The Little Prince and the Fox

These are not decisions I made, or am making, light-heartedly. 

I had envisioned my summer of 2023 very differently. I had imagined that after recovering from my gender-affirming top-surgery, I would get fully back to work in a very productive way, wrap up my textbook completely, publish the results from the past year of postdoc research, calmly find a new living situation, and then go on a 2-3 week vacation exploring new areas in- and/or out-of-State, before starting the Fall 2023 semester with a full & regular schedule. 

But March & April turned out to be much tougher than expected between my return to the “real world” & to work being much harder and slower than I had hoped and my housing situation precipitating and forcing me to find a new place from one day to the next. But the latter event also opened up a whole new world of opportunities and relationships, from a place to live where I feel comfortable & loved, to new “adoptive families”, the deepening of previous friendships, new running buddies in my neighborhood, psychedelic therapy, starting to go out dancing again — reconnecting to life in a more whole & happy way and even exploring life in new ways. 

It’s within this frame of a roller-coaster, surprising, and unexpected (for better or for worse) spring that the friendship with the genderqueer visiting scientist from Europe started again after the break from their (scientific) visit from last year. When they arrived at the end of March, I was at the height of my (housing) crisis; and during their first two months here I was going from being extremely stressed and anxious and still traumatized and almost afraid of the world to opening up to life again — my own wonderful, albeit complicated, springtime. One can view our (re)connection then as serendipitous. For me it was in many ways extremely unexpected, but when around mid-May I finally realized there might be something “more” than platonic friendship between us, I decided very consciously to go with it, to take the leap, to let it happen, to “go and explore”. I wasn’t going to explore new areas in- and/or out-of-State out in Nature on my own, as planned. I was going to explore new & old areas of my own inner world in close relation with someone else — something I hadn’t really done in a decade. 

There still is a part of me that feels/thinks that I wasn’t true to myself or my plans/dreams this summer because I didn’t go and explore new areas in- and/or out-of-State out in Nature on my own — probably it’s the wounded part of me, and maybe also the staunchly independent part of me. But it was my decision, my conscious decision. I chose to spend that time with them and to spend it with them in those particular ways — and we made many of those decisions together, like a couple, in a relationship — something I also hadn’t done in a decade. I postponed and shrunk my road trip vacation, I didn’t travel far geographically this summer; but I nevertheless did something very important and meaningful for myself and probably also for them — and definitely something new or unusual for me for years. 

So my decision that that experience be limited in time comes within this frame, or reality, for me: I willingly and consciously went into an experience for 2-3 months between May and July that was in many ways new to me, in many ways difficult because I was out of practice, in some ways also scary or not completely aligned to what I would do on a long-term basis. I explored, I experimented, opening up to and compromising with another person, very closely. Maybe too closely or too fast too close because I couldn’t have maintained those patterns for long, they would have been unsustainable for me in the long run. I did it willingly & consciously then because I knew that was the only moment, the only time, I would have with them. 

In many ways my summer plans were turned upside down by them, by their presence, by the relationship with them: I embraced that, I went with the flow, I even jumped for it, because I felt that it was worth it. 

And I still believe it was worth it, deep down inside me. But in order to be able to really tap into that sense of it “having been worth it”, now I need to find some closure to shed the anger and the pain. 

To be able to say — and to truly feel deep down inside me — “that was my summer of 2023, how I chose to spend that one summer together with someone I loved”.

I’m taking back my power. 

I still do have a choice. 

And maybe it hasn’t really been “one step forward, two steps back” for me — maybe I’ve learned and grown more than expected from all this. 

This anger I’m feeling is the “good type of anger”, it’s my friend. It’s that anger that tells me that my boundaries have been pushed or forced in a way that is unhealthy for me; that anger that tells me when it’s time to say “Stop”; that anger that helps me get unstuck and move on. 

