The Little Prince and the Fox

[Spoiler alert (last paragraph in italics): quote from the end of the novel (& movie) “Call me by your name”]

I want to hold onto the good memories. And that might have to be partly also an active exercise stemming from an active choice. 

In the past week my focus as well as my pain have been mainly on anger and disappointment. Maybe because in some ways it’s easier (for me). 

In the situation with my special genderqueer European friend, for instance, I’ve been dwelling on the unusual silence that there has been between us for nearly two weeks now, probably due to their boyfriend visiting from Europe. I’ve focused on how badly we handled this polyamorous situation, blaming both myself and them for poor communication, blahblahblah. And while that might definitely be a lesson for me to learn from this relationship, this is really NOT what I want to remember, what I want to take away, from it — nor what I want to leave behind with them, if possible. 

I want to remember the good times. Actually, the wonderful, lovely times. Because that’s what we had not only during the month of sexual & romantic intimacy but also during the previous months of profound platonic friendship both this spring and last year. I want to remember our deep, spontaneous, instinctive connection. Our commonalities, our enriching differences, the almost immediate recognition between us. I want to remember the profound, open, sincere conversations. I want to remember how we learned from each other, how we helped each other grow and find ourselves, how our paths crossed in moments of our lives that were fundamental turning points, both professionally and on each of our gender journeys, for both of us. I want to remember how serendipitously we were there for each other, and how we embraced it, stepped into it, and embraced each other. I want to remember how we held each other, intellectually, emotionally, and physically. I want to remember how they held me even when I wasn’t “at my best”. I want to remember how they embraced me and soothed me. I want to remember all the times they made space for me and my feelings, even for my difficult emotions — not the only one time that they didn’t. I want to remember how safe I felt with them — safe enough to explore sexuality again for the first time in over a year and for the first time ever after my gender-affirming top-surgery. And I want to remember how wonderful sex felt with them, how attuned we were, how much we reveled in each other’s touch, how much full consent there was with hardly any words needed. I want to remember the bliss, the joy, the sense of connection and wholeness and healing from those moments. 

Of course, all these beautiful memories are also — precisely — the cause of the intense pain I am feeling from our forced separation, in the forced ending of our relationship. But this pain is worth it to the very last drop. And this, for now, can be hard for me to hold, so I need to actively remind myself. Because I want to. 

Recalling Mr. Perlman’s words to his son Elio when the latter is pining over his “lost love” (also, at least partly, for geographical reasons): “You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. […] In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. […] We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing as to not feel anything —  what a waste!”

[Trigger warning: grief, loss, death]

I just finished reading the wonderful book “My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry” by Fredrick Backman — quite serendipitous, since it’s a lovely, delicate book on loss, grief, and the power of stories & community (family, friends, etc.) to heal. (As well as the power of embracing differences.) 

If there’s one thing I fear more than loss that’s getting bitter from grief and pain. I don’t want to get bitter. So as I process and prepare for the losses that will eventually come, I’ll take with me this passage from one of the very last chapters of the book “My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry”: 

“

You never say good-bye in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. You just say “See you later”. It’s important to people in the Land-of-Almost-Awake that it should be this way, because they believe that nothing really ever completely dies. It just turns into a story, undergoes a little shift in grammar, changes tense from “now” to “then”. 

A funeral can go on for weeks, because few events in life are a better opportunity to tell stories. Admittedly on the first day it’s mainly stories about sorrow and loss, but gradually as the days and nights pass, they transform into the sorts of stories that you can’t tell without bursting out laughing. Stories about how the deceased once read the instructions “Apply to the face but not around the eyes” on the packaging of some skin cream, and then called the manufacturer with extreme annoyance to point out that this is precisely where the face is positioned. Or how she employed a dragon to caramelize the tops of all the creme brûlées before a big party in the castle, but forgot to check whether the dragon had a cold. […] 

And the Miamasians laugh so loudly that the stories rise up like lanterns around the grave. Until all stories are one and the tenses are one and the same. They laugh until no one can forget that this is what we leave behind when we go: the laughs. 

