The Little Prince and the Fox

How can it be that today hurts even more than yesterday? 

Maybe it’s the physical exhaustion, all the running around and wearing myself out, which has thankfully allowed me to sleep at night, now catching up with me and making me feel even more sad and anxious from loneliness. 

Or maybe it’s the dream I had last night, another one of those vivid dreams I have been having so often recently. I dreamt about my genderqueer European sweetheart and their wife. I know their wife, she’s a lovely person, we spent most of the time all three of us together last year and I saw her twice this year when she was visiting for a couple weeks in April: we get along wonderfully and there’s even some mutual liking between me & her. It was mainly me & her in my dream, and there was tenderness between us —  my genderqueer European sweetheart (her spouse) was more on the side. I cannot remember details except for a sense of delicate tenderness and strong connection, closeness among all three of us but especially between me & her. I woke up feeling as if they had both really been there by my side… so vivid… and so much more heartbreaking this morning. 

Maybe I should tell them, tell them both, about this dream at some point? 

I’ve asked my genderqueer European ex-partner for some “radio silence” to hopefully make the separation, or at least the regaining of my balance alone here in Colorado, easier for me. But maybe there’s value in sharing the sadness, sharing the pain…? 

For now, I feel the need to try and regain my footing here in Colorado, in this place that I have chosen as home, with my friends here, my job here, my life here. Because this love story with my genderqueer European friend has also rattled some of my certainty with respect to my choice of staying in the U.S. and staying away from Europe. 

For the first three decades of my life all I wanted was to move from Europe, where I grew up, to the U.S., where part of my maternal family resides. When I finally moved to California in 2016 it felt like — and actually was — a great liberation for me and I have never wanted to go back to Europe even for a short visit since then. But in all these years living in the U.S., and especially since moving to Colorado, I keep making strong connections with people who are either fully European or partly European or, at least, who’ve lived in Europe for a significant amount of time and have a clear idea of places, languages, customs there. It feels like Europe keeps calling to me through these connections I keep making as well as through the deep friendships I still have with many people overseas. 

I don’t think I want to move back to Europe to live, I cannot imagine myself living & working there anymore (I never really did) but there are lots of things that I miss of/from Europe. I still feel an extremely strong connection to Europe, especially certain areas or countries or cities there — there’s still so much I miss from there. Most of the time I forget about those things, forget how much I miss them; but then I meet someone who is (also) European and still lives there or someone who knows those things because they’ve been there, and the connection feels revived and the longing comes back. And this happened extremely intensely with my genderqueer European sweetheart: so many of the things we did together felt so “European” — speaking German together; talking about cities in European that we both know; walking (instead of driving) everywhere regardless of the road; spending hours at a cafe or restaurant even after the check had been brought to us; sitting around the kitchen table with their other European housemate sharing meals and chatting for hours… I loved doing all those things. 

Maybe — probably, certainly — I can continue doing them anyway even with my (local and/or American) friends here — for sure I could! But somehow the relationship with my genderqueer European sweetheart switched on that longing and now it hurts… Being with them felt like a “coming home”… 

Was that feeling of “coming home” my genderqueer sweetheart due to their being European or was it simply the persons that they & I are, our connection as people, our soul connection? 

That’s what I need to understand now — one of the things I need to understand — and one of my reasons for needing “radio silence” from them for a while now: I need to understand my deeper feelings and needs not only with respect to them and our relationship but also regarding my own connection and/or relationship with Europe and my different (geographical & cultural) identities.

[Trigger warnings & spoiler alerts: loss, grief, pain, anxiety; PTSD; long-COVID; a couple details about Fredrik’s Backman’s novel “Anxious people”]

Once again, I’m going to use Fredrik Backman’s words (from his book Anxious people) to express my current emotions and feelings I have already had several other times in the past — that horrible, terrifying anxiety that comes from loss, pain, sadness, loneliness: 

“[…] Unfortunately I think most people would still get more sympathy from their colleagues and bosses at work if they show up looking rough one morning and say ‘I’m hung over’ than if they say ‘I’m suffering from anxiety’. But I think we pass people in the street every day who feel the same way as you and I, many of them just don’t know what it is. Men and women going around for months having trouble breathing and seeing doctor after doctor because they think there’s something wrong with their lungs. All because it’s so damn difficult to admit that something else is… broken. That’s it’s an ache in our soul, invisible lead weighs in our blood, an indescribable pressure in our chest. Our brains are lying to us, telling us we’re going to die. But there’s nothing wrong with our lungs. […]”

So many times I have felt that, the “ache in my soul”, the “invisible lead in my blood”, the “indescribable pressure in my chest”. And I’m feeling it in these days more terribly intense than ever, as I did a couple other times during the month of July. 