I still have a choice and I am making my decision — actually, I’m confirming the decision I had already made one month, two months, three months ago, all along. I always knew in my heart that it would be a lovely but temporary, self-contained love story with my genderqueer European friend. I called it a “bubble” all along, and I meant it. A wonderful, lovely bubble with so many things I miss — and will miss for a long time — terribly. With so many things that remind me daily of my genderqueer European friend. But sooner or later the pain will fade from those memories and I will be able to just retain the beauty & joy from the recollections. That is also one of my choices, one of my decisions: to keep, and eventually be able to go back to, those lovely memories; to hold those 2-3 months of this past spring/summer with my genderqueer European friend as a beautiful, lovely, and important part of my life. I don’t want to regret, to feel like I wasted those months with them or grieving after their departure. I want to be happy I did it, as I was in the moment I did. I pushed some of my own boundaries while being in the romantic relationship with them those couple of months and I did it consciously but also specifically because I knew it would be temporary, that our love story was temporary. I put up with some things that I probably wouldn’t have accepted if our relationship hadn’t been a “time-constrained bubble”, if I hadn’t known it was going to forcefully end by August 1st. I did it willingly and consciously then, but I’m not going to let any more of my boundaries be pushed with them now. I loved them to pieces and still love them and miss them but even if the geographical barriers were removed, it wouldn’t work between us because of some aspects of their character/personality that are deeply not OK for me in a long-term romantic relationship. Maybe they feel the same about me, but they still seem willing to hang on to something, to some sporadic form of romantic communication between us, to the idea of meeting up at a conference for a week next year in June. At this stage, that doesn’t work for me, and I have the right to not only say so and explain my reasons — which I’ve done with them in great detail — but also to act upon it concretely. 

Which is what I shall do.

I strongly believe in the fact that sometimes, when you love someone, you’ve got to let them go, even if just temporarily at times. 

This has been an issue for me with a few friends, with my family of origin for years, and most recently with my genderqueer European ex-lover.

For me, grief is deeply intertwined with rejection and abandonment issues, which is probably why I instinctively turn inwards and even push some people away from me when I’m grieving. I need to find — to rediscover or reestablish — my own capacity to “make it through” by myself ultimately. When people are, or seem to be, unwilling or unable to let me do that, I cut communication with them, at least temporarily, as a means to protect myself, on the one hand, and also to find deeper or faster healing, on the other. I have been doing this for many years with my family of origin because they so often broke or disrespected or invaded my boundaries, my need for silence and/or distance. I literally had to block them on my phone. 

When my genderqueer European friend left a month ago, I asked them to give me some time before being in touch again, about 4-5 weeks of “radio silence” for me to recover from our separation. They agreed, a bit reluctantly, and I believed I could trust them. So I didn’t block them on my phone. But they broke that promise. 

I am loyal. I believe deeply in friendship, it has been maybe my single deepest and most important belief and goal in life since childhood. I truly believe in building, maintaining, and rebuilding friendships/relationships. But I also strongly believe in the need for breaks, for silence, for distance sometimes, when necessary. Sometimes it is necessary. It can hurt in the moment but I think it helps to heal things deeper & faster in the long run. 

I turn inward to myself and/or reach out to “safe” friendships and exercise, nature, and work when I’m grieving. I temporarily turn away from the cause of my pain or grief, which often involves temporarily “turning away” from the person causing or involved in (whether willingly or not) that pain/loss/grief. But I come back. I do come back. And when I come back with my heart healed I can give so much more — more friendship, more compassion, more empathy, more love — free of anger. 

It’s going to be harder for me to do that with my genderqueer European ex-lover now because of their having disrespected my request for “radio silence” a month ago. Their reaching out to me way too early and with mixed messages in their communication to me has sort of “set me back” by almost a month in my healing process — or that’s how it feels to me now. And for this I’m angry with them. 

When I asked them for 4-5 weeks of “radio silence”, roughly until after the Labor Day holiday weekend, I knew from past experiences that that would allow me sufficient time to do most of the “heavy lifting” of the grieving both for my father’s death and for the forced separation/breakup from my genderqueer European ex-lover. Not having gotten those four weeks of silence from them is making me feel “far behind” in my grieving process because every communication with them feels like a renewed separation or breakup from which I have to recover over and over again — like one step forward and two steps back. 

This hurts me but it also infuriates me because it makes me feel like I have no control over my own healing process. 