“

May this apply to me, my dad, and all the other losses I am feeling so painfully now.

How much grief can one heart take before being completely shattered? How much pain can one heart take before ending up crushed and giving up?

I feel like mine is beyond its limits at this point. 

Apparently, my father has been hospitalized again and this round it seems to be for the very last time: the doctors told my family yesterday to get prepared, that my dad will probably not make it another week and certainly not to his birthday in two weeks. 

His health has been steadily declining for the past two years, most dramatically over the past year or so; and this isn’t the first time that my mother has reached out to me with accounts of my father being hospitalized not knowing if he’ll make it through. But he always has so far, so I don’t know if I can really believe, or trust, my mother this time round either. There is a part of me that feels it’s one of her numerous attempts to try and regain some control over, or contact with, me. And this makes me feel both very angry and somewhat under attack. I need to reset my boundaries with her, with my family of origin, again for the hundredth time. Which is painful and exhausting.

But there’s also the genuine, untainted grief about losing my dad — a pain that is made even worse by the fact that I effectively lost, or was abandoned by, my father as a child, almost three decades ago. I’ve already lost my dad, I was never really allowed to have an authentic, direct relationship with him, and he will never really know me. 

This last thought is probably the worst, the most painful for me. 

Yes, he loves me, he always has loved me, but he’s never approved of almost anything I did or was, he’s never really known me, seen me. So how could he really love, or have loved, ME? 

And this pain for not being really, deeply loved for myself has become all-encompassing again since yesterday. The feeling, the realization, of being profoundly alone because of having been unable to build a life with anyone. I tried three times, earnestly, in my twenties and early thirties, and failed miserably all three times. There was nobody yesterday to really hold me in all that pain and grief I was feeling around my dad — there would be no one who would/could go with me, if I decided to fly over to Europe for my father’s last days and/or funeral. Once again, I’d be alone, I’d have to do it all by myself. Show up to my family of origin with a different legal name, a different voice, a different body, all by myself. 

I cannot do it. 

I so much would have wanted — needed — to be held yesterday by my non-binary friend with whom I slept in California and/or my special genderqueer European friend here. But one of them is, precisely, in California; and the other, despite being only a few miles away, is busy with their boyfriend visiting from Europe (before going back to Europe themself in a couple weeks). Would either of them take the time, make the trip, to be with me yesterday, to be with me in this grief? No, and of course not. I’m not even going to ask, it’s unreasonable for me to expect it, so I won’t. But I would need it, I would desire it. 

But I give up. There’s no point telling me that I deserve to be loved, the whole me just as I am (“das ganze Packet”, as my European genderqueer friend put it). We all deserve to be loved but I am unable to find that love or those people who will build a life with me, or unable to let that love in wholly or to give myself enough to anyone to build a life with them. All I can be is just a “sexual friend” for my non-binary friend in California if “feelings don’t get too complicated” or someone to fill a gap between their wife and their boyfriend for my genderqueer European friend while they’re here visiting Colorado. Take it or leave it. 

I give up. It hurts too much. I don’t care how much well-meaning friends say I’m lovable and deserving of love: I have been unable to find it in four decades and I am going to stop seeking it. Go back to work and exercise, as I always have done, because those are the only things I seem to be able to do sort of okay.

“ 

Fuck

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why

It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It’s something unpredictable

But in the end, it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos of memories, and dead skin on trial

For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while

It’s something unpredictable

But in the end, it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life

It’s something unpredictable

But in the end, it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life

It’s something unpredictable

But in the end, it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life 

“

[“Good Riddance (Time of your life)” by Green Day]

In my morning melancholy today I had this song playing in my mind — a song that I connect mostly to my high school years (& heartbreaks), that I heard played at the last Pride event to which I went on Friday and that I sang with my Italian climbing buddy a couple months ago, with him strumming on the guitar and singing in a higher pitch than myself, before he returned to Europe.