Loss induces these feelings in me — the departure of someone I love; the separation from a place where I feel at home; the grief from a missed opportunity. 

And now that I’ve done the methacholine challenge test with no evident effects, I know for a fact that it’s not asthma for me. It was a reasonable doubt after my severe COVID in March 2020 and consequent long-COVID. But my lungs are clear, have been clear for years now, and while I most likely have some form of “performance anxiety” and/or EILO when doing certain types of exercise or races, it is mainly in my head. Be it PTSD from my COVID or the traumatic effects of abandonment or attachment issues from my childhood, I am one of those “anxious people” of whom Fredrik Backman writes in his lovely novel. I’m one of the ones who don’t jump off the bridge, one of the ones who wear themselves out to dampen the pain. 

But eventually I will sit with it, walk with it, once it’s ready to be endured, once it’s bearable and can be faced.   

Here it is, that pain that hardly allows me to sit still, hardly allows me to breathe. 

The sense of loss, the loneliness, the broken habits even — it’s so hard to bear, especially in an empty house. 

Yesterday — the day of the big, painful separation from my European sweetheart and a week from my father’s funeral — I got through the day thanks to friends and trying to keep my body & mind busy to dampen the pain. It’s so sharp in this moment that I need to dull it a little, it’s too hard to endure otherwise. 

Today will be the same. And probably it will be this way for a while… 

For how long?

Focus on the little things, on what I have here and now. My pet snake who needs to be cleaned and fed again. Our house cat sitting right next to me, here & now, while I type out these words with my mug of tea, licking his front paws with great gusto, acting like I’m not here but actually coming over to the seat on the front porch precisely in the moment when I step outside for my breakfast. And then grocery shopping that needs to be done later, after a climbing session with a new climbing partner. And finally dinner with friends tonight. 

One step at a time. Here & now. That’s all I can do for the moment. 

And once the grief has become endurable, I can turn to it (again) and mend this broken heart.

The pain is real. It’s here: concrete, insistent, physical even. The renewed waves of grief are washing over me again already, physically painful and profoundly lonely.

Last night, I dreamt that I was crossing a sea, THE SEA, i.e. the Atlantic Ocean, in a big ship sailing across through huge waves in a violent storm. I was scared and the people with me were afraid, too — strangers who knew nothing about sailing and were truly terrified of the gale. But my fear was limited, under control, quite rational and even peaceful in some way. I knew the ship was built to sustain, to navigate through, such stormy weather and make it safely to the other side. So I trusted it would. I braced myself, I did what I could to ease my discomfort in that difficult moment, even finding the courage to look out of the ship’s portholes, out at the storm, out at the huge waves that seemed like they would engulf the ship and annihilate us any moment. I looked out, scared, uncomfortable, but still trusting. And also making peace with the possibility that the ship might not make it through the storm “alive” or whole. But I knew that the ship (or its captain) was doing its best, and that was enough. Somehow that was enough. 

And eventually the ship got itself & all of us passengers safely to the other side, to the other coast, to Europe. 

And it did so by navigating through the huge stormy waves in a new and unusual way: instead of sailing straight across them in a straight line, it moved forward in a sort of horizontal spiral motion, revolving on itself (like pirouetting) to sort of “flatten out” some of the volume of the waves, as if making some extra space for itself, smoothing a little more of the water’s rough surface, while moving forward — or in order to move forward. 

Weird and dizzying and confusing… but it worked! 

What is this dream saying to me, about me, about life? 

That I can weather this storm, too, I can navigate these difficult moments once again; and maybe, also, that although it might feel to me that I’m treading water and only moving in circles, I actually still am moving forward nonetheless — and maybe it’s precisely these circles that are keeping my ship afloat?

Maybe this dream is also telling me that I can go back to Europe, i.e. I’ll be able to endure it, if/when I ever decide to embark on that voyage (be it only a visit)? 

For now — here & now — what I need to navigate is this current pain, this current painful loneliness, the current losses: these current renewed & huge waves of grief washing over me (again).

