegan now but also because I’ve never really been used to eating game or fowl. So I believe this linguistic reference to the word “fowl” through the image of the bird in my dream is very significant and is referring specifically, through assonance, to the word “foul”. 

How naturally, quickly, easily the word “fowl” came to me to describe the bird in my dream… I think it means that I somehow feel, deeply and intensely and more or less consciously, that something foul is actually going on in my life… But in what sense? 

What is foul in me or in my life now? Or does it refer to something foul in my past? Or in my future? 

What is it that feels foul to me, and why does it feel that way now? 

One of the things I like the most about Colorado is that it has four definite seasons — spring, summer, autumn, and winter, clearly marked and distinguishable, and similar to the places where I grew up in Europe as a child and young adult. My mind & soul enjoy the change of seasons, my body thrives on its connection to regular, cyclic seasonality. 

But now it’s playing against me. 

Now my deep, innate connection to the seasons, to seasonal smells and changes in light and temperature, and to all the memories that such natural clues evoke in me, is playing against me, as memories from last summer flood my consciousness at all levels (physical, mental, emotional) reactivating grief and yearnings that cannot be satisfied. 

I’m afraid of what this summer will bring, of how it will feel for me: I’m scared of the emptiness, the loneliness, the lack of purpose or direction, the confusion or lack of clarity. 

In five days I’ll be moving out of the place where I’ve been living for over a year and I’ll be house-sitting for friends down the street for three months. I’m very grateful to have the space all to myself and to be able to save some money on rent, especially in view of being unemployed in less than four months from now. But I’m also afraid of the loneliness that I might feel, in particular given that some of my dearest friends will be away for all, or parts, of the summer. This fear about an empty summer is also compounded by the fact that I won’t be able to climb because of my UCL injury/surgery/recovery, which leaves me without one of my most valuable sources of joy, community, and coping skills.

And then I’m scared of what will happen afterwards, in September, October, and the months to come. I’ll have to look for a new place to live in September: where? with whom? with what job? And what job do I want to do? What do I really want to do next in my life, apart from staying in this corner of Colorado? 

So much uncertainty, so much unclarity, so much emptiness. 

I’m sad about what’s here now and scared of what’s to come.