The Little Prince and the Fox

I’m back in the area of coastal California where I spent six years of my life before moving to Colorado recently.

I’m here to logistically finalize my move to Colorado but I’m also saying Hi/Goodbye to some friends here who are among my best friends overall.

Many of these friends are much older than myself, actually my parents’ age or almost. And seeing them again is confirming a realization that I had recently, namely how the years I spent in this region of California, almost fleeing Europe, have been a wonderful (and much needed and healing) “reparenting” for me.   

When I told my nuclear family, in December 2015, that in three weeks I’d be moving to California, my father’s response was, literally, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just settle down?” I’ll probably never forget his response, that “What’s wrong with you?” – the culminating example of how he had always responded to me when he wasn’t totally absent from my life.

Yesterday, I went sailing with a program for which I’ve been volunteering for the past six years here and in which there are four persons who are friends but also, effectively, “surrogate fathers” for me. Two of them in particular have been very important and dear father-figures to me, the father that I always wish I had had.

One of them picked me up to drive to the sailing program yesterday morning and the moment he saw me (still unawares of my latest move and plans) he said, “Your eyes – they’re so bright and sparkling – and you look so happy”. So then I told him about the recent decisions and changes and move and future plans, and his response was “We’ll miss you, I’ll always be happy to go sailing with you whenever you’re back here, and if you ever need help in returning to this area, I’ll give you all the support I can. But I can see you’re happy and I’m happy for you — keep following your path!” [This person has a picture of me sailing on his boat as his computer’s screensaver.]

The other one who’s particularly important to me said something along similar lines – “You’re inspiring and I love your journey: you’re following a wonderful path!”

And they all embraced the news of my gender identity & new pronouns, asking me to correct them if they mis-gender me involuntarily, while also acknowledging that they’ve always seen and supported the boy in me and me just as I am.

I realize (& have felt this for a while) that moving away from California to Colorado now is also, in some ways, part of my growing up and becoming my adult self more fully. I needed those years in California with so many friends who were older than myself and more like parent/mentor figures because I truly needed the reparenting: I needed support to heal those old wounds from my childhood, in particular those connected to a father who basically swayed between being absent and (not constructively) hyper-critical.

This realization has brought additional peace and joy to me and gratitude for the years spent here and towards all these lovely persons.

“Leaving New York” by R.E.M.

F…, it hurts.

Today is one of those days where having a “to-do” list, things that need to be done and cannot be postponed, will be a life-line.

For the past week or so, anxiety and grief have been coming and going in a two-day cycle: one day is good, I feel excited and energetic, empowered and liberated and optimistic; the next, grief is back together with an anxiety that grasps my body, tightening my chest and knotting my stomach. Today is one of these latter days. I wish I could sit and cry, to let it all out, but the tears don’t come.

I recognize this rhythm, these cyclic feelings: I felt the same two-day alternating cycle when I moved from Europe to California six and a half years ago. It was much harder then and the “bad” days felt worse, but it was the same two-day alternating rhythm. Realizing this helped me this morning. It even made me smile as I thought, “Well, this is me, this is how I function”. This is how my body functions. Despite the extremely intense pain, both emotional and physical, this morning there is also relief in recognizing a pattern. It helps remind me that it’s manageable, that I handled it before, even when it was worse, and therefore I can handle it again. And it shall pass, too.

(I’m also relieved, and thankful, to see that despite the pain and grief and anxiety, my mental state is stable, i.e. I can focus well on work, on the practical things to be done, and even on risky activities/hobbies. The mental fatigue that was almost paralyzing some of my thoughts or actions a few weeks ago is gone now.)

Still, there is very intense pain and grief in this moment, right now. This needs to be recognized and acknowledged and held, no matter how hard it may be. So I’ll sit with it and let it be while also doing the things that need to be done today.

On the other hand, though, having those two meetings that might turn out to be painful or awkward is up to me, it’s my own choice (as long as the other persons involved confirm the availability they have given me for now). If I feel that I’m not ready to, or not interested in, having either one of those meetings, or if I don’t have the time or the emotional bandwidth for them, I don’t need to have them. I am free not to have them. At the end of the day, I am free.