Despite it having been one of the loveliest, deepest, and strongest love stories of my life, the relationship with my genderqueer European ex-lover for me was — or needs to be — a “summer affair”, a wonderful little bubble belonging to 2-3 months of the spring/summer 2023 but nothing more. I need that closure, those boundaries, in order to be able to heal and move on with my life. There is no future for us together, so I need to be able to move on with my life, with the life I have chosen to build & live here in Colorado. They went back to their “normal life” in Europe, at “home”, their home, with their stable partners there with whom they already have built or are in the process of building a concrete life in Europe. The months here in Colorado were a bubble, a parenthesis, for them, a temporary phase in their professional as well as personal life, a temporary phase of which I happened to be a part. But that’s it, that’s all. They’ve gone back to their “normal”, “non-temporary” life in Europe which they already share with two partners. I don’t belong to that life of theirs there. I belong here. And I need to rebuild my life here, where I have been left on my own (i.e. without other partners). I feel like I was left behind — to me, I was de facto left behind, with very little choice or power in the matter other than the choice/power of severing communication (temporarily). 

The fact that even that last little shred of choice/power/control was taken away from me by them infuriates me. 

What choice/power/control am I left with now?

My days are full of things to do, people to see, friends who love me. But my soul is empty, my heart a hole. 

I run through my days, seemingly my usual active, lively self on the outside. But I’m dead inside. 

I’m an empty shell.

My friends ask me how I’m doing. And I don’t really know what to answer. There are days when my emotions fluctuate wildly and are extremely intense — pain, sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, but also a sense of freedom, liberation, belonging here geographically. On days of such emotional roller-coasters it’s hard for me to say how I’m doing because my feelings are all over the place. Then, there are days when I feel nothing; I feel like an empty shell or totally disconnected from myself. 

This disconnect is happening with my body, too: I feel like I’ve lost the boy in me. 

I’m struggling with my gender. 

I’ve been off testosterone for ten days now. I stopped it at the very beginning of my trip last week because of a gut feeling, a sense of needing to stop it. 

I wanted to be able to grieve and “feel my emotions just as they were, just as they came” — although I realize this might be a perspective coming from internalized transphobia. 

I also was feeling uncomfortable and frustrated with the recent increase of body/facial hair. Uncomfortable probably because I wasn’t socialized in a way that would prepare me to accept body hair on myself and maybe also because I simply prefer bodies (male & female) without much body hair. Frustrated because despite the increase of body/facial hair on me, which I & my queer friends have been noticing, I am still getting misgendered a lot: the majority of the world around me seems to see an androgynous/athletic & maybe hairy woman in me, and I hate this. I am NOT a woman!!! And I hate to be read/seen as a hairy/androgynous/athletic woman. So I got to the point where I thought, “What’s the point of taking testosterone if all that I’m getting from it is body hair I don’t like and ongoing misgendering from the world around me?!?” 

I’ve lost the boy inside me — or maybe the boy in me is lost. He is lost because he recently lost two of the most important people in his boy-life: he lost his dad, who will never know him as the boy he is and always was; and he lost his non-binary, genderqueer European boyfriend who was so affirming of his blossoming & transforming masculinity.

I think the profound and heart-wrenching grief from having lost my father and my genderqueer European lover (the former by death, the latter by forced separation/breakup) in such short succession has thrown me off balance so much that it’s blocked the growth of the boy in me. It’s left me feeling so disconnected with myself that I cannot even feel my own gender. I know I’m not a woman and I hate to be read as one; but when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t see that beautiful boy anymore — I don’t see anything.

I see no one. 

Here and now, at home in Colorado. 

It’s warm, already too warm for me to go for a run at 9am. It’s sunny and bright and there’s a very gentle breeze. Some birds are chirping. Somebody is mowing a lawn not too far from my front porch — I cannot see them but I can hear the lawnmower and the people’s voices when the machine is off. 

It feels like a lazy summer morning. 

Grounding myself, here and now. This is a great part of self-regulation. What I see here, what I smell, what I hear, what I feel on my skin. Here and now. Not last week, not a month ago, not in some unknown future. 

Being here and now is all I can really do to keep my mind from spinning, triggered by the renewed wave of grief and resurfacing abandonment trauma. 

