So I walked past Jenna’s room and Keith was laying in her bed with her. It shocked me. I don’t think she’s getting back together with him, nor do I think she’d necessarily do it right here in front of me like this. But still, I have that anxiety over it.

Fuck. I just really am in love with Jenna. That’s all. I hope I didn’t fuck it all up this summer…

FUck

fuckf

Fuck

Fuck

FUck

Fuck

Fuck

Breathe.

Dear Jeniavieve,

I am writing you this letter because I had something on my mind that I wanted to say, and I know my timing hasn’t always been the best. What I have to say I would like to have said in person, but I also know that you like to save things, and maybe when you look at this letter again in the future, you’ll be glad I sent it. Glad I recorded the words so you could read them again.

I would like to start by letting you know that my therapist notified me that my CBT sessions would be coming to an end soon. While she didn’t give me an exact number, she said that there will probably be only one or two sessions left once I get back.

The CBT, in combination with the hypnotherapy, has helped immensely in eliminating the occurrence of irrational thinking that stemmed from my anxiety. In the rare occasions that it does crop up, I’m able to identify and dismiss the thought immediately. That’s something I’ve never been able to do before, Jenna, and it feels good – really good – to be in control of myself and my emotions for once. I feel powerful now, whereas before, in my head, I felt small and weak. That’s how my subconscious saw me: weak, ineffectual, unable to do anything about anything.

That isn’t the case anymore.

That being said, I told you not long ago that it wasn’t over; in fact, it hadn’t even begun, and that I was going to fight. Well, I have been fighting, and the therapies I’ve been participating in have been the weapons, and the battleground has been inside my own head.

Well, the war is coming to a close in the next few weeks, and I was hoping that you and I could talk about us once I officially graduate (or whatever you call it) from therapy. I made big promises when I got back, but due to my anxiety, I was unable to deliver on them. That time has passed, and my emotions are no longer hobbled.

Rather than make more promises or continue to wax apologetic about how much I’ve changed, I want to spend the rest of this letter telling you who I am and how I feel. You can then make a decision about whether or not you want to talk about us.

First off, I want to hear what you have to say in all this, so I’m going to keep this part about me short and simple. I’ve told you before how I loved you from the day we met, and I still do. I told you before that I wanted to be the person in your life you could turn to when things got rough, who wouldn’t judge you or expect anything in return for what I give. I hope that, if you look back over these past months, you’ll see that I was able to do what I said I was going to do. When you stumbled, I caught you. When you cried, I cried for your pain. I felt it then, and I still feel it now. That’s not ever going to change. I didn’t give you my blood as a nice gesture, I did it because you already had it, figuratively, and I figured you might as well have it literally too.

I know that it hasn’t been long since I’ve been in therapy – only a matter of weeks. I know that it can be hard to believe that someone can just turn around and feel better. The truth is: for CBT to be effective, the person has to put in the work – and I have. This has not been an easy experience for me, and I know it wasn’t easy for you. If you have any doubts, know that I’m more than capable of spending every single day proving it to you for as long as we’re together. I know people have abandoned you throughout your life, one way or another, but I never will. I still showed up when you were ignoring me back in March/April, and I stayed when you told me you wanted me to. If, when we talk, you choose to move forward with me, you’re going to get the same kind of support you got back then. The same kind of love. The same kind of truth. And if it’s in our future that I end up leaving this world before you, know that you won’t need to put my picture on your mantle or summon me up from the aether. The second my soul leaves my body it will be right there behind you, whispering in your ear:

“I’m right here, lady, and I’m not going anywhere.”

I love you and I need you – all of you. There’s room enough, now, for you, the girls, Vinnie, and Les. I hope our story can continue, and I’m happy to include them as part of it because they’re a part of you and your story.

And I’ve been waiting for you for my entire life.

See you soon,

Ryan

 

 

 

 

 

 

We would kiss.
When you would breathe out,
I would breathe in.
To take in your lifegiving oxygen
And the bi-products of your exhalation
into me
Let those self-same molecules that coursed their way through your body
Now course their way through mine
Give me life, as they did you
I meld with it,
And in so doing,

I Meld with You.