A song connected to many Goodbyes — or “Good Riddances” — for me… 

A song that echoes and resonates with me deeply in this moment.

One year ago I was officially starting my second post-doc, which effectively felt like the begining of a second chance (at a career in academia) for me. 

Today marks the first weekend in five weeks that I’m spending without being in the company of, and without sleeping with, a sexually/romantic partner. In a sense, it’s going back to my “normal” status quo of the past six or seven years. But in another sense, looking at it just in the present moment, I could also see it as another beginning.

[By definition, one could see every ending as a new beginning…?] 

The past five weeks, and five weekends, have been wonderful — and maybe even more so because the events and feelings and emotions with both of the friends with whom I had sexual/romantic intimacy were an unexpected surprise. Those weeks, and those weekends, have been lovely, and the pain now is real and intense. And probably even more so real and intense because the painful separation(s) came in the middle of the initial phase of rapture in the relationship(s), in the midst of the “new relationship energy”, making the separation(s) abrupt and thus more painful. 

And yet, there’s a part of me that feels lighter, more free and aligned again, from having that rapture removed. As much as I loved it and reveled in it, it was also distracting. It fit perfectly into the boisterous bloom of springtime and Pride month, and I’d do it all over again — I’d love to have it again. But just as its beginning & unfolding were serendipitous in space & time, maybe also its ending now is right timing for me, as it allows me to recenter for my summertime. 

I would have loved to have another month of rapturous weekends with my special genderqueer European friend here and the circumstances causing that to end earlier than (initially) expected were, and are, truly painful to me. But what would it have brought me, really, another month of such weekends with them? Left me a wreck at the end of my summer, before starting the fall semester in which I also have to teach without really having time to recenter myself in the ways that I know how to realign with myself, like traveling in the summer, having my summertime. 

So yes, it’s painful, it’s been painful all week, it’s still going to be painful for a while, and I still believe we could have handled it better. But there’s also an aspect of liberation, of relief in a way, a sense of “new beginning”.

Another new beginning. And the question: how many times will I have to do this?

And another question, probably more pressing (& more useful) for me right now: what do I want to do with my summertime?

I think it might be good for me to reread the (excellent) book “Polysecure” by Jessica Fern.  

In this and other books about consensual nonmonogamy, two main reasons for people to practice consensual nonmonogamy are outlined, namely: being nonmonogamous as a lifestyle (e.g. for philosophical, social, political, or practical reasons) or being nonmonogamous as an orientation (i.e. one’s deeper identity very much like being straight or gay or bisexual). 

I am, and have always been, nonmonogamous as an orientation. I also agree with, and deeply feel aligned with, being nonmonogamous as a lifestyle for many reasons, but that’s an additional layer to my core identity with respect to sexually/romantically intimate relationships. Sort of like “nurture on top of nature” for me. I have been able to embrace my polyamorous identity only recently, though, since moving to California in 2016, because for my entire life before then I was brainwashed with toxic (cis/hetero) mononormativity that led me to think that something was wrong with me and I needed to “be fixed”. Anyway, I’m “happily polyamorous” now, in the sense that I feel whole in this way as well, at last. 

However, while I truly am polyamorous at my core and have sincerely experienced that beautiful emotion that is called “compersion” for my partners with respect to their other partners, feeling no jealousy at all, I’m realizing that I still have tons to learn. I’m still messing up badly. I’m messing up in communication and the basic reason this is happening is because I still have a fundamental belief within me of not being wholly lovable, of not being fully worthy of love. And so I just avoid the conversations in which one would clarify the dynamics of the whole relationship involving everyone, all partners, and where I stand within the picture. I fundamentally believe that I’m just “an extra”, just a “temporary fling” or just a “friend with benefits”, and so I put myself in that position, I play that role, a sort of temporarily supportive role, standing on the sidelines, and walking away when things could get too painful or complicated.

… Hmmm… Lots of food for thought here…

In all fairness, though, I need to add that I know I’m not alone — and this is something that not only my head knows — my heart also feels it. 