And if I do want to think about the past or need to plan for the future, do it to the extent that it serves and heals me. Like planning for the grad course I’ll be teaching and focusing on my research work again. Or like remembering all the lovely moments from my road trip out in nature last week, my long walks along several rivers, my swims in reservoirs, my hikes — the mountains, the lakes, the meadows, the woods; the sky full of stars and the Milky Way so clearly visible and the shooting star I was able to admire while tent-camping; the sounds of the creek and the rain while I was cozily sleeping in my little tent that kept both me and my friend who paid me a surprise visit from Iowa warm & dry; the lovely moments with this dear friend who made the trek from Iowa to see & support me for a few days in the mountains, who went swimming in the reservoir with me, played music and sang with me, hugged me when I burst into tears and held my hand when I couldn’t sleep; the fun moments with the other friend who offered me hospitality once again in his house in southern Colorado at the end of my trip and with whom I went for a beautiful and fun morning hike, feeling so free and happy in a wonderfully childish way on our jog back downhill throw the bushes. Remember all the moments I was held, be it by loving, supportive, fun friends or by Nature itself and the connection I felt with it All. 

A connection that I can recapture again now, sitting on my front porch at home on this warm, lazy summer morning, if only I allow it. 

A connection that might lessen or soften the pain from the loss of my dad and the separation from my genderqueer European friend.

Here and now, at home in Colorado, I might not have all that I would want or wish for, but I have enough.

I really like and relate to the idea(s) of “safe haven & secure basis” mentioned in Jessica Fern’s book Polysecure. 

The “safe haven & secure basis” are the two main aspects of healthy attachment-based relationships. 

When my European genderqueer lover/friend left to go back home to Europe a week ago, one of my most significant “safe havens” (& “secure bases”) disappeared abruptly. Despite it being “expected”, and thus I being “mentally prepared for it”, it still felt like it had been abruptly ripped away from me, which probably triggered some deep abandonment issues from my childhood/past with the ensuing anxiety and almost feelings of panic from being alone. Which I had expected and prepared for to the extent that I could. So the support from friends, their actual presence with me either in person or on the phone, was a huge help, maybe more significant and fundamental than they can imagine, as they were contributing to my being able to rebuild a sense of safety. They were (& still are) helping me rebuild a safe haven. Which in turn allows me to have, and feel, a secure basis from which I can grow further, explore, go on adventures — thrive as my authentic self. 

Since my years in California it has become extremely, and sometimes painfully, clear to me that I really need both, the “safe haven” and the “secure basis” within my most important relationships: I need to have the space and time and liberty to be wild, adventurous, free; but I also need to feel that I’m coming home to somebody, that someone is expecting me, that someone is thinking of me and will be sad if I don’t come home. I don’t want to come back to an empty home (whether figuratively or literally). And I want to be able to provide the same “safe haven & secure basis” to my friends and partners, offering supportive, non-possessive love. 

A week after the painful and triggering separation from my European genderqueer lover/friend I am setting off for my own, long-awaited vacation/adventure. A lot of the next week will be spent alone in the outdoors, all by myself in nature. I am a little scared but I’m also feeling eager and looking forward to it, in need of it. But I am also, and especially, very aware of the fact that I might not have reached enough peace, even physiologically within my nervous system, if it hadn’t been for my friends’ support over the past week. 

They are my “safe haven & secure basis”, and for that I will never be able to thank them all enough.

It hit me all of a sudden last night while I was brushing my teeth: four months is a third of a year, a consistent part of a whole year. Four and a half months was the time my European genderqueer friend spent here in Colorado this year and the amount of time they were hoping to spend with me — me, one of the three people they ultimately came to love (& consider) as a partner. All of a sudden it hit me that I might have been more important to them than I ever realized, and that I might have missed out on something big. 

When they arrived in March, we reconnected at the end of the month as I was struggling with huge stress from my housing situation and still feeling uncomfortable & vulnerable in the outside world with my post-op body. The reconnection was joyful and intense and immediate on both sides but then I got totally (re)absorbed by trying to get myself back onto my feet, trying to get my life back on track. They pursued me throughout April without my realizing it — I only understood it in retrospect when they brought it up and pointed it out to me explicitly last week. 

Throughout the relationship with my European genderqueer friend I often thought about various examples and true stories recounted in the book by Amy Gahran Stepping off the relationship escalator, which relates many different types of profound, significant relationships and different ways of living them or handling them, including polyamory, distance relationships, and tribe/village/extended chosen family situations. I read this book in February and already back then the true stories of people with (more or less significant) partners in distant parts of the country or even on another continent really struck me: in some cases, the relationships were casual and far apart; in others, the people involved spent chunks of dedicated time together, like several months every year, often dividing the year between periods they spent with one partner in one part of the world and other periods they spent in (a) different location(s) with other partner(s) or on their own. These stories in the book really hit home with me, already back then in February, as something that I could potentially imagine happening in my own life, maybe because of old “friends with benefits” or “special friends” that I have had in the past and with whom I could have imagined — or still could envision — such a development, if only we considered it a viable option. 