I am free. This is one of the main goals that I have been striving for my whole life. Freedom does not come for free, freedom has a cost. But I am free to choose if and when to have those meetings/interactions. As long as they can bring me peace and/or closure, beyond the pain or awkwardness, I’ll have them. Otherwise, if they’re just more salt on a wound, I will not. And I don’t have to make this decision now. I have at least one more week before having to make this decision (and half of it is anyway out of my control, in the other people’s hands)!

In a couple hours I’ll be going out for brunch with a new friend/colleague & her husband.

Yesterday I hiked a 14er with one of my best buddies here.

This upcoming week I have plans to spend a couple days with another of my favorite guy-friends here as well as plans with other climbing buddies.

The past weeks and months have been constellated with pleasant, frequent, even regular, activities in company of good friends, fun buddies, and nice people here with whom the connections flow easily, steadily, mutually.

Yet the strongest feelings this morning are pain and sadness.

I have finally organized all the logistics to complete my move from California to Colorado and I’ll be going to California next week to finish packing up, to empty my old office there, to return items at my old job, to oversee the pick-up & delivery of my belongings from there to Colorado, and to see friends. To say “Hi/Goodbye” to friends there.

This morning the reality of the “Goodbyes” really hit me hard.

As I was driving out of California with my car-load for the temporary move last winter, feeling deeply sad and also a little scared, I said to myself, “I can come back here anytime, if I want to”. And that was true.

I decided that I didn’t want to go back there, and I still feel I don’t want to go back to stay. I’m really much happier and healthier here. Look at how much I’ve been able to heal and rebuild in these six months here!

On the other hand, though, these six months have also been a “long goodbye”, or a preparation for the final goodbye: and this final goodbye is coming up in the next couple weeks. The friendships I have there will always remain, sincere and solid, and I know we’ll continue to keep in touch like we have been doing in all this time and even visit each other. But I’ll be packing up my stuff and leaving. I’ll be packing up and leaving.

And I might be having two meetings, in particular, with persons who are special to me, that could be painful, sad, or awkward. One will probably be a reconnecting, with some effort, the new start of a deep, sincere, and open friendship. The other (if it even takes place) will most likely be the very last act of a very long goodbye.

In the midst of the hectic organization of logistics and in the height of the happiness and fun I’ve found here, I hadn’t realized how painful or overwhelming those days in California might be. It might all turn out to be much lighter than it feels this morning – hopefully it will. But I also need to be prepared for this pain that I’m feeling now to come back, more intensely, once I’m there. So having certain plans both here and there with people with whom there is mutual, sincere care and interest and pleasure in each other’s company is a good emotional life-line to help me handle this “long goodbye” with healthy awareness, courage, and authenticity.

What the U.S. can — and should! — learn from the steps being made forward on reproductive rights in Latin America…

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/06/1110155933/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-abortion-rights-wins-in-latin-america

I had never even heard of the concept of “getting our needs met” until the round of psychotherapy I did in Europe in 2014-2015. 

Of course, I had an instinctive understanding of getting my needs met and to some extent did it, and had always done it or tried to do it, like we all do, as human beings, as animals, as living creatures. But the idea that “getting our needs met” is a key aspect in our well-being and our functioning in the world and our interactions with others — that “getting our need met”, or not, really affects all aspects of our lives and has deep impacts on our close/intimate relationships and our professional success/effectiveness — this was all new to me until 2014. 

Ever since, though, it’s been a guideline, and even a life-line, for many of my important decisions and choices. 

I realize that a lot of my “life wanderings” have been driven by my seeking environments that would allow me to get my needs covered better, more fully. I have changed countries and jobs and professional sectors altogether, and even relationships, to try and get closer to a “place” (geographical location, professional environment, relationship styles) that fits my needs better. And my feeling so much better here in Colorado than I did in California basically boils down to the fact that my needs get met more wholly here (as I felt better in California than in most European places because my needs were getting covered better). 