It’s been six months since my gender-affirming top-surgery. Six months ago at this time I was being operated on. 

Six months ago. It almost feels like a lifetime ago. This body, this chest, this torso seems and feels so “right” to me that I can hardly even remember how it was or felt before, and I can hardly believe how I was able to live with breasts, to bear it, in a body that didn’t belong to me… 

My dad’s funeral took place today, back in Europe, nearly two weeks after his death. 

I wasn’t there, I couldn’t be there, and another wave of grief will probably hit me next week. Now I feel numb or a rather dull sadness that comes mostly, right in this moment, from the soon-to-be separation/break-up with my genderqueer European friend/partner. 

Two weeks ago they & I had a lovely clarifying conversation, and we realized — and admitted — that we were, are, very in love with each other and would rather love and lose each other than not love each other at all. We decided to spend as much time as possible together over the following three weeks, which will come to an end in a week, next Tuesday, August 1st, when they return home to Europe. We’ve had two wonderful, blissful weeks together, despite the sharp awareness of having a “deadline” to our beautiful romantic relationship. 

Their presence has brightened up my life in a way that I had forgotten was possible, and being able to spend the weekend with them, being held so fully & lovingly by a partner (albeit “temporary” partner) right after my father’s death, was a blessing. 

But it also, in many ways, just postponed the pain. I know the wave of grief will return, it will come again and be even stronger, more intense, when they leave in a week. 

And I’m afraid of the storm that will hit me then. 

This is the type of loneliness I’ve so often, too often, been feeling for decades, beautifully put into words by Fredrik Backman in his book “Anxious People”:

“

The […] was sitting alone in the hall. She could hear the voices of the people […], but they might as well have been in a different time zone. There were eternities between her and everyone else now, between her and the person she had been that morning. She wasn’t alone in the apartment, but no one in the world shared her prospects, and that’s the greatest loneliness in the world: when no one is walking beside you toward your destination.

“

[Trigger warning: death, loss, grief.]

“Aujourd’hui, papa est mort. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.”

A week has come and gone and my dad still seems to be alive (I don’t know in what conditions of consciousness but “technically alive”), once again defeating the doctors’ (& my mother’s) dire prognostics. 

It’s been two full weeks since I last heard from my special genderqueer European friend. They sent me a sweet text message after our Denver Pride weekend together, before the visit of their boyfriend from Europe. Then nothing. I reached out again two days ago but there’s been no reply, which is really weird and confusing since they’re usually so responsive. 

So here I am, waiting. Waiting for my dad and life to decide what they want to do with each other. Waiting for this person who felt like a partner, albeit for a limited period of time, to give me some response. 

And wait is all I can do at this point, really. 

Like some of those days when we just have to wait for the rain to stop, or for the clouds to clear, or for the scorching sunshine to give us a break. 

Like maybe some of my friends are waiting for me to reach out again once I’ve done enough healing on my own. 

And maybe my dad is also waiting, holding on to life, hanging in there, waiting for me to go back to Europe to visit him before he dies…?

This is my choice. This place is my choice. Living here is my choice. Despite it being partly the cause of some of my current pain because it entails geographical distance and/or separation from several loved ones. 

But it also keeps me close to many other loved ones.

This particular spot, this particular trail & trailhead, is one of my absolute favorite ones and probably the most meaningful place for me recently since it’s also connected to my ketamine journeys. 

This place fills me with peace and joy. I’ve gone there innumerable times to hike or to trail run, alone or with dear friends, in all seasons. 

And I went there again today on my motorcycle ride. Parked my bike and went for a short walk, just enough to see the gorgeous vista and be immersed in the beautiful nature. And I felt all the love. Almost with the same intensity as during & shortly after my ketamine journeys. I felt deeply alive, profoundly loved and full of love towards everything around me. I felt soaked in nature and in love — part of it All, whole, undivided. 

I opened my arms, embraced it, let it fill me. And then shouted it out — “I love you”!

It is so beautiful. Green and lush, covered in wildflowers, everything blooming. The blue sky, the white and gray clouds, the red rocks, the green grass and trees, the rainbow flowers. It’s alive and buzzing and yet quiet and peaceful. So full of life and love. 

And it’s my choice, my choice time and again: my choice to live here, my choice to come back to this place both physically and emotionally/mentally. 

I chose this. And I choose it again now, today. 

Here & now.