So all of a sudden last night the thought, or question, hit me — and then a whole chain-reaction of questions: “was this what my European genderqueer friend had imagined for/between us? or maybe not quite envisioned for us but sort of spontaneously, almost unconsciously, sought out? if so, why didn’t they bring it up when we were discussing future options/solutions before our forced separation? why did they limit themself to proposing we meet for a week at a conference next June?? on the other hand, would I really want, or be ready for, a one-third-of-a-year steady, nearby relationship with this person (or anyone else) & two-thirds-of-the-year distance relationship? would I really want another spring or summer like the one I had this year with my European genderqueer friend? 

The only answer I have now is to the last of these questions, and the answer to that, in all honesty, is NO. It was lovely the way it was for a couple months this year but it wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, sustainable in that way. 

The other questions I’m going to let sit, maybe discuss them with my European genderqueer friend when we eventually reconnect and if it seems appropriate then. 

In the meantime, I’m going to rebuild my wholeness here — or, at least, try to do my best at that — try to live beyond that “one third” again… 

I’m tired from having run myself ragged all week, from having gotten up at 5am and spent all day climbing outdoors both days this weekend, from the long, solitary walk along the creek after today’s climbing. 

But it’s precisely these two days of climbing outdoors, learning new skills, meeting new people, pushing my comfort zone a little further, getting back in touch with my bold & wild side, finding my grounding on the wall as well as along the rushing water of the familiar & beloved creek — my home here, in this geographical place as well as my home within me — it’s all this that has lit the fire within me again. And as I sat relaxing — finally relaxing, finally able to sit and write in my journal — sipping hot chocolate from my favorite chocolaterie, finally I felt it again: some peace but also, and especially, the conviction deep down inside me and surfacing powerfully again to not give up. To not give up seeking, not give up pursuing my dreams, not give up hoping, not give up loving. 

The hard moves requiring new skills on the routes I faced in this weekend’s climbing course, navigating and overcoming those difficulties, seeing my efforts being repaid immediately — it all brought back some sense of power and hope to me: that not all is lost, that I can still do it, I can still do something. 

My friends’ supportive responses and loving presence this week also helped in the same way: seeing my questions answered, my seeking hand lovingly held, my requests generously understood — this also contributed immensely to help me rebuild and regain the will to not give up. 

And I’m not going to give up! 

I can cry because it ended — something beautiful ended — but eventually I want to, and will, smile because it happened. And in the meantime I’ll smile because of what I have here & now, because of who I am and what I can do, because of who is with me, by my side, here & now (maybe even on the other side of the ocean or of the country but still part of my life), because of the new friends and connections I can make and maybe, hopefully, also because of the new lovers I might eventually find. 

I’m not giving up. Not yet.

How can it hurt so much? How is it even physically possible for it to hurt so much? 

Is it worse today than Tuesday or Wednesday or yesterday because it’s finally starting to sink in? The initial shock and void from their departure is now turning into an established reality of their absence being for ever? Is it finally starting to hit me, the tragic reality of it, that I’m in love with someone who’s building their life on a different continent and with whom I have no possibility of a common/shared future? Is it finally dawning on me for real that I can never be with that person, that those two months we had together were truly only a temporary bubble? 

I “knew” it a the time, we both knew it all along. But “knowing” it in advance does not — cannot — lessen the pain now. 

In my earlier blog today I wrote about them as “my genderqueer European sweetheart”, instinctively, almost out of habit. Then, as I re-read, I realized that isn’t appropriate anymore… 

Last week they were my “temporary partner”; today they’re my “ex-partner”. Another one of those to add to my list. But this one I still love to pieces today. 

I wonder if they miss me as much as I miss them… Honestly, I hope they don’t. Because I could never wish so much pain on anyone, especially not on someone I love so much. From the bottom of my heart I hope they’re finding, or regaining, their own happiness and homeliness back in Europe. 

And with all of my heart, I also hope this pain passes for me as soon as possible because it is unbearable.