I think that finding ways to get my needs covered in a more rounded and healthy way has been so tricky for me for two main reasons. On the one hand, because I wasn’t taught to think, or feel, in these terms — I discovered this “viewpoint” in psychotherapy in 2014, as an adult. On the other, because my needs are usually very different, or even opposite, from the “mainstream” or conventions. They’ve always been different in many ways: I’ve always desired and sought different ways of being close, intimate, romantic with people, instinctively refusing the heterosexual-monogamic normative ever since being a teenager; I’ve always believed in the importance of a “chosen family” and sought that vs/over the “biological family”; I’ve always been non-binary/trans, often feeling different from how the world saw me or wanted me to be; I often wanted or needed to behave differently from how I was taught (although I often abided and “behaved myself”). 

Getting my needs met better is making me into a “better” person: it’s allowing me to be kinder, more forgiving, more understanding, more loving even; it’s allowing me to have the bandwidth, i.e. the mental and emotional energy, to do some activism, thus trying to actively improve some aspects of the world around me and beyond me; it’s allowing me to connect with people in a more healthy way. Vice versa, when I wasn’t getting some very important needs met, it led to very unhealthy, toxic, and even dangerous situations, especially in the intra-personal sphere.

I remember distinctly how “good” and much more “flexible” I felt when I got to California, leaving Europe several years ago: all of a sudden, so many toxic burdens and constraints had been lifted or severed, allowing me to have emotional and mental energy for so much more and be “nicer” to the people, the world, around me.

Now, I’m getting the same feeling again, here in Colorado, compared to California. There was some toxicity in my life there coming from unmet needs, and that toxicity has been washed away — or is in the process of being washed away — allowing me to be happier and more whole within myself and thus give more, in a healthier way, to the world around me.

I have buddies here. And it feels so good. 

I haven’t had buddies like this since grad school — for over a decade. And this was one of the things I missed the most since finishing grad school: male friends with whom I could hang out easily, spontaneously, as peers, as if we were all a bunch of guys — me just as much as them. 

Tonight I hung out with my French buddy. We’re mainly climbing buddies but we also share other passions like hiking and motorcycle-riding, and I’ve already visited him a couple times at his new house for dinner with his girlfriend as well. 

This evening was partly impromptu. The original plan was some outdoor climbing in a group of four or five of us and then dinner&drinks out all together, also to celebrate the completion of my textbook and the start of my new job. But the weather got bad so plans changed last minute and in the end my French friend and I just met up for a climb at the gym. 

I love the dynamics between us. It’s all so easy, so simple, so spontaneous. We get each other instinctively, without having to say much, and yet we can also have deep, interesting, or personal conversations. 

We have similar levels of recklessness and we balance each other out nicely in risk-taking, pushing and cautioning each other to the right degree. 

I love how comfortable and safe I feel with him while also pushing my limits and my comfort zone. I push my comfort zone with him, and feel comfortable doing so, because I instinctively feel safe with him, instinctively trust him. It’s a gut feeling. It’s felt like this ever since he helped me, as a total stranger, when I got stranded in the canyon with the overheated engine of my car. 

We were lead-climbing at the gym this evening and I was struggling on a dynamic move at the top of a roof at the end of a tough route. I tried it over and over, not pushing myself as hard as I could because I was instinctively trying to avoid falling. He let me take my time to try and rest and try again. Then he finally said, “Go for it — take the fall — I’ve got you”. I knew he was right: I knew I would fall trying it all the way but I also knew I had to try it all the way, and I knew he had me, of course. So I tried the move, and fell. No big deal. But once I had taken the fall and seen it was no big deal, then my confidence was even stronger, so I got back on the wall, tried the hard move again and made it. And got to the top. And the next time I tried an even harder route, taking all the risks, and letting him catch my falls. 