Friends are showering me with love and it’s sinking in, I’m soaking it in and it does truly help. 

I know I’m strong, but it’s the willingness to open up and be vulnerable that is actually bringing me all this love now. Having told my friends in advance that this moment, and these difficult emotions, were in store for me this week and the following; opening up and talking about my pain here, in these pages; not hiding my tears from my housemates. The responses are coming in, warm, supportive, loving. As I turn on my cell phone and/or check my email, there they are: messages from my friends asking how I’m doing, checking in on me, sending their love, offering support and in-person company; local friends coming over to visit me and/or telling me their available times to hang out in person in the next days; my housemates, who are now also one of my most important chosen families, including me in their family dinner; another one of my adoptive families here inviting me over for the 4th of July celebration.

They’re here, my friends, my chosen families: I know it, I can feel it deep in my heart, and my gratitude & love go out to them all.

The morning and evenings are the worst moments. And maybe the mornings even worse than the evenings because at night at least I can let go, indulge my pain, allow myself to feel it, cry even, unwind, lean into the loving/supportive company of friends, and eventually go to sleep. But in the mornings, I wake up feeling the loneliness and pain all over — the past couple of mornings I’ve felt like it’s been the pain actually waking me up. And with the pain, the sadness, the loneliness, there’s an anxiety that I know well from the past: a type of anxiety I feel from a sense of abandonment. Whether it’s “real” or “only perceived”, it’s there, real for me: anxiety from a sense of having been abandoned. Which I know rationally is not what is really happening in this particular situation with my special genderqueer European friend. But while the head knows, the hearts feels, and this sense of loss and sadness and loneliness is very real and concrete for me now. 

And again, all I can do is get myself through my day focusing on what I can get done, on what I can achieve, on what is within my reach: work and exercise. Until another evening in which I may let myself cry, and another morning leading to another day of work and exercise and socialization, until the pain will eventually subside…

“Let everything happen to you: 

beauty and terror. 

Just keep going. 

No feeling lasts forever.”

[Rainer Maria Rilke]

I know this too shall pass. 

But today it hurts like hell and all I can do is hold myself together from falling apart. 

I knew it would hurt. I knew it going in. 

When five weeks ago I accepted the explicit invitation from my European, genderqueer friend to sleep over — and sleep with them — after going out dancing with them at a queer club, I knew I was opening the door to a whole rainbow of emotions and experiences, including the possibility of loss and pain. And after our second sleep over a week later — four weeks ago — I knew I was in for a heart break. Not because they had, or have, any intentions of breaking my heart. I am sure they care for me and revel in our connection as much as I do. But there was one of those count-down clocks ticking from the start here: their return to Europe (& my unwillingness to have any sort of long-distance relationship, especially on such long distances, although this was never brought up). 

For four weeks now I’ve known this moment was going to come. Just over a week ago, I discovered it would come sooner than I was expecting, but I made peace with it and still decided to spend this past weekend with them, and go to the Denver Pride Fest & Parade with them — which was in itself one of my (& our) most meaningful experiences, both for each one of us personally and for both of us together. I knew this would be an intense weekend, a weekend full of a whole wide range of emotions — a rainbow of emotions and experiences — including some bittersweet. But no matter how prepared we are for the pain, it always hurts more than expected when it hits. 

I have loved deeply and intensely before, many times. 

I have felt strong, deep, sincere connections on the emotional, intellectual, and even sentimental/romantic levels before. 

I still have many meaningful relationships full of love and emotional & intellectual connection that are ongoing, present, and that don’t seem likely to end any time soon, fortunately. 

But no matter how much more, or other, love there is, when one love ends — or has to end — it still hurts like hell. 

And that’s where I am today: in the phase that hurts.

I wish we had had more time because there are things I still would have liked to have done, or tried, or experienced, or explored with this person. But maybe adding more time and wonderful experiences would only have made it even harder when the forced, inevitable separation eventually came? So maybe it’s better that the “time bubble” has popped now, nipping things while still in the bud?