Now it Blurs the line between you and me
The distinction between two separate people ceases to be
There are no lines
No Boundaries
No borders
Definitions

Where two people once stood there is something else entirely.
Like two hydrogen atoms being crushed together in the center of a star

Annihilated?

Obliterated?

No.

Not destroyed–

Transmuted.

A helium atom.

Something else.
Something different.
Something new.
Not two things that cease to be
But a new and magnificent element
With its own properties
Its own possibilities

Not You and I,
Not Me and You.
Not Jeniavieve and Ryan.
Not Ryan and Jeniavieve

Us.

Us

Ours is greater than mere love.
Love is a word people use in a ham-fisted attempt to describe a series of chemical reactions happening in their brains
when they see someone.

A storm blows in unexpectedly
High winds rip the roofs off houses
Rain comes down like bullets
Lightning Strikes
The people run
The people Hide
At the sound of our terrible thunder.

How do you stop a thunderstorm?
How do you unwind a hurricane?

You don’t.

Logic and reason are reduced to pointless platitudes
Flaccid and ineffectual
Useless tools

Us is a force of nature
The strong force that binds together quarks
which make up the proton.
And it’s that same force that in turn holds together the nucleus of the atom

Strong Force
Weak Force
Electromagnetism
The fundamental laws that bind the physical universe together

Those forces
And nothing else
are worthy enough to be used to describe the indescribable.
Necessary to take you and me
and turn it into

Us

But right now
There isn’t an Us.
There’s You
And there’s Me.
And the distance in between,
Even one nanometer
Might as well be an unbridgable gap
And the void that ensues
Cannot be filled

There is no answer for a law of nature
that can’t complete itself.
Fusion cannot occur
and turn hydrogen into helium
without the requisite heat and force;
but our star has cooled.

Not too much, one can only hope.
Not for too long, one can only hope
Not forever.

I’m one, now,
and one can only hope.

the hydrogen atom
which, in desiring stability it bonds with oxygen
It doesn’t think
It doesn’t contemplate
Ruminate
Worry
Or ponder
It desires a bond because of the laws of nature,
laws higher and more powerful than itself,
have deemed that that is the way the universe is to be.

And so it is.
Such is the basis of my desire to bond, too.
Guided by something outside myself that I have no knowledge
or ability to comprehend
But that’s okay.
The atom doesn’t care about why or how
It only does what it is in its nature to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I forgot what heartbreak was like. It’s a different kind of loss, and a different kind of pain. Not the pain of loss associated with a loved one who lived a long life and finally died of old age, or the loss of a friendship – relationship, even – in which you were the driving force that caused it to break up. There’s loss there, too, and it hurts in its own way.

Heartbreak is different. When you fall in love, a person leaves a mark on you that only they can leave, and when that mark gets ripped away from you before you’re ready, it leaves a gaping hole that nothing else can fill. It leaves questions. Horrible, torturous questions. Sometimes you get answers, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes a person drifts away, sometimes it’s an action that one performs that drives the other away – and that, I think, is the worst kind of heartbreak there is.

It’s because in that kind of heartbreak there’s a definite point in time where things went sour. One moment in time you can clearly see, remember, even relive (and we do relive them. Over and over and over again). You can see that moment constantly, but you can’t do anything about it. There’s no changing it, no way to go back as we’re all being dragged helplessly in time’s unrelenting march forward. It’s like being on a ship and slowly watching the shore you long for most in this world – a shore you know you will never touch gain – shrink slowly into the distance as you head out into the dreary gray and uncertainty of the open sea.

As time goes on, that pain of loss doesn’t come as frequently. We find that it ebbs and flows like a tide, and we have to endure every wave of emotion that comes over us. But eventually, those waves come fewer and farther between, and the happiness starts to occur more than the dark days.

But for others, it doesn’t. Sometimes the pain is all we have left – and so we cherish it. That’s when pain becomes pleasure. Let’s hope neither of us ever find ourselves in that place.

Maybe you experience heartbreak differently, but this is how it is for me. Perhaps you can relate – I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t think I ever told you this, but I am so, so sorry for your loss. I was too wrapped up in being angry with Les for the way he ended things to stop and really consider the effects it was having on you. It must have been so hard going through it all, and going through what you’re going through even now. Sweet woman, so much has happened to you in your life, and you deserved none of it.

Another thing I wanted to tell you in all this is that I haven’t been completely honest with you the past couple days. Specifically, when you asked me if I had been crying and I said no, I was just really stoned. Well, I was stoned (at the times that you asked) though I had been crying earlier, but not for the reason you may think.

I cry because we’re no longer together, yes, but it’s also in large part due to coming to the realization that I ruined your trip – your special place in the world – and how deeply I wronged you as a person. A person who has the inherent right to love, laugh, cry, hate, as YOU choose. And you handle it well. The little things you do, the way you explained it to me, special things you take with you when you go places. That’s why I feel the way I do for you. It’s the little things… the big ones… It’s WHO. YOU. ARE. that so ignites the fiery conflagration that burns for you in the deepest part of me.

You’re a person I truly respect, and someone for whom I have deep feelings. I cry because I feel so fucking bad for hurting you and wronging you and fucking up your camping trip. I feel guilt. I feel shame. I feel remorse. And it all cuts right to the bone.

I’m not telling you all this in some pathetic attempt to garner sympathy – I don’t want it and will not accept it. I tell you because I want you to know that with every laborious breath, every forced smile, behind every “it’s okay” and “no problem” that there is an endless abyss of suffering and regret. My suffering is just, to be sure, and I hope that in some small way maybe you’ll think better of me. Better of me because I’m not like other people. It’s things like this here that are important to me. The deep stuff. The stuff few people ever think about or try to understand. 

If not, it’s okay. No problem.

You’re the one, Jenna. I knew it the second I saw you when you picked me up at the airport with Yumi November 8th. 2012, and I knew it again when you opened the door this last April; and I know it still – some things won’t ever change.

I understand and respect your decisions, and to be perfectly honest with you, I needed this. I needed you to break it off, so that I could see myself in the situation I feared most, and watch myself continue to do my work, get through each day, and wake up ready to meet the next. I needed to see it to know that I could do it. Because in knowing that, it frees me of the anxiety I had about the situation in the first place. The anxiety that I did not handle correctly, and subsequently led us to where we are now. Much like driving your car, the anxiety I had been feeling the past few weeks was only anticipatory. Once I got behind the wheel of your car and hit the gas, I was right as rain. I really was excited this morning to drive your car back to the apartment. Not because it was hard and I persevered, but because it was easy. The truth is, I am far more capable than I give myself credit, and know now that I had been projecting that low confidence in myself onto our relationship, and that’s where my anxiety was coming from. Driving on the road is easy. Letting go of anxiety and truly experiencing what life and relationships have to offer is easy. I know that now, but now it’s too late. Moving forward, I intend to take actions to remove my low confidence and low self-esteem entirely. They aren’t useful, they serve no purpose, and they will be excised.

It all starts by forgiving myself for what I’ve explained to you here, and this letter, this mea culpa, of sorts, is where it begins.

I make mistakes. Sometimes small, sometimes big. But I always emerge better in the end. I paid a very dear price for this lesson, and in so-doing I hurt someone for whom I care more than myself. But now I’m free of that previous anguish, because I’ve tasted what I feared, and I fucking conquered it. Perhaps it seems a little odd to you, to read this. I know that a lot of people aren’t this way. They don’t learn, they don’t grow, they’re incapable of examining themselves with a critical lens and seeing any real flaws. Maybe it seems a little too convenient. All of the sudden, everything is fine? I’d have doubts, too, were I you. But I’m the one in my head, and I know what I’m capable of. It becomes clearer by the day. With every new experience, and every new challenge. Even here, in this hellish prison of my own making, I continue to flourish.