These falls at the gym are safe, they’re almost mock, but they’re a good playground and practice for the outdoors. And he’s the perfect buddy for me to push myself, to take risks broadening my comfort zone while feeling safe and having fun. 

My confidence has been coming back. The couple of weeks off and especially the vacation, the relaxation and also the adventures on the trip visiting my other friend recently, helped me regain my mental balance. I’ve been doing fun, adventurous things again, taking calculated risks, in ways that I used to before and that feel good to me, feel so much like “me”. 

But having buddies, like this French friend or the friend I visited recently, makes it feel even better, and probably helped to accelerate my renewed grounding and courage and pushing the limits in a fun, healthy way that is so “me”. 

I like these guys so much, I feel so comfortably well with them. Safe with them but not stifled. It feels like I can grow and improve myself with them while having really lots of fun. And it feels mutual. But above all, I like how it feels like a brotherly friendship between us. I feel that the boy in me can really come out, really just be himself with them. I talk openly about my non-binary/trans identity with them, about the masculinization processes I’m undergoing or planning, but also about my concerns. We don’t pretend that I’m exactly like them, a cis-male, but they don’t treat me like a woman or girl. They treat me like a boy, like a buddy. I love that. 

I wonder how much of their treating me like this has to do with the different — new but also partly old & renewed — way I have of posing and presenting myself… Do they treat me like a boy (more than guys have been doing over the past decade) because I’m posing myself more as a boy than I was doing in the recent past? 

If so it would be an interesting and even powerful result of my own redefinition of my gender identity & gender expression. An interesting and powerful result of my living even more authentically & truthfully to my own self.

But regardless of the cause, climbing at the gym and then spontaneously going out for dinner, sharing a beer, and celebrating the completion of my textbook with my French buddy was an extremely wonderful evening for me, and something I had missed in a very long time!

The U.S. Supreme Court is on recess (i.e. on vacation). Thank goodness! It has done so much damage over the past few weeks, throwing this country back by decades, that one would almost wish they didn’t come back from their summer recess… What other damage this once-trustworthy organ of American democracy could bring to this country — and the world — I’m just too worried to even imagine. 

Years ago at a dinner with some friends we were talking about what other periods of history we would have liked to live in, and why. And I said I would have liked to live in the 1960’s – 1970’s to see and be part of all the groundbreaking political and social revolutions that started and took place then — to be part of those battles, actively. 

Well, it looks like it might have been wishful thinking, a case of “be careful what you wish for — it might actually come true”… 

With the tragedy of mass shootings becoming as frequent as sneezes in allergy season and no political effort to ban or limit fire arms. With the limitations and restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court on environmental protection. With women stripped of the right to abortion. With the rights and lives of trans & queer people constantly threatened and attacked. With the looming threats and active attacks on the homosexual/non-heteronormative communities. There’s enough material for plenty of battles, with no need to go back to the 1960’s or 1970’s. 

I’m worried and angry. 

I can feel my instinct of hatred grow towards these discriminative, narrow-minded, hyper-conservative rulings made in the name of power and privilege of a small group who has always had power and privilege. 

But I also know that hate only breeds more hate and misunderstanding. That activism means dialogue with the other parties and sides: it means bridging gaps, trying to create understanding and inclusion among all, for all. 

I’m here to stay and I’m here to fight. To fight this battle not with guns, not with hatred, but with dialogue and “anger […] used for growth” (as Audre Lorde and other great persons have taught us). 

[Spoiler alert: I mainly write about the end of this film.]

“And then we danced” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. So powerful and strong, yet so delicate and sensitive – like Mareb, the main character of this sweet film about love, friendship, authenticity, courage, and liberation.

In my view, the “we” who “then danced” are all the different parts that make up Mareb, and in particular both his feminine and his masculine sides that he brings together and brings out in his dancing – especially in the beautiful, poignant, liberated and liberating dance in that last, defiant routine he exhibits, stating who he is with the courage of someone who feels confident in his own authenticity and protected by the love of those who really matter to him.

A precious and powerful inspiration!