Maybe this is one of my gifts, the ability to analyze and self-criticize, and therefore turn things around so quickly. There are plenty of things in this world I’m not good at, but I do have a powerful mind, and weakness isn’t one of my flaws.

I love you more than any words I write here could ever convey. Trying to put it into words would only serve to diminish it, and so I won’t type anything else about it beyond those three at the beginning of this paragraph. You’re a special person, Jenna.  You don’t know how hard it has been not to grab your face and kiss you these past couple of mornings. The sickly sweet feel of your skin against mine, with my arms wrapped around you, and your scent lingering on me when you walk away… in those brief, fleeting moments… is where I exist. Where my world begins and ends; and I wouldn’t have it any other way. If at some point in the future the spark you had for me hasn’t been smothered by the slow march of time or someone else, and you want to try this again, it will be different. It will be better – I promise.

And you know I always keep my promises.

Ryan

I decided this morning that I would like to get some short stories published, so I am going to actively work toward that goal. To begin, I just need to read more, which I will start doing today if I am not too tired. I slept for about 3 hours or so last night, and I don’t really know what I’m capable of doing today. I have a feeling I’m going to crash relatively soon – especially since I just ate.

At any rate, I came to that decision because I want to be more than I am, and actually start accomplishing the things I want to do in my life. I’m doing it for me, though, not for anyone else. I don’t care anymore if I’m not good enough for other people. I will just do my thing and try to achieve some measure of happiness with myself.

I don’t know if it’s due to the delirium of being sleep-deprived, or if I’m coming out of my depression of the last few days. Either way, I need to try and change the way I think about things, and take steps to detach from those to whom I am attached. It hurts too much and causes to much pain to come up empty and wanting time and time again. I guess I was always chasing a delusion anyways. The world, and personal relationships, just don’t exist in the way I had always fantasized.

I still feel pretty depressed and inadequate after yesterday. In the end, it really doesn’t surprise me that someone would be interested in other people. I mean, Jenna certainly isn’t the first person I was with who wanted to go that route, and probably won’t be the last, either.

I am pretty gross. I got myself super fat over the past several years and, while I’ve lost a great deal of the weight, I still have a ton to go. I’m thinner now than I was, but still fat and gross.

I’m going to the gym tomorrow to sign up with those assholes; so I won’t be fat overlong. But still, how desirable is someone like me anyway? I wish I wasn’t transgender. I wish I could just be a man and live with it. I often think about stopping my transition and just living as a guy for the remainder of my time here on this hellish rock, but as much as it would make my life so much easier, the mere thought of being another bald, disgusting, gross ass man just repulses me to my marrow. I just can’t. But I can’t be a girl, either. Not really. Just some gross mishmash of the genders and sexes.

Some trans people end up being really attractive, but I don’t have those qualities. I don’t think I started my transition early enough to really end up looking like a girl – I’ll just wind up looking like some broad-shouldered dude in a dress with a ton of a makeup on and an obvious wig. A shit voice, too.

Of course, there’s always the chance some drunk hits me on my way to the gym tomorrow. Once can only hope, I guess.

 

Depression is an interesting thing. No matter what’s going on in your life, it will seem like that’s the thing that’s causing your depression. But, if/when that particular thing changes, the depression doesn’t just go away. Not really. It might lie dormant for a while, but then something else comes up and triggers it, and then that’s the thing that’s causing your depression.

Earlier Jenna let me read a post she wrote some months back about the things she’d done with people sexually, and it let me in on a side of her that I had only heard tiny bits and pieces of before.

I’m certainly not one to judge, I mean, I’ve never really been that judgmental anyway. I don’t think it’s slutty for a woman to like sex – most of them do – and I certainly don’t think it’s slutty for someone to engage in sexual acts with one or more people on however many occasions they like. Hey, if it makes you feel good…

It did, however, make me feel pretty bad about myself. I don’t think I’ll ever quite be enough for her. She’s a nice person, and I don’t think she’d say so to my face… not unless I did something that made her mad and she stopped liking me or whatever. But still, knowing is enough.

And, in truth, what do I really have to offer someone who’s into those things anyway? I have no status in this world. I’ve done nothing. I’m not attractive. I’m not cool. There’s really no reason to value having me in one’s life at all, so I guess I’m not surprised she’d rather be with other people. I just wonder how long she can put up with my meager offerings until eventually she brings it up herself. I think she maybe likes that guy in Japan. The satanist whose name I forget. She said he was polyamorous.

Part of me thinks that maybe she’d be happier with someone else. I wonder if I’d be happier if I were somebody else? Being me is neither easy nor enjoyable. Too many other people have so many gifts and talents, but I have none. And that is my problem.

My problem, and my depression, begins and ends with myself.

I really, really wish I had succeeded in just dying off last October. It’s difficult now to pull the trigger on something like that because it would make my family feel bad. Jenna told me once she didn’t know if she could handle it if she found me dead on the floor some time, but I don’t know about that. I’m not that great.

Oh well. I wish I had some weed and some booze right now. I could use a blackout or three.

Tonight was a bombshell – fittingly preceded by ominous whistling, an eerily serene portent of destruction, of pain, of the bone-chilling horror that is to come. Yeah, I knew something was up. I also knew I’ve been out of my head the past couple days…. oh, were it that I could go back. But you can’t. You can only go forward.

Everything was going so well, until all of the sudden, it started going so wrong. I didn’t come here to be a pin in her cushion. To cause additional headache, more bullshit. Never. Never ever.

And yet here I am. Lobbed in with the likes of Joel and others. People who took, people who stabbed relentlessly.

But not me. Not anymore.

I’m going to buy my ticket in a few minutes. I’m going to buy my ticket and I’m going to go. If there were ever any cause, any purpose for me coming out here, it was never to cause you pain and suffering. I’d say sorry, but those words don’t even begin to encompass my sorrow, my regret. Regret for something I certainly didn’t do on purpose… but in the end, does it really matter?

I don’t know. I don’t think it does.

For a few sweet, precious days, everything was perfect. Two weeks in absolute paradise… but the bill came early, and the cost… I’m not prepared to pay, but I’ll do it nonetheless. I’ll pay it because it has to be paid, and I won’t run. I won’t hide. Not anymore. I’ve told myself time and time again that I’ve risen above that obsequious, quivering weakling I used to be. Now it’s time to prove it. And I will prove it.

So this is what you have in store for me, is it? Life. You have fucked me again and again, now you give me all I’ve ever wanted, the exact type of person I could have designed myself on a computer screen. The only woman with whom I have ever, ever actually seen a possible, real future with… only to rip it away in a matter of days? Do it, then. Do it, and watch as I cope. Watch as I deal with what’s happened and continue on. Watch, or, as is your wont – hit me again. Again, and again, and again. Whatever you have in store for me, life, I will deal with. I have scars on my wrist from the time I tried to run away forever, and that won’t happen this time. .

You know what the worst part about it is? It’s the timing. I’m almost o.k. I’m almost where I should be. I’m making the right choices, I got off those pills that were driving me nuts… but unfortunately they won’t go quietly into the night. They reach out… now and again, and strike from the shadows.

I told you, Jenna, that I only wanted to be a source of joy and goodness in your life, and it appears I cannot be that. If the only thing I can do to make your life better is to take myself out of it… then that’s what I’ll do. I loved you then, and I love you now.

So go ahead, life. Give me all you’ve got.

“…to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

 

 

 

For the past three weeks I have been feeling really, really good; my depression and anxiety were almost non-existent. I thought it was because I started smoking weed every night and it was helping me to sleep better. I was wrong.

I hope I’m not bipolar and that the past several weeks were a manic/hypo-manic episode.

I’m starting to realize certain types of happiness may be out of my reach in this life, but honestly… at this point, I’d settle for just feeling stable